After a recent comment, I decided to whip up 24hr versions of my Time Tracker Sheets. I love using this simple tool for running my games. It helps in so many ways and has just the right stuff for what I need.
If I’m running at the table, I like the version with a built in encounter tracker space.
When I run games online with Roll20, I use their digital initiative system so the Time Tracker clocks are all I need.
I hope you find them as helpful as I do!
Back in January, an article on Buzzfeed went viral. No, it wasn’t about the 10 best ways to cook a hot dog (although I’d be intrigued to find out the ways other than: 1. Roasting over a fire; 2. Boiling in a pan on the stovetop; 3. Wrapping in a paper towel and microwaving for 45 seconds).
It was an article titled, “How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation,” by Anne Helen Petersen. If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to take the time to do so here. The gist of the article is that, while burnout isn’t a phenomenon unique to the millennial generation, millennials are held captive by it in a way that other generations aren’t. Millennials have essentially been programmed since birth to attempt to optimize every aspect of life. Beginning with over-scheduled childhoods filled with a variety of extra-curricular activities designed to make us the most attractive college candidates possible, to the society-driven goal that every single one of us attend said colleges, we have spent our lives being maximized. This has led millennials to be pre-disposed to burnout. Burnout happens when you give everything you have to something, and yet still more is asked of you, which you continue to give until you just stop.
I resonated with this article. Being an older millennial (part of the xennial sub-generation) I can’t say that everything fit my life, but it nails the general social context in which I’ve grown up, and in which I find myself attempting to successfully ‘adult.’
And I admit, that I often feel a bit burned out. Like Ms. Petersen notes in her article, I can find myself struggling to focus on accomplishing simple, uncomplicated tasks. This is one of the hallmarks of burnout.
It’s the result of being expected to produce something in every aspect of life, to give and give and give until you have nothing left to give and then give even more. It’s a mental and physical reaction against the programmed commodification our whole lives have become. This goes far beyond just the work we do…it extends into our hobbies.
For years I’ve felt a bit ashamed of publicly revealing my hobbies. When asked what my hobbies are, instead of saying things like, working outside, exercising, or woodworking, my answer is, “I play games.”
Most often this means video games, but it also includes board games. The problem with board games is that you have to have a group of people get together, and with work and travel and families, finding time is an issue. PLUS, you have to live near each other. Video games requires neither of these so, more often than not, I probably should should say that my hobby isn’t playing games (in general) but simply playing video games.
I felt shame about sharing this hobby because, unlike those other hobbies I mentioned, playing video games isn’t ‘productive.’ Like, I don’t get to the end of an hour of doing my hobby and say, “Look at these chiseled 6-pack abs I’ve been working on!” There are no books to analyze and review, no cool walking sticks I’ve whittled, no flower gardens to show off…instead, I could share about how I won the 1998 World Series with the Twins after I took over as the General Manager in 1994 for an utterly horrendous team!
Even in my hobbies, which are supposed to be about what I do to relax in my downtime, I was being sucked back into this idea that the only thing important about life is how well I could optimize my time to produce stuff.
Enter Dungeons and Dragons.
Here was a game that I could play, with others (and thanks to the wonders of the internet we can play together even though we don’t live near each other!), and we weren’t producing anything…at least, not some tangible product.
When you play D&D, you do end up producing things…you produce a story…you produce active imaginations…you produce team-work…you produce friendship…in short, you produce community. These are an entirely different kind of product, a product that doesn’t drain you of life like a 4th level Blight spell, but instead restores your soul like a Bard’s Song of Rest.
Since I started playing D&D 4 years ago, I have felt zero shame in sharing about the adventures of my Hill Dwarf Fighter-Paladin named Leroy Jenkins. In fact, I relish the chance to share about my hobby, to raise a fist in the face of productive hobbies, to boldly claim, “I’m not making anything and it feels great!”
So, how do you deal with millennial (or any) burnout? Why not try joining up with other adventurers to end a tyrannical Lich’s reign of terror? To quote my gnome friend Channing Tenderhammer, “Liches get stitches!”
What’s the good in a game that brings out the worst in people?
What’s the point of telling stories about the end of the world?
This past summer I took the high school kids in my congregation on a service/learning trip to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. It was a week long chance to build relationships with them and try to teach them something about community, accompaniment, faith, love, and servanthood.
It was also a chance to play Ten Candles.
Ten Candles is a newer indie-RPG by Stephen Dewey in which the end of the world happens and the characters all die. Here’s the description from the website, where you can purchase the PDF for a very much worth-it $10:
Ten Candles is a zero-prep tabletop storytelling game designed for one-shot 2-4 hour sessions of tragic horror. It was released in December 2015 and is best played with one GM and 3-5 players. It is played by the light of ten tea light candles which provide atmosphere, act as a countdown timer for the game, and allow you to literally burn your character sheet away as you play. Ten Candles is described as a “tragic horror” game rather than survival horror for one main reason: in Ten Candles there are no survivors. In the final scene of the game, when only one candle remains, all of the characters will die. In this, Ten Candles is not a game about “winning” or beating the monsters. Instead, it is a game about what happens in the dark, and about those who try to survive within it. It is a game about being pushed to the brink of madness and despair, searching for hope in a hopeless world, and trying to do something meaningful with your final few hours left.
My kids got super excited about playing this game. It was all they wanted to talk about, but when the Bible camp counselors caught wind of the game it was like the Satanic panic of the 1980s broke loose all over again. “What is this game?” they asked with a certain degree of fear. Why on earth would I want to play a game with the kids that’s about death? It didn’t help that the game had a pseudo-ritualistic bent to it, involving a dark room late at night with burning candles that are slowly extinguished. I imagined them wondering, “What prayers to the dark powers was this crazy pastor indoctrinating these kids with? What’s the point in a game that encourages and tempts the players to succumb to their darker sides?”
Ten Candles is like Dungeons & Dragons in that in an imagined world the players run free, sin flows a little more freely. The consequences of stealing or lying or running around with your pants off or even killing aren’t as big as they are in real life. But that’s precisely why games like these can be such a powerful tool for teaching, growth, and revelation.
I assuaged the fears of the counselors, and even got one of them to join us in playing. I ran a bigger game than recommended, and as the 11 of us gathered around the table late at night I introduced what was about to happen,
The game we are about to play is a tragedy. The sun has gone out, light is failing, and the one certainty is that death is coming for each of you. Like Romeo and Juliet, and like life itself, there’s no getting out of this alive. And yet hope remains. Each of you will be tested. Each will be tempted. Each will face desperate circumstances. The darkness in each of your characters will offer a temporary respite, but it’s up to you if you embrace that darkness or if you will die still holding onto what is good instead.
Like the book of Revelation, this game is an apocalypse. The world is ending and the truth is being revealed. What will it reveal about you?
The Bible is full of stories of the end of all things as we know it. Apocalyptic is a genre throughout the scriptures, one that Jesus himself uses on multiple occasions. The end of all things brings a freedom with it, a freedom from long-lasting consequences, a freedom from established social norms and cultural structures, a freedom that reveals the deep truth about all things. Who are you when no one is watching? Who are you when the mold of daily life is broken? Who are you when it matters most? Who are you at your deepest level of self? Who are you?
The blessing of role playing games is that they can give us a safe space to experiment and test and discover who we are. It’s a safe space in which we can face our deepest fears and temptations. In playing we can experience both what it’s like to give into our darker sides and what’s it’s like to overcome them, without facing the real life consequences of doing that experimentation with our own selves. The failed character who gives into a lingering drug addiction can be set down when the game is over. Giving into a lingering addiction in real life carries much graver consequences.
So what’s the good of a game that lessons the consequences of sin? It’s the ability to experiment and to learn.
Of course, role-playing in and of itself is just a tool. It can be used for purposes good and ill. The efficacy of the lessons learned depends in large part on the guidance of the Dungeon Master. But this tool is a powerful one. Playing at the end of the world can reveal the deepest and most profound truths of who we are.
Dungeon Master Pastor 