Date: 9th of May 2026
As a games designer one of the things my professors told me time and time again was to kill your darlings. That it is OK even encouraged to end your projects early if they stop being feasible or fun. It's not bad advice, but it isn't 5 years deep that you usually need to take an idea behind the shed. Not that this campaign was particularly one of my darlings. It was in fact 5 years falling in and out of burnout. It was also 5 years of exploring a world with my friends. So it was a darling, just one that I sometimes had a less than perfect relationship with.
It all started just as I was entering university. Our usual DM had gone on deployment and so was going to be missing for some months. I'd previously run a ‘two-shot’ for this group a month prior and was asked to take that and make a campaign. I foolishly agreed and then some 2 years in I was deeply regretting that decision. There was no clear big bad or end game for the party and the world was missing some tangibility.
By this time I was burnt out, I couldn't find the energy to fix these issues. Not to mention i was caught up in being a student, coursework and socials had taken some priority. What time and effort I had was spent keeping up. My partner at the time (who we shall call ‘Frittata’ as I'm hungry as I write this) offered to help, they helped flesh out the pantheon and plan our big bad. I could continue my work keeping up with the planning and collaborate to bring the world beyond the session to life.
Eventually the game progressed to a point where a mid-late game villain was needed. And as they were helping with this Frittata offered to step up. They would join as a player reprising a character in a sideplot one-shot and steal an important artifact, called a "Shard of Origin”, from the party that had been introduced in that same one shot. In doing so the PC would become an ascendant being and villain for the campaign Frittata would then give me their character to use as my own.
Looking back this was a silly thing to agree on. I was relying on them choosing to hand over their character (foreshadowing) and that my party would be OK with a betrayal like this. I took the offer as there wasn't another option that was good for me at the. I was desperate for a change that I didn't feel capable of bringing to light myself and was given a way out by someone that I trusted.
As we will explore more closely in later posts this trust was slowly broken in the pot that frogs boil within and the campaign had to be ended. Frittata had sewn themselves so deeply into this world however that I couldn't take it with me as I escaped an abusive relationship. So how does it feel to have lost or rather refused connection to something so central to my life? Well it has so many feelings attached to it. Positive and negative, it's really not a simple thing.
I’m happy that I have the new found freedom; I can explore new ideas I’d had that didn't fit, reinterpret old ideas and stories. I can do something completely different, right now I'm running a campaign within Candela Obscura and playing as an Anglican priest within Vampire the Masquerade. I intend to bring many of the ideas I'd had both used and unused into a new world (Epithet). This was originally to be the world after the events of the campaign that would have changed the laws of the universe. Many of the rules created for this new world were really cool and I wish to reclaim them.
I’m also deeply mournful of what I've lost. There were so many characters from that world that I loved, they were my friends. Kajtan, a cured wereboar who betrayed his godly order that lied to him both in how he was orphaned and what his order’s creed truly was. Sapere, an oracle burdened with a vision that made him an apostate. Kvarc, a husband widowed vowing vengeance against the god that ordered wrath on the site where his wife died. Cain, one of the first mortals cursed to live so long he no longer knew who he was. Pegi, one of many clones of a god’s long lost love created again and again. Antaea, a goddess who once rebelled and now hides the descendants of those who rose up.
Each of these characters, some PCs and others my own creations are gone. Their echoes may return in new characters in new worlds, but the stories we had worked to complete will never have the resolutions they deserved.
It’s hard to work with both these conflicting sets of feelings, I have won and lost much. My current plan on dealing with this pain and joy is to focus on the good and work past the bad. Working on a new DnD campaign & setting is obviously healing in that I can do it right this time. I can reinvent that which I liked and throw out that which I hated. And while I'm getting that sorted out I can do things I wasn't able to do while I was locked up in the DM seat.