This Saturday for the first time since the pandemic sent the nation and the world into shut down, I am getting together with my friends for in-person role play gaming.

The game that I had been running when COVID-19 came along and upended everything was FGU’s Space Opera, a complex sci-fi game setting with tons and tons of complex calculations and table as it attempts to model nearly every kind of sci-fi setting you might want for you enjoyment.

I used to run campaigns of this way back in the 80s and they were very popular with my friends. It was a challenge getting back into the swing of Space Opera particularly finding that groove where I am willing to let the wild and free nature of such a setting run free, but I think I was getting there when the pandemic suspended the game.

In the interim I have lost one player and a dear friend to the disease and I have plans to give his character a fitting exit from the campaign to honor his own unique quirky nature.

I have also taken quite a bit of time creating spreadsheets to help me run this campaign. Back in the primitive 80s when personal computers were little more than stone knives and bear skins, I used a lot of notes, notebooks, and guestimates to run the game but now with laptops, iPads, and smartphone I have more options and I am quite proud of the Excel sheets I have crafted to manage skill learning, transit time, system generation, and time keeping.

Here’s my hand drawn and letter and thus hideous sector map for the current game. I am so looking forward to this weekend.