#Telling Stories

[jellisdraws]

My campaign has entered ACT THREEEEEEEEEEE

My players literally kick so much ass and I love them. We are now 75 sessions in. Act 1 took about 50 sessions, Act 2 took about 25- shorter but they were much more involved in the main plot of the campaign and the developments were HUGE. I fully anticipate Act 3 to take at least 70 sessions to get through. The party is splitting with plans to reconvene later so everyone is making a new character to have for the split arc and we’re jumping into the unknown together.

Things are coming together in such an exciting way, the future ofcthe game feels fresh and the bones I have laid out in the past two arcs are strong and allow for tons of flexibility on the part of my players and how they drive the narrative. And I feel like this is possible because I have “broken” some of the tacit rules of DMing. I’m not sure these things work without a group you’ve played with regularly for a long time but I’ll share what I can in hopes that it encourages other DM’s to cut loose a little bit.

1. I did not give them freedom when designing characters. When I proposed this campaign, the idea would be the main cast would all be kids who grew up together. The players and I sat around for multiple session 0’s designing the town these kids grew up in, as well as their families, their connections to each other and so on before they ever even had the chance to choose classes. They only were allowed to write their own backstories for the duration of a 15 year timeskip between the prologue and campaign start. On top of this I gave the players the mandate to make a second, high level character sheet that they couldn’t even name, characters whose purpose would become clear as a story within the story of the campaign. It was a whole lot of effort but it has paid dividends. The character backstories made for the 15 year gap we’re more tied to the world than any I have seen, and the players were more keen to know about the world in turn. The second characters allowed for them to experiment with other builds and feel powerful, while I could use the sessions involving them as a mechanic to reveal lore in a way that made sense, and have the actions of the players shape the narrative consequences their main characters are dealing with.

2. I have not told this story chronologically. As alluded to above, the higher level characters are powerful figures from a forgotten past that the main group is inexorably tied to. While the events of the main campaign have been in order the group has jumped around through time experiencing visions of the past in no discernible order (at first) though a pattern and timeline has emerged. As the group seeks the truth of a forgotten age I needed a way to give them lore they otherwise couldn’t access, this method has allowed for me to tell a story and expand and continue the mystery without lore/info dumping on my players too hard. Every truth or revelation feels earned: as they decipher the clues left behind with the information gained from their visions.

3. I’ve railroaded them when necessary. I’ve been DMing for about a decade now, and I can confidently say there are no hard and fast rules around railroading your players and letting them determine their own path. Imo, the best campaigns allow both the players and the DM to hold the narrative reins in their hands. While the players should always be leading the action, they should not always be leading the direction. It is necessary to give you the DM the time to bury leads, invest them in your villains and NPC’s and ensure they have a stake in the primary conflict outside of their character backstories. Once you have established what the heck is going on and given them some mile posts to achieve then you can let them lead themselves.

4. I’ve allowed and encouraged metagaming. In a campaign where I’m already doing a bunch of weird stuff to affect how the narrative is told and explored, I have happily allowed metagaming at the table and happily answered lore questions and given them information to clarify things I want them to know. My players excitedly discussing theories about my game? Crack, I want to encourage it! I’ve worked hard to craft a cool mystery into the campaign and if they have questions about their clues I want to answer them! I’ve Also ‘Metagamed’ consequences to certain actions, letting the characters fully know the stakes of certain rolls, or given context to a situation so the player can make an informed decision in character. Often they still choose to accept the dramatic irony, seeing how certain decisions will affect things. The degree of openness I’ve brought to the way the story is told has seen rewards again and again with interesting decisions and amazing plays being made that are all the more impactful because the players know the weight of those actions and decisions.

5. I’ve been downright mean. I have been mean as hell when it comes to fighting during the climactic sequences, counterspelling healing, taking out downed characters, ruthlessly using mechanics to my benefit and everytime it makes seeing them succeed by the skin of their teeth worth it. And it reinforces themes I care about and explained during session 0, the world is big and scary and they are a small and new part of it. Dnd campaigns work best when there are stakes. You don’t need to have those stakes be massive and life threatening all the time and not every combat should be a knockdown drag out slug fest, but your villains and antagonists should be smart, effective and fucking powerful. They should challenge or overwhelm your heroes at times. The stakes make those dice rolls and choices valuable.

6. I’ve played with a DM PC since session 1. I love having a DMPC. I know not everyone does, but to me it opens up so many more chances at RP. I can check in on my quiet players in game, I can reward my roleplayer characters with fun RP, and I can share little facets of the world the group might not otherwise get. The DM PC does their best to not take center stage, instead doing their best to let other characters shine and in both combat and RP I’ve found this to be an excellent tool and way to increase my enjoyment and feel connected to the story the way my players experience it.

All this being said, the most important thing I do is talk to my players. Communication is the most important thing in cooperative storytelling and knowing what they want and enjoy out of stories is most important to running a campaign that will see your players coming back for more every week and having a blast doing it.

So yeah, cut loose DM’s! Do that funky weird idea you have, talk about it to your players. Go ham. And play in the way that suits you and your players best! You’ll see dividends

[folklorist-word-florist]

[My first novel] had just been published...

...and I was suffering a fear common among people who have just written a first novel: the fear of never writing another. (As a matter of fact this fear is also common among people who have just written a second novel, a third novel, and, for all I know, a forty-fourth novel, but at the time I considered it a unique affliction.) ---- Joan Didion

[g-l-o-w-y-l-i-g-h-t-s]

This list of Halloween Traditions on Google is actually a brilliant shit post

Ah yes. We will participate in the traditional activities of Pumpkin and Seeing Ghosts. Maybe also some Soul. Just to really cover our bases.

[infinitysisters]

“When I met him on the set for the very first time…a couple of hours before we were going to shoot our first scene together, the director says (to Matthau) “this is Kevin Pollak, he’s going to play your son”, and I foolishly decided to make small talk with Walter Matthau, and I said, ‘So, Walter, uh, uh, the script’s pretty good huh?’, and he says, ‘the script sucks kid, I owe my bookie 2 million.’”

— Kevin Pollak, Grumpy Old Men (1993)

[ask-firespiritcookie]

here here, so that fire spirit doesnt burn anything up, i present a picture i found on the internet:

bORB

Knight: I appreciate the thought, but his flames get more intense the more emotional he is. I'm afraid this picture has done nothing but make him more of a nuisance

Him being the way he is, is exactly why I rather he not be here in the first place.

I can't imagine anything keeping his attention for long anyway. He's bound to, sooner or later, make his presence known again. So I guess...

I'm only delaying the inevitable.

FS: haha! You know me so well.

Knight: Unfortunately....

Anyway, I'm making my way to the hall now. I can only beg of you to be on your UP MOST behavior, okay???

The King is joining us.

[sastielsfandom]

Sam and Castiel tell each other messages through books. Through lines on spines, dashes on the cover. Stacked or organized books. Distances with titled books. Tabs in certain pages and how many books have tabs. The books they use, they have no meaning, it's supposed to lead others on a wild goose chase because there's never going to be a clear connection. It's about the patterns they've set, the code they understand that no one else even notices.

[filmcourage]

Why Writing Groups Are A Great Idea - Jill Chamberlain

Watch the video interview on Youtube here.

[poprocklyrics]

There is fiction in the space between the lines on your page of memories

Telling Stories, Tracy Chapman

[futurebird]

My mom hates fiction.

My mom is a really strange person. Not least of her oddities is that she insists that she "hates fiction" -- You'd think this would have upset me more growing up being a kid who was interested in nothing more than making up stories, the more fantastical and detached from reality the better, but it never really bothered me.

There is a kind of villain archetype in children's fiction: the evil one who hates imagination and probably also bright colors and laughter. My mom is nothing like that. Although she does like mathematics, and space documentaries better than any novel. When I still made her read all the stories I'd write she'd always sigh and say "I don't understand why you can't write about something that's real?" I'd try to explain that all the stories were as good as real to me. And I'd get nowhere.

A vivid memory: a long car ride down south, driving at night. We couldn't get the radio to work. No music, no local news. We decided to tell stories to pass the time and keep whoever was driving awake.

I just sat there bursting with ideas hardly able to listen to the other stories. (I'd like to think I could be more mature than that today, but... I can't make any promises.) Everyone told a story and then we got to my mom.

My mom tries to tell stories we already know like "Little Red Riding-hood" and everyone angrily vetoes this choice. "No no no you have to make up a story!" "I can't just... make up a story." "Yes you can. Just make one up. It could be about anything." "... I just can't. How about I tell you the story of David and Goliath--" "NOoooo! Make one up!" "I've never been able to do that."

As a child, I flat out refuse to believe this is true. I remember being angry that she was keeping her story a secret for no good reason. Because, in my mind everyone had a story resting on the tip of their tongue. Threatening to come out if invited or not!

Everyone has to have stories, right? Maybe my mom's stories just didn't seem enough like the goofy over-the-top fantasy and sci-fi tales everyone was telling in the car that night, so she didn't think we'd like them? Maybe. So we moved on to the next person but that always stuck with me. The idea of not having a story just bursting out of you... desperate to be told was confusing. And I wondered if that's really what it was. Everyone has to have stories, right? Maybe my mom's stories just didn't seem enough like the goofy over-the-top fantasy and sci-fi tales everyone was telling in the car that night, so she didn't think we'd like them?

Maybe growing up with 4 very artistic & creative siblings made her feel like giving up on such things: just focusing on her mathematics?

What are people saying when they say "I don't have an imagination?" or "I don't like fiction."

I don't think it's as simple as them being boring people, since the people who say this, in my experience, are far from boring, far from uncreative too. The creativity comes in other places-- but, its there. This is specifically about stories--

--or the kind of thing that people expect when we say "tell me a story."

Sometimes? I feel like I agree with my mom. I enjoy documentaries more than fiction-- a lot of popular fiction is so full of the world and all of the ugliness in the world. Mass media can get me down, the tropes, their predictability get me down. I try not to lean into this too much, I don't want to seem pretentious, after all. But, mass media can be very boring from a certain perspective.

It takes a kind of creativity to breathe life back into it. Like how people online fabricate all of these elaborate backstories and intrigue for characters in mass media. That seems like the only way to have fun with those stories. Maybe my mother just had a bad case of that?

Or maybe it's something else I still will struggle to understand.

So here I am fascinated by the claim of "having no imagination"

I need to write about it!

If you are such a person can you say a little about what's really going on?

[dragonfire1000]

Telling stories....

....Just like old times

[aleiammostoles]

Life of an Artist🎨🖌️

For me creating an art is a medicine to me. It gives me motivations to do what I love to do. Whenever I draw or paint I always imagining of how I will turn my dreams into reality by means of expressing your own feelings to it. Its like you are creating your own world of art. This way I can be who I want to be, and I am free to express my emotions, thoughts and feelings to it.

[aeshnacyanea2000]

Even little white lies, like ‘I shall definitely have the money by the end of the week’, always ended in trouble. That was ‘telling stories’, a sin in the de Worde compendium that was worse than lying; it was trying to make lies interesting.

Terry Pratchett - The Truth

[apdistractions]

[roseworth]

i think theres this idea in the general public that the "best" fanfic gets turned into real books like 50 shades of grey. but the truth is that the best fanfic can never be published as an actual book because its intricately woven into the canon material so its inseparable even if you change the names

[vaindumbass]

love all the cute dungeon meshi pride art but chilchuck would not be caught dead wearing any sort of pride merch. you think that man is going to give out any personal information? for free?????

[acorviart]

not to sound like a boomer, but I need some people to learn how to write emails in a semi-professional (at the very least) format so you're not cold emailing a business/potential employer/any other stranger about formal matters in the exact same way you'd DM a close friend on instagram

the formality/language can loosen up in the email chain once you've established a rapport and you match the other person if they're being less formal, but please don't have the very first email you send a stranger be written in all lowercase ultra-casual sms slang with no greeting or signature and a billion emojis