Koibu's Corner: Throwing away work (Patreon)

I was just working on our next session of Cosmo's Kitchen and struggling to flesh out this idea. You see, I wanted to do something about harvesting this psychic fungus so that Cosmo could make a soup that would be fed to an NPC in the following Cosmo's Kitchen episode and start loosely linking together these one shots. It's a good idea, and I stand by it, but I was really stuck on how to make getting psychic fungus fit the style of this campaign. In any other campaign it would be easy, but Cosmo's Kitchen needs a certain amount of... something.

Anyway, I was working out details, making slow progress over the course of the whole day. I thought about it on my dog walk in the morning. I took notes when I got home. I had a meeting. Took more notes. Had another meeting. Brainstormed and made a few notes. Had a 3rd meeting. Flipped through my notebook to look at former ideas on the same topic. Did another dog walk, dinner, and a 4th meeting. The game was in < 18 hours by this point and I still didn't feel like it was good enough, but I needed something to run so I opened up roll20 to start putting together what I had. By now it's been a full day of work on the topic, plus notes from weeks ago that I was referencing and I'm still not happy.

Then this other idea pops into my head. Totally unrelated. No fungus at all. No plot lines interconnecting. Just this idea: A dragon and its hoard act as a bank, and Cosmo needs a loan! 

This idea is lovely, but it has no Cosmo's Kitchen vibes whatsoever. But you know what does have Cosmo's Kitchen vibes? Wanting to use Dragon Scales as dinner plates! Wanting to find out if the dragon has eggs (for another party later), or might lay eggs soon, or might be looking for a mate. 15 minutes later, the whole session is planned.

And this is frustrating sometimes. I spent all day, plus time in previous days, trying to work out this idea. I must have put in at least 8 hours of work, only to scrap it for an idea that was fleshed out in 15 minutes.

Today's lesson is that time spent working on something does not equate to quality. Sometimes we DMs need to throw all of our hard work into the trash, and forget about our plans. We need to throw away maps, flow charts, multi session story lines, tie in with other campaigns, and things that feel like they would be epic if they could only just work out.

Don't do something just because you've put a lot of work into it. Do throw away (or set aside for later notes) hard work when you smell something else good.

Neal