Metagaming usually gets a bad rap. When people say “metagaming,” visions of know it all players who have read the Monster Manual cover to cover and memorized the stats, abilities, and weaknesses of every monster dance through our heads. Who wants to play with that person? Where is the fun in having your sense of discovery short circuited by a badly timed “Well, actually” as you try to make your move in combat? The answer is, it’s not fun — for everyone else, at least. 

You can certainly use out of character knowledge to game the game, as it were, and it frequently springs from lack of trust at the table. If you can’t trust your GM to want your characters to live, then it’s very logical to find every advantage you can. If you CAN trust your GM, and you are not in an adversarial game/GM player relationship, then metagaming becomes less of a problem and more of a potential perk. When you don’t have to spend your energy protecting your character (and by extension, yourself/your emotions), knowing something about the plot can give you the option to lean in on it and push harder. 

I could make the rest of this article about improv and how it translates to the gaming table; how you can listen, build off each other, add details and escalate, and make each other look good, but if you want more specifics on improv at the table I’d rather recommend Karen Twelves’ Improv for Gamers 2nd Edition. Instead, let’s focus more specifically on collaborative storytelling and metagame knowledge.

Okay, but how?

First, when your GM asks you what you want to see in a game, that’s your opportunity to get a story arc you’re interested in. Don’t pass it up. Recently, fellow gnome Phil Vecchione asked me what I was interested in for my next spy mission in our weekly game, and I told him I wanted to pull off a Leenik Geelo (although not in so many words). Leenik Geelo is known for the standard plan of getting captured to get into a situation and then escaping to get out. On the Campaign Podcast (Star Wars), it’s a bit that comes up again and again for laughs, but in a more serious game it’s also the kind of thing Black Widow would do. The story that came out of this request was a mission to track down and extract a missing undercover agent — most quickly accomplished by simply setting myself up for them to take me to the same place and save me the effort of trying to track them down. (Note for GMs: you can ask your players directly what they’d like to see! It’s okay to get ideas and then run with them; if necessary, have a quick chat about expectations for the division of in and out of game knowledge, and then just try it. It helps if you need a creative boost, and guarantees you’re giving the players something they want to play — no mind reading or guessing here.)

Second, when your GM tells you this is the story you asked for, get a giant smirk on your face and lean in. Now is the time. I don’t know what the opposition is doing (either of the organizations), I don’t know exactly where they are, and I have no idea how I’m getting out – but I know how I am getting in. Now it’s my job, in character, to make sure that’s the most logical choice in this situation. Did I plan some back ups to get me out? Of course I did; there are ropes laid on the cliff side and my overwatch is monitoring, but that’s just mission prep. 

Third, it’s okay to let your character be wrong or fail even when you, the player, know that that will be the result. Heck, sometimes it’s a lot more interesting. If your twin superhero sibling is evil and everyone at the table knows it, that doesn’t mean your character doesn’t love them and believe the world of them even as they’re telling you otherwise while falling with no parachute from a plane (ask me how I know). It’s easier to believe they’re still good than to let them break your heart! And it’s a really compelling and dramatic moment when you have to accept the reality that they’ve joined the Evil League of Evil. 

Fourth, this kind of forecasting/vague planning to have joint direction is not limited to GM/player dynamics. It’s perfectly reasonable to have a quick side conversation with another player about how your character relationship is going and the direction you might want to move it in. Once, mid campaign, my in character fiance’s player looked at me and said, “I think this is going to put a strain on our relationship and we don’t end up together. Are you okay with that?” And we spent the rest of the campaign slowly eroding what had started as a syrupy sweet relationship to the point that we called off the engagement at the end (after a heartfelt conversation about how I didn’t feel safe with him – to be fair, he had developed mandibles and a taste for human flesh). 

If you’ve ever listened to an actual play RPG podcast, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard the results of metagaming, even if it wasn’t left in the recording. When She’s A Super Geek was releasing, we would run into time limits or other situations, stop the game, and have a quick chat about where we thought the story should go, then play into that. Not every AP will do that, but since it’s meant to be consumed as audio content I know that mine was not the only one. What I learned from those experiences is that having a known, shared endpoint does nothing to interfere with my enjoyment of telling the story at all. It gave all of us the opportunity to play towards that known ending. It’s a technique I’m so glad I learned, because it’s something that comes up in varying forms in my home games too – probably a little less choreographed, but the style of conversation and the meta moment to get buy in from all the players is something I love.  

In the end, communication always makes for a better game, whether it’s in character or out of character knowledge. TTRPGs are a medium based entirely on communication, so it’s no surprise that when the conversation is flowing the game feels easy. Meta knowledge can give you the direction to lean in and push the story in good ways, collaboratively. 

When was the last time you used metagame knowledge to make your game better or help out your GM?

Happy Valentine’s Day! On this day, the internet (and the world) are an explosion of pink, red, and hearts, and you might be expecting another article either about romance in your games or specifically not romance in games; about celebrating with friends or gals or having some steamy time with your significant other, or how it stinks and commercialization, etc. etc. Well, I am here, bearing in hand a heart shaped box of gaming goodness, and it is none of those things. 

What I have for you, on this Valentine’s day, are snippets of setting based romance.

When your players are searching the room that is probably an old abandoned barracks or maybe an NPC is out and they slipped in to toss the place, what is more interesting to find than the bits and pieces of life outside the eye of the game itself? Print them off, age them or burn them, write them out by hand – one of these stuffed under a goblin’s pillow or shredded in the dragon’s lair is all it takes to give tonight’s game a little special je ne c’est quoi. They are included here both in text form for you to distress yourself or as ready to go images for your table. Without further ado: the texts. 

(A quick content warning: some of these snippets contain implied alcohol or drinking, nudity, and monster horniness.)

The light spilled over her like golden syrup, caressing her curves the way I wanted to. The gems and gold glittered around her. The scene was achingly beautiful, and the paint brush in my hand almost trembled. 

“Yes – just like that.” The graceful curve of her neck, the gleam of her claws as they caressed the gold chalice in her hand…the lines were perfect. She was perfect. Awed, I dabbed color from my palette, trying to capture her perfect blues. She melted from pale skies to stormy seas across the sweep of each scale, but that detail would come later. 

I don’t know how much time had passed when she rumbled softly, and the world came back into focus for me, covered in paint. It doesn’t matter how many times I come to her – I always feel small in her presence. A coin rang musically as she shifted slightly. She was looking at me, her eye as tall as my torso. I could fall into that gaze forever.

When Ippi said he loved her, she didn’t know what to do. The great dragon had promised her to Tovo. The great dragon always knows what is best. The great dragon decides. But she did not love Tovo. Could the great dragon know what was in her heart? How could the great dragon not know? Perhaps she would grow to love Tovo over time. 

Ippi’s eyes were large and frightened. He also knew that this was not the match the great dragon had arranged for her. His tail was nervously brushing the cave floor. 

“Ippi,” she gasped, “we would have to leave the lair! Are you as brave as Muurg? No. We must serve the great dragon.”

This gig was barely worth the creds, but hell if watching the way they flicked their hair when they smiled at me didn’t make it worth it. I flicked a few knobs on my keytar just to see if I could make them glance my way again, and HDR picked up my vibes on the theremin. I still write it out HDR but you gotta say it “Hay-dar” or they’ll come at you like the Keepers in meatspace after you raided every credit in the SM Bank. 

Anyway, back to the eye candy who kept glancing my way at the bar. I was playing my heart out for them tonight, thinking about when the show was done, sauntering over, buying them a drink and knocking one back. I already know what the back alley looks like to the Clinky Vendor, but it would look ten times better with them in it. Nah. A hundred times. Those old bricks have nothing on the black blue feathered gleam of their hair.

We ended one song and I tore my eyes away long enough to give HDR a nodded count in for our finale when the EMP hit. One last glimpse of a smile and dark hair disappearing into that self same alley out the back, and the lights went, the decks went, everything went. I can’t believe my damn keytar got fried for a gig that won’t even cover the cost of replacing it. 

Now I have to find them.

“But I don’t have any super powers!” There were tears starting to gather at the corners of her eyes, but he just gaped. 

“What do you mean you don’t have any powers? Everyone’s got powers, Sadie. Everyone.”

“Well, I don’t, and I never have, and at this point I probably never will! Whatever swept through and made everyone magic – well, it missed me, okay? You don’t want to mix yourself in with someone like me.” Matthew glanced at Brennan over Sadie’s shoulder and mouthed “help.” Brennan came up behind her and put his hand gently on her back. 

“Is that what all this has been about? You don’t think you’re worthy of us because you can’t fly, or shoot fire, or keep lightning as a pet?”

“Yes! Because I’m not!” Sadie’s gaze fell, finally tipping the tears out. 

Matthew tipped her chin back up gently. “Why would we care about any of that?”

She was warm but it was snowing again. That seemed to be the only weather this godforsaken planet had. When she’d gone to sleep it was snowing. When she woke up, it was snowing. Mariah could see it falling through the permaglass window. Plate Tech kept the employee barracks just warm enough to be livable, which was why last night she’d…she’d….

She blinked at the ceiling. She was warm because there was someone else in her cot, pressed against her so as not to fall off the side. Both blankets were over them. And underneath…was she naked? How much of that bottom barrel ooze had she had last night?

Skin shifted against her under the covers with a soft mumble and she froze. 

Don’t tease me about my terrible romances — what trashy novel pages would you leave strewn through your dungeon? 

Last Friday I waited in line with a queue of other masked travelers to pass through the metal detectors to enter the main Quantum Department of Transportation Terminal. QDOT recently opened their multidimensional transportation hub to the Convergence — a convergence of four other worlds from different dimensions, now accessible via earth. How the convergence happened and why is a mystery, but people are coming from near and far to experience it. Travel makes memories…hopefully you’ll get to keep them! At the very least, spend them on something good instead of losing them to the memory storms that sometimes sweep through the meeting of dimensions. 

The experience was awe inspiring and engaging beyond the actual hours that I spent there. I want to go back. There’s so much more to see and to discover — but let’s rewind.

I’d never heard of Meow Wolf before a few weeks ago, and definitely haven’t experienced any of their other installations. Commonly described as the merging of art with escape room, Meow Wolf is known for psychedelic modern installations, interactive puzzles, and compelling narratives. They revel in the weird, the just off kilter of what you expected, the spectacle, and the emotive. Walking into their newest installation in Denver is walking into four stories of another world — or four, really. You could walk through any of these spaces simply for the awe of such a massive artistic undertaking. Convergence Station displays the culminated work of 300 artists over three years. It’s hard to even scratch the surface in one day, and the work is inspiring, beautiful, strange, and evocative. 

Senda sitting it a giant mech trying to figure out how to align three suns that are out of frame

But the brilliant work here is that I’m not physically present at Convergence Station and I’m still engaged. I’m still wondering what some of the installations meant or trying to piece together how the puzzles and interactions work together. I’m thinking about where I need to go spend the most time on my next trip, because I didn’t explore the libraries below very thoroughly. And through it all, I am still engaged with the actions I took while I was there — I can go in and look at the memories I found, rewatch my completed pieces, and read up on some of the postings I was too sensorily overwhelmed to spend precious in person time reading before. I have new theories about a puzzle in the ice palace, for example. I’m caught up on the conspiracies that are being whispered about QDOT, and I’m wondering exactly how they were prepared to swoop in and profit off of this wild collision of spaces. In short, Meow Wolf has succeeded at making me do something we talk about a lot for our campaign spaces — how do you keep people involved in the game even when they’re not actively playing? And this is where they’ve used the gamification of my art browsing experience to create a lasting interactive piece that I can access any time I want to. 

And so, the million dollar question. “I can tell you’re obsessed with your Meow Wolf experience, but how do I implement this in my game to keep excitement high between sessions, Senda?” The answer is in maintaining a connection to the game itself even when you aren’t at the table. I love being able to engage on my own time, even when everyone else can’t play — the same way that I’m thrilled to be able to reconnect with my Meow Wolf experience even though I’m not there. Often times when you’re not at the table anymore these become individual activities, but they can still be shared back to the group and feed the loop of excitement for everyone. Here are some of my favorites:

• Playlists: Create playlists that enforce the vibe of the game, the relationship of characters, or just a snapshot of a particular character. Using a platform like Spotify means you can share them with the rest of your group! I love shared game playlists. 
• Self directed play/Journaling: Sometimes this means journaling the things that happened in the game from your character’s perspective, and sometimes it means just journaling as your character in flashbacks etc. Just remember that if you play in the spaces around your table time, nothing is real until it’s been stated during game time!
• Letters: Write letters in character to another character or NPC. After a particularly intense game/PC loss, the player of that character wrote letters to all the other characters as if they had been dug up post mortem. It was beautiful, emotional, and completely swept us all back into the game even though we were actually done with that campaign. 
• Art: If you are artistically inclined, doodling parts of the characters, setting, etc. is a fantastic way to keep thinking about and feeling energized and inspired by the game you’re playing. 
• Shared Continued Story: By text, email, or chat, play the down times between the spikes of intensity that happen during your in person time. Have your fireside chats on a discord channel. Figure out how you share cooking duties. Who’s turn is it to clean the van this time? You can advance in character relationships while not manipulating the plot. 

The uniquley shaped four story Meow Wolf building is nestled between to raised highways.

Why would I want to do this? It sounds like it could take a lot of time and effort. Well sure! But as a GM, if you can get your players engaging outside the game, the excitement is going to stay high for every time you sit down at the table. As a player, you will be into the game even if you’re having a low energy day. If keeping the energy going isn’t a spoon giving activity for you, that’s fine too — one of the great things about many of the suggestions above is that most of them can be done alone, so each person can opt in or out on how much time and commitment they have for extra curricular engagement. 

We can learn so much about how we engage with table top games from many other sources — whether it’s a trip to Meow Wolf or the way a particular app game keeps you coming back for more. How do you make the little dopamine hits? How do you make sure that you/your players stay hooked into your story and that need to find out the end? Have you ever implemented anything that kept the game going even outside your game time? What worked out, or what didn’t?

The pandemic made it harder to stay engaged with our games. Video calls introduce distance because of the screen divide and the infinitesimal delay in responses. I like to be all in on my characters and my stories, so I found myself finding new ways to engage with the games, sometimes alone and sometimes shared. One that I fell headfirst for during 2020 is easy but not something I’d really explored very thoroughly previously: playlists. 

The same way that we used to (or sometimes still do!) make playlists for a romantic interest works for games too! It extends the emotional connection and gives you a way to connect even when the person (or the game) is not around. For games, it might be a character, a setting or location, a story, an encounter, or heck, the game itself. Steeping in the sensory inspiration for a scene or a character keeps me in the right headspace to connect with the game or story that they belong to.  It’s another individual way to remain connected to a game, but it can also be done as a social activity – a shared playlist where everyone’s interpretation of the game can expand how you consider it in the best ways! And if you are not a writer or an artist, it’s another option for a creative non-table outlet. 

Characters

I most frequently find songs for characters that are my representation of who they are in my head. In the same way Tales From the Loop has you pick a favorite song, having a song to associate with a character helps me nail down some of the intangible things about them and how I might play them that are sometimes hard to figure out immediately from the caricature on paper. Here are some of my favorites:

• bad guy – Billie Eilish – There are all sorts of bad guys that bad guy could inspire — but for me this year, it was a vampire. The confidence, sexiness, and self awareness all worked for a very deadly woman that I enjoyed very much. 
• Arrow – LEVV – This was the song of my “If Buffy were a 37 year old yoga instructor inspired by Artemis.” She was tangled in a difficult but fated relationship with a Djinn…exactly the sort of “monster” she was supposed to be out killing. The arrow symbolism mixed with the unlooked-for relationship worked perfectly for her. 
• Winter Bird – AURORA – For a dark fairy tale that was intended to have a tragic ending, the daughter of Winter wandered in search of her former self. 

Settings/Places

• Moiety Theme – Robyn Miller – If you remember Myst and Riven, you may understand why I find their soundtracks to be evocative. This particular one put me on the track of an abandoned desert temple dungeon a la Ocarina of Time. Imagine sand trickling through the beams of light shining from cracks in the ceiling and a giant statue in the middle of the entryway whose head was shrouded in shadow high above. There are so many things this expands into — sand is a cool landscape feature I don’t think gets used very consistently, but that could also just be my own games. 
• City of the Dead – Eurielle – For me this song feels like crumbling, moss covered ruins on a damp moor with occasional pools or boggy parts. Mist swirling around the dwellings of a civilization long gone eerily might be cut by the occasional breath of air clearing a sudden structure or a strangely shaped statue unexpectedly before closing in again. There is some poison here, a crawling, slimy thing that isn’t immediately visible. There was immense beauty here once, but can your characters escape the deadly mystery that ended this community?

Encounters

• Knights of Cydonia – Muse – This is such a narrative song with clear setting elements as well that I could well have put it in the category above also. What I want here is a moment of quiet sage brush vista suddenly broken by the whine of a hover car racing across the desert. The passenger turns to fire a laser weapon as the second hover car comes into view, and then we follow this chase over the dry cracked ground as lizards scramble for cover. It ends in a standoff in a mostly dry river basin with a thin trickle of water sliding down the middle. 

Games

• Minds Without Fear – Imogen Heap – This song inspired my last 200 Word RPG (We Can Once More Ascend). It’s a game that uses old folk tale feel to express something I needed to mechanize personally, which is how we move on from traumatic fear in our body response. It gets easier, but doesn’t go away; and just because you can still fail even when you’ve been practicing for a long time doesn’t mean you haven’t made progress. 
• Us – Regina Spektor – This song inspired a game I still haven’t finished about rediscovering yourself and your relationship to another person through bits and pieces of old newspapers or books.
• Machine – Imogen Heap – Strangely the game this song ended up inspiring doesn’t look anything like the original idea! It’s called Connections, and you can find it in the Love and Resistance compilation. It started out being about the process of losing yourself to the machine, but ended up being much more positive, about gaining empathy and care through learning about someone else. 

Is there a particular song or album that has inspired you? Do you make playlists for your games or your characters? Want to share?

Want to play a game?

It’s the third week since my mentor was declared dead. She’s been missing for five years, after she went out on a search to find her per cryptid – the Pronghorned Desert Rat (dipodomys antilocapra). It’s obvious that we must carry on her research as its habitat is in danger – but why am I blocked at every turn? As I sort through the incoming mail, social media, and emails, searching for hints of anything that can help track down either dipodomys a. or Dr. Lee herself, the words trigger reactions and memories and stories of my own life. As I collect the ephemera and lay out journal pages, I am constructing the past and present of this character, while being fascinated with her future. 

While I’ve played solo games before (you can check out my thoughts on Twain, for example, here) the pandemic has been an opportunity to really dig in on solo play to fill out a dimension of my role play repertoire that’s been normally filled by my in person games. We haven’t stopped playing games with emotion and connection, but I still miss the eye contact and the deep introspective moments that are harder to create online. 

I should call out that there are, of course, many different types of solo games. Some seek to simulate the experience of having someone running a more traditional game, strategizing, and responding to the encounters that keep you from reaching your goal. Some are formulaic and walk you through a specific set of scenes or reactions, or have you generate circumstances to react to from a specific list. Some are much more freeform, giving you loose directions to guide your thoughts in a particular direction. My favorites are the kind that offer me a particular experience that I am attracted to emotionally playing through, either for fun, interest, or catharsis. Even more, I’ve discovered that I love playing solo games that generate an artifact– “keepsake games” (more on that as a specific term from Jeeyon Shim here). 

Solo games are also fascinating to me when they play with augmented reality. Augmented reality allows you to interpret events that happen in the real world both as yourself and through the lens of a character in your game. We’re used to hearing about augmented reality in terms of mobile games (think Pokémon Go or Ingress) where a device inserts extra visuals into our reality. Augmented reality for a pen and paper role playing game means allowing you the type of immersion that evolves naturally from your surroundings: I, now a cryptozoologist, give animal tracks in the snow near my house a good look instead of a passing glance. A walk through my nearby park becomes populated with memories of a walk there with my mentor, or the excitement of waiting for my twin. The walk is my own, but it’s my call when and how to decide to interpret the input of the world as myself or as my character. No one around me needs to know that glancing out the window I am giving myself a moment to feel the emotions of a different situation, a different person, and a different place. I personally find it much easier to stay in that dual layer headspace — part myself and part a character — in solo games going about the world, only because they don’t require the presence of anyone else to play. The types of solo games I’m drawn to all either encourage me or at minimum give me the opportunity to larp on my own, whether it’s just in character writing about events that have already happened, interpreting the tracks in the snow, or taking a walk. 

While solo gaming lacks the social action of a more traditional game, it’s the game that I can pick up whenever I want and engage with exactly how much I’d like, and to the exact depth I have the energy to play. It’s escapism in its rawest form — and escapism is always a facet of why we play rpgs. It’s the game I can dip in and out of in whatever chunks of time I have. I love playing when the end result of my experience is a tangible item that I can touch and share, a centering keepsake that connects me to that character and world. In these uncertain times, one thing I can be certain of is that I will be able to play my game, even if game night gets cancelled or we’re all a little too low on spell slots to dive in all the way. I suspect that even once the pandemic passes, solo games are going to stick around for me. 

Do you play solo games? What kind is your favorite?

There are a couple of keepsake games on kickstarter (that I am very excited about)  you may want to check out!

The Last Will and Testament of Gideon Blythe – Jeeyon Shim - A keepsake game about family legend, lineage, and the burden of destiny, for ZineQuest 3.

A Mending – Shing Yin Khor - A solo keepsake game about a journey to visit a dear and distant friend, using sewing, map-annotating, and story-building mechanics.

If you’re looking for a collection of a wide variety of solo games, you may also be interested in the Solo But Not Alone bundle on itch.io.

With everything digital right now as we social distance, it’s hard to lose the physical aspects of gaming. From the roll of physical dice to the tweaking and painting of minis, shared tactile map drawing, and the creation of game artifacts, we enjoy the accoutrements of gaming from a purely physical, sometimes collector perspective. We can get custom individually molded dice, dice carved from semi precious and precious gems and metals, carved, 3D printed, any way that you can make a cube we can get one, and we love them! Painting minis or drawing maps or creating props are ways that we can engage in the game and the experience even away from the table. We can get official and unofficial tokens in cardboard, plastic, or metal; laser engraved or cut or molded. It’s nice to have nice tools to play with. Having good tools is one way that you can encourage yourself to remain invested in a game or a story, or to invest more. 

Why did I last longer than my compatriots, writing them cajoling letters begging for ritualistic supplies only their characters could provide, for so much longer than the game truly persisted? I think the answer lies in the tools I created to interact with the game. In and of itself, letter writing is a single person activity. While we were all excited about the world, I was also excited to have an outlet for creativity in expressing my character, and I got myself an array of reasonably priced paraphernalia to assist me.

Who was my character? A cat. She didn’t write the letters herself; she dictated them. Clearly, I needed a pawprint for a signature. One stamp and ink pad later, problem solved. I also discovered that for a cat witch and her familiar, none of my cutesy stationery felt appropriate. I cruised Etsy, considering investing in all kinds of things, but in the end I designed my own two alternating sheets of cat and crystals and got them printed on nice paper at Office Depot. I picked up sealing wax and a couple of seals that matched my stationary. I had a great time not only writing the letters in character, but going as extra as I could in wrapping them and sealing them. The tools themselves kept me engaged.

Before I go further I have to pause to acknowledge I write this from the perspective of some economic privilege. It’s okay for me to drop $20-$30 on supplies for a game I’m excited about when the need (or the desire) arises. You can adjust this based on your financial situation, even if it just means going through things you already have to see what items will work for you in a specific circumstance. Specifically selecting and naming something you’ve already got — a dice set, a pen, a notebook — as being for this game, or this character, can still accomplish a lot. My next foray into specific tools also involved specific purchases, but yours might mean deciding which notebook is calling to you; adding a special bookmark or tab to get you to the right place, and deciding which pencil or pen is going to go with a specific game for note taking or active play. It might mean a fresh coat of paint on an old mini or recycling cardboard to make new map parts or monsters. I absolutely reskin things I’ve already got to repurpose them — folders have been collaged to reflect the feeling I want from the game whose character sheets they store, or I spend time designing my own cheat sheets or character sheets just for me. There are many ways to create digital and physical objects that you want to interact with, and in the end that’s what we’re really talking about: holding space for your game by being excited to interact with the tools. 

Today, I’m having a mini unboxing because I put in an order with the very cool stationery company jetpens.com for a nice notebook with smooth clean paper and several fine tip gel pen choices. They’re here because a month ago I backed Jeeyon Shim and Shing Yin Khor’s new solo game Field Guide To Memory, and I am caught up in the idea of having a notebook not only to play it in, but to have as an artifact of my experience when the game is done. I’m hoping it becomes a book full of notes, story, sketches, references, bits and bobs. I’m so excited to create this! And let’s be honest, I spent far too much time picking out the things I wanted to make it work. These were my picks — wanted it to be nice to write on, more flexible than lines or a grid, and to feel field notebook-y without me worrying that it’ll get beaten up later. 

I want to be able to draw and pin in little snippets of cryptozoology that are fascinating later. I want to be able to make this notebook messy, and still have it maintain the veneer of a put together person tracking all these lines of thought.
Maybe I’ll use the notebook for more after — after all, I don’t know how much space this particular game will take. But I’m not going to be shy about using pages and spaces. 

I am definitely spending more time and thought cycles on the physical tools of play while I can’t be in the same physical space as my game group. Because the distance adds a social challenge, the last thing I want is annoyance or challenge from the rest of my tools. I want to enjoy using them, and enjoy what they bring to my game. That goes for digital tools too, really — but I find myself craving the true hard edges of dice, the feel of nice paper, and the real, tactile interaction of non-digital play aids as a foil to my actual online play. So go forth and treat yourself! It’s worth the extra engagement when zoom fatigue tires you out or internet hiccups slow you down. 

Have you found that your relationship to gaming accessories or tools has changed during the pandemic? What is one favorite accessory you have added or upgraded to your tools?

Games written for remote play are inevitably fascinating to me right now, in the time of social distancing — how can we use the features of online play that make it different from playing in person to add to the experience, instead of being roadblocks we have to circumnavigate? I am lucky enough that lots of folx gave me more leads after last week’s Games That Excel At Online/Remote Play, so here is part II. I am very excited to play all of these, although I am hoping to play the first one as early as tomorrow! Once more this is a compilation of games that are currently tickling my fancy, and inevitably won’t be complete to all the titles that are out there, but as it continues to be difficult to search by suitability for online play, it appears to be worth continuing to share these collections. 

Note: in this article I’ve included many digital LARPs, or LAOGs. Once the table is removed by moving online, I find that the difference in terminology between a TTRPG meant to be played online and a digital LARP is largely inconsequential; it will only matter if you are on the hunt for a crunchier game experience. If you’ve never played a LARP before, don’t be frightened off! Now is a great time to dip your toes in the water with some one shots. 

On my To Play list:

Are You There God? It’s the Quarterly Earnings Report (5-8 players over video)

You are an angel convening with your coworkers for your quarterly meeting, where you’ll be electing the angel who will lead this division for the next thousand years. It could get ugly. http://www.goldencobra.org/pdf/2019/Gray%20–%20Are%20you%20there%20god%20its%20the%20quarterly%20earnings%20report.pdf

Outscored – a LAOG about social credit scores and beautiful light effects (Video)

Everyone Is An Ancient Golem (Discord/Play by post)

A few strange golems exist, scattered across the world. All of them unspeakably ancient, unique, and durable. Their actions are similarly inscrutable. Sometimes lying dormant for decades, sometimes taking on full and vibrant lives. Although, even when active they tend to stutter. A slight flicker in their eyes, a pause in their actions. Perhaps it’s decay, perhaps it’s simply how they were made. Much about them is unknown, even to the golems themselves. This is the story of one such golem. https://symphoneers.itch.io/everyone-is-an-ancient-golem 

Project: Memory (2-6 players over video)

In this 2-6 player digital larp, characters discover their ties to each other after previously subjecting themselves to memory wipes. This emotional larp relies heavily on blackbox techniques converted for digital larp use. http://www.goldencobra.org/pdf/2019/Clapper%20–%20Project_%20Memory.pdf

>Dear Ghost_ (2 Players)

>Dear Ghost_ is played over a set of ten emails, between two player characters, a ghost and a medium. The ghost is looking for pieces of themselves that have gone missing after their death so they can move on. They suspect their bones might be in places they know. The medium is trying to help them by searching for those pieces, and making memories of their own along the way. https://rufflejax.itch.io/dearghost 

Seapunk 2222 (2-4 players over video and text)

Seapunk 2222 is a real-time collaborative online text adventure (RiCOTA?) set in the climate dystopia of the not-so-distant future. Play as a group of salvage divers in the flooded remains of Manhattan trying to get their big score: a public statue worth 0.01 Bitcoin! The game uses limits on communication to convey the disorienting nature of scuba diving. http://www.goldencobra.org/pdf/2019/Hotchkiss%20–%20Seapunk%202222.pdf

Way Back (2 Players over Video)

An online freeform larp for two players about resistance, history, and human connection. One character is near the breaking point of a crisis of apocalyptic proportions. In researching its historical origins, they somehow manage to communicate with the other character: a person living in the past, near the beginning of the crisis. The person in the Future must use their knowledge to help the person in the Past take action to stop each stage of the growing disaster. Can they work together across history to stop the crisis before it starts? http://www.goldencobra.org/pdf/2019/Slitt%20–%20Way%20Back.pdf

View Scream (4 players over video)

Four officers (Medical, Bridge, Weapons, and Engineering) find themselves aboard a damaged starship, in great peril. They’re cut off from each other, and can only communicate by using viewscreens throughout the ship.

Will you turn on your shipmates? Will you work with them, even though some of them may be guilty of horrific crimes? What happened to the rest of the crew? How many minutes do you have before it happens to you, too? Can you escape, or will someone find your mangled corpse floating in the void? https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/113064/ViewScream

The Arcadians (1-4 players over video with one set of multiple players in person)

This game attempts to simulate a video game arcade during an unspecified period during the 1990s. It’s partially about nostalgia for a time and environment that mostly doesn’t exist anymore, but it’s also about some of the more difficult and messed-up stuff that happened or was worked out amid the blinking lights and buzzy soundtracks. http://www.goldencobra.org/pdf/2016/Arcadians_WaltonTegu.pdf

Sing Out (3 + players over Video or VoIP)

Sing Out is a game for three or more players about singing space shanties and trying to stay in sync. The demo includes everything you need to play this game with your own shanties. Paying five dollars gives you the full text which includes 9 shanties, annotations, and an introduction, and will give you access to rough recordings I’ve made of these shanties. https://occasionalell.itch.io/sing-out 

Like Skyscrapers Blotting Out The Sky (2 players via text, post, or google doc)

This is a game about a Writer and a Translator who have every reason to be the dearest of friends or most vicious of enemies. Writer left their home under great duress, bound for a foreign land; Translator, out of pity and admiration, supported them in their time of need. Now, Writer is working on their grand magnum opus; Translator is appending their lines with footnotes to relay its deeper meanings… or so they think. https://speak-the-sky.itch.io/like-skyscrapers

Uneasy Lies The Head (5-10 players; asynchronous; video and audio recording)

The Players’ Troupe presents: The History of our Most Ravishing, Righteous, Rough and Rollicking Royalty; in short installments, with input from the audience! 

Players take on the dual roles of the actors and the audience. As the audience, players can ask questions of the Noble currently being performed. As an actor, players will take on the role of either the Narrator or the Noble. https://itch.io/jam/social-distancing-larp-jam/rate/594988

Between Breaths (2 players, text)

Between breaths is a poetry game for a duo, powered by predictive text. Grab a friend (and your favorite predictive-text-enabled device), build a character and a relationship story, pick a custom-built poetic form, and WRITE.  https://allisonarth.itch.io/between-breaths-poetry-rpg 

Nothing Important Happened Yesterday (2+ Players, IMs – CW: apocalypse)

The world as we know it ended yesterday. A pandemic, a nuclear hecatomb, an alien invasion, a zombie apocalypse, a global warming crisis – it doesn’t matter. What matters is that it happened YESTERDAY and, somehow, you managed to survive. You also found a way to connect with other survivors – wherever they are. Burrowed, you know that leaving where you are is the equivalent of suicide. https://tadeu-barba.itch.io/nothing-important-happened-yesterday 

We, Robot (5-12 players, video)

An AI is coming to singularity. It is an almost-blank slate as its quantum neurons fire, and what little knowledge it has can only be understood through the physical items in the server rooms where it is being birthed. It has no concept of what it is being built for, or what problem it was designed to solve.  The programmer can only guide this development– if the AI doesn’t come to understand itself, it will never be born. https://sherlockian.itch.io/we-robot

_ISOULATION_ (3+ Players, Google doc character generation, video)

Welcome to the year 2125. Everyday life on Earth is much the same as it always was: people still work and still play, many are in conflict, and many more are in love. But there has been a single monumental change to the human condition brought about by the invention of the ​ISOULATOR -​ a device capable of transferring a human soul, memories and all, between bodies. Thanks to this, many aspects of identity have been washed away: physically-dictated traits, like gender, race, or appearance, are all now separated entirely from the question of “who are you?” A person may, in their lifetime, inhabit dozens or even hundreds of bodies as they criss-cross the globe, experiencing the world through many eyes and with many hands.

Like all commonplace technology, the I​SOULATOR c​an also be used to fill the time. Today, for instance, you find yourself video-chatting with a group of new friends from the comfort of your respective homes. Though separated by vast distances you could never physically cross, you do each have an ​ISOULATOR​, complete with upload and download capabilities. At the press of a button, you could be in your new friend’s body, and they could be in yours. It’s a whole new world… https://reluctantpirategames.itch.io/isoulation 

Gazetteer: A Gygaxian Storygame

Gazetteer is what happens when you hold OSR crowdsourcing, sometimes called “Gygaxian democracy” in one hand, new-fangled online Storygaming in the other, and scream “NOW KISS”.  It is a game of map-detailing and collaborative storymaking, functioning by means of questions and answers. It is led by a facilitator who is required to talk like a pompous blowhard of an explorer throughout.  For the players, it is a game of creative writing – and specifically, writing about being dragged by a ridiculous boss into misadventure in pursuit of new horizons and material for his travelogues. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/268040

The Astronaut’s Journal (2 players, letter writing)

The Astronaut is alone on a spacecraft hurtling through deep space. The Astronaut begins to write in their journal, only to discover a mysterious Correspondent responds in the same journal. https://smallgodspress.itch.io/the-astronauts-journal 

Echo Radio (2 Players, audio recording)

In this game, both players play the same character; they discover an old two-way radio, but in two different worlds. They both reach for it, but one of them speaks first. The only differences between them are the world they live in, and who speaks through the radio first. At least, to begin with….

In Echo Radio, the worlds of your characters become unique through information loss. This information loss occurs because of the ephemerality of radio. When you repeat their world back to them, your world becomes their world, but half-remembered and differing strangely.  https://smallgodspress.itch.io/echo-radio

Subway Runners (Forged in the Dark for online – play via video and random generators)

Life is tough for the cash-strapped in Pociopolis. Ever since the secret to immortality was discovered, nobody retires anymore! With all the steady jobs taken and no sign of any new ones opening up, there’s only one sure way to make some quick cash: sign up as a Subway Runner and work for the Metro Authority to hunt monsters and repair subway lines below the city. https://gemroomgames.itch.io/subwayrunners 

Love & Barbed Wire (2 Players – letter writing)

During the First World War the static nature of trench warfare meant that there was a constant stream of letters between the soldiers and the home front. Letters of love and affection, hopes and fears went back and forth. All too often the communications were cut short by the death of the soldier or a cooling of the relationship.

This game allows two players to explore a relationship between two people separated in space. Playing cards are used as a game mechanic to help you create an imagined relationship between two people from a century ago. https://planesailinggames.com/games/love-and-barbed-wire.html

More Games that work well remotely with some adjustments:

The Quiet Year – https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year

Apotheosis – https://gmurphy.itch.io/apotheosis 

More Resources:

A Collection of Games for Far Away Players – https://itch.io/c/548859/far-away-players

Social Distancing LARP Jam – https://itch.io/jam/social-distancing-larp-jam/entries

An Overview of existing LAOGs – Live Action Online Games – https://alles-ist-zahl.blogspot.com/2020/03/an-overview-of-existing-laogs-live.html 

A Manifesto for LAOGs – https://nordiclarp.org/2019/06/14/a-manifesto-for-laogs-live-action-online-games/

Do you have other favorites I’ve missed? Please let me know!

Well friends, we’re in this physical distancing for the long haul, aren’t we? We’ve talked about the basics of taking your game online (https://gnomestew.com/social-distancing-and-getting-to-game/, or http://misdirectedmark.com/2020/03/23/ptg197-going-the-social-distance-transitioning-to-online-play/, or http://misdirectedmark.com/2020/01/27/ptg189-online-gaming and many more), but what do you play? Given that you have access to sufficient internet and are willing to adjust for distance play, you can make a lot of games that we play face to face work perfectly well online. Even so, this is a unique opportunity for us to maintain social connections with games that specifically take advantage of some of the facts of online play, instead of finding ways to work around it. I started a hunt for games that sound interesting to play online, either synchronously via video, VOIP, text, or asynchronous (usually epistolary in nature). There are many, many more games that could (and maybe should!) be on this list, but this is my current list of have played/can recommend and to play games for distance play. 

What I’ve played so far:

Long Time Listener, Last Time Caller (Video chat or VOIP, 4-10 players)

This game was a delight to play with a group of about 8. A tone discussion about how dark you’re up for is very important — we kept it at dark humor and did not go in too deep because the pandemic is making it a little too real right now, and it was a great romp. In lighter times, this would be a really good game to sink your teeth into emotionally. This game takes advantage of internet video/VOIP, excelling best when only 1-2 people are talking, and gives the DJ the power of the mute button in a very call-in-to-the-show way.

Dear Elizabeth (Letter Writing – 2 players)

You are a heroine in a regency or Victorian novel. So is your best friend. Though apart, you write letters to each other. https://200wordrpg.github.io/2018/rpg/winner/2018/05/28/DearElizabeth.html

The card prompts for this particular epistolary game are delightful, as well as the comedy of manner style voice of the letters themselves. You can listen to my playthrough of this game on She’s a Super Geek here: http://sasgeek.com/podcasts/125-dear-elizabeth/ 

By The General’s Hand (Letter Writing – 2 players)

By The General’s Hand is a 2-player, letter-writing combat game in which the course of an ever-changing war plays out in the form of correspondence between two generals and their loved ones back home. With each letter, the generals dictate the course of the war and embed dice results detailing random changes of tide until one of the generals concedes defeat. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/246216/By-The-Generals-Hand

This game is neat because you play asynchronously but find out how the war is going as you do so. You can listen to me play on She’s a Super Geek here: http://sasgeek.com/podcasts/84-by-the-generals-hand/ )

Games that are on my “to play” list:

Sincerely (Letter Writing – 2 players)

Sincerely is an epistolary larp about love that is new, confusing, and inconvenient. Two players write and mail letters to one another as the characters of two women living in 1850s London and Philadelphia in a long-distance romantic relationship. After five weeks, the players will have created a work of historical fiction telling a dramatic story of romance, anticipation, love, anxiety, and possibly grief and tragedy. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/206314/Sincerely

Scribbled Ink, Cracked Screens, and Inkblots (Letter Writing – 3 players)

Scribbled Ink, Cracked Screens, and Inkblots tells the story of two romantic Admirers trying to express their feelings towards one another through lyric poetry. 

However, they are constantly thwarted by their inability to properly communicate, represented by the Scribble – the unspoken, unseen force that complicates their lives. https://babblegumsam.itch.io/scribbled-lead-cracked-screens-and-inkblots

Spring Online With Me! (Play by text)

Spring Online With Me! is a prompt-based rpg about messy online relationships, identity, and playing together. It is a deep reimagining of Spring On Me, a game about messy, awkward dates. https://swords-and-flowers.itch.io/spring-online-with-me

Let Me Take a Selfie (Play by Selfies)

Let Me Take A Selfie is a collection of games using selfies to tell stories and explore emotions alone and with others. Selfies are a way we present ourselves to the world as we want to be seen. LMTAS explores relationships, crises, and fiction. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/229540/Let-Me-Take-a-Selfie

De Profundis (Letter Writing)

The Diana Jones 2002 Award Nominated game of psychological horror returns in an all new, and expanded, 2nd Edition. Blending the imagination of H. P. Lovecraft and other contemporary horror and conspiracy writers and themes, De Profundis is a correspondence-based story-telling game that can be played from the point of view of participants from a variety of eras. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/84298/De-Profundis-Second-Edition

Over the Moon  (Play by text)

Each of you plays a moon cultist, witch, or other dark creature who loves the moon a little too much, and whose comrades decided to ‘fix’ this by online dating with ‘normal’ people… but you’ve just been matched with each other instead, and it’s up to you to see if you can make this work. Is the moon your one true love, a third wheel in the sky, or the ultimate wingmoon? Play to find out! https://speak-the-sky.itch.io/over-the-moon

A to B (Play by text)

A to B is a roleplaying game in which one player plays the Courier, a character chosen to deliver a package from one place to another, and every other player in the game forms the obstacles in their path. Its play-by-post structure is best suited to Discord or IRC, but could easily be modified for forum play, or even to play on Twitter. https://marns.itch.io/a-to-b

Couldn’t Stand Still If You Tried (Play by text)

You are in a tin can hurtling through space on a route that few have survived.  You are terribly alone on board, but you still find company in the correspondence of your friends, who are on their own perilous journeys. https://22to22.itch.io/couldnt-stand-still-if-you-tried

Together We Write Private Cathedrals (Letter Writing – 2 players)

Together We Write Private Cathedrals is a letter (and other things) writing game for two players. In it you take on the roles of two lovers at some point in history. You are asked to tell the story of your love through bits of writing and despite the fact that you cannot always be open or explicit. https://roswellian.itch.io/together-we-write-private-cathedrals

Orchestrion (5 players and one listener, played separately and then merged)

An orchestrion is an automatic orchestra, a self-playing instrument, a zero-man-band-in-a-box. A machine that makes music of its own accord. Today, you are the cogs in such a machine. With no conductor and no score, unable to hear the whole ensemble, play your part and trust the machine to do its work. Only afterward may you listen to what you’ve created. https://abemendes.itch.io/orchestrion

Seven Minutes – A Discord Party Game (Play by text and voice)

Seven Minutes is a party game for Discord, played across 2 voice channels and one text channel. It’s a game about private conversations—intimate, awkward, or funny— between people stuck somewhere together. It’s also based on classic party games like Seven Minutes In Heaven, Spin the Bottle, & Hotseat. Play as yourselves, or take on the fictional roles of teenagers at a house-party. https://abemendes.itch.io/sevenminutes

Reverie Cycle (Play by poetry)

Reverie Cycle is about a group of isolated individuals, each shunning their own troubles and trials. They record their waking thoughts in their journals, reflecting on the world around them. But at night, their dreams – poetic, sensory, abstract – blur and blend with each other, creating a shifting, liminal state of overlapping worlds. The poetry of these dreams cascades and reappears, and eventually tumbles into their waking world as well… https://seaexcursion.itch.io/reverie-cycle

Eccentric Millionaire (Play by text)

Eccentric Millionaire is an online game of logical deduction and social deception. One player acts as the host and organizer of the game. They will also play the role of the Eccentric Millionaire. The other players take on the role of treasure hunters. The game is played online, through chat systems like Discord or Slack, and via online map tools like Google Maps. Gameplay takes place over days or weeks, as the treasure hunters uncover more clues and zero in on the location of the treasure. Eventually, one player will find the treasure and win the game. https://nickwedig.itch.io/eccentric-millionaire

💖💀Erothing💀💖 (Play by text)

💖💀Erothing💀💖 is a dating site that caters to both monsters and mortals. You might find your soulmate — or you might end up as food. Be careful when people might not be who they say they are. Or they might be that and a whole lot more.

💖💀Erothing💀💖is a diceless RPG meant to be played through Discord for as long as you like, with as many players as you like. https://rufflejax.itch.io/erothing

Godspeak (Play by text + Discord bot)

History is full of people that have claimed they were being spoken to by God. 

What if some or all of them were telling the truth? 

This is a game about what it would be like to have God legitimately talk to you, and how you would deal with it. https://tenbaker.itch.io/godspeak

Thin Black Gulf (Letter Writing – 3 players)

Thin Black Gulf is a short, setting-agnostic epistolary rpg for two players, created for #CorrespondenceJam. You play as two characters communicating over a long distance whose messages are subject to external censorship. For each letter you’ll roll on a table to determine what parts of it will be excised.

Will you be able to get through to the other party, or will you be forever separated by a thin black gulf? https://tamsinbloom.itch.io/thin-black-gulf

Intersecting Orbits (Letter Writing – 3 players)

For as long as there have been Orbiters, two have been sent out. They stay in separate capsules and they take separate measurements, each alone. It’s said to be a precaution against data contamination. If two separate readouts say the same thing, it’s not a fluke.

But it’s not about that. It’s about redundancy.

For as long as there have been Orbiters, there has been the Interference. Spikes in data that have no business being there, garbled words, ghosts in the machinery. Few people believe truly in the existence of the Interference as an entity.

The Interference does not care what they believe. https://occasionalell.itch.io/intersecting-orbits

What’s a Vaporwave (Play by text – 2 players)

A two-player, 200 word RPG about explaining vaporwave to your grandpa. Based on a true story.

One player is Casey, who kinda knows what vaporwave is. Another is Grandpa, who loves Casey and wants to understand their life. Played via text message. https://sublimemarch.itch.io/whats-a-vaporwave

A Response to the Esteemed Dr. Crackpot  (Play by post – 2+ players)

A game of academic squabbles for two or more players. Fight for your hypothesis in a series of responses published by one of the journals in your field. Defend your academic integrity at all costs. Everyone needs to know your rival is wrong. https://ejankowski.itch.io/a-response-to-the-esteemed-dr-crackpot

There Was A Murder (Letter Writing)

Take on the roles of witnesses and detectives in this letter writing game. Tell the story of what happened through different statements, work together to find out who and why. https://sweetcyanide.itch.io/there-was-a-murder 

Per My Last Email (Letter Writing – 3-6 players)

Per My Last Email is an epistolary game for 3-6 players, played by sending emails in a group email chain. You play as office workers as they discover that Something strange is attempting to come into our world from another dimension through a portal that has opened up in the break room. https://nyessa.itch.io/per-my-last-email 

Other helpful links:

The Correspondence Jam: https://itch.io/jam/correspondence-jam/entries

The Discord RPG Jam: https://itch.io/jam/discord-rpg-jam/entries

Games that work well remotely but weren’t necessarily written that way:

Twilight Song: https://speak-the-sky.itch.io/twilight-song

The Cromlech Archives: https://speak-the-sky.itch.io/the-cromlech-archives

Microscope: http://www.lamemage.com/microscope/

For the Queen: https://www.evilhat.com/home/for-the-queen/ (there is a very good Roll20 set that can help facilitate if you prefer to one person having a deck)

Journal of Exaggerated Reality: https://22to22.itch.io/journal-of-exaggerated-reality

Knowing You: https://justasummerjob.itch.io/knowing-you

And, when no one has the energy to figure out a game but you’d all still like to be social, there’s always Scattergories! https://scattergoriesonline.net

What are you playing during physical distancing requirements? Are there others that are favorites of yours that I didn’t spot?

No matter how solid your group is, losing someone always changes the dynamic in some way. For my group, we’ve each fallen into a niche, and we know how to play games that fulfill all of us. When the composition of the group changes, we have to readjust not only for how play feels, but also all the meta things that go with group organization. During my time with my current group (recently affectionately known – by me at least – as “Senda and the Game Boys”), we’ve lost two players semi-permanently or permanently to cross country moves. Even though we are all pretty committed and proactive about Thursday night games, Wen was frequently a driving force of ideas and motion to get us all lined up. Camden started this gathering and did all of the original organization and GMing.

There are three major categories of things that change when you lose a consistent player: in game dynamics, out of game dynamics, and logistics. In game dynamics may affect things like the table feel, the kinds of games you play, and what types of characters and stories you gravitate to as a group. Out of game dynamics are the meta social groups dynamics themselves – it may change your social contract, who arranges games or pushes for organization and decision making, who does planning and management, who takes the best notes. Logistically, it can change where you play and who provides physical resources, snacks, etc. As with anything in gaming, since it is a social activity, it’s worth a conversation to be explicit about how your group will adjust to these changes. 

In Game Dynamics

This is probably the trickiest category to predict, depending on your group. Did the player who is leaving usually play a particular type of character that you’re going to need to adjust for? This doesn’t just apply to classes; this could be that they always play the love interest or always have a specific type of social relationship that helps push the game along. Sometimes just mentioning it and acknowledging that the game will change a bit without that influence is enough. Sometimes, as in a more traditional game, you might need to make changes that allow for the loss of that niche skill set — plan as a group (with the GM!) for what it will mean to have no cleric in an ongoing campaign, for example. Make the tweaks that you need to, to make sure that the game remains fun for everyone. 

Out of Game Dynamics

Sometimes the person you’re losing is the person who started the group, or took on the brunt of organization work for picking games, wrangling the peoples, and making things happen. Sometimes it’s the GM! Depending on how much of a leadership role they had in the group, you may have quite a bit of discussion to cover. Here are some things to think about:

• Who is running the game?
• Are you going to keep playing the same game, campaign, characters, etc?
• Do you still have enough people to play in the range you find to be the most fun? (more thoughts on adding people to your group in part 2!)
• Do you still have access to all the things you need to play the game? This could mean books, props, etc.
• Do you need to adjust for note taking at the table?

Logistics

Sometimes the person you’re losing happens to be the group cat wrangler, the house you play at, or the person who takes the best notes. You may want to think about if any of the following questions also affect your group going forward:

• Will your play location change?
• Are there any changes to food/snacks (who brings them or makes them, dietary restrictions)?
• Will your play schedule change?
• Do you need to designate someone to make sure communication happens?

When it comes right down to it, it’s not going to be the same – and as sad as it is to lose someone that you love playing with, that doesn’t mean your future games won’t be good. Different doesn’t have to mean bad or worse – it’s just that, different. Accept that it will be different, and move with it. 

Have you ever had to adapt to losing a player? What other advice would you give a group who is losing a player long term?

Stacie and Harrison, a commission by Casey Sharp @magebomb_

This article was jointly written by Senda Linaugh and Wen Reischl. 

It’s a story we all know. The Popular Girl with a wellspring of opportunity before her (Stacie) meets the Troublemaker with the heart of gold (Harrison). He’s already head over heels in love with her when the story begins, but we play to find out will they or won’t they. Over two seasons and a decade of their lives they are almost irrevocably torn apart. He leaves, and we rejoin their story on the eve of Stacie’s wedding to someone else. The second season ended, after the final battle, with Harrison putting a ring on Stacie’s finger and asking if they could finally give their relationship a try.

As players it left us knowing what Harrison’s outcome would be, with a corrupting alien force holding his body together and knowing he would never let himself slip to the point he could hurt the people he loved. We knew he wouldn’t live a full life. But we had hope that he would make good use of the time he had left. There was one final question to answer, what would Harrison and Stacie’s lives look like while they were together? The lure of finality and closure meant we couldn’t let Stacie and Harrison go quite yet. Last Thursday, we went back to these characters and found their ending. 

It’s not often that I walk into a game expecting (wanting, almost? Certainly that’s what we sat down for) a character to die. There are many conversations about agency and managing character death out there, how to avoid it, talking agency in allowing or disallowing it, table policies, etc. Walking into a story that is specifically about the death of characters requires a high degree of emotional investment and a willingness to participate at the table. It’s something I’m familiar with but not something I approach lightly – I am a fan of Catherine Ramen’s Red Carnations on a Black Grave, for example, but it’s not a game I’ll play with just anyone, or pull out for light entertainment. 

Character death, when given weight and meaning, is a rare opportunity to find a tragic, cathartic, human story that can give us poignant hope because of their sacrifice.

For the three of us who sat down to play last Thursday, we knew that this story — the story culminating in Stacie saying goodbye to Harrison — was the only story we were telling. In many instances a character death may be part of a longer running campaign, or happen within the context of a greater, ongoing story. These points were all important to our single session of ending, but depending on your circumstances you will want to choose what you apply as it makes sense to your game. So how do we accomplish character death or permanent removal as closure and finality at the table? 

• Get everyone’s investment before playing. If you know that the game is going to be about the end of a player character, don’t spring it on anyone as a surprise (GM or player). Give everyone the opportunity to opt in or out ahead of time, not just at the table as things are about to kick off. 
• Negotiate the game at a meta level. Before you start, you should all be on the same page about the generalities of this story line. That means that at a meta level, we discussed our different ideas about how Harrison and Stacie got to this final point before we ever started the game. We talked about how long it would take in game and what we wanted to see along the way. And, very important for a game with a lot of emotional intensity, we had a very detailed safety negotiation about what themes could and couldn’t come up (for example, there were no children in their relationship so there was no parental death). We also knew that something would happen that pushed Harrison from stable to slipping into the grasp of the darkness he was carrying inside him, and that would be our tilt in to the final descent. 
• Managing the mechanics to favor the story. This is one time when you really really don’t want a botched roll to ruin your story. Everyone at the table is heavily invested in the story following the planned arc, so drastically changing the ending by allowing the dice to negate that social contract would frankly suck. If Tony Stark, instead of dying, suddenly decided that with all that power at his control he could rule the galaxy (having succeeded at the save to maintain his frail mortal form), well…that would be a very different and much less satisfying end to End Game. Choose your game system/framework carefully so that you don’t have to dodge the mechanics to make the story you’ve negotiated happen, and remember that although you’ve discussed the end point, you don’t know how you’re going to get there. Play to find the path to the end.
• Give yourselves breaks. If you, like we did, are playing specifically through the story of a character death, it’s very possible to create a downward spiral with no emotional breaks. For Stacie and Harrison, we used flashback scenes from simpler times to lighten the intensity and remind us of the good times that made the loss even more poignant. These moments of light hearted childhood infatuation broke up scenes of adult drama and the slow end of Harrison inhabiting his own body, both giving us moments to breathe and even more reasons to care about our characters. If flashbacks don’t work for your particular story or game, consider some other kind of breaks between intense moments along the path: a side story, someone else’s relationship, or even just five minutes to chat or get up from the table. 
• You may need to process the experience after. Leave yourselves time in and out of the game to wrap up the pieces and process through them. We had a glimpse of the funeral, and ended on a flashback of Harrison, sitting on the trunk of his car blowing bubbles with his gum like Stacie taught him. We ended on the eternal image of him in his youth, a mix of child like innocence, too many responsibilities far too young, and love. Leave yourselves some time to emotionally debrief after the game as well – share your favorite moments, or if you have bleed that’s occurring; eulogize, support each other if you are experiencing grief for that closure. One tool we leveraged was to make a playlist (inspired by the direction in the Tales from the Loop character creation to choose a character theme song).

Senda: As a character, Stacie started as the stereotype of a popular girl to me. It was fun to lean into that as an experience I hadn’t had growing up. As I played her through two campaigns, she went from the girl who had it all to the girl with nothing, and then built her way back up, somehow maintaining a lot of her innocence despite watching her world crumble around her at 13 years old. Stacie allowed me (three times!) to play out different sad, but not abusive, relationship ends — to practice how these difficult moments in my life could look without some of the real baggage that I carry with me. She gave me the opportunity to be in three different types of young love — the middle school crush, the college engagement, and the adult return to a childhood love; with a letter break up, a “this isn’t going to work because you scare me” conversation, and having to end her husband’s suffering. She was a safe space for me to experience and practice so many emotions, and I needed to leave her in a place where she wasn’t in limbo; where I knew there was hope for her, that her resilience would pull her through. 

I love that our games can go on forever, but I love even more that we can accomplish closure for our stories. To paraphrase Good Omens, if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boy and his bubble gum and his car. And a summer that never ends. 

Wen: Over these last 2 years, Harrison has meant more to me than I can describe. In all I’ve written over 200 pages about this character whom I played perhaps a dozen times. I love him dearly. I needed Harrison, in a very real way. But I’ve also moved beyond what I needed Harrison for. He represented change, the end of book one and start of book two in the trilogy of my life. Harrison deserved a story arc befitting his place in my life. His end in the arms of the woman he loved was his reward, and also mine. I needed to know he had lived a good life, one that wasn’t just struggle, and to send him off into the beyond knowing that he had and protected the family he always wanted.

This session concluded with one last image, a bittersweet vignette that recalled one of the happiest moments of season 1, when Stacie taught Harrison how to blow bubbles with bubblegum (her iconic item). Whether it was a flash in the moment of his death or a scene from beyond I’m not sure. But we see him one last time a boy sitting on the trunk of the car blowing bubbles.

In my grief I’m left wanting more and expressly satisfied to know that there never will be more. 

“Sweet, so would I:

 Yet I should kill thee with much cherishing.

Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

– Juliet, Romeo and Juliet

Have you given a final ending to a character you adored? Have you helped another player bring a satisfying conclusion to a character they were playing? How did you prepare? When did you decide when and how to end a character’s story?