The chocolate chip cookies were exactly golden-brown and hot from the oven. Using an oven mitt, I took the cookie sheet out, slipped the parchment paper and the dozen cookies onto a cooking rack. In another few minutes we’d have cookies and tall glasses of cold milk. For now, though, we would wait until they had cooled off – oatmeal pecan chocolate chip cookies with a rich aroma of semi-sweet chocolate and hints of vanilla and nuts.
But it wasn’t always this way. It took me a while to figure out how to make chocolate chip cookies I was proud of, and that my friends would eagerly look forward to.
On the back of most packages of chocolate chips, you will find a recipe for chocolate chip cookies. But there are alternatives: there are lots of pre-packaged chocolate chip cookies in the cookies (or biscuits) aisle of any grocery store.* Commercial bakeries also turn out chocolate chip cookies – heck, Insomnia Cookies makes a lot of money from college students looking for a late-night snack after clubbing. And if you feel like you don’t want to go out, you can just get a tube of chocolate chip cookie dough when grocery shopping, and bake them later. That is, if you actually bake them – some people just want the dough. (*nom*nom*nom*) But if you’re adventuresome, you might take the time to put actual ingredients together, and see how they turn out.
So what does this have to do with gaming? Everything.
See, getting reliably good with chocolate chip cookies required patience and a LOT of practice. But that’s also true of making up your own stuff for a game. Open up any tabletop roleplaying game rule book, and there are a TON of ingredients for a good game right there. It’s been that way since 1974. But knowing how to put those together for a memorable gaming session, much less a long-standing campaign? Creating your own adventures and campaigns takes some time and some practice. More importantly, it involves trusting yourself to come up with the right stuff for your players. And it might not always work – but I assure you, once you have figured out how to be consistently good, it will be much easier to build memorable adventures that leave your players asking for more. All it takes is practice and a willingness to be creative – to trust your daemon, as the Greeks used to say.
Which is why I started Ancient Academy Games. I wanted to create materials – ingredients, you might say – that game masters and players could use to build better adventures and campaigns. The advantage of learning how to bake your own cookies is that you can figure out exactly what you want – and gaming is no different.
None of this is to say that you should not buy store-bought cookies. Sometimes, that’s exactly what you need. There’s no purity test here. There are some modules, adventures, and campaigns that have been published that are truly epic and memorable – and playing them can teach a lot about how to do something similar for your own game. What’s different about creating your own material for your game is that it can build your self-confidence in your own creative abilities, in an entirely different way than running a store-bought adventure.
There’s another secret to this: just because it’s been published, with lots of art and professional production values, that doesn’t mean that it will be right for you. I’ve had some chocolate chip cookies that people told me were “the absolute best” and had a high visibility public reputation – only to discover that there was too much sugar, not enough flour, and chocolate chunks weren’t always a substitute for chips or pastilles. Some people really liked them – but they didn’t work for me. It’s the same with game adventures – too many “kill the monster” encounters, over-the-top treasures, too much emphasis on game mechanics. You can have all of those ingredients, but if they aren’t mixed to your taste, there’s no point in pretending that they will work well in your game. Again, this isn’t to say that all published adventures and campaigns won’t work for you, just that you shouldn’t automatically assume that they will.
What will work for you, over time, is to develop the skill to create your own adventures and build your own campaigns. To begin that process, you need to take small steps to nurture that wellspring of creativity. Create non-player characters, new monsters, new magic items, new rules – everything is open for experimentation. However, don’t try to do everything differently all at once, unless you know what you are doing. Add things in one at a time to see how they work, provide details as needed, and sketch out larger pictures – you can always fill them in later. Build room for later creativity – it will make a difference.
“Mmmmm, these are so good! They’ve got a different texture to them. What did you do?” Lynn looked inquiringly at me, over the rim of her glass of milk.
“You know it’s been warm this week? I chilled the dough in the fridge for a few hours.” I took another bite of cookie – for quality control purposes only.
“I bet the gaming group is going to love them.” Lynn sounded very pleased.
“Well, I hope so, too.”
Oatmeal Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
3 ½ c. unbleached flour
1 c. rolled oats
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
8 oz. butter
¾ c. granulated sugar
¾ c. light brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
½ c. pecans, chopped
12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
Set oven to 350 degrees F.
- Sift dry ingredients together.
- Cream butter, sugar, and brown sugar together. This is much easier if the butter is warm.
- Add eggs and mix really WELL – you want a decent emulsion to emerge.
- Add vanilla and continue mixing.
- Then add dry ingredients – you want the cookie dough to be moist but not too moist; be ready a little more flour (1-2 Tbsp. at most) if needed.
- Add oatmeal
- Add chocolate chips
Chill cookie dough for at least one hour in the refrigerator. I use a small hand scoop to form decent-sized balls to place on the parchment paper on the cookie sheet. Bake for 14-18 minutes until golden brown on top.
* My favorite store-bought chocolate chip cookie is probably the President’s Choice Decadent Chocolate Chip Cookie. With a hint of coconut and crunchy, they are just enough different from what I make that I still enjoy them. (What’s your favorite cookie? What do you like about it?)