Patrick Stuart's Sky-Stone-River Place

Is an obscure PDF, no longer available, containing a very entertaining dungeon filled with opportunities for climbing, swinging and yelling in a vast cavern filled with toppled templery and mosaic birds. 

My Rom'Myr Dying Earth campaign was built around this adventure module as the start location. Firstly, because I think the adventure is hella-cool. I knew I wanted to run it as soon as I skimmed the plain text doc. The other is because my OSR Homebrew setting used the Thief class as the base character class. If you don't qualify for any of the other six classes you are a thief. And with thieves having a high Climb Walls ability, the only  ability they can really exercise with some assurance of success, is a perfect match for the dungeon's interior environment. 

The campaign has moved on from the starting location, obviously, in the last year and a half, but before more daylight appears between that glorious opening and the current campaign's direction I would like to honor this original freebie with my own illustration of the water-warped temple.

OSR XP Awards Expanded

The conceit of XP for gold in Dungeons & Dragons is to incentivize adventuring. To face unknown peril in the hopes of in-game rewards. And since then DMs and PCs have argued for and have given XP for behavior outside of wealth accumulation. A great example of this mechanic is found in TSR’s Marvel Super Heroes. The game incentivizes heroic action by awarding “Karma” points. The spending of Karma point values by the PC is then used to turn in-game failures into successes for the hero. Do more heroic stuff during the game and your PC continues to enhance their ability to successfully pull off heroic stuff! Play it safe (and decidedly non-heroic) and the PC will not have a means to pull the proverbial fat out of the fire when the stakes are nigh insurmountable.

And there I have let the XP for gold standard lay. The end-all and be-all means of OSR-character advancement, while expanded means of character advancement I accepted in any other game as well as the conceit implied. I mean, I never had reason to change OSR experience awards. Sure it forced me to become oblivious to standard economic reality in my fantasy settings, and what it would require for in-game financial management, let alone where are the staggering tall stacks of cash being kept! But I was young, impressionable and really didn’t care. My sandbox DM hands were kept out of meddling with value judgments and in-game awards outside of the prescribed method.

But now I am older and game time is not had everyday. It is three times a month or less. Me and my players will be long dead before multiple campaign worlds will be played out and characters risen to heroic, high fantastic deeds if I kept XP count strictly on coin. Besides, my interest in player motivation and player-driven goals leads to no other conclusion than XP awards for goals, activities and actions.

My current OSR campaign, the Dying Earth of Rom’Myr, started as a genre-enforcing thought experiment by restricting PC class. Basically house-ruling the character creation rules to suit the game worlds genre. Without diving into too much detail, here is the long and short of it. Decidedly pulp-flavored fantasy the default class is Thief. Good attributes qualify the budding PC for any of the other six character classes available. But restricting character class wasn’t going to get my desire across. That of incentivizing PC play inline with genre tropes typical of the literature.

For this task I had to offer up XP awards for actions and behaviors. For example, I wanted the PCs to take a look at some great indie-OSR product as well as take faction affiliation more seriously. Therefore I offered 250 points for a god from the Petty-Gods compendium at character creation. Completing “jobs” for Patrons gave more XP than just their financial award. Achieving party-agreed upon goals generated XP awards, causing story-appropriate reactions and results gained XP, engaging with the campaign world’s people and places gains XP.

How these XP’s are rated and distributed has been an ongoing experiment, really just giving out group XP rewards for great game play. Here is a good example of my evolving thought on these XP awards. The PCs placed a modest wager on a racing long shot. They then involved themselves mightily in the races intrigue and double-dealing to orchestrate a win! Against all odds the PCs slapped their marker down at the betting window, achieving an 8,000 dollar win! Except the poor never win in Rom’Myr. Just like the real world, when the powers that be are denied they call foul and cancel the payout! No gold, no XP. I did not like this, not one bit. So the crown and cathedral confiscated the “fairly” won spoils. Why do the PCs get no XP? The players themselves achieved an amazing in-game feat, one worthy of cataloging in any dying earth tale. So I gave the party the 8,000 XP.

Look, I want my players to succeed. That is why I don’t fudge to-hit and damage rolls. It makes those miraculous rolls, those narrow odds achieved, really memorable. I also don’t want them to toil endlessly for thousands of coin to achieve heroic stature and reputation. The geometric expansion of XP totals forces me to litter the game world with ridiculous treasure caches otherwise. Screw that noise. Specifically, cash and gems generates instant XP. Items of value must be converted into cash before XP is awarded. Pulling off risky actions typical of the genre grants individual awards. Now I am rewarded by having good players. Players who “do stuff”. They most likely would play in-character even without artificial XP awards. But sometimes they want to play it safe, drift away from trouble and take the road more traveled to save their hides. Turning up the possible XP available makes ignoring new, dangerous hooks and threads just that more harder. That the call to adventure, and its awards, can be found in completing well known tropes and attitudes. I think rewarding the PCs for completing goals agreed upon by the party the most satisfying of all. This “rapid” advancement drives the game with a fast pace, the other great ingredient marking a good game. This idea of additional XP awards driving pace is something for another blog post itself. Suffice to say, reward your PCs for doing stuff. Not just with coin and magic. But with meaningful XP awards.

Gambling Mechanic for your Online OSR Game

A great roadside attraction thrills your fantasy players. The promise of unexpected boons and banes from carnival games is a thrill not unlike gambling. Most tavern encounters and back-alley interactions are spiced up with an odd game of chance or ridiculous custom being played out. In a FTF game going “all-in” with a game of cash poker can be done in real time if the DM and PCs agree. While not necessary, the “game-within-a-game” has not uncommon interest for your average gamer. Just like a mass combat encounter where the DM and players through down miniture armies and work out the fight with a table-top wargame, so to can gambling games be so straightforwardly delivered.

Not so online. The DM can’t whip out a deck of cards and start dealing, all the while laying out house-rules. Falling back on the hobby’s early improvisational roots, you can roll out both use real gambling games to play for a winner. Online, not so much.

Besides the physical barrier to play, if some PCs are in to gaming while others want to move on to other goals this can cause disruption in play for everyone if the games of chance take too long. I therefore conjured up a quick way to resolve exotic card games while retaining a reusable mechanic which gives the thrill of hitting a payout!

For my occasion I came up with a poker game called “Dragon Master”, and resolved it thusly; any PC who wants to play a hand must put up an ante. This is added with all other antes to give the starting “pot”. The DM decides how many additional players are so the number is correct. Now each PC must Save vs. Poison to get a playable hand, a hand worth betting on. If not then the PC looses their ante and must wait for another round to play. The NPC’s the players are gambling against never roll for a playable hand. This set up is completely player-facing. If only one PC is gaming against others than rolling for a playable hand is straight forward. Roll your Poison Save till you succeed. Pay the amount of antes equal to the number of hands you were “dealt” before you stayed in.

Now the PCs declare their wagers and roll to win. This is resolved with an attribute roll. The PCs are free to choose from Intelligence, Wisdom or Charisma. Both the DM and any active PC players roll a d20. Winner is the highest number without going over their chosen attribute. Rolling over your attribute represents folding, losing in a showdown, however the PCs and DM want to role play the encounter. There is nothing in the way for any amount of role play PCs want to do because the final dice roll always gives you the winner.

I give my PCs xp for every bit of cash they win, even if they loose it all in following hands. Nothing sharpens a card player like taking a few beatings along the way! The improving saving throw with character advancement complements the idea of a more experienced traveler and adventurer getting mre playable hands. Face it, good card players are more than likely to have had a wide variety of wordly experiences, and PC level is a good representation of this in game terms. The d20 throw against attribute counts both the edge a character may have with high numbers while at the same time these flat rolls can also throw surprises!

So, to recap;

1. Place your ante.

2. Roll save versus poison to continue, or loose ante.

3. A saved ante now must be wagered on, PCs still in declare their wagers.

4. Roll d20. Highest number without going over attribute wins.

5. Repeat.

Into the Dark: Bryce Lynch's Adventure Design Tips Summarized and...

Into the Dark: Bryce Lynch's Adventure Design Tips Summarized and...: What follows is a second attempt to briefly encapsulate the tips and principles for designing adventures presented by the inestimable Bryce...

Monday, July 25, 2016

Bryce Lynch's Adventure Design Tips Summarized and Explained (Mark 2)

What follows is a second attempt to briefly encapsulate the tips and principles for designing adventures presented by the inestimable Bryce Lynch in his singularly fantastic adventure review blog, Ten Foot Pole. This is basically the same as my previous postsummarizing the principles from Bryce's reviews of The Hoard of the Dragon Queen and The Rise of Tiamat, but with some minor edits to improve the felicity of expression (ahem).

Bryce Lynch’s Adventure Design Tips

Summarized and Explained

1. General Tips: The 5 C’s

1. Color: The referee should give brief but evocative descriptions of locations, monsters, NPCs, and treasures. Avoid the vague or generic.

2. Context: In order for their actions to be significant and purposeful, players must generally have some information about the likely consequences of their actions, such as likely reactions of monsters or NPCs.

3. Choice: There should be more than one course of action available to players in order for the adventure to continue. Avoid choke points—both literal choke points in the physical layouts of dungeons and other locations, and figurative choke points which require a unique decision or solution in order for the adventure to proceed.

4. Consequences: Player actions should be allowed to make a real difference in the adventure and in the campaign. Avoid a set storyline or sequence of events immune to player interference.

5. Creativity: Related to (3) and (4), reward player creativity by allowing them to pursue unanticipated courses of action or to produce unanticipated consequences, rather than restricting player action and player creativity by setting up arbitrary constraints in the location layout or course of events.

2. Hooks

6. Don’t rely on a single hook; use multiple kinds (treasure; reward; magic; glory; political power).

7. Create a rumor table with hooks and color.

8. Hooks should appeal to the players, not just to their characters.

9. Hooks can and should be complex or nuanced, such as working for an evil NPC or working for rival factions.

10. To support sandbox play, dungeon, town, and wilderness locations, monsters, and NPCs should all have hooks.

3. Locations (Dungeons, Towns, Wilderness, etc.)

11. Location descriptions should be terse (not verbose) but evocative (not boring, obvious, or generic).

12. Only include background info that affects gameplay; avoid long descriptions of irrelevant info.

13. Rooms should have features that players can interact with to produce meaningful consequences. Give concrete descriptions of secret doors, traps, etc.

14. Floor plan tips:

             a. Multiple routes (vs. choke points or linear, one-way paths).

             b. Multiple entrances and exits.

             c. Multiple stairs per floor.

             d. Open spaces with balconies, galleries, and ledges at various elevations.

             e. Pools and rivers that connect different rooms or levels.

             f. Bridges and ladders.

4. Monsters and NPCs

15. Create interesting, believable motivations for monsters and NPCs.

16. Create factions of monsters and NPCs, which leads to a dynamic, interconnected strategic situation.

17. Give players the choice of allying with, attacking, trading with, or having other relationships with monsters and NPCs.

18. Create schedules, routines, tactics, or orders of battle for monsters and NPCs.

19. Wandering monsters too should be given motives, goals, hooks, and tactics.

20. Avoid standard monsters. Failing that, describe standard monsters in a non-standard way (e.g., don’t just name the species).

21. Give evocative descriptions of monsters. Give concrete descriptions of their appearance and activities. Go for the telltale sensory detail, rather than the generic abstract trait. Show, don’t tell.

Example: Instead of stating “One of the guards in the camp is a cruel bully,” say “The burly Manfred takes a leak on Tobias’s bedroll, and then snatches Tobias’s roasted chicken from his hand and quickly gobbles it down.”

22. Use truly evil monsters to evoke a Sense of Terror.

5. Treasure

23. Treasure should be valuable enough to motivate players and to make the challenges worthwhile.

24. Non-magical treasure should relate to the setting and give clues or information about monsters, NPCs, locations, etc.

25. Avoid standard magic items.

26. Give evocative descriptions of magic items. Give concrete descriptions of their appearance and how they must be manipulated to produce their magical effects.

27. Use magic items to evoke a Sense of Wonder.

6. Format and Functionality

28. Include reference tables:

a. Rumor/hook table.

b. Monster/NPC table that lists their main traits, motivations, location, etc.

c. Room/building table that lists the rooms in a dungeon or other keyed location.

29. In published modules, put maps and monster stats on separate sheets so they are easy to refer to in play.

30. On maps, use keyed symbols to indicate standard features (e.g., lit/unlit, locked/unlocked, secret, trapped, etc.), rather than a verbal description in the location key.

2018 Clockwork & Cthulhu Campaign in Review

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Aww, The Vanishing Tower now has a holiday tradition! Reviewing the past year's blood-soaked saga of Clockwork & Cthulhu!

What were the top 5 hits of this past year for the longest running roleplaying game I've ever tried? There is so much to choose from, so much ground covered, consequences consummated and reckless adventure pursued... I'm just having a hard time deciding!

#5 You Tube! I know I am real late to the party here and this sure is some low-hanging fruit, but this is a recent development for my group and it has had an immediate impact on my enjoyment of our play. The live streaming and the resultant upload of the video for later review lets me remember important events, catch witty things my players are saying I otherwise miss and appreciate the effect of pacing on everyone's enjoyment of any given session. How else will I never forget -6 Hit Points is not considered being "softened-up" by the players?

#4 PC Death! Not once, but twice! The Scottish outlaw Creigh disappeared through a hole in the wall and Cousin Ralph Norton, a beast of a man, went down during a whirling knife and pistol fight. Player Characters can take more of a beating than the NPC's in my Renaissancegame but I am truly surprised this was the limit of the PC body count for 2018. Dice favored the players more than naught when life and success held in the balance. This puts two regular players on their third character each while everyone else is still on their original. In a long running campaign PC death changes the dynamic of the PC group. Comfortable niches are all but upturned and Players have to reinvent a game personality. I believe it is just enough work to make a player want to keep their existing character. I know as the Keeper I have to make not inconsequential choices on the fly for the introduction of a new character. It is important to not restrain from killing a PC when the dice roll against them just because I got invested in some story elements involving the stand out character. No plot armor allowed!

#3 Splitting the Party! One player went one way, one another, and still others clutched their wounds and looked for a place to lie low. The old OSR maxum of keeping your player group all together during the session must surely be tossed on the junk-heap of gaming history by now. 2018 saw the campaign enlivened with the players finding themselves making split-second decisions and getting cut off from one another. This spawned a couple of bonus sessions and overall made a greater campaign world. This doesn't mean a Keeper does not need to work extra hard on pacing and keeping everyone involved. I did have to schedule seperate sessions and find time for them, but it shouldn't be shied away from in session either. Zak's Frostbitten & Mutilated has a nifty adventure which gives any Game Master an example on how tension and interest can be maintained while splitting the party.

#2 The Birth of the Side Quest into a major Campaign Event! The PC's have gotten up in all manner of conflict with cosmic and local forces that the adventure ground literally squirms with the snakes of complications. Whether or not the PC's pursue their enemies, trouble with an agenda is sure to find them. The Keeper's most useful tool for handling PC's going in unknown directions are random encounter tables customized for the current adventure location. The running and gunning the players did in the streets of Old Yarmouth against alien antagonists and political rivals was all spawned from the fallout from a previous mission. The proper mix of success and setback with random encounters and prepared site locations gave the players complete agency against a backdrop of a responding campaign world. Did I say random encounter tables are essential? You know what fuels great tables? Great adventure content. Involved side quests come across better when you have interesting third party content to use. It is hard to constantly foster entertaining encounters so a smart Keeper will use quality content from others as solid footing to riff off of during live play.

And #1 is the Consummation of the Picaresque.  Sailing to the New World in pursuit of their ever-elusive initial adversary is kind of a big deal. Because it fit for the time period the voyage and the destination continued the campaign world-building. How the PC's arranged passage to the New World was an engaging adventure arc in its own right! The PC's jumped from Yarmouth, Norfolk, on to King's Lynn and then Africa. Each stop gave the PC's a chance to interact with the NPC's and they worked with their environment as they saw fit. Unique outcomes along the way, a hallmark of the picaresque,  will then plant the seeds for future, new adventures.

And that is what has stuck with me for this past year's play. There is one more session of 2018, this Sunday morning. No matter what occurs on the last day of this year 2019 feels like a year of reckoning. For the PC's, for the campaign long unanswered threads- some will be answered. This is right an just and the group has made it so. I wonder what this will bring the body count to?

Where in the World is Xoth?

Xoth is here actually. Well, only in my multiverse. The World of Xoth is Morten Braten's creation for his Pathfinder game. I took his setting material and used it for my playtesting of USR Sword & Sorcery. This, an the "Known World" of Mystara from B/X D&D, are my touchstone campaign worlds when I got back into gaming five years ago. With some regular play it didn't take long to start  daydreaming about intersecting gaming worlds and gaming groups with each other. The Flailsnail's conventions showed me that I didn't even have to be thaaat concerned about different systems mashing with different system PC's. Running some Classic Traveller and keeping a Clockwork & Cthulhu campaign going the pieces of my multi-verse are mostly full-formed now. Mystara, Xoth, 1646 C&C Earth and the super-future of my Outer Frontier Traveller Universe I'm placing all in the "normal", terrestrial universe, with only Clockwork & Cthulhu and Traveller necessarily being separated in time.

I quickly populating the different campaign worlds with many different "doorways" out of the terrestrial universe and into other "realms", the multiverse of my game world; "Murph's Multiverse"! Mystara PC's ventured into the far future, Mystara's the-end-of-time (my Ro'Myr setting?) as well as crossing over into A Red and Pleasant Land. Xoth, these PC's activated ancient devices which connected to beings in Outer Frontier Traveller Universe, as well as through Lotus poisoning in the far-east they ended up in a strange mushroom-dreamland. The PC's from my current C&C game have entered the realm of The Pale Lady (shares space with A Red and Pleasant Land) and became acquainted with "trans-arcana" penetrations. In the Outer Frontier that PC group investigated and activated more troubling powers started in another time and place on Xoth which brought my multiverse its first glimpse of horror-scarred Carcosa...

Which gets me all thinking about a visual map of all this. Where all these great settings get placed and their linkages get tracked.

So now I know where Xoth is, Trappist-1, and Earth. Mystara can be place anywhere in the known universe (or beyond) and right now there really isn't a pressing need at this point to pin it down. The Outer Frontier will eventually get mapped back to "original" Earth. Oh yeah, I even have some modern-day adventures from Anthropomorphic USR and Fear & Loathing USR to bridge all my imaginings to the here and now!

The inspiration for my map is coming from that great map of Kamandi's world by Kirby. Now I guess I just got to draw it :) 

The Why? of doing this is to hone a functional DM'ing device to tap crossover opportunities by retaining, recognizing and cataloguing mentally them for later use. If I have a multidimensional model of my homebrewed gaming universe I can hang cool ideas like ornaments on a christmas tree. Or stars in the night sky I guess.

OSR games develop story better than Story Games

[Edit 7/29/18]: Patrick Stuart makes a far better case than I can, read his post here.

In short I feel Story Games spend much of their game time talking about what the story is about while the traditional rpg's I play and run story is happening because we are playing the game. A common refrain I hear about Story Games is “it's about the story”, that somehow without giving PC's valuable session time to bloviate on what their character is about, what they have done, what matters to them a role playing game is terrible and being played wrong. Oh, also no one else at the table (think GM) can say what happens to their PC. I find the structure of a Story Game obliterates the stand out features of traditional RPG's to the point of making them unrecognizable, so much so they have a name; Story Games.

My latest game session once again reinforced my opinion that a traditional RPG delivers story in so many levels that the fall down for folks who cannot get a “story” out of traditional mechanics can't rise to the challenge. Role playing games offer a unique medium with incredible artistic and creative depth. Underneath the term “game” lies a medium which has no bottom, no limits to the quality of experienced to be realized. Therefore, with any artistic exploit, it is not easy to be good at it. And when I mean good I don't mean enjoyment. As a kid I enjoyed RPG's to the exclusion of almost any other activity. Doesn't mean I was any good at it. In fact I was keenly aware that there was much more to the game than my gaming group could really achieve. The D&D, Stormbringer and Gamma World rule books would mention this thing called a campaign? Where the game really shined as over the course of adventuring a world would be built up and the PC's would be a significant part of this. A Final Word in the original Classic Traveller rulebook sums it up nicely; “The greatest burden, of course, falls on the referee, who must create entire worlds and societies thorugh which the players will roam… The players themselves have a burden almost equal to that of the referee: they must move, act, travel in search of their own goals… Above all, the players and the referees must work together.”

Story Games remove and or minimize the Game Master's/Referee's role in a traditional RPG thereby creating something different. Which is all well and good, play the game you want. But to say a Story Game is the solution for not having story in your RPG is rubbish. It's like saying you can't paint like Picasso because there is something wrong with paint, canvas and a stick, the tools you paint with. No, while it is easy to paint it is difficult to paint creatively.

Today's session went like this; some of the players felt they had a cash flow problem. One of them didn't. Some of the players thought they should pursue a dubious means of solving the problem, one of them didn't. On top of this one of the players had a problem with the relations and deals the party had made with dubious factions through play at the present time. One of the players turned to me and asked, “Do I have to role play this out or can I just roll and try and influence the other player?” In my game rolls for the results of social interaction (bluffing, fast talk, intimidation, etc.) are reserved for NPC's. The players have complete autonomy when it comes to deciding what choices their PC's will make. “Look, you guys have to work this out.” And I usually punctuate the moment by clicking off my mic. This is their time and I want the party to sink or swim on their own desires, needs, wants, abilities and investment. In fact, they had a similar situation just the previous session. One character was not hot on letting the party's surgeon remove his recently acquired kangaroo tail through amputation. They had to work this out among themselves. Arguing the risk of death or permanent disability against the complications such an enchantment would cause for the party at large in the campaign world. This was all on them. And it wasn't the first time the subject had been brought up. Anyways, the tail did come off and the PC survived, but this doesn't mean there was a kumbaya moment where they all came out of the barn holding hands. No, the game's story is being made in real time with their choices and decisions. No one used an “edge” or a “move to direct the tale. There were no mechanics to be forced to help them out of a complicated situation. They argued, decided, and hoped for the best. And the PC's character, their personality, their “story” was made before all out of everyone's own imaginative clay. Good, bad, or indifferent as far as quality of “play”, they got what they got not because they followed some structured method of resolution, but because they made it, together.

Now back to today's session; the dissenting PC (on the cash grab) felt so strongly about it he refused to participate in the action. Once again there was no “my character wouldn't do that”, or “my aspect says I will do this” he played his story in real time, played his character his way, and surprise, surprise, with high fidelity based on what has happened to the PC during the course of play within the overall campaign. Because he was invested, because like everyone else around the table they put some decent effort into their role. And this shit happens all the time with the players. No one at the table is shy about arguing over choice, action and consequence. And this is the story. Sure we have arch villains, and mind-bending horrors to battle. Blood soaked combat and PC death, but it is in the session to session PC on PC interaction which makes each one of them stand out and a distinct and unique story emerges every session.

Are the best sessions when they interact with each other for hours and no dice are thrown? No, not at all. We get the extra icing on the cake because the campaign world is dangerous and adventure abounds. Sooner than later the dice must be rolled and catastrophe breathes heavy over their shoulder. Just because you gamed your balls off doesn't mean your PC has plot immunity. That just sounds too much like a Story Game.

Turning a page in Clockwork & Cthulhu

The PC's settled their affairs with the Pale Lady's Trans-Arcana penetration into the material plane off the coast of Great Yarmouth this morning. Hero and Improvement points were awarded and they returned to Norton Manor, the now defacto headquarters of these secret agents of Parliament known as C.l U. B., the Clockwork Underground Bureau. One PC death was incurred during this four week (game time) adventure arc and one PC was ordained into the order of Righteous Soldiers, a recognition of his single-minded willingness to deliver death to enemies of the Parliamentary cause. 

For some reason I feel wiped out. Drained. Not that any of the sessions were any "harder" than the rest to run. More that it feels like I have wrung much imaginative juice from this mortal frame to fuel the campaign world. This is with using published adventure material as well. It certainly helped with the heavy lifting of world building. This is also a gaming first for me; a long running campaign. It is deeply satisfying and my belief that under all the entertainment value easily recognizable with TTRP'ing is a legitimate art form is validated.

As the game moves on to another chapter the challenge is clear; continue doing what I am doing, but make it BETTER. What does better mean? Now is not the time for me to come up with the answer. I need to reflect, drift and daydream now. Running a campaign is both a marathon and a sprint. Twenty four miles of fascinating road, some of it has to be run fast, uphill, both ways. On the surface TTRPG's are simple. It taps into the incredible enjoyment from oral storytelling and group collaboration. One thing leads to another, la-de-da la-de-da.

I've learned custom random tables for your world and setting are a godsend for the flagging mind during a session. Hacking published materials with your own ideas relieves the burden of coming up with the endless stream of NPC's needed in your world. I've also discarded the idea that the system really matters. I think when folks are having lovely flame wars over different systems and different editions it is a deflection from how demanding being a game referee is if you want to do it well. Most people don't want to face up that they may suck and they need to make changes. It is sooo much easier to say the system is broken, or it doesn't do this or that well. Rubbish. Here is my analogy to try and make my point; the fine art known as painting has three components. Color, texture and shape. Pigment on the end of a stick is applied to a flat surface. That is it. But from simple ingredients the bottom of this form has never been reached. Some who really want to be a painter won't make it because they will suck. "It wasn't for me." "I like photography better." folks may say as they flit through mediums looking for recognition. I've found it is better to soberly recognize your ability, and figure out for yourself what success looks like. For me it is to challenge myself to do better. Don't get hung up on results. Pursue with dogged determination and be open to the surprise of invention. You are conquering fear, nothing more, nothing less.  

So after this little stream of blathering thought here is my ask; when you feel drained from the work and fear you can do no better what do you do to get geared up to viciously attack your old way of doing things and blow your mind with the next discovery with your long running campaign?