New Campaign!

 I am starting a new campaign! 

Running the game for new people is such a wonderful feeling. While my "main group" is always where my heart lies - we've developed a general standard operating procedure. Playing and running for new people helps jump start my creativity and improve as a DM and player. I would highly recommend running adventurer's league or some other game at a store to not only continue to encourage new players - but to shake up your standard operating procedures. While running a game at a store carries a certain stereotype of players, the best way I’ve found to combat that is to be picky about the store. A FLGS should absolutely be welcoming to you and others. The more welcoming and friendly a store, the more likely it is to have a community of wonderful players who will be kind to each other.

I'm going to work on blogging my experience prepping and running the game. This will include a session summary, things that went well, things I can improve on, the inspiration I drew from, and a short sentence or two about how I plan to prep the upcoming week. I found Matt Colville’s campaign diaries incredibly helpful so I hope to capture some of that energy here.

As I have moved away from 5e, I was very excited to hear that a group was interested in playing Worlds Without Numbers. The biggest draw to return to 5e is always the player population is astronomical. However, 5e's drawbacks are pretty big dealbreakers for me: very low chance it will be human-centric (my overwhelming preference), it assumes high magic (I'd rather magic be a less dominating factor in world building), and it puts too much emphasis on character builds (characters gain abilities based on choices made away from the table v. earned through gameplay) — amongst other reasons.

I chose Worlds Without Numbers becase:

1. It has minimalistic class creation, while still giving players the feeling of 5e “options.”

2. I think its 2d6 skill checks are super interesting to resolve

3. The spells are evocative, yet clearly designed to not dominate all aspects of the game

4. Shock damage keeps combat progressing (I want to write a blog post questioning the value of “to hit” rolls)

5. I’ve never run it or Stars Without Numbers before and I wanted to expand my game knowledge

I’ll have a blog topic soon outlaying my setting primer and map - as well as what I plan to cover in session 0. I also hope to have a new review coming in the next week or so!