There are events which arise that act as speed bumps in our journey, reducing our momentum and threatening to take out the axle if we hit them too hard and fast. In my experience of running RPGs throughout recent years, it seems to take relatively few such bumps in the road to totally knock me off course.

I’m facing a sequence of such speed bumps in my attempt to run a classical open world fantasy game in my newly-designed realm of Fellmyr. For example, this weekend will be the second time that player absence (for very good reason) reduces the group to just one player. While no single event is hugely significant, together the sequence imparts drag.

In the same way that I dislike the feeling as my car goes over a sequence of speed bumps – that jarring sensation which you know can’t be good for the suspension – I also dislike the events which crop up to impact play. As much as I tell myself that it’s just a small niggle, the accumulation of niggles drags me down.

Maintaining momentum in play is critically important. I’m prone to emotional thinking, in which one gets fooled into believing that what one feels is what is true. This makes it all the more vital to keep the sessions alive, keep taking small moves in a forward direction, in spite of how one feels.

Thus, as far as I can tell, the best way to address the speed bumps is to patiently weather them: turn up to sessions, keep prepping small pieces within the world, focus on learning the rules you need to use, and through it all remaining as calm as possible. It’s not necessarily easy or comfortable, but the alternative – giving up – is a bad place to go.

It’s the will to continue – to keep making toys for your players to fiddle with, to keep showing up to play, and to keep on smiling even when it all suddenly feels too hard – it’s that will which sees you through.

At least, that’s what I am telling myself tonight.

Game on!