I need some help and... honestly... it's a little intangible and that makes it hard to pin down. I will take any advice or encouragement that is available.
I suffer from pretty heavy depression. I've also got a pretty chaotic home life sometimes dealing with family issues and domestic drama. The amount of time I have every day where I'm not tied up, I tend to default into playing games to pass the time. This is time I could spend on preparing a campaign or world-building. I know that I'm extremely dissatisfied with what I'm doing: there aren't any quality time-sink games I can invest in and I can only medicate myself with so many matches of Humankind or Civ 6 before I can't even load up the main menu without feeling boredom. I want to break through to the other side, but I've had so little success motivating myself.
I can't decide on a world to start building. Should I work on my criminal empire setting? My modern fantasy? Post-apocalyptic, which I've had a craving for recently?
And even if I could narrow down that aspect, I'm entirely at a loss as to how I should begin. I know that in order to start running anything, I'm going to need (as far as I believe):
- A functional understanding of whatever digital tabletop environment I want to use - leaning towards FoundryVTT presently. That'll take time.
- A decently fleshed-out world in which I can run a campaign. Even if I start "big" and flesh out broad details, I'm not even sure where to start. And I want to be able to take a bite out of this one so badly, it's been escaping me for years.
- At least a passable knowledge of whatever books I want to use.
- Assets. Digital tabletop makes things a lot easier, but I'm still going to need to generate assets (maps, splats, etc).
- Recruitment. It'll take time to attract and vet players.
I'm confronted with this mountain. I don't want to put it off any longer, nor abandon it because it's "too big."
I just don't know what to do right now. I
want to take the time I have and use it fruitfully.