What to do on a Gaming Break

It's summer again. Well it's supposed to be but with temperatures lingering around 40 it doesn't feel like it. Most summers I take time off. A couple months. To hang out with the wife full-time, if she doesn't get sick of me, to recharge the batteries. It's a standard procedure for most gamers. 

But when do you go back? Everything is relative. Sometimes after a week I start twitching. Compulsively reaching for my d20. Reading about the newest and greatest setting/adventure/supplement of all-time. Watch YouTube videos of 5e gaming because I watched all the old school gaming videos already. Not gaming can make you do fucked up things. Like posting a picture of a weird looking ginger dry humping a giant d20. I have no idea what this meme means. 

So what to do with that time off? Read. Read a lot. Read non-gaming things. Without hesitation I will say I get more gaming ideas from non-gaming material. 

Sub-Cutures

I enjoy books that focus on a sub-cultures (i.e. Melungeons, Sukeban, and Gopniks) with substance. Don't get me started on the Bagel Heads. You can grab a beautifully odd culture that is very specific and develop it into a wonderful setting. Maybe the idea is big enough to flesh out into a kingdom or just place these quirky individuals within an already established setting. 

Cults

Slip in any cult. Any. This material is rich with a skewed view of reality. Skewed POVs need to be solid, at least a little believable. Enough to make sense why people would belong. I see this as the biggest struggle when I read about gaming cults. They are kinda like DC and Marvel big bad villains. I'm doing bad things because I'm a bad. Or I want to rule the world! Or I want to destroy the world! But the reasoning behind their horrible attitude is missing. Superhero movies aren't bothered by this most of the time. Unlike these movies, we need to have something of substance in game. The players are interacting and moving within the world they affect. If a cult's reasoning doesn't have some semblance of reason, it doesn't have to make sense to the party, but it needs to saturate the cult you are selling as the next group of baddies. Or a pleasant group of well-adjusted people who happen to worship dog poop.

History

No brainer. Read history. Lots of it. All of it. Go ahead I'll wait. But I do steer away from this category especially the broad sweeping books. While they cover a lot of time, events and wide perspective, I don't get as much from these types of books. What I use them for is to find funnel material. What's funnel material? Oil, milk, flour, a little powder sugar... Let's say I'm reading the Roman Empire. Yup, the whole fucking thing. 27 BC through the fall of Constantinople in 1453 AD. Or thereabouts. Yes I looked it up. As I'm reading how wonderful and horrible these Romans were I read something about the Saminites. They sound interesting. I funnel down. I start read articles, maybe a book. They have interesting blended way of worship. Funnel down. They worship spirits called Numina and sacrificing animals to Vulcan, Diana, Mars and Mefitis. While the overviews are good I prefer digging down. Getting into the dirt. That's where I find my gold.

General Fiction

Read fiction. Fiction that you wouldn't normal read. It may surprise you how much you learn from these books when you go outside the fantasy/sci-fi genre. Part of this is I have such a hard time reading genre fiction because the ground is so tread upon. The fucking snake is dead. So I lean into quirky fiction. I find it an amazing source for NPCs. The beautiful depth you can capture to bring into your game. Unless someone buries and axe into his chest. First rule of NPCs: Don't Name them after an ex-girlfriend. Second rule of NPCs: Don't get attached. 

Weird Shit

Probably my favorite category. And probably the most adjacent category to gaming. Stuff like paranormal boogie ladies, cryptids, folklore, folk stories, and of course books about the strange fuckers who hunt them. Love these books. Don't be surprised if you find gaming material in the introductions. One of the lacking aspects of most campaigns is the sense of wonder. Because everything that is consider supernatural, extra terrestrial, ultra terrestrial, or myth is real. No need to wonder. Ned in the corner had his left arm torn off by Bigfoot. You don't have to wonder if it exists because it does. But if you can capture some sense of the wonder they provide in a game then that is a big fucking win. Reading these kinda of books help with developing the story behind the creatures and things. 

Next section. Lets talk about movies and videos.

YouTube

I have a confession. I hardly ever watched YouTube. I heard about all the shitty stuff they do to their creators. Hated watch those fucking ads. Promote the most asinine idiots of the week. And thumbnail after thumbnail were filled with faces I wanted to punch. In my text group they would send me a dozen videos during the day about dumb shit. Apparently when they are at "work" they watch YouTube.

Then I got a subscription. 

Pretty much. I vetted my channel. Subscribe to the faces I didn't want to punch. Had to learn a nanoscopic level of tolerance. It was hard. But now I find YouTube is a good source of other voices on topics I've heard a hundred times. I've been playing since 79 so what's that? 46 years. During that time I ate RPGs like they were Reece's Big Cups. Do I really need to watch a video about Hex Crawls? Random Encounters? Mapping? Or watch some dumbass tell me how little he knows about the horribleness of TSR adventure modules? No. But I like to hear how others do it. Granted you have to sift through a lot of manure to get to the good stuff but it's there. Lots of it. Recently I've indulged in a lot of YouTube. And I have my own channel because I wanted to be the face you wanted to punch.

Don't forget to like and subscribe! 😉

Movies

I  feel like this category doesn't pay off like it used to. Personally my movie watching has slacked off. I used to be a weekly movie-goer. Even if there wasn't a movie I wanted to see I'd pick one I'd never heard of and give it go. Back then I got a lot more out of movies. While I enjoy a good movie I can't tell you when the last time I left a movie inspired to create something. The last one I remember was the Matrix. 

Limited Series

I love how they call them limited series. I guess so we all won't get confused with the Unlimited Series. But this is where the new gold lies these days. There is a lot of great content we gamers can delve deep into. How many wanted to run a Yellowstone type of campaign after it ran for a couple seasons? How many people wanted to run a Rings of Power campaign...wait, bad example. You know what I mean. These series have cool elements. While many of the series are two-dimensional they may have juicy tidbits to pluck off the cardboard tree. 

Board Games

If you are playing a board game during your gaming break you are lying to yourself. You are gaming. Maybe it's not a thirteenth month campaign where you journey to the great white north to uncover a monster that will kill the world (see DC and Marvel movies above) but its gaming. Shush. You're lying to yourself. It's okay. Recognize. Accept. Change.

Conclusion

As you can read there is no such thing as a break from gaming. You walk into a local Taco Bell and see the toilets are clogged. You immediately want to blame it on the Quesada Otyuth that is obvious living in the large sewer tunnels beneath. You hear a clip of a conversation, "And I woke up with a rubber chicken with lipstick on it." How do I work that into a starter quest? Everything is fodder for your game.

There is no break. Once a gamer always a gamer.