Frankly, I think this is a very good thing. One of the worst things to happen to roleplaying was a generation of GMs thinking they have to be Brennan Lee Mulligan or Matt Mercer.
Stop worrying about how marketable your game is. Stop worrying about how good your writing and your performances are. Roleplaying games are, by their nature, intimate. Every single game is an experience shared between a small group of people. And that’s exactly what makes them so powerful.
I’ve lost track of how many times players have literally cried during my games. I’m talking “Grave of The Fireflies” kind of tears here, not “My GM is an abusive dick” tears. Just the other day one my players told me that I’m the reason they can’t listen to a particular song without crying, because it reminded them of a particular moment in one of my games. And that’s the sort of thing that makes you think “Holy shit, I should be recording/livestreaming this.” But if I did that, none of those moments would have ever happened, because my players aren’t professional actors, and they would have been so self conscious about performing to a crowd that they would never have lost themselves in their characters like that.
Enjoy the intimacy. Enjoy the imperfection. There’s nothing else like it.
Thank you.
I’ve been doing TTRPGs since middle school and when Critical Role hit I was so frustrated with everyone trying to make games something you could sell! I don’t want a curated experience. I want the kind of drama you can only get when the dice are impersonal and the players are just trying to survive!
This is just like how Flant Grillby used the dragon watch to trick Grumbly the toll booth worker into leaving early. Of course, this completely ruined Groblar’s plan to send Flant on a wild goose chase to retrieve an enchanted rubber chicken, which really ballyragged him. That is all to say that Flant could finally meet back up with Jontrather. After crossing The Pit Of Generic Fantasy Doom©, the managed to trick Korkouslork into saying “bananabread” and so Korkouslork was obligated to help them. After Korkouslork turned into a dragon, and flew Flant & Jontrather over the Turgberg mountains, they all landed in the forest of Krof’s folly. Due to the ancient forest enchantment, Korkouslork was unable to turn all the way back, and could only spit fire instead of speak, no matter how hard she tried. This actually proved advantageous, as when L’orb, the wandering magician, tried to hypnotize her into saying bananabread, she spit fire at L’orb instead.
Anyway, sorry to ramble on about my totally real DnD campaign I didn’t just come up with on the spot.
A lot of my games sort of take place in the same universe, even when they’re different systems or settings.
Like an old DND campaign had the players visit a wizard university, where they met many NPCs. One of them was Reg. He’s kind of a chill party dude. Loves playing wizard pong (it’s like ping pong, but with mage hands)
My current game is a 2050s corporate dystopia using Fate. Heavy inspiration from World of Darkness and Shadowrun.
And Reg is here. He fully believes he used to go to wizard school, but something happened and now he’s here. He’s pretty chill about it, though. Last game, a werewolf was going berserk and Reg was like “Dude. Fucking metal.” The werewolf gave him a knock-on-your-ass high five and Reg lived.
I love wizard pong, I’m stealing it.
Give them enough time, and Wizards will claim that they have the rights to your campaign because of some fine print on their books or something.
This sentiment is hyperbole, but still fueled my exit.
omg you know Dave!?!
He still owes me money.
D&D 5e game:I have two planets orbiting each other.
1200 years ago it was just a moon, then somehow the moon fell and almost ended the world.
But the next day there was a moon again.
Really it’s another version of the same world from a parallel timeline. The act of summoning it led the powers that be to seal the system in a bubble plane to keep the chaos from spreading.
The wizard who did it fell in love with himself from another timeline. The BBEG is two liches who are each other’s phylactery. If both cannot be defeated before the first revives, there is no way to stop them.
Such a tragic story, to do that much for love and then only be vulnerable when you’re near your love.
Their name is Zeitounessian, and I have a party on each world trying to stop him.
Neither party has yet determined that there are two of him.
Yeah, that’s going on my list of shit to maybe steal later…
Have fun with it!
I did the gaybro liches before. It was a PF1 game where 3 of the party members wanted to be goblins. We had an Alchemist (burny), a Barbarian (Bitey) and a gunslinger (shooty). The last player wanted to a be human witch. The player was kind of dumb, but the character got gang pressed into trying to wrangle these goblins in spite of being an immoral shitheel herself. The first adventure (which is the only one they did before the game petered out for other reasons) was they were sent to rescue the local children from an Ogre who was kidnapping them from a village. They discovered that he was very erudite and literate (think Cave guy from Freakzoid) and he was trying to teach the children how to read. The villagers were very angry objectors to the written word. The next adventure (which I had notes for somewhere) was going to pit them against a dragon who had been kidnapping princesses. The players would discover he was a giant nerd, and was treating them well; he just needed them for his army build for wargames against other dragons.
Okay, so fine you get the tone; the liches were two wizards who were like, no homo gym bros in life, who made each other their phylacteries. My plan was to have the players find a diary and they would learn the joke; that was only one of them was gay. The diary would have no surviving identifying marks, so they wouldn’t know which one
I’d considered making one of them a veteran lich who has conquered other versions of himself and the other a ‘naive victim’ lich but that was too on the nose for what Marvel had been planning to do with Kang and also narratively unnecessary.
In mine they are yuan-ti abomination liches, and since they are each other’s phylactery, their bodies were intricately crafted to be serpentine ebony or ivory. Similar to yours in some ways.
Thanks for the stories, sounds like it was fun!
This is literally how the furries got started. Won’t be long before they commission a $5,000 cosplay suit of their ice elemental.
My Red Markets campaign was so fucking good. We had a a teacher turned politician in the zombie wasteland trying to build dual power systems before a (hopefully) coming revolution, a horror druid zombie army, and totally-not-CIA sabateurs. It was rad.
Our current campaign has a recurring mook named Qarl who the party has killed several times… somehow he keeps showing up every time they square away against the baddies. There’s a little riot every time they find out he’s back!
Clearly he’s actually the BBEG lich in disguise. Time for a phylactery hunt! ;)
I need to put a recurring mook in my game
If you post your stuff to Lemmy… people will meme about it???
I’m reminded of a very passionate post I once saw about how tiktok dances have made some people afraid to dance because they aren’t as good as people who literally live in dance training camps to factory -produce dance videos. Anyway, the plea was to just ignore that and dance! People largely have an innate desire to move when they hear music, and its OK to just vibe with it.
The internet has got people thinking that everything they make must be step 1 of their plan to monetize that thing and release it for global consumption. Write stories for yourself, letter for friends, and poems for no one! Dance no matter who is looking. Make art everywhere. And for goodness’ sake, play table top games with friends, make up stories, and let yourself get wildly obcessed about it! It’s yours! It’s ok to just love the story your friends are telling and to talk about with people, and you don’t even have to lament that your friend group isn’t charming enough to carry the podcast of your game.
