Behind the Screen: The Winter Drag…
In addition to the gaming hiatus due to our relocation, we are also smack in the middle of the Winter Drag that affects many roleplaying groups. With all of the social obligations, shopping, and general merriment that is involved with the Thanksgiving/Christmas corridor, often there is not time for traditional roleplaying.
But there’s always exceptions!
The olden days of college gaming were about the only time during the holidays when we would roleplay, and we had many contributing factors to making this happen: proximity to other gamers, the need for a break from studying, and the lack of family members demanding various holiday gatherings until it was time for the short Thanksgiving or Christmas break that we were given.
Ways to Donder your Blitzen during the holiday season
If you do really want to game during the holidays, one-shot campaigns are your best friend. That, and stringent scheduling. I usually put some cycles toward campaign planning during the winter months, putting together a few episodes worth of common campaign encounters is a pretty quick and easy prospect that doesn’t require other people to complete.
I also like to plan some holiday related encounters during my campaigns so the characters in my campaign have the opportunity to relax and celebrate in-game. I’ve had Santa Claus drop off a few fun presents, and the occasional useful item to my players in the past. The Easter Bunny shows up in every one of my campaigns in some way or another (the vorpal Easter Bunny from another dimension was fun one year) and most of the time the players appreciate the fun diversion.
Occasionally, you will have a player or two that balk at the anachronism or find the presentation of holiday related campaign events childish, but those people can officially Cram It With Walnuts.
Take the time to relax and enjoy the holiday season, however don’t forget that you can use these times to create some great moments for use in your campaigns once the presents are unwrapped and the turkey is far into leftovers!
Amen to that. We’re currently in the midst of our holiday slump…and what’s more, it’s actually impacting my interest in blogging! What can I say — it’s just more fun to blog about RPGs when you’re actually playing them.
I hear that… our post frequency has dropped off dramatically when we don’t have a constant stream of input to work off of!!
Thansk for the comment and thanks for reading! 🙂
See, my gaming friends are divided between the ones who go to college near by and the ones who don’t (who are with us during the summers). I DM for the at-home friends, but when the other guys come home for the holidays, we do one day events (World of Darkness adventures, drafting up epic-level characters and trying to kill Orcus). So we’ve got much to look forward to at the end of the month!