The Importance of The Journey

I love gaming, and I love the fantasy genre of movies/novels. One of the large consistencies I see in fantasy works (especially Tolkien, who is undoubtedly the grand-father of fantasy gaming) is the importance of the journey.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are both primarily stories about a journey. In the former, Bilbo and the company of dwarves take a journey to The Lonely Mountain with the goal of defeating the dragon at the end. The Lord of the Rings is a three book tale profiling a number of journeys, mainly that of the ring back to Mordor, but also the internal journeys of a number of characters (most notably Aragorn's internal journey to his destiny as King).

As a GM, the thing I've struggled with the most is making the journey a key part of the tale. In the first campaign my gaming group ever played together, we essentially handwaved months of travel for the sake of time, just because we wanted to flesh out this world we had created (there's probably a whole other series of posts that I could write based on the world-creation).

But my point is this, if the 4 hobbits hadn't stopped at weathertop, and it hadn't been included in the journey, would the story have lost a bit of its poignancy?

We watch Sam and Frodo's journey with such anticipation, partially because we can see the profound impact that they journey itself is having on them.

I've struggled with making the journey feel epic because I thing I fall into one of two traps.

First, the journey become too epic. I played through the first two books of Jade Regent from Paizo publishing and felt like the whole thing was too bogged down in the journey. It just... took forever and felt like we weren't making any progress along the way! We could really make sure that we track the days/nights, set up watches for each night and roll perception checks each night while on watch. But, after then tenth night of "you all sleep well because nothing happened," it gets pretty mundane!

On the flip side of that, if you handwave the nights when nothing is going to happen, and only concern yourself with the nights that the bandits try to rob the camp, all the sudden your PCs think they sleep in their full plate armor and the magic users have scrolls and spell components in hand while they sleep.

The other trap I already mentioned, we just assume that over a few months the party gets from point A to point B. They gain no XP along the way, we just pick the story back up once they get to the place you want them. This is completely against everything I'm trying to accomplish in a game and therefore I try to avoid doing anything of the sort. I believe that the journey itself does shape the characters. Their destiny is forged in the difficult journeys.

My final problem with journey-based storytelling is that I feel like they severely railroad the players. We know they are supposed to get from Point A to Point B, and I can even plan 3-4 things along the way. This is literally the railroad we try to avoid when planning out games.

So, what do you do when thinking of the journey? How do you tell the epic tale of characters getting to their destination to kill the dragon, destroy the ring, and/or find the treasure?

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Writer's Block

They say the more you do something, the better you will get at it. It should be no secret that I enjoy writing. This is my third blog attempt, each on focused a little differently. I find difficulty in blogging, however, because I think the majority of people who I'm already connected with won't be interested in a lot of the things I could sit down to talk about.

For instance, I finished A Dance With Dragons tonight. It's the 5th book in George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series which has been made wildly popular by the show Game of Thrones on HBO. I had read the previous four books a while ago but was reluctant to read the 5th book because it garnered pretty negative reviews from readers (especially on amazon).

However, when compiling a list of 30 books to read, I went ahead and added it onto the list. It took me three weeks to read it, and I absolutely loved it! It continues the very adult saga of Martin's world, but is hands down the greatest fantasy literature over (Yes, move over Tolkein)!

My greatest frustration, however, is Martin's incessant use of cliff hangers. There are what feel like 100 cliffs that we're hanging on, waiting for the next volume of the epic series. There were 6 years between the publication of the 4th and 5th books. I'm horribly anxious for the next book in the series!

But alas, most of my friends don't want to read my musings on that book. So, I could write about some new music. I recently picked up 2 albums from Benjamin Dunn from noisetrade.com. The first one is called Fable. It's an amazing album. RadioU plays 2 singles from the album, and I loved both of the songs.

Fable (at least for the first 5-6 songs) plays on a litany of Narnia references. If you've gotten to know me at all over my life, you may know that The Chronicles of Narnia has a very special place in my heart. The Narnia novels remain one of my favorite book series of all time.

Sail to the End speaks about Reepicheep and his journeys to the end of the world to travel to Aslan's country.

My Name is Eustace is a wonderful song rendition of Eustance Clarence Scrubb being transformed by Aslan's grace and mercy.

Sing references the Emperor/Aslan creating the world of Narnia by singing it into being.

But alas, I'm not sure I'm musically aware enough to write an entire post about an album (or even two). However, I highly recommend the Benjamin Dunn albums. Find them and get them!

What I could spend a lot of time talking about is my idea for a gaming adventure. I want to have an adventure published by next August. This gives me more than a year to get an adventure written and published. I also want to fill a journal up with only gaming ideas (not necessarily just Pathfinder). Why gaming ideas? Because gaming forces me to be creative. Writing is a creative endeavor, but writing for gaming really embraces my imagination in a completely different way.

So, I went to Barnes and Noble and got a new "Gaming Journal." I must admit, I actually bought my first Moleskine journal. After using it a little, I can see why they're so popular.

Anyrate, I've started brainstorming ideas for my new adventure. I have a title and a very loose concept in my head. I spent a few hours yesterday writing down a lot of information on the setting of the adventure. It needs to be loose enough to fit into any campaign world, and not be tied down to a single campaign setting.

I can literally feel more than 3/4 of my readers clicking away from this post already.

The issue I'm having, though, is where to begin?! I can see the end-game really well. Kill the BBEG (That's gamer talk for Big Bad Evil Guy), take treasure, WIN!

I can see the mid-points well. Get to BBEG, travel through dungeon full of traps and monsters.

But the beginning of adventures is so vexing for me. How do great stories begin?

A hole in the ground.
The beheading of a Night's Watch Deserter.
4 children avoiding the blitz by moving into a country mansion.
Traveling along the road in the desert and being blown up.
A traveling merchant singing a song about hot nights before peddling his wares.

(Bonus points to anyone who can name all 5 of those stories based only on my interpretation of their beginnings)

What about you, I've hit some writer's block, can you help? What's a great way to begin an adventuring story? The old school gaming trope is to meet in a tavern, get the mission pitched, save the world. So, I'd prefer to avoid that type of introduction altogether.

At any rate, thanks for reading. Leave comments below!

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Book #1 - The Hobbit

I set out to finish 30 new books before I turned 30 years old next August. To start my adventure, I read a book about... an adventure.

Holly and I fell in love with the Lord of the Rings trilogy; in fact i twas one of the things in our lives that we shared before we dated and have fallen in love with the extended editions through our marriage (we actually took the entire series on our honeymoon with us and watched the trilogy that week).

When The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey came out, we put it at the top of our "Must see list." Once we saw the movie, Holly took to rereading the book (she had read it before).

She absolutely insisted that I read it, and so I made it the first book I read on my list! I read the book in the shadow of the movie, which is something I generally try to avoid doing. However, I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy in college, and really struggled with Tolkein's writing. I just couldn't get into the flow of his style. He was a genius, no questions asked; but I really had trouble hanging with it.

The Hobbit didn't give me any of those problems. It was a fantastic read, and helped to flesh out more of the world I've come to love so much. It's also gotten me super-excited for the next couple of Hobbit movies.

One book down, Twenty-nine to go!

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