Arriving home on the last day of term, ready for the 5 week holiday, I am exhausted. But even if I don’t quite know where the energy might come from today, I do know that over the next few days I will be recovering and looking ahead to the things I want to do this summer.

First on my list is to recover my playfulness. This will involve letting myself enjoy a few choice games over the coming few weeks in no particular order. The usual suspects include a game of “Panzer”, the World War II hex-and-chit tactical wargame, and monkeying around with arena fights using GURPS.

Looking ahead, I have a book to write with Johnn Four around the topic of Tiny Prep, so I’ll be knuckling down to crank out the manuscript. It’s great to be invited to expand on the idea and practice of the technique, so I’m looking forward to seeing what arises. It’ll also be nice to co-write with Johnn who is, after all, a prolific author himself.

Lastly, there’s the question of what I’m going to do with GURPS as I begin my apprenticeship to the system and new approaches to prep. While I’m excited to start reading the forthcoming GMing book from The Alexandrian, I aim to go and revisit his blog to begin seriously putting into use the advice he has shared.

One goal is to prepare an Open Table game that I can run both at the school gaming club but also for interested Patrons and friends online. This will blend some techniques around Chgowiz’s “Three Hex Campaign Starters“, focusing on the basics of Locationcrawls from The Alexandrian, and the suggestions from Bandit’s Keep about “Serialized D&D Campaigns“.

Another goal is to resurrect and develop my solo gaming, again powered by GURPS and possibly set within the same emerging world as the Open Table game mentioned above. That said, I also fancy expanding my horizons by exploring some science-fiction locations using solo tools – partly to learn those parts of GURPS but also because I love me some SF.

It’s going to be a busy summer break immersing myself back into the games I love. If I do even half of that stuff, it’ll be a grand way to enjoy some weeks at home.

Game on!