Coffee Ramble 4 - Chronicle of Moss

Recently I was going through some folders I had on my old production box in preparation to wipe the drive out.  There wasn't a lot to back up since I tended to do that regularly anyway, but I came across a folder simply called 'Chronicle 2017'.

The folder held a metric ton of old notes for a D&D campaign (In fact, the last 'successful' D&D campaign I've ever run).  It also contained an abundance of sketches that I had illustrated for the game as well.  Everything from simple design notes on some NPC's to a couple early sketches of Chime (one of the NPC's) and the group as a whole fighting what I can only guess is a bunch of assassin-vines or similar.

The biggest thing to hit me was not just the sheer amount of 'stuff' I had prepared for that game, but instead the nostalgic feeling of how much I loved prepping that stuff.  The hours spent just doodling things in the world, thinking up devious monstrosities or traps to encounter and just immersing myself in that space and time.  I really, really loved working on this stuff.

The first thought that came into my head was "Fuck I miss doing stuff like this."

Perhaps this was partly based on nostalgia.  2017 was the 'before time'.  Before my father's health took a very sharp and sudden turn for the worse, before the global pandemic, before the stacking stresses and multiple nervous breakdowns.  But not all of it can just be boiled down to nostalgia, I really did miss prepping and running this game.  I miss the social aspects of it.  I miss seeing things take shape, I miss the wheezing laughter when things went terribly wrong.  (I probably don't miss trying to balance encounters though.. Good GOD is D&D's encounter system a mess).

Some day I'd like to run something like this again.  Whether a game or just.. something.  I'd like to lose myself deep inside some umbral pocket of the increasingly forgotten world I have in my head.  If prepping for these games did one thing, it gave me laser focus on 'things to draw'.  I was never without a muse for artwork.

The interactions would lead to unique outcomes, the characters would develop and weave themselves into the fabric of what is now a very shaky universe.  Sketches of giants and their clan symbols, and the lore behind them, images of a lunatic dwarf who could breath under water stuffing their head inside of an attacking water elemental and laughing hysterically.

Those before times are, as with all things in the past, gone now.  But maybe I can spark an interest again.  I can see a little candle getting lit and make a new 'Chronicle of Moss' with a different set of people.  I'll just have to see.  But I can at least promise to post whatever madness that might pull from my thinkmeats.

Play games, folks.   It's good for the soul.

-T.J.