Last week we wrapped-up two of the most wholly satisfying series of games I’ve played in awhile, and I wanted to…

Last week we wrapped-up two of the most wholly satisfying series of games I’ve played in awhile, and I wanted to share a few thoughts on them.

The first was a series called Vornheim Stories. We were using John Harper’s World of Dungeons to tell a set of episodic stories set in and around the Lamentations setting of Vornheim. In fact, three of the five sessions took place in the city of Bellet Osc, one of Vornheim’s neighboring communities.

In the hands of the right group, World of Dungeons can be a very powerful tool. I’ve talked about its pleasures in other places, so I won’t go into too many details here, but I’d like to reiterate the system is highly flexible and adaptable, allowing you to take your story in all kinds of weird and interesting directions, while providing just enough structure to prevent your story from going off the rails. I like to use it to explore new themes, ideas, and settings.

In Bellet Osc, we created an urban environment that was basically a grimy, perverse Wonderland. And I say “we,” because it was a very collaborative effort. I came to each session with a basic idea of things that might occur (NOTE: you can look at my Vornheim Stories notes in our Patreon feed to see what I’m talking about), but the players really helped paint the picture and bring things to life. A lot of what we did was very extemporaneous (and I definitely got a chance to flex my improv muscles) but it never really threatened to get away from us. We reached a level of shared interest in the setting that ensured no one was going to suggest something that would fuck it all up, and reaching that state of trust within the group is pretty much gaming Nirvana to me.

In the end, we created a world in Bellet Osc that was funny, grotesque, sweet (in its way), and completely surprising. I was reminded of a feeling I had when I first read Dragon Magazine #172 as a kid. That one had an article about the villainous subterranean city of Skullport, and I remember being completely enchanted by it. All the weird characters and visual details included in that article made Skullport seem very real to me, and I wanted to know more about what sorts of things were going on there. This is how I felt about Bellet Osc at the end of Vornheim Stories. It’s likely to stick with me for awhile.

The other series we wrapped was equally satisfying, but for different reasons. This one was a science fantasy-tinged Dungeon World four-parter called Whispers of Carcosa. Unlike Vornheim Stories, which was highly collaborative in a world-building sense, Whispers of Carcosa was stuffed to the brim with set pieces and encounters I’ve run a number of times before. I knew what the NPCs sounded like, and how to play them; I understood when and how to ramp-up the tension; I knew the precise reactions I’d get from the table whenever I unfurled a particular narrative trick; and, importantly, I knew exactly how to make sure the players would have a fucking blast over these four sessions. The ideas I was playing with have been banging around in my head for years; it’s not the sort of thing I could have improvised easily.

And yet…

And yet I found myself constantly surprised because the players brought it when it came to showing us their characters. And it wasn’t just “Look how awesome my dude is!” The players showed a real investment in learning more about the other characters, and how their own character could help bring out the best in them. I think our move to Flags has been a really good one in terms of spurring those kinds of conversations, but the players in this series were going beyond that in a way I was really grateful for. We had a conversation at the beginning and end of each session that was all about the setting, how the characters fit into it, and what sorts of things the players wanted to see from themselves and each other. It was a really productive practice, and I paid close attention so I could adjust things here and there to account for it. In the end, I knew what we needed to do to stick the landing on the final session, and we did.

Anyway, a dream to the players, who did such a great job with Bellet Osc and Carcosa last month: Fraser Simons Chris Wiegand Timothy Bennett Phillip Wessels Aniket Schneider Alex Chalk Deacon Stepanos