What do you do when you know what you’ll be doing for a hobby for the next 18 months?

This past week I finally got my copy of Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, the sequel to Dragon Heist, which I’m currently running.  It is a heavy book outlining over a dozen dungeon levels, enough to take the PC’s from 5th to 20th level, at the rate of about one level per, well, level of the dungeon.

So if you take roughly 16 levels and you can finish one level every two gaming sessions and you game twice a month, then you’re looking at 16 months of gaming.  And for my group, that’s being generous in terms of both the frequency of gaming and their pace in a dungeon.  It’s much more likely that we are looking at two years’ worth of gaming.

So what do I do with that?  It sounds weird, but hobbies are anti-work–effort you expend to sort of undo the damage that work and life and everything else does to you.  It’s “re-creation,” creative work that puts you back together.  Or at least that’s how it is supposed to be.  When the creative aspect has been outlined that far in advance, you’re left with whole chunks of your landscape now already claimed.

There are, of course, several answers to this problem.  I can take some of the time and energy and work at improving my gaming area.  That includes some organizing, throwing things away, cleaning things up, etc.  I already started this (see earlier posts) but there’s always room for improvement.

There is also painting miniatures.  I’ve gotten so far away from that part of the hobby and am now trying to get back into it.  Not having to scramble for game ideas frees me up on my days off to sit quietly at a desk and get some of the several hundred miniatures I have lying around painted and into a drawer.

And finally, the 3D printer is on its way, purchased under a “lightning sale” this week.  I have to wait until Christmas to get it going, but there is a steep learning curve about these things, and I’m looking forward to climbing it.

There is always the opportunity to use the next two years to plan out whatever follows The Dungeon of the Mad Mage.  In theory, if we make it to the end the PC’s will be at 20th level and ready to be “retired.”  We could start a new D&D game at that point, or do something totally different.

Comments always welcome, and thanks for reading.