Bore
Wizard loves RP. Wizard loves narrative. Wizard should probably stick to her medium.
Let’s face it, guys. Even if this hobby of ours is predicated on interactive narrative, that doesn’t make us expert in the art of storytelling. It’s far too easy to turn these collective dreams of ours into “you had to be there” stories. Nor am I exempt from the problem. For every relatable fireball wizard there’s an underwhelming kobold sherpa. For every tragic character death there’s the bizarrely sensual coo of the middle-aged white dude sex pigeon. When you’re a gamer, there’s a special alchemy that happens around the gaming table. And as bright as those memories shine in a group’s collective mythology, they don’t necessarily carry over to verbal communication.
This has much to do with context. If you’ve got to start your stories with, “I was a wizard, and my buddy was a warlock, but the jerk at our table was this oversexed other warlock who was creeping on our cleric (played by a female), who was the GM’s ex-girlfriend and also my roommate,” then my eyes have already glazed over. Social intricacies and character relationships and the idiosyncrasies of game systems all figure into THE POINT of our stories. And when your tale is so overloaded, it’s easy to lose the Trees of Brevity amidst the Forest of Wit. In an odd way, I think this explains part of the charm of Handbook-World. Our stock and trade in this comic is generic dungeon fantasy. Anyone who’s ever hurled a plastic platonic solid knows what a missed trap or a rules lawyer looks like. When you get too special-snowflake though, you begin to lose your audience.
And so, while Wizard lacks the art of the anecdote, I wonder whether you guys can do any better? What is your favorite gaming story? Is it instantly relatable? Do you have to spend undue time with the setup and the context? Or can you get to the narrative meat of your tale before interest has waned? And more generally, what makes a good “no shit there were were” gaming story? Am I right in my “brevity” assessment? Or does that lead us to the bizarre realms of “be me / be not me” storytelling? Sound off with your best tales from the table down in the comments!
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I wonder whether Aristocrat and Elf Princess have the seating arrangement organized so that people they want to punish – but have no lawful reason to toss in the ole dungeon – wind up seated next to Wizard…
We’ve established that elves dislike other elves:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/hostage-crisis
I guess maybe it’s not just a drow thing. :/
Maybe that’s why Elves are considered to be a slow-breeding species, when it’s apparently pretty easy for them to make little Half-Elves: most of them can’t stand to be in the same room long enough to make new Elves. 😉
Having just finished my first five-and-a-half-year campaign and moved to a new city, I’ve made the horrifying discovery that explaining anything from the original story requires explaining everything from the original story. Thankfully I don’t have to leave the world entirely – my new game is set there – but it is a little frustrating that the stories of old get rather hard to tell.
There’s a reason that I write up my session summaries in narrative form. I hope to clean it all up and get ’em printed for my players one day when the campaign finally ends. 🙂
Knowing your audience is key. Turns out that a big exciting D&D story means very little to people who don’t know what D&D is or have the faintest inkling of how it’s played.
Sometimes “So no shit there we were, fighting the biggest dragon ever to exist” is all the setup you really require, and sometimes its just not enough context.
Even among fellow hobbyists, though, the specifics of a given setting or system tend to get in the way. In consequence, even D&D players talking to other D&D players can feel like football players talking to cricketers.
And of course, different groups can run things very differently, even if most of the same players are involved. The kind of game you play in 90-minute intervals at the local game shop with whoever shows up for weekday D&D is very different from the game you play for a few hours every other Sunday…and the Sunday game you’ve been playing for years is going to be different than the one you started up the other month to celebrate everyone getting their jabs.
And once you do change out all the players, the differences get even more extreme. One group might be a stickler for the strict rules of the system, seeing what stories fall out from the dice and rulebooks; another might see its players treat all rules as optional save the Rule of Cool, competing for the best “The enemy’s gate is down” moment of the campaign. If you’re used to the former, the latter is going to be as familiar to you as GURPS or Shadowrun.
I think this is part of the reason that Critical Role took off. It’s useful for the community to have a lingua franca to discuss concepts. Makes me wish there were other, equally popular shows that ran in different styles so we had more to compare though.
I’m guilty of this. Once, on a date, I was prompted to tell a DnD story. In a moment of blinding idiocy, I described putting together and running my favourite dungeon from a DM’s perspective. Sure, it was a fun moment for me, but I didn’t clock on until much later that I’d neglected to actually describe what was IN the dungeon or how the players had overcome it. Completely glossed over the actual story in favour of the mechanics.
We, uh, didn’t see each other again after that.
“Tell me a story of fantasy and adventure!”
“OK, so they were all APL 5, and I needed a couple of CR 4-6 encounters. Thus did I heroically journey to the land of the SRD….”
Let me try a couple.
For reasons too complicated to get into, we were following a giantess through the forest. We came across what looked like a couple of slavers driving slaves through the woods, but before we could ask any meaningful questions, the giantess decided the slaves looked tasty. Most of the party tried to knock out the giantess, but the paladin noticed that the slaves’ chains were making it hard for them to run and decided to cut them apart.
The DM ruled that he could break the chains and not hit the slaves as long as he didn’t roll a 1…and he rolled a 1 three out of four times. Needless to say, a mid-level paladin’s melee attack killed these poor commoners instantly. After the third victim, my cleric demanded to know what the paladin was doing.
“I’m trying to help!”
“Stop helping!”
So there we were, having accidentally unleashed Malfeshnekor into the bowels of the goblin fortress. (In retrospect he should have been stuck in his room, but we didn’t know that at the time.) He was several CRs above the party level, and we’d just finished what was supposed to be the big boss fight. So it wasn’t a fight we could win.
The party cleric decided to hold off the beast, sacrificing himself to let his friends escape with their lives. The party barbarian wouldn’t let his buddy die alone—and besides, it seemed like a fun last fight. The party gunslinger also stayed behind, because his gun had broken and he’d rather roll a new character than buy a new one.
We still mock the gunslinger about that.
Same campaign as the first anecdote, actually. We were trying to get into a frost giant fortress, and the two players playing an ettin wanted to shortcircuit the normal process of spending way too long on plans that would devolve into combat anyways. So they decided to knock on the front door, pretend they wanted to present tribute to the frost giant king, and initiate combat by failing.
“Roll Deception.”
“Natural 20.”
“…with disadvantage?”
“Natural 20.”
So now half the party was trying to get into a frost giant fortress, while the other half was being watched by every giant in the mead hall.
I should have turned into a dragon.
Final boss fight of the campaign (the one from the second anecdote, actually), and I had a list of buff spells to cast on myself beforehand. Then the actual session came along, and nobody else had anywhere near as much pre-buffing (not even the alchemist), so I cut the list in half or so. One of the cut buffs was Form of the Dragon.
In retrospect, if I’d cast that spell, the fire resistance would have let me survive more than two rounds. I was the only casualty.
My dad once said he killed a knight back in AD&D by using cantrip (its own spell back in the day) to make his horse orgasm over a bridge.
Just remembered a fun story from a GURPS game I was DMing for my dad and brother.
So they started the campaign separate, as you do, with their own motivations to investigate/attack a certain castle. My brother, being in middle school at the time, made an idiot of himself and pissed off the guards, so he entombed himself underground for twelve hours to avoid their wrath.
During those twelve hours, my dad beat up basically everyone in the castle, did what he came there to do, and left. My brother came out of the ground confused about why the castle was suddenly empty. Needless to say, this turned out to be a one-shot.
Heh. That’s practically a “hangover” scenario.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-hangover
Not a bad setup, actually. Just start a session cold with, “You’ve been hiding within [insert party’s hiding method] for hours. You’ve healed up from that near TPK, but who knows if the X, Y, or Z that nearly killed you are still waiting outside your shelter. When you emerge however, etc. etc.”
Beats the hell out of “you start in a tavern.”
I think your dad wins this round, lol.
The deck was always stacked in his favor. He’s been playing D&D longer than almost anyone else in my gaming group (and, I suspect, many other members of the audience) has been alive.
After many years at game night, we had begun a new campaign, and everyone switched to a new character class. Not only was everyone suddenly now an expert on how somebody else at the table should do their job, we all had new personalities and character dynamics to figure out.
A far cry from our former “vanilla” cleric or my former halfling rogue, my new cleric was a min-maxed Chaotic Good half-orc who greeted everyone with a hearty back-slap and a volume-goes-to-eleven bellow of “I am Alkaeus, Priest of Power and Servant of Heracles!” The group caught on at once and endeavored to persevere, deliberately limiting my chances to proselytize.
At the second session, a player who had missed our introductory outing innocently turned to his right and introduced himself to me in-game. Having been briefed by the others, he thought he was prepared.
FIGHTER: Hi, nice to meet you. (pleasantries)
CLERIC: (returns pleasantries). Have you considered the merits of Heracleism?
FIGHTER: (smirks smugly) I, um, I follow Kord. (assumes the matter is finished)
CLERIC: (rolls a Knowledge (religion) check–>26) THE GOD OF STRENGTH! IT IS LIKE WE ARE BROTHERS ALREADY! COME, TELL ME TALES OF YOUR GOD AND I SHALL TELL YOU OF MINE…
–From the kitchen, I hear another player groan “jeezus Who wound him back up?” to which our host sighed “It was the dwarf, he didn’t know any better.”
Is this a reference to something? Or was it just that you were playing Bigman McLoudvoice?
Chiefly the latter, though Hercules: Prince of Power was Marvel comics title once upon a time.
Nope!
I realized belatedly that I have a shorter anecdote than that (that I may have shared before):
(Imagine a retired Marine sounding defensive and slightly petulant when his Druid was described as game-breaking.)
“No! They weren’t giant, celestial, dire, or anything…They were completely normal orcas and there were only three of them.”
(and…scene)
lol. Nice. I feel like we’re approaching RPG epigram over here.
How to introduce a new character to campaing, Nordic style. Have the new character be drunk and encountering a warhost, upon being offered battles, thralls and wealth immidiately best buds with others.
Yes it’s Warhammer fantasy campaing. What did you expect peace, love and understanding? It’s blood, booze and booty(both ways count depending how slabeeshi you are) that anyone into the game is after.
I’m pleased that, when you search for “slabeeshi,” Google asks, “Did you mean:
slaanesh?”
Pathfinder: Just on Wednesday, we were fighting a Winter Witch with a Rime Rod. Any Cold damage will entangle us. All of us are in a narrow choke point and she lays down an AoE damage every turn Cold based spell that will anchor us there. Sufficed to say, we can’t escape this.
Or can we? the druid animal companion throws one fighter to safety. I then turn to our Fighter
“You have Cold Resistance. It only works if it hurts you. If your Resist is enough, pick me up and carry me out of the effect!”
The GM pointed out that the ground was icy and difficult terrain. “You can save yourself or risk getting caught next turn.” He chose to get me out…
At which point. then grabbed him and moved him out.
The witch tried to catch us again and we repeated it. Thus, we invented the game of aggressive figure skating!
I’ll seize on this. Not to be a jerk about it, but because it’s an important point for online RPG stories.
When understanding is already so tenuous thanks to all that contextual complexity I described in the OP, grammatical shit matters. Just as you’re winding up to the big punchline I’ve got to parse this:
I can understand the gist, but it takes the wind out of your humorous figure skating sails when I’ve got to
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/548/129/538.jpg
100% fair. My typing skills often lead to grammatical errors. Sorry for that.
No worries. This is a weirdly meta conversation, but I cant’ think where else you’d even go to talk about this stuff. I mean, what other activity requires a writer’s workshop about “this fun thing I did in my hobby” stories?
Ah, a different memory just struck.
World of Darkness, Werewolf the Apocalypse. My character was friends with a grumpy individual whom I dragged everywhere. I was carrying him while leading a group through a mystical maze and the GM tells us to make a spot check. I fail, friend succeeds.
GM: You are walking in a giant footprint. Think Godzilla type print.
My grumpy friend just pushed my PC’s dead down to see the footprint.
The moment of awesome was my response. In my loudest voice for that character, I exclaimed “LOOK! A CLUE!”
We had to stop the game for about 5 minutes for everyone to stop laughing.
Yup. I think this is the kind of story that requires a live telling. I bet this shit was bring-down-the-house hilarious as it happened. But when repeating the experience to outsiders, the punchline works better with pantomime and a loud character voice rather than writing.
I’m fully aware I have a bit of an issue with this- or at least, I think I do, but no group I’ve ever played with has taken offense to it. Then again, the group I GM for is an entire group of this person so it goes great. We’ve had entire sessions go by that are just the players talking IC and occasionally asking me for input from an NPC, or sessions that were just RP between players and a group of NPCs.
Being a talky-guy in game is fine (within reason).
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/grandiloquence
But today’s comic is really about foisting your greatness onto outsiders. It’s hard work making the antics of characters from a show your audience has never seen sound interesting.
In the Handbook world aren’t rules about cruel and unusual punishment? Laurel make a great work with the guy on the left. He suffers. Drows would mercy kill him if anything 😛
It’s been amazing comparing ye olde Handbook comics to more recent stuff. The art style has changed like crazy!
It looks like. When she remade the first comic you can aprreciate that even more 🙂
Heh. I’d forgotten about that one. I guess it’s been a year:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/deja-vu
Almost a year, yes 🙂
Funny when the readers got better memory than the authors 🙂
I still remember that time i told Laurel on Chorus of the Neverborn how she spoiled the end of the comic with a Deviantart piece 😀
lol. Which DA piece? Did she do Contessa in “the new game” or something?
This piece: https://www.deviantart.com/fishcapades/art/Afterthoughts-140102619
Quite similar to Chorus ending 🙂
Wizard seems to have a case of ‘clown-like mouth’ in this strip.
Had to google to see if ‘clown-like mouth’ was a technical term in illustration. The image search was unexpectedly off-putting. :/
I usually get straight to the nitty-gritty. For example:
The party was hired to rescue a kidnapped princess. We were in the wagons heading there when hellhounds started chasing us. The Barbarian decides to jump off the rapidly moving wagon to attack the hounds. He falls short but Druid, who was sitting on Barbarian’s shoulder due to being a tiny race, uses HIM as a springboard and elbow drops right on the last hellhound. Combat over. (Bard and Wizard shot ice spells at the rest.)
Later, when we got close to the fortress, we had to hide from a patrol. Barbarian and Fighter get spotted and they take off running to lead the patrol away from us.
Barbarian and Fighter split up and make a big circle, crossing right across from each other. They then attacked the guard that was following the other one and knock them off the horses. Barbarian and Fighter dodge the trample, the guards don’t. Fighter double-slices into the one he’s fighting and offs him. Meanwhile Barbarian grapples the other guy and suplexs him into the ground headfirst. Bye-bye guards.
Oh, and the rest of us snuck into the fortress and rescued the princess while this was going on.
I hope that the fighter and barbarian high-fived in passing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNMpSy_faaI
The All Guardsman Party is an example of how to do this right, and it does it by focusing entirely on the characters themselves. I barely knew diddly jack shit about Warhammer 40k when I started reading it, but damn it’s been hilarious and engaging from the very beginning.
Of course, AGP has the advantage of being told online, not in person. Just introducing the characters takes 10-15 minutes when read aloud, and the individual adventures can take hours to relate. It’s one thing when you can take the time to actually explain everything important to the story; it’s another when your audience’s eyes start glazing over before you’ve named a single principal character.
But yeah, focusing on the characters was definitely good.
Gotta agree with GWG. Even though the content is similar (recounting an RPG experience) the Guardsmen belong to a different genre. They’re still broadly “tales from the table,” but they’re not anecdotes.
I honestly can’t remember the last time I tried to verbally explain a full-length version of one of my games to another person.
My favorite that’s easy to share is that the party was in their first big fight, having met the BBEG who would later escape to be a recurring villain. Said BBEG was anatomically akin to a flaming suit of animated armor, though, significantly exploded and significantly more fire than metal. The only thing that made up his head with metal was a floating crown.
Only one party member dealt damage to him. As he was quite large, the rest of the party was using their turns to do acrobatics checks followed by sleight of hand to steal his crown- you know- the one that’s a magically bound piece of his body.
Fortunately our thieving circus performers lived long enough for him to eventually retreat in order to continue restoring his body after having been freed by that same party (they freed him by stealing the magic sword that bound him frozen in time). Trying to steal things from the villains became a recurring gag in the campaign.
“Rolling to steal someone’s head” continues to be a running joke with the group
Should have used a sword. It’s the traditional method.
https://youtu.be/9x6De3KgUO4?t=125
I think I’ve already told all my best stories here in the comments of previous strips. How good a job I did of that? You’d probably be a better judge than I, lol.
Personally I imagine I’m on a bad day just as about as bad as Wizard and on a good day I could pass for a passable storyteller at a distance. =P
Me too, buddy. Me too.
Most of my favorites are actually about a friend. This player, you see drank a bit more heavily than the rest of us on Numenera night, and due to this and his own personality became a consistent source of shenanigans. He was a goo person we’ll call Slimy. He actually also had some really clutch moments, but they weren’t as funny as these ones, so…
GM: You’re lying on the floor at [my character]’s feet as he fends off the bandits and shadow serpent. You’ll have to touch him to heal him.
Him: DICK PUNCH OF HEALING!
Me: (wince)
Him: (nat 20)
GM: You are absolutely certain that there are traps here, here, and here.
Him: I calmly walk through.
GM: Uh… the walls slam together with astonishing force, splattering your goo body everywhere. You are very nearly dead.
Him: What?! How???
Everyone: (stare at him incredulously)
Him: You said I was certain there weren’t any traps there!
Everyone: (incredulous staring intensifies)
Other PC: So yeah, the hall is trapped. (demonstrates to our characters what we all already knew OOC, that any weight will cause the entire hundred-foot hallway to become engulfed in flames for several minutes, by activating the trap)
Slimy: I jump across the flames!
GM: …Uh…. Okay, roll for distance, and roll [massive damage].
Him: Wow, that’s a lot of damage, but I travel 30ft! I hope I don’t splat on the back of the room.
GM: …You’ve only made it about a third of the way there, actually. Do you want to –
Him: I jump the rest of the way! (travels another 30ft into the flames, takes more massive damage. He’s now completely depleted one of his three health pools, and once the second one goes he’ll pass out)
GM: So you keep going again?
Him: …What do I see around me?
GM: (incredulous) You see only fire. You feel only fire. Your world is fire! (waits for another few moments, but the player remains silent). You take the fire damage again as you stand their contemplating your position.
He actually made it out of that one, running out of health and passing out as he made the last jump. Lots of laughs all around! Once the rest of us made it across (safely, I might add), we had to cart his ball of slime around for the next few hours while he regenerated.
From the same campaign we had this great quote:
“Hah! Not today, Satan! Maybe tomorrow, but not today!” – our resident were-Satan
Oh, and earlier Slimy attempted to get fancy on an infiltration mission… instead of just calmly walking in and speaking to the person in charge like most of the rest of us did. He got spotted almost immediately, nearly killed, and had to disguise himself as part of the ground. While the rest of the team spent the night either progressing the plot or getting laid, he spent it slowly inching his way out of the camp by eating the dirt directly in front of him and oozing forward to take its place!
Good times.
That’s a good way to do it. Had a buddy whose RPG stories were always about how awesome he was and how stupid everyone else at the table was. Might be the only IRL braggart I’ve ever encountered. Seriously off-putting after a while.
Anywho, I do appreciate that script style and the stage directions in these. It helps to give the reader a sense of the full experience without belaboring the transition from in-character to OOC. The style reminds me a bit of the chat logs of yore:
http://bash.org/?top
Snake divorce is still probably my best story.
Mr. Slithers, a chronically overweight ‘flying’ snake had just been liberated a few sessions before by the party’s pet loving barbarian. After getting high on drugs and life, he had become a NPC staple of the tavern community, much beloved for his neutral evil antics and desire to eat rats and maybe bite kids.
On the latest mission however, there were more snakes to be found. And of course, the Barbarian had to have them. Grabbing their cages from the house of a noble, they brought them back to the tavern. One of the snakes fled because I can only do so many snake voices. The others introduced themselves as Big Fluffy Wuffy Tex and Ms. Slithers, estranged bride of Ms. Slithers.
The two snakes hated each other and could not abide to live under the same roof. Ms. Slithers hated Mr. Slithers because he ate her eggs. Mr. Slithers on the other hand thought that if she didn’t want her would be children being eaten, then she shouldn’t have had them in the first place. These were incompatible views.
So… Despite having attempted to end the session early, I was forced to hash out a quick skill challenge with results of either they get back together or one of them did a murder upon the other. The end result was somewhere in the middle, and they had snake divorce. Big Fluffy Wuffy Tex and Ms. Slithers got together and had their own eggs which eventually hatched.
Now, I suppose the question is this a good story? Maybe, maybe not. There’s not a great moral to it other than don’t let your pet snake eat it’s wife’s eggs. Or maybe, don’t let your snakes marry. Maybe marriage just isn’t for snakes.
Regardless of whether the snake divorce story has merits or not, the memories of that weird ass session still make me and my players laugh. And that in itself has merits, right?
Absolutely it does. But you’ve still got to ask yourself, “How do I sell this odd experience to outsiders?” The funniest part was the opening line, since the words “snake divorce” are inherently hilarious. I suspect that you could make the climactic moment more climactic if you set up the die roll a bit more.
“So basically, if the check goes well, we’ve got beautiful conjugal snake bliss. If it goes poorly, everyone’s rolling initiative, because one of these long-boy NPCs is doing a murder on the other. So we make with the marriage counseling. Our bard talks about remembering the good times. Our druid talks about the Will of Nature, and how every creature that crawls is happier with a mate. The Barbarian says ‘uwu my snek pets are cute when they’re angry.’ But finally everything that can be said has been said. The snakes stare long and hard into one another’s eyes. Tails rattle. A die clatters. “I want snake divorce,” says Ms. Snake. We proceeded to lose our collective shit.”
Something like that. Bleh.
My absolute favorite moment at a gaming table definitely takes some set-up, but I don’t think it’s COMPLETELY unrelatable, it just requires a brief summary of our group dynamic—we have several games running between the various members of our friend circle, by various DMs.
Two relevant people here, besides me: “Maple” and “Sleuth.”
Maple runs a Curse of Strahd campaign that Sleuth and I play in. My PC in this game is a redemption paladin, whom Maple really likes (by which I mean he keeps trying to kill her). All 3 of us also enjoy text roleplay, and at the time we were running a silly superhero-themed AU, where a version of my paladin ran a secret truce zone called Sanctuary. Her schtick was offering superhumans of all stripes a hideout, somewhere to stay and get food, without cops or heroes busting down the door. The idea was that if people had somewhere to go for help and support, they wouldn’t feel as motivated to do supervillain things. The #1 rule of Sanctuary was NO FIGHTING, enforced by literal ban hammer.
Enter Sleuth, who also runs his own homebrew campaign, which I wasn’t part of at the time. Sleuth LOVED the idea of Sanctuary, and wanted to introduce a version of Sanctuary in his campaign world, with me guest-starring my (leveled-up) pally as an NPC. See, Maple’s PC in Sleuth’s campaign was an edgy warlock bent on killing his parents for selling him to a cult, and Sleuth wanted to make Maple talk to them without murder. Sleuth also wanted the party to meet one of their BBEGs without getting into a lethal fight. Sanctuary would be the mechanism. Redemption pallys get so many options for shutting down eldritch blasting that it’s not even funny, and we knew Maple knew exactly what my character could do, because he kept joking about killing her off before she had enough levels to earn her auras. We planned this crossover behind Maple’s back for almost a whole month, and somehow managed to keep him from finding out that I was up to anything…
And then the moment came for the big reveal. Maple’s warlock and a few other players had just gotten their butts kicked in a fight, so they retreated to “that truce zone” one NPC mentioned for safety. We play virtually, so I snuck into the discord call, and Sleuth started to painstakingly describe Sanctuary… using the exact same details I’d repeatedly used to describe it in our text RP, all the way until he read out the (very recognizably phrased) rules of the establishment. And then Sleuth immediately had Maple roll perception, before noticing a very familiar face sitting at the bar…
The experience of Maple’s offended gasp and face journey will stay with me for probably the rest of my life. IIRC, he just went “oh shit” after the monologue and was quiet for like a solid 30 seconds of shock, while Sleuth and I lost our shit laughing. Maple’s warlock did try to murder, Maple’s warlock got counterspelled and then shut down hard, and what followed was some absolutely STUNNING roleplay between the warlock and his father that made basically everyone cry. It was so freaking good, y’all, we got character catharsis and EVERYTHING.
Of course, now that he’s seen her in action, Maple is trying even harder to kill my paladin in the Strahd game before she gets her aura of the guardian. But we can’t have everything.
If the paladin dies in Maple’s game, she can’t murder Maple’s PC in Sleith’s game. The perfect crime!
Oh, she wouldn’t murder the warlock—she’d just put his scrawny 7 strength butt in a firm headlock and lecture him about how melting people’s guts out with eldritch blast is Very Rude until the warlock wants to die.
I’ve since joined Sleuth’s game for real and I’m very attached to that character, lol, he’s a total sweetheart once you get past the patricide and ominous GOOlock shenanigans.
In the kindest possible way: This may be the type of story I’m talking about. As an outsider, I don’t know any of these people or characters. I’ve got to mentally parse who’s running which game, whose character is relevant for which part of the story, and what the web of relationships means in the context of “the big reveal.”
And even during the big reveal, I’m left slightly confused:
I don’t know if that face belonged to Maple’s murderous parents, your suddenly-recognized paladin, or the BBEG that Sleuth wanted to introduce. It’s not until the phrase “between the warlock and his father” that the story finally tells us which it is.
I like the idea of Sanctuary, and can see how the shocking crossover played well at the table. But by time we arrive at “what followed was some absolutely STUNNING roleplay,” it feels like tell-don’t-show anticlimax.
In this story, I’d have cut out all the character names but Maple’s. You could improve clarity by referring to “my game” and “my buddy’s game” when talking about the different versions of Sanctuary. The paladin becomes simply “Sanctuary’s unkillable proprietor,” as their narrative function seems to stop at “enforcing Sanctuary’s truce.” I’d have also liked more emphasis on Maple’s relationship to the evil parent, as that’s the point of the big reveal.
…
Thanks for coming to my TED talk. Or my English lit class. Whichever. :/
I mean, I’m not gonna say you’re wrong, so no offense taken lol. I actually appreciate the feedback—I volunteered this one bc to some extent it is exactly the kind of story that you’re spoofing. I just also don’t think it’s irredeemable, my storytelling skills just need work. I’ve told this one to quite a few people who followed along with no problem and really got a kick out of it, and plenty of others bluescreened immediately, and it’s hard to gauge an audience in advance… leading to either a fantastic time swapping stories, or somebody who just wants to leave.
I think that’s the real reason these stories keep getting told—a lot of those “you had to be there” tales feel so close to something everyone would understand, that you just keep trying, because eventually you’ll find the rendition that works. It turns into an editing cycle, especially bc different people genuinely do want different things out of other people’s RPG stories.
Personally, I don’t mind a somewhat-digressing explanation of the interpersonal drama behind a game story, because I think the added layer of “and the beefing characters were roommates mad at each other IRL” or “this entire plot point is underlined by OOC romantic drama” makes things infinitely funnier. My personal game story nemesis is the tale that hinges on some specific game mechanic or the layout of a super special puzzle dungeon, or rules-related squabbling that you can’t TLDR in a sentence or two. Rules can be fun when playing but are rarely fun to listen to. Obviously there’s a limit to how much digression I’ll tolerate, but like, tastes just differ sometimes! Makes it hard to gauge how your stories will play. :>
That’s the maddening thing. You want your audience to understand the full context of your story so that they can get WHY it’s hilarious. But you wind up having to drop threads and elide details so that you can get to the meat of the anecdote sooner.
After reading back through these comments, I’m beginning to think that there are different genres of tabletop story. Some are the full-context “long-form” style, and some are the stripped down, “short-form” anecdote. I think the problem comes when the former tries to become the latter. When there’s too much story to fit inside a few short paragraphs, the narrative is better served by a full All Guardsman Party writeup.
My original feedback was from the “anecdote” perspective, which tends to be my go-to thanks to the style of this comic. I bet I’d dig a 2,000 word version of your story though. That would give you more room for setup, character development, and digressions.
One of my favourites from a long time ago:
We were playing in a 10-man group – really an experiment to see if such a large group could work (it couldn’t, but it was hilarious).
Me as GM: So you set off towards . It’s a ten-day walk.
PC #10 (INT 5): Not a problem! There are ten of us, we will just walk one day each!
Brief moment of silence. Then the table erupts in laughter for about 20 minutes or so. We never finished the campaign, but the story is still fondly told among friends.
I can picture you guys shouting “one day each!” before riding off for waffles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkalDmRVChs
Oh boy, let’s see how bad this goes:
There’s a running joke in my group that we know which guy is the most rape-able, because a (banished) former member told us his opinions on the subject. He told us this as an awkward joke in response to a joke about whether we should be worried because all of his characters come off as rapists. Yeah, no tears were shed when we decided he wasn’t a good fit, but no one else will ever find it funny because it’s really a joke about creepy that dude was.
Yup. Context is EXTREMELY NECESSARY here. But if you’ve got to preface your joke with “I’m not making a creepy rape joke, honest!” then it probably isn’t worth the trouble.
I can’t remember who the character is on the right, with the pink hair. I thought maybe it was monk at first?
That would be Elven Diplomat #2. I really need to yell at Laurel about making less distinctive throwaway characters….