What is it that makes a role-playing world interesting? Some would say a good story. Others might suggest a successful character. You could even go so far as to speculate that the action and adventure are the real draw. All of these things are important to the recipe of gaming, but the bottom line for me has to be the players.

I have spent some of my youth and much of my adult life crafting imaginary worlds and sharing them with my friends. Over the years, friends have come and gone, but the need to create and socialize in this environment continues.

I find myself at an interesting crossroads. I have taken breaks from gaming in the past, as much as 18 months. I stepped away this summer to involve myself in other activities. This time as I sit down to the creative well to draw from it and once again generate a place of fantasy and escape.

This time I am looking at revisiting an old campaign. The “Ghosts of Kinstaya” campaign setting. I have been making good headway in the creative process. To the point that I have even come up with a title, Kinestaya – Court of Ashes. The creative process came to a grinding halt as I started to address the players and the characters they would use to explore the new era in the world. DO I allow them to continue with their existing characters (all around 12th level), or have them generate new ones.

The idea of creating new characters has its appeal because the players are familiar with the world and the mythology, but I could have them experience everything through a fresh perspective. It is also easier for me because I can have more of a free license to alter things that I don’t remember that well. It has been more than a year since we adventured here with the old characters.

The other side of the equation is to allow them to continue the saga with their existing characters and see what they can accomplish and maximize their ability to contribute to a world. The characters were fully developed with distinct personalities. It would be interesting to see how things turned out.

I suppose the only way to know for sure is to continue developing an see how difficult the adventures are that I craft. If it seems like I am leaning toward higher-level adventures. I guess I continue down that path. Otherwise, start rolling the dice, new characters are on the way.

Well, that said, its time to put pen to paper and begin development.

It occurs to me that this would be a good forum to share some development ideas. So expect to hear more about my progress the weeks to come.