It's almost four days since it happened.
Since what happened, you ask?
Magic. Since magic happened.
In March 2024, I started a D&D homebrew campaign with the North American crew. Having run this adventure with the South Africans, I had some vague certainties as to what was going to happen down the line. So I began seeding things - gave one player's character random heartburn and weird dreams about the past.
Saturday night (technically Sunday morning for me), 19 sessions and more than a year later, I finally got to tell him why.
I was, as always, very nervous. I struggle with almost permanent anxiety and just having the reason for it being different. Needless to say, that was raging. I also have a large group of people whom I don't want to sideline for the big reveal, so I worked on ways to include them through recollection or questions. We also had a surprise new edition to the party that required me bringing them into the game in a way that still works for the story. Oh! And I only had two hours to do all of the things in.
A lot of things to juggle for my anxiety-crazed brain.
So I took away combat for this session. I mostly took away exploration. Instead, I focused in on the tier of play that I love the most and comes up the least in many campaigns. I let the people roleplay for two hours.
This group knows how to roleplay.
The player whose character had weird heartburn had such a look of shock when I finally revealed why there's a stabby-burn feeling in his chest. And the shock reverberated through all of them. There were slack jaw moments which I will cherish in my memory forever. It was such an amazing time. Amazing enough to vaguely write a post about it. ;-)
Story payoffs like this one doesn't come as frequently to me in a campaign. I will never be able to duplicate this even for the same group. But I'm challenged to try.
