Picking up from last week (which did proceed a bit better than before, the talk having helped), I asked the participants in my local library’s Dungeons & Dragons program if any others had narrative ideas to submit for development as one-shot games to run, prompting them towards development of scenarios and situations through which they might work their peers and with which I told them I remained happy to help. So much done, play proceeded, moving through more of the narrative I had plotted out for them and towards resolution and denouement (with the latter term having been defined for their use; they are schoolchildren, after all, and their English classes are likely to make use of such terms).

There are only two meetings left in the present session, the week before Thanksgiving in the US being the last of them scheduled. As such, it is clear that we will not get through all of what I had planned, about which I have some feelings. I’d’ve liked to’ve gotten through all of it, since I did do the work of putting it together, and it does seem to me that the players had a good time of doing it. I’d’ve also liked to’ve gotten to have one or more of the participants run a one-shot this session, although if there is another session (I expect so, but I acknolwedge that the decision is not entirely mine to make), we can more or less open on such games. But those are relatively minor concerns, overall, and I am mindful that having such things in my life means things in my life are going pretty damned well; it’s something for which to be grateful, honestly.

It is the case that, overall, things did go well. The participants enjoyed the game I set before them, which is the point of playing such a game. They also clearly learned things, satisfying the library’s needs. They had an hour and a half each week of supervised social time, which I know pleased many of their parents, and my own daughter had her impetus towards volunteerism indulged, which pleases me and the library staff with whom she worked. An aspiring Girl Scout made progress towards a program award, one that will stand her in good stead as she moves forward with higher-level work and prepares more fully for her future, and helping with that is a good thing. I refined my craft further, in several regards, and since I am trying to bring in some additional money by doing so (hint, hint), that also works to my good. For all of these, I am grateful.

There are things to improve, of course. I did get a little crunchier in my event planning than was probably good for me, or at least differently crunchy; as a still-introductory game, there was cause to expose participants to a lot of rules, but I think I went overboard at times. I also did more than a few non-standard things that make sense to me in concept but that I probably did not carry forward as fully as I ought to have done; if and as things move forward, I think I will want to codify them more fully and explicitly. Too, it might be good to start to compile something of a compendium of information for the campaign, whether in this webspace or somewhere else, but that will join the many scholarly somedays I’ve noted in my other work here as something worth doing when circumstances allow. And I probably ought to move towards the broader narrative arc I have dimly in mind, in which Hanlon is but one small part…

Another time. But I look forward to there being another time.

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