A HEART FELT STORY! ….with a tip to try

A HEART FELT STORY! ….with a tip to try

A HEART FELT STORY! ….with a tip to try

Hello community,

I have been blown away with how awesome TDWT has been since I joined and everyone has been really inspirational. I play DW with my son as much as I can and it has really helped me engage him during unstructured/down times. My son is 3, but he totally gets it when it comes to DW and other RPGs. Listening to his little voice in the back seat saying DM phrases like ‘THEN SUDDENLY!’ or ‘When our heroes last met…’ really warms my heart. He GM’s on the fly games with me that are mechanically DW, but really they have no dice because we are driving home from school or just out and about and it got me thinking…

I really enjoy playing like this and it adds a lot to when him and I actually down to play with dice. The fun stories of his characters: Captain Peow, Spikey Ball Lord, and Dragon Master-Blood Lawyer (and yes, he really came up with these characters himself) don’t have to only exist around a table. We get to let these PC’s live lives all the time and we can open the window to see what they are doing. Sometimes I will ask my son what he thinks DMBL is doing in a slice of life kind of scene. Nothing is funnier than an epic hero at a laundry mat.

In the same vein as Monte Cook’s Invisible Sun, we don’t have to stop playing philosophically or realistically and that got me thinking. What if you let the slower moments of game play, like travel, downtime between quests, or night watches happen away from the table and pick up en media res back in the action once everyone is together again. It could go something like this:

-Party finishes their 4 hour session by killing the BBEG

-DM tells PCs to get with someone through text or over coffee or during video games and just narratively go on a side quest or play out a Bolster move

-Before the next session, let the DM know what was done and make rolls if necessary

-Have the PCs tell of their exploits and the DM gives XP

Let me know what you think!

8 thoughts on “A HEART FELT STORY! ….with a tip to try”

  2. Firstly, i am very impressed at your son, he is what i aspire for my own children (way far off, but still). I know grown adults that don’t understand the game.

    More to your question, i have seen something like that, as well as done EXACTLY that in my own games.

    The former comes in the form of “love letters” which help to establish more details about the world or fast-forward to the next event. A sample love letter for down time would be “As you, Dragon Master-Blood Lawyer were tending to your law firm in the village, a stranger to town came to you for aid, what was their name, and what were they asking for?”

    Or, you could use it between sessions and pick up right were you left off in the dungeon crawl: “Spikey Ball Lord, you and the others of your party continued on through the next few passageways without much incident… except, you noticed a form move in the shadows, just outside the torch-light, what did it look like?”

    I have also used what you suggested—the “describe your own down time”—in a level 0 adventure between quests. I asked the vilagers how they coped with the gruesome memories of their previous adventure (and how one of them returned to his farming life after losing a hand), be it drinking, work, or eagerness for more.

  3. Jeremy Strandberg​ Dude that’s awesome. I’ve only ever really created an NPC that writes a news letter and sends it around the realm. I enjoyed doing it because I get to add editorials that the players can read that are from the view of the writer; sometimes he gets it wrong or writes with yellow journalism and it cuts out me having to spit expository lines directly to players. I’ll post if I can one.

  4. I like how the players’ choices in your letters seem to either be self promoting, for the community, or adding more drama and intrigue. Choices choices choices.

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