Well, today’s experiment turned out well. I’d been wanting to write “Love Letters” to my PCs for a while now, but I totes wanted to do it before the first season was over. The season has been so super connected, I didn’t want to totally disjoint things. However at the end of the last session (actually for the entire session WHAT?!) our chosen was in his Darkest Self. And the final scene in the last session was our Infernal, using Elsewise Power to not die in a terrible car crash (of her own causing).
Fortunately one of our players was away last week, so I had 2 whole weeks to ruminate on this, and here’s what I came up with. Plagiarism! Well sort of, maybe you’ve played The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen, A Roleplaying Game in a New style (possibly one of the first Story RPGs!). If not, shame on you, but here’s how it works normally, you tell a story, and other people can offer you money to interrupt your story. You can incorporate their annoyance in your story and take their money, or match their bet and ignore it.
Now I wanted to focus on each of the characters so I gave everybody a move on their “primary” stat in the traditional 10/7-9/6 format. Except instead of much in the way of particular game effect, I had a kind of “story seed” based on each character, and events that might be important to them. I gave each player a little intro, and then had them read all 3 outcomes before rolling. Then they had 5-10 minutes to tell a story. The catch was, while they were telling the story I promised (and mostly held to it) to interrupt occasionally. “I know it was a dream, but didn’t he want you to switch the labels, not just throw it in the trash”.
If they took my interruptions in stride, and and incorporated it into their stories, well, I gave ’em an XP. And of course my players are awesome and they all well earned that XP! Hell, I think a couple of those stories were probably worth two … but I don’t like to play favorites, so I won’t say who.
This ended up taking about an hour, and while it did require way more prep time than a PbtA game normally takes, it did give me a whole hour where I mostly just got to sit back, and occasionally mess with other people’s storytelling. So, not actually a “win” as far as being a lazy DM goes, but I feel like the prep time was well worth it, and the players seemed to like it.
The most worthwhile thing though (as MC), was giving up total narrative control. It’s easy to do when you’re the player, but so so hard when you’re the one running the show. None of the love letters turned out exactly how I expected, which is basically perfect!
Now my ramble is done. Hopefully someone will find this useful someday or something.
PS: Since two of the characters were in the hospital, I printed the love letters on Patient Record Sheets, and came out wearing a labcoat with a fake Doctor ID badge and the “patient records” on a clipboard. Hurray for the MC having an excuse to dress up for once!