Hemming and Hawing

Even though it has been forever and a day since I last posted, I have continued to play and the game (story) has moved along quite a bit since my last post. No spoilers, but a lot has happened to our brave band of adventurers in their quest to recover the stolen Cloud Gem from the cultists of Nag-Roop. They've followed the cultists deep into the Azure Pits and (ok, minor spoiler) not all in the party will return to the surface…

But the purpose of this post is to try and articulate the continuing difficulties I've had with writing up the session summaries. When I first started exploring the idea of solo play, I did a bit of research on various blogs covering the subject. On one blog (unfortunately I cannot recall which) I read that session summaries were an integral part of solo play. BUT, that they should be kept short - max a paragraph or so. I agree with this (although I find a paragraph is TOO short), and I have thought about ways to 'shorten' but haven't had any luck…

Artist unknown

Then I realized that the whole reason I play this game is for the story that develops organically from the rolls of the dice, use of random tables and my interpretation of them, etc. I have my notebook with my scribbling and various rolls and whatnot, but I also want to take a stab at putting in the extra effort to convey the images going on in my head as I play. This isn't an exercise in creative writing (Lord knows that's a stretch with me), but I do want to try and tell the story. Who knows, my kids might find it interesting one day when they get old enough.

So, I will move ahead and try and 'catch-up' with the current story. I'll try and focus on presenting scenes that I find most interesting, including commentary of how choices were made, which randomizers I used, etc. Then I will use a very abbreviated, 'fast-forward' format to connect to the next important scene.

Hopefully this format will work and writing session summaries will no longer be the bottleneck it currently is!