TTRPG
- “What does your energy level look like after dialysis?”
- “When are you actually at your Mac with both arms free?”
- “What makes this app section so complicated?”
- Groups with busy schedules
- Players who want variety in their gaming
- Anyone who’s tired of unfinished campaigns
- New players who don’t want to commit to months of sessions
- Getting familiar with a few add-modules to make playtime smoother
- Search out appropriate music and ambience sounds
The Productivity Conversation I Didn't Expect to Have
I sat down to write about productivity. Instead, I accidentally solved my productivity problem.
It started with a simple request. I wanted to turn my struggles with overwhelm and chronic illness into a blog post. Multiple interests pulling me in different directions, dialysis eating up twelve hours a week, YouTube consumption replacing creation - the usual productivity paradox.
You read more about it here.
But something unexpected happened during the conversation with my AI writing assistant. What began as research for a blog post became a real-time case study in how productive conversations actually work.
The Original Problem
The setup was familiar to anyone who’s ever felt overwhelmed by their own interests. I love coding, cooking, RPGs, fitness, reading. My wife has projects that need my support. I’m supposed to be working on an iPad app for her. But instead of making progress on any of it, I find myself watching YouTube videos for hours.
I’d even found a video that perfectly explained the problem - how our brains get hijacked by consumption, how creation provides more sustainable dopamine hits, how shifting from consumer to contributor changes everything.
The Habit that forces your brain to stop consuming
I understood the theory. I just couldn’t implement it.
The Conversation That Changed Everything
“What’s your top priority right then?” came the question.
“Probably the iPadOS app, since finishing that would help my wife greatly.”
Simple question. Clear answer. But then something interesting happened.
“Those twelve hours of dialysis per week? That’s actually prime iPad development time. You could queue up iOS tutorials, work on app wireframes…”
“Well, there’s no Xcode for iPad,” I replied. “And my left arm is completely blocked with needles. I can’t move it.”
Sudden silence. Then: “Right, of course there’s no Xcode for iPad. That was a pretty big oversight on my part.”
What Made This Conversation Different
Most productivity advice fails because it’s generic. It assumes everyone has the same constraints, the same energy levels, the same physical capabilities. The conversation became productive the moment my real constraints got acknowledged.
No judgment about not being able to code one-handed during medical treatment. No generic advice about “just managing your time better.” Instead: “What can you realistically do one-handed on an iPad for four hours?”
The questions kept getting more specific:
Each question revealed another layer of reality that typical productivity advice ignores.
The Lessons Hidden in the Dialogue
Assumptions get corrected quickly. The Xcode-on-iPad suggestion was wrong, but it got corrected immediately instead of becoming the foundation for useless advice.
Constraints clarify priorities. Once we established that dialysis time wasn’t coding time, it became clear that the real development work had to happen during my four productive in-between days.
Specificity beats generality. “Work on the app” is overwhelming. “Identify the next three concrete actions for the app” is actionable.
Questions matter more than answers. The breakthrough didn’t come from advice. It came from questions that helped me see my situation more clearly.
The Meta-Lesson
Here’s what I realized: the conversation itself was demonstrating the productivity principle I needed to learn.
Instead of consuming more productivity content, I was actively working through my specific situation. Instead of generic advice, I was getting targeted questions. Instead of feeling judged for my limitations, I was finding ways to work with them.
The conversation was creation, not consumption. It was collaborative problem-solving in real time.
The Breakthrough Moment
The real breakthrough came when we identified that the missing section of the app wasn’t just technically complicated - it was “lots of different pieces.” Suddenly the overwhelm made sense. It wasn’t one elegant problem to solve, but fifteen mini-features that all needed to connect.
“What if you just listed all the different pieces first? Not designing them, not coding them - just creating an inventory.”
That’s when it clicked. The paralysis wasn’t about not knowing how to code. It was about not knowing where to start when everything felt connected to everything else.
What This Means for Productivity
The best productivity hack might be finding someone who asks better questions.
Not someone who gives you a system to follow. Not someone who tells you to eliminate distractions. Someone who helps you see your actual constraints clearly, then works with those constraints instead of ignoring them.
Generic productivity advice is like generic medical advice - it might work for some people, but it’s useless if it doesn’t account for your specific situation.
The real productivity breakthrough happens when you stop trying to fit your life into someone else’s system and start building a system that fits your actual life.
The Ironic Ending
I started this conversation wanting to write about my productivity problems. I ended up actually solving them.
The blog post was supposed to be about the problem. Instead, it became about the solution.
Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is have a better conversation.
Tomb of Annihilation for Foundry Virtual Tabletop is out! I’m seriously tempted to grab a copy.
I finally have port forwarding working on my Mac mini running Sequoia. Turns out the firewall resisted my attempts to open a port. Not even when configuring APF manually. So I had to resort to turning off the system firewall and installing LittleSnitch. Sometimes 3rd party simply is best.
Why Call of Cthulhu Beats D&D at Actually Getting Played
Let’s be honest about something. How many D&D campaigns have you started that never finished?
I’m talking about those epic adventures that were supposed to take your characters from level 1 to 20. The ones that petered out somewhere around level 6. The campaign notes gathering dust on your hard drive.
There’s a reason for this. And it’s not that your group lacks commitment.
The Year-Long D&D Commitment Problem
Here’s what nobody tells you when you crack open that shiny new D&D adventure book. Curse of Strahd will eat 22-26 sessions of your life. Tomb of Annihilation demands 26-35 sessions. Even the humble Lost Mines of Phandelver - the “beginner” adventure - clocks in at 30-50 hours of gameplay.
That’s 6 months to 2 years of regular weekly sessions. For one campaign.
Think about your last group text trying to schedule a session. Now imagine doing that every week for two years straight. While keeping the same characters alive. And remembering what happened in session 12 when you’re now on session 31.
No wonder most D&D campaigns die a slow death around the third month.
CoC: Complete Stories in Bite-Sized Chunks
Call of Cthulhu takes a completely different approach. Most scenarios are designed to wrap up in 3-4 hours total.
Not 3-4 hours per session for months on end. Three to four hours. Period. Done. Complete story with beginning, middle, and satisfying conclusion.
“The Haunting” - the classic starter scenario - takes about 4-6 hours. You can literally run this on a Saturday afternoon and have investigators discover cosmic horror, face an impossible choice, and either save the day or go insane trying. All before dinner.
Compare that to starting Curse of Strahd knowing you’re signing up for half a year of consistent scheduling. Which one sounds more doable for your actual life?
Why D&D Became a Commitment Sport
Don’t get me wrong. D&D’s design isn’t accidental. The level 1-20 progression system demands long story arcs. You need time to grow from “I swing my sword” to “I cast Meteor Swarm and reshape the battlefield.”
Published D&D adventures are built around this. They’re designed as months-long investments. Epic journeys that require sustained character development and party dynamics.
But here’s the thing. Somewhere along the way, the hobby developed this expectation that “real” D&D means year-long campaigns. That shorter adventures are just warm-ups for the main event.
This turned D&D into a commitment sport. Like training for a marathon when you just wanted to go for a jog.
The Beautiful Efficiency of Horror
Call of Cthulhu works differently because horror works differently.
Investigation has a natural story structure. Investigators find clues. Clues lead to revelations. Revelations lead to confrontation with cosmic horror. Confrontation leads to resolution (or madness).
This arc fits perfectly into 3-4 hours. The tension builds, reaches a climax, and resolves. No need for seventeen sessions of character development. The story is the star, not the character sheet.
Plus, let’s talk about character mortality. In CoC, investigators die. Or go insane. Or both. This isn’t a bug - it’s a feature. It creates natural endpoints to stories.
Unlike D&D, where characters grow stronger and more attached over dozens of sessions, CoC investigators are fragile. This makes shorter commitments not just possible, but inevitable.
Real Talk: What This Means for Your Gaming Group
You know what’s great about running “The Haunting” on a Saturday night? Everyone leaves satisfied. Complete story. Full experience. No cliffhangers requiring next week’s session to resolve.
Compare that to starting Descent into Avernus and knowing you’re committing to 30-40 sessions. That’s almost a year of weekly gaming. Miss a few sessions and you’re lost. Have one player move away and the whole campaign crumbles.
CoC scenarios are perfect for:
You can run “The Dead Boarder” in 2 hours. “The Necropolis” takes 1-2 hours max. These aren’t abbreviated experiences - they’re complete horror stories with full narrative arcs.
Ready to Try Some Cosmic Horror?
If you’re tired of D&D campaigns that never reach their conclusions, give Call of Cthulhu a shot.
Start with “The Haunting” from the starter set. Four hours. Complete experience. Your players will face cosmic horror, make impossible choices, and either triumph or face the consequences of meddling with forces beyond human comprehension.
All in one evening.
The best part? When it’s over, it’s actually over. Your group will have experienced a complete story from beginning to end. No scheduling next week’s session to find out what happens. No wondering if this campaign will join the graveyard of unfinished adventures.
Just the satisfaction of a story well told. And maybe, just maybe, investigators who lived to tell the tale.
Though honestly, where’s the fun in that?
Have you experienced the curse of unfinished D&D campaigns? Or found success with shorter RPG formats? Share your horror stories (gaming or otherwise) in the comments below.
Trying to get Foundry VTT V13 to run on my hosted server. The node version had a missing library that I am probably unable to install. So now it is the pre-compiled Linux version. Maybe that works better. If that fails I might revert to running a local version on my Mac. Not ideal, but serviceable.
I prepped the first one shot of Chaosium‘s new book No Time to Scream in Foundry VTT for a friend and I. We played it yesterday to great fun. Highly recommended.
Diving into Call of Cthulhu setup options for Foundry VTT. Sometimes I enjoy game prep more then actually playing.
It looks like Ember is a huge success! Join on in to get an expansive roleplaying world to play in.
It is almost time. Ember is launching in a few hours on Kickstarter. It is a new roleplaying game from the guys that create the brilliant Foundry VTT virtual tabletop roleplaying software.
My two favorite Call of Cthulhu Keepers right now are Becca Scott ands Mark Meer.
Tonight we are having session two of our DnD group. I’m hoping it goes better for the party then last session (where we had a TPK). Either way, they are all pumped and are having fun regardless. As will I.
Foundry VTT self-hosting or using The Forge
My Foundry VTT journey continues. Last Tuesday we had our first session of Lost Mines of Phandelver and I promptly kill our party. It was a bit unbalanced due to only two of four players showing up and them insisting to pretend like the other party members didn’t exist.
But we all still had fun and they instantly proceeded to create new characters.
Also, I’m slowly—or actually rather fast—running out of server space with all the extra modules I’m installing. Uberspace by default gives you 10GB of disk space, most of which is taken up by my wife’s email account. She’s not great at inbox zero…
Anyway, you can book an extra 10GB for €3 a month, which I did. But now I’m also running close to that limit thanks to some modules that require several GB of space. And now I’m pondering where it is worth the extra €6 a month to self-host and the flexibility that brings or if I should buy access to The Forge for about €4,50 a month and safe myself the headache.
Session One of our Lost Mines of Phandelver DnD campaign starts tonight. I’m very excited.
Love me some AI Generators for Foundry VTT
I am having way too much fun building out my Foundry VTT world with AI tools. Lots of Theatre of the Mind images with the help of MidJourney, ElevenLabs voices provide narration, and now I have a singing bard thanks to suno.
I cannot wait for my players to experience it all.
I just ran my first proper D&D session. It was chaotic. I did a decently poor job. And the players had great fun and I loved it.
Foundry VTT Update
Almost done converting the “The Lost Mine of Phandelver” campaign into a Foundry VTT Game World. ✔️ Maps loaded in. ✔️ Walls and doors drawn ✔️ Enemies and other NPCs placed on map (shoutout to AI Monster Importer) ✔️ Imported the whole campaign text into Journals ✔️ Convert all “read to the group” text into audio narration with the help of ElevenLabs’ voice “John Doe - Intimate”
Still to be done:
Foundry VTT and AI Voices via ElevenLabs
I recently discovered Foundry VTT as a way to play role playing games with my friends from all over there the world.
I have spent a few days transferring a D&D campaign to digital format and it is coming together just greatly. Great maps with flickering lights, atmospheric background music.
And I even found a way to have all the story hooks being read by a great AI narrator via ElevenLabs. They have a great Michael Kramer like voice (John Doe - Intimate) and I was able to get the whole campaign vocalized for just €5.