Letting go of the reins

In March 2008 I started a Vampire Dark Age campaign. The goal was to play from 754 to 2010. After 30 sessions and one and a half year later I needed some time of from being storyteller. So I asked one of the players to take over as storyteller from October 2009. The idea was that he was going to to between 5 and 10 sessions. I just want to talk a bit about how that felt.

At the initial handover it felt good. I was finally going to be a player again. I trusted the new storyteller to take good care of my campaign, so there was no real worries. The first session was almost like we were two storytellers, as he needed to confer with me about certain things and NPCs.

To make the handover smoother it was done just after the player entered a new city. That is during the sige of Paris in 885 they had been in Paris, but had a very limited experience with the city. So it was almost like a blank slate.

I know what your thinking 30 session / 1.5 years to play from 754 to 885 that is about 4.4 years per session or 87 game years per real year. Which means we are going to need play for another 13 years and 255 more sessions before we reach 2010.

In the beginning it was a bit fun and a bit frustrating to see how the new storytellers used the NPCs, and the plots I left behind. After two or three session that was all gone, it was just great to be a player again. The new storyteller had built up a total separate setting within my setting. He managed to isolate most of the play to Paris city, while still keeping the connection to the NPC and plots outside.

Now after six session as player I feel much more rejuvenated. It is with mixed feelings I look at the calender and see that in 4 sessions I'm going to be the storyteller again. In one way it will be great to be the sotryteller again. I have gotten a lot of inspiration from seeing someone else work with the NPC and plots I started, on the other hand then I will no longer be a player...