Jex Thomas – Dungeon World Tavern G+ Archives

What an epic session today!

What an epic session today! I remember an interview with Vince Gilligan where he talked about the writing process for Breaking Bad and he said that they would purposely paint themselves into corners and then have to figure out how to get out of them. And as I’m reflecting on GMing this campaign of Freebooters, it feels similar to that a lot of times. This session contained a number of big twists and I’m going to have to figure out how they all make sense and set things up for whatever might come next. But they had a huge impact on the players and I can only speak for myself but I’m so excited to play to find out what happens next!

Also, “never split the party” is a rule that’s very fun to break.

In our dying days, a question–

How do you, as GMs, keep notes? I run my Freebooters games very very low prep, sometimes no prep depending on where things are at. I feel like I have the tools to come up with stuff on the fly well enough or roll for it. But I don’t always do a great job of taking note of what that stuff is. I have a moleskin I bring with me and jot things down–usually keywords–and it’s often enough to jog my memory when I’m writing up a session recap later (usually a few days later). Last session, though, I was pretty sleep deprived (isn’t parenthood a miracle), enough that I thought about calling things off, and I remember … next to nothing. My notes help a little, but not much, and I ended up just having to send out a message to the players asking them to refresh me on the events of the last session. I can’t help but think this could have been avoided by taking better notes on the front end?

So, what’s your note-taking process? How do you juggle taking notes with staying present in the fiction and being responsive/reactive to the players’ actions?

I wonder if this might be a future home?

I wonder if this might be a future home? I recall Jason and the Gauntlet crew being fans of The Perilous Wilds, not sure their take on Freebooters but I can’t imagine they’d be against us settling in there? The Gauntlet has kind of proven itself to be the most reliable voice and community in indie TTRPGs and their policies on inclusive gaming are really important. Thoughts?

https://twitter.com/GauntletRPG/status/1105076332055195650?s=20

Excellent session of Freebooters 2e using the new rules.

Excellent session of Freebooters 2e using the new rules. It went extraordinarily well. I really like how the new travel moves work in play. We also started out the session by using the culture development rules to flesh out some world building and history. I hate to admit that we’re probably not going to use Scatter Them or Reaction Check; they just didn’t vibe with the players at my table, all of whom thought it would make more sense for the Judge to roll for that stuff because both moves feel like they “cross the line.” I swear I didn’t poison the well against those moves (since I’m on the record here as being skeptical); I didn’t share my opinion until they’d already given their feedback. But all around another great session of a great game.