Continuing from the previous session, pregame discussion was abbreviated. Coming off of tax day for a tax preparer leaves less latitude for game-planning than might be preferred, after all, but I am confident that the short resumption of previous weeks’ discussion of (neo-)medievalism and the vocabulary-building that seems always to accompany games I run with the kids speak to the explicitly educational objectives of the library’s program. I hope they do so, at least, and it’s what I mean to tell anyone who asks me about it.

There are still a couple of sessions to go with the current group of players, which is a melancholy thing. There is still time with them, still time for them to complete another narrative arc and to find satisfaction in doing so and delight in the doings at the gaming table. There is still time for me to do some good and contribute to the raising up of a new generation of gamers. There is, if I am being honest, still opportunity for me to get paid for doing some additional work. But it is also likely that the group will complete the current arc, gamers being what they are generally and middle-schoolers being eminently distractible. It is also possible that the program will not resume; the decision to renew or continue is not mine to make, even if I do hope it will go on and that others can be brought into the fold, as it were. And it is possible that there will be some who come from the experience of playing at my table not with an “Eh, not for me,” which happens, but “Ew, fuck that,” which also happens but is far less happy a thing to have happen.

Still, I am trying to keep in mind my comments from a few weeks back. Things change. Things end. Worrying about either takes away from what is good now, and there is much good now. And even if it is the case that present demands require attention to what is not good now, and I acknowledge there’s a whole lot that is decidedly not good, focusing on what might happen takes away from dealing with what is happening. It’s been something with which I’ve long struggled; I tend to catastrophize, to jump immediately not to what is likely to go wrong, but instead to the worst possible scenario, and it pushes me away from a great amount of enjoyment. I’m better about it than I used to be, I’m reasonably sure, but I still have a ways to go…just as Hanlon does.

I suppose I ought to get to planning out the next session, then.

Want your own gaming stuff written? Want it without AI slop? I’m your guy!

Or you can send your support along directly!