Back when I first started my d20 action horror campaign along with this column, I had just ended a long-running Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 campaign. It combined elements of Arcanis and Freeport. It encompassed over nine different players from three different states, two different Dungeon Masters, and spanned over 60 adventures. When my son was born, I decided it was time to take a break.

I resumed gaming a few months later and started our current action horror game. But I came to a decision point when I learned my wife was pregnant with our second child.

Given that gaming involves a nearly two-hour trip to Long Island each time, it's no simple feat to play. The good news is my son gets to see his grandparents. But that involves packing, as we sleep over, and then traveling back. In short, it's a lot of work.

With two kids, it will involve even more work. We're going to keep visiting, of course, but things will have to be planned a bit more carefully. And in the short term, it just won't be practical to travel that distance to game.

But on the other hand, I don't want to cancel the game completely. We're about halfway through the story arc, with characters just coming into their own. I'd really like to complete the game with the characters at or near 20th level. So I'm going to have to come up with some other means of stalling that feels like a natural pause. I'm kicking around a few ideas:

• Beat the crap out of them. A knockdown, drag out fight with some Big Bad feels appropriate. The characters will then be recuperating for a few months in real time. But I want the season ender, as I think of it, to end with a bang. I'm thinking it's time to introduce Chthonians.
• Reveal something startling. In the same way that most action dramas end their season with explosions, they also usually reveal a twist. I think it will involve shapeshifting shoggoths. I plan to reveal the big twist just before we go on hiatus.
• Move the plot forward. It's one thing to achieve some important goals within the campaign, but just before a hiatus I want the players to feel like they really accomplished something. After the Chthonians implement their terrible plan (see At Your Door for what that plan is), I want the players to strike back and strike hard. It will be the equivalent of what the Aliens movie did after Alien – first you are stalked by a terrible beast, then you go back with big guns to nuke it from orbit. Or an airstrike against a Chthonian lair, a la the Wilmarth Foundation's mad plan to strike back against Shudde M'ell
  Time it just right. This is the hardest part. There's no guarantee every scenario will end on time or that the players will progress quickly enough to reach the logical ending point in time before the baby is born. So I'll have to adjust the number of scenarios leading up to the big finale according to our timeline.
  One thing's for sure: we're just getting started.

  Your Turn: How did you get your game back on track after a hiatus?

  Michael "Talien" Tresca is the National RPG Examiner