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I intended to start a second campaign a long time ago. But, the shelf of shame intervened. Then came our second baby and the associated storm in our toddler.

If someone had asked me years ago, before I had any kids, whether it would be a bigger transition to go from 0 to 1 kid or from 1 to 2 kids I would have said from 0 to 1. But I would have been wrong. Sure, it’s a big deal to become a parent for the first time. You don’t have all the stuff. You don’t know what you don’t know. All the new feelings, new responsibilities, and now seeing yourself as a mom or dad are difficult to navigate. But your child is an infant, sleeps most of the time, and stays where you put it. When you have a second kid, you now have to manage the transition of the first to the older sibling. Their world is turned upside down and they don’t really have the emotional tools or self-awareness they need to get through it. Patience, love, fun, and optimism. And a whole lot of finger crossing.

Then we got COVID again. I swear that m*f*er waits until the worst time.

I don’t expect it to be as hard to raise a second Ranger. My familiarity of the game systems gives me a head start in having fun. I learned over the course of my first campaign that my tendency to min-max this game leads to me not enjoying it. I end up shuffling around tokens, flipping cards, and reducing narrative moments to their mechanics. I set out to “win” the campaign and lost sight of the importance of enjoying it. I don’t want to make the same mistake the second time.

Fortunately I have parent-of-young-children amnesia and I’ve forgotten most details like the outcomes of every missions, how to get certain Reward cards, and so on, so I can come in with a fresh perspective and decide each mission as they come rather than trying to pick the outcomes I want. Instead, I will focus my fun-generating efforts on constructing my initial Ranger deck and choice of Specialty and Background. I feel the key to enjoying EBR is to embrace the light roleplaying elements and try to put yourself in the world.

My first campaign I played as a Shaper-Shepherd and was at first delighted by how powerful Oru and Riri were, then dismayed. I was facerolling through the path deck and rarely encountering situations that my two OP companions couldn’t handle. Years of training as a Shaper and a dog is more powerful than most of my Manifestations… how embarrassing. The power of Oru and Riri made immersion difficult since I didn’t really have to puzzle through a situation or, truthfully, deal with failure. I also arrived at that first character without an archetype or backstory in mind. I just liked the Shaper and Shepherd cards and built the deck based on which cards I thought were neat, not the character they would create.

Since I finished my first campaign I went through the exercise of creating decks for all 16 Specialty-Background combinations to familiarize myself with the possible synergies. This gave me a good head start, a Ranger rolodex shall we say, to draw on for this campaign. I didn’t want to spend too much time on character creation and deck construction. I didn’t want to agonize my way into the min-max trap that spoils the game for me. I made the decision based entirely on the character that sprang to mind from the deck and whether I thought it would be fun to play that character.

I quickly settled on my Artificer-Forager deck that I first titled “Puffercrawler Disciple”. I want to change the title, but I’m not sure what to yet. The deck revolves around the combination of Puffercrawler Spores with the Wrist Pad Darter, enabling the Ranger to turn any non-friendly Being into a Flora. I largely felt like this was a gimmick deck when I created it. As the “Disciple” title suggests, I felt this Ranger was, at best, some sort of addled acolyte of the hallucinogenic or healing properties of Puffercrawler Spores such that they thought every being should enjoy the trip. At worst, they were a bioterrorist.

A more cohesive, forgiving, and compelling backstory is coming into place. This initiate Ranger is a bioengineer inspired by the biomeld technology of the ancients. That technological capacity and knowledge is now lost and forgotten, but in its place my Ranger has been exploring the connection between flora and fauna, and the possibilities of hybridization. This is a fringe and controversial field of study. Some Valley dwellers feel it interferes with the natural order and evolution and such meddling is in direct conflict with the mandate of Rangers to steward the valley. Others feel it borders on playing god in the same way that brought the old civilization to ruin.

Yet our Ranger, and others like him, sees this flora-fauna hybridization research no more meddlesome in the natural order than domesticating animals or selectively cultivating plants for their medicinal, ritual, or food value. Why raise the specter of “monstrous” flora-fauna hybrids when stilt horses are a far cry from their wild ancestors? How are claims of destroying the natural order justified when the “natural state” of the Valley has been inextricably altered by human presence? Stewardship needs to acknowledge the rightful place of humans in the ecosystem, along with their curiosity, ingenuity, and experimentation. Stewardship that views humans as apart from the “natural” world they manage is just a more palatable version of playing god.

And, most importantly, the moral weight of the Ranger’s mandate to protect all life in the Valley constrains the dangerous possibilities of flora-fauna hybridization. This research can only be conducted ethically by one who has taken the Ranger oath.

At least, this is what our Ranger argued when applying to join the Rangers. He impressed all his instructors with his grasp of history and nuanced understanding of a balanced ecosystem. He appeared to be an exemplar student. But knowledge and experience can change a person, or reveal their true motivations…