Post-Session
Are any of you kids theater majors? If so, you might have heard of a dude by the name of Richard Schechner. He literally wrote the book on performance studies, and he’s been all manner of useful in my own scholarly work recently. That’s because, when you choose to study RPGs, one of the lenses at your disposal is game-as-performance. And if an RPG session is a performance, it goes through a number of identifiable phases. Schechner lists 10 of them, and they range from training and rehearsal to performance and criticism. It can be a fun exercise to try and make a typical gaming session fit the model, but don’t worry. I’m not going to recapitulate the entire text book at you. What I do want to discuss is the oft-overlooked question of what happens when the session ends. I’m talking about the concept of the cooldown.
As Schechner describes it, “If warm-ups prepare people for the leap into performance, cooldown ushers them back to daily life.” In a hobby like ours, where we like to talk about escaping into fantasy, entering another world, and becoming somebody else for a little while, the return to everyday life can bring out some peculiar emotions.
Think about the last really good session you had. The exhilaration of a satisfying combat. The satisfaction of an intense story moment expertly delivered. Now think of the car ride home. That odd feeling of pent-up energy and emptiness as the game world gives way to the real. It’s not unlike coming out of the theater after a really good movie or closing the last page on an thought-provoking book. Or perhaps more succinctly, kermitMeme.exe.
In our hobby, dealing with that emotion is often an informal process. It might be as simple as breaking character to comment on the fun you just had. It might involve heading out to a post-game meal where you discuss the good, the bad, and the awesome of the night’s festivities (traditionally over waffles). If you want to talk about ritual, it can also include the turn from story to mechanics as XP gets portioned out. At the very least there’s usually a “thanks for the session” and “when are we playing next?”
So for today’s discussion question, what do you say we compare notes on our own “cooldown” strategies? What typically happens in your group when the game is over for the night? What signals that “the session is done” and “we’re back in the real world now?” And for those of you who, like Wizard, find yourselves counting the days to the next adventure the second you get home, how do you contend with the odd mix of emotions that comes with stepping between worlds? Give us your personalized post-game report down in the comments!
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I never had a problem with this in normal rpg sessions, but when I did LARPing for a few years, this was a very real thing. Me and the buddy I travelled to the events with would always go out for a “real food” meal when we got back from the events, but having spent 2-4 days in character every waking moment, that first couple of hours walking into town for something to eat would always feel surreal; I felt naked without my armour, and as we walked past people in the street, I would find my hand unconsciously straying to where the hilt of my sword would normally be. By the end of the meal we would both feel human again, but there was always that strange hour or two afterwards where we weren’t quite ready to be normal yet!
A lot of my thinking on the subject of LARP cooldown comes from this one:
https://www.routledge.com/Performing-Fantasy-and-Reality-in-Contemporary-Culture-1st-Edition/Seregina/p/book/9780367478940
Returning to yourself is hard when you’re that deeply immersed.
First post here, having just finished bingeing the entire archive in four days. I feel very enlightened…
Anyway, my usual cool-down consists of picking a player to walk home with, discussing events of the session and plans for the future, then heading back to tidy up, collapse and fail to fall asleep. In this time of COVID, I forfeit the former element.
As for Wizard’s situation, I empathize fully. I’m three weeks late to run my latest VTM session, and coming up with D&D plotlines in my sleep due to that irritating thing, the “family holiday.”
Whoops… put that as a reply. Did say it was my first time posting here 🙂
First all, welcome to the comic! And no worries about the reply. I’ve done it myself more times than I’d care to admit.
I feel you on the ‘fail to fall asleep’ bit. When the session has gone especially well, it’s is TOUGH to get the game world out of my head.
This kind of thing is why I’d really like to see a decent “going home after an Isekai” story, where people who’ve spent a significant amount of time in a different world have to reaclimatise to a world where you don’t usually carry a sword out of doors.
How would you do that in a LARP? RP losing your memories of the fantasy world as you pump gas and head to the diner?
Pre-uni, back when we held session in the real world, we would always finish close to when we needed to leave, so the cool-down would involve us chatting, both about the session and about stuff in general, while also rushing to get everything packed away. Once I got back home, I’d tell my family that it went well, and then that would be it for the week.
Now, though, we’re online, so we tend to start late, and don’t need to worry about heading home. As such, the sessions now end with the more tired of us leaving to go sleep, while those that remain have a post-game discussion, complementing the DM on the whole thing, and freaking out about how many times we almost died. This goes on until we either run out of things to say, or realise the time. After that, I begin the ritual of sleep, except for the fact that I can’t sleep because I’m busy obsessing over everything that just happened and everything that’s about to happen and all sort of things and stuff.
…the morning after, ah, is not good. We hold sessions during the middle of the week, till the middle of the night, and as such Thursday mornings are a pain. Not to bad, for me, as I start and finish early, and so can spend the afternoon napping and working through any lingering post-game emotions, but another group member has Thursday as his busiest day, so I can’t imagine how much coffee he must go through.
Is it just the late hour that causes the exhaustion? Or is there something about the game itself that leaves you tired afterwards?
Just the late hour, and also lack of sleep in general.
Uh oh, Wizard’s player is starting to mix reality and the game.
That, or Wizard is VERY anxious for another dramatic adventure (no wonder she absconded the royal throne), and has made a very custom sending stone.
scryPhones are very popular in Handbook-World:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/scryingdevice
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/scheduling-conflicts
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/advanced-recon
What the title of that icecream? TPK Runch? And what would be the fabtasy equivalent of a Haagen -Dasz?
TPKrunch.
Other great flavors can be found on our FB page: https://www.facebook.com/handbookofheroes/posts/1332265343647106
Wait, where’s Thief, to ‘support’ Wizard in her time of need/loneliness?
I think she’s still upset about the latest goings-on in the other Handbook.
I feel like there was a missed opportunity with making those slippers into adorable and/or horrifying [fantasy creature] shaped slippers. Probably Owlbear, Dragon, Disenchanter or Aurumvorax ones.
I would pay good gp for some aurumvorax slippers.
Those are Mimic Slippers. They look just like a real mimic would; the resemblance is uncanny!
Slipper mimics are especially dangerous. By the time you realize, your foot is already halfway eaten.
I feel like the message should have been sent by the lich, since it seems like he is the DM judging by that one TPK comic.
Technically, all the monsters are the DM:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/adversarial-gming
My regular group has been on hiatus for almost 2 months and I have to say, Wizard and I are totally on the same wavelength right now XD
We are hoping to start up again in August with a kind of in-game “time skip” of a week or so in which the party got to hang out in the Capital city of one of the worlds biggest nations resting, training, and spending the cash they made from our last adventure. My strategy for easing the TTRPG withdrawal has been doing some writing about my character’s activities during the downtime, listening to podcasts like the Glass Cannon and replaying playing some of my go-to fantasy video games like the Soulsborne Games, or Dragon’s Dogma.
My ice cream intake may have spiked in the past few months. :/
Ooh… I never did finish Bloodbourne. It may be time to pick it up again.
Don’t you mean Bloodborne? o_O
Nope. My hunter has a very specific persona:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourne_(film_series)
XD
I was hoping for a Bourne/World of Darkness crossover 😛
Pelor-damn it this strip hits close to home. When DND is one of the only regular way to see some friends, session postponements suck especially after a hard few days.
For cooldown strategies, we generally end session and spend the next 30 mins / hour shooting the breeze and catching up. The switch from referring to people by character name to talking to them with their actual names is another way of signaling game is done. . After everyone else logs off (or we go home when meeting IRL), my personal cooldown is logging stuff in notes and basically reliving the session one last time.
Lots of good stuff in here:
Is there any difference between the digital and the IRL version of cooldown?
So usually… my cooldown, as much as I try to have it be, is to take a little time with everyone and just chat about things that we thought were cool, things we thought could’ve gone better. Sometimes, depending on how things are going, I try to sit down with the GM to layout a few reasonably upcoming story beats rather than taking the guy by total surprise.
I really like discussing where things are going… both on my end, and for other people. My only concern really is ending up like Gunslinger. People seem to enjoy the chats, but no one else really ever seems to start them. :/
Do you do that in front of the group, or do you try to preserve a bit of surprise for the rest of the table?
In case the content of these Handbook blogs wasn’t a clue, I also love recapitulating games. Some of my fondest memories of gaming are of sitting in a hookah bar with my buddies until the wee hours, talking about where the game has been and where it’s going.
“While we are alive we should sit among colored lights and taste good wines, and discuss our adventures in far places; when we are dead, the opportunity is past.”
― Jack Vance
I cannot agree more with Mr. Vance there.
Usually we START OUT as one big chat, but half the group immediately goes to bed. It’s work night after all. So… it generally works out that it’s me and whoever can stay up another hour. Typically the GM.
I mean god. Staying up late and having to be to work in a few hours is just a blanket -2, I mean really. ;p
In my group we discuss things, “That was great. That was a mistake. Will somebody finally say me what that reference was of? What will we do next time?” and depending of the time it is we eat something or take some drinks or we go home. We also burn the notes of the completed campaigns, that is one of the parts i like the most. Each one goes to its house and that. I, for one, dedicate myself to my live, play Warframe and other games, look for a job, keep my health on plague times, think of the setting we use and refine it more, and do other things. I don’t have that going from a world to other feeling you say 🙂
Currently i am on an extended cooldown while they play Don’t rest your head, as i said before. The waiting is, well… necessary taking in account the plague, but also i have many ideas for a campaign, but i will need to wait to play it and share it with them. As i said i have my own games and things to distract myself while i wait. I am not as desperate as Wizard, maybe she should try to play Warframe, i would be fun to se her face when she discover that Limbo Prime got vaulted 😛
My post-game cooldown used to involve biking home. Now it involves closing my laptop and going to sleep. That’s what I get for exclusively playing late at night.
I bet the snap of that laptop closing has a peculiar ring of finality.
DM usually says when we reach a stopping point for the session, and that we’ll pick it back up next time (unless it was the end of the campaign).
Whether it was the end of the session or the end of the campaign, our typical ritual is to break out into gushing about what was great about the session (or campaign as a whole, if it ended). Usually, that means starting with what others did that was cool before tooting your own horn. It’s only polite.
The ancient rite of, “Doo d’th Atwa Zawsem.”
When I DM, I usually like to get a quick post-session review from my players, just to see what they liked, what they didn’t like, and anything they want me to fix/change/include for the next session. I try not to drag it out into a full session autopsy or force people to give me feedback, I just make sure to ask the question and let people answer if they want, or if nobody has anything in particular to say then we just pack up and go do whatever’s next.
How does that work out for you? I find it’s tough to get criticism sometimes.
…
There might be a comic in that.
I usually remind people that I’m a big boy who can handle criticism of something made specifically to entertain them, and that if they don’t tell me what they don’t like, they’ll probably be getting more of it for the rest of the campaign.
Playing face to face, the cooldown would normally just be the amount of time taken to pack stuff away and head out to the cars… five to ten minutes, normally, though we’ve occasionally ended up hanging around the carpark late at night just because conversations haven’t finished yet.
Playing online at the moment, yeah, that can be a bit more abrupt… a few minutes to go through the “same time next week?” routine, then people start dropping off the call.
“Ok, bye!” never seems like a fitting conclusion to a fantasy epic.
No… but on the bright side, we’re getting slightly longer sessions since nobody has to drive home afterwards. Though it can sometimes be hard to get to sleep straight after the game has ended on a cliffhanger…
Well, as stated earlier somewhere in another comment, KAP (King Arthur Pendragon RPG) has a sort of build in cool-down. Every session is supposed to be a single adventure in a single year. And after this adventure there is the Winter Phase. In this phase you get to do all the important things that your knight is doing when living his normal live instead of gallivanting around the countryside looking for adventure. In this phase the Glory (sort of XP only totally different) is awarded for deeds that your knight(s) did during the session, so you get to do some recap. Then you do the economic phase, in which your manor provides you with the means to carry on being a knight, with food, livestock (Horses!) and children (important for your dynasty, as you will probably play your son in future sessions), some solo role-playing if you want to woe the woman of your dreams, or get to fulfil some other duties for your lord, and lastly you get to train yourself, and your squire, to be better at all the skills that a knight needs to function.
All this is both a game mechanic that is important from a character standpoint, but also provides a mechanic to softly land the players back in the real world.
This is excellent timing. If it had been today’s comic I’d have said perfect, but we shan’t let that be enemy of good. This gets a bit long, but there’s a point coming in the last paragraph – feel free to skip, there is nothing of actual consequence between here and there.
I just finished a video game about an hour ago. One that had been on my wishlist for a while, that I had recently finally bought and over the last weeks chipped away at endless random-generated side missions for neglible and diminishing rewards (both in terms of in-game rewards and of endorphines) until the ennui took over and I decided to leave them all by the wayside and just complete the main plot already.
The main plot proceeded to then drag on a lot longer than I thought, but eventually, even that was done. The villain defeated, the powerful, dangerous, ancient and long-lost treasure found, then locked away again for-even-everer, the hero got the girl and retired to live happily ever after, some more closing exposition, and a dangling plot hook carefully emphasized to make sure the next game in the series would sell just as well.
Now what?
I could do housework. I could clean up a bit, do the dishes, or even simply go to bed early. But I played the game because the real world is a tedium right now. I played to cool down, to relax, to get a change of tapestry, recharge my batteries, etc. To finish an epic story, still feeling the last shreds of adrenaline, to tear myself from the immersion of epic deeds – to do dishes?
So how do I cope? I tried playing another game I had saved up. Turns out my old box of joy can’t seem to run it properly. Researching potential upgrades and fixes only produced a nice collage of “can’t afford”. At least I know now all the ways in which I am not just behind the times, but also to poor to catch up.
So now I’m here, reading free webcomics instead. I get the impression writing about it helps me deal. It keeps me busy just a little longer, until I feel less boring and more sensible going to bed early to be well-rested for my exams. I also enjoy telling tales, to the surprise of absolutely no-one here.
The conclusion, long in coming, like the end of a great tale but much less spectacular, is that writing may be a way to cope. Next group I play in, I might give the role of the party historian a shot, writing summaries for the sessions (OOC). It helps tie the game’s events together, while the “outside” perspective of the retrospective narrator rather than the immersed character may help soften the shock of translating back into realspace.
I should append here, I’m not just talking about short session notes, but an actual text. Like, the tale an observer might tell that got to watch the events unfold, seeing more than the individual characters might, but not much more. Of course, that sort of writing isn’t everyone’s cup of Boston-Harbor-decoration, but I think it might be mine, and maybe a few others will find inspiration in it as well.
You clever devil you: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/session-summary
It is to my great shame and grief that I admit that post had slipped my mind. And here I thought I was being original.
I like to write post-game notes, sort of an IC diary. It helps me wind down, and it also helps keep track of what happened in the game (at least from my character’s POV).
I also like reading other players’ versions of the same game.