How to Run a Game (Part 21) - Beyond the Table

For a lot of folks, there seems to be an assumption that a tabletop RPG only occurs during the course of play when the official session is running. I touch on this when I discuss the ideas of setting up a liminal space for the session, and when I mention that "bleed" can be a dangerous thing. But bleed exists and always will exist, and it can be used to advantage. I'm still a fan of the idea that there needs to be a separation between the fantastic world of the session, and the real world beyond. However, there is always the opportunity to make the real world a little more magical by spreading the game to it. 

I began seeing this idea back in the mid 1990s.

I was a part of a few communities of live-action gamers, and the internet was nothing like it is today. These various groups typically held games monthly, the first Saturday of the month might be one game group, the second might be a different game... but having thirty or more players trying to cram in a complete story in three or four hours then wait a month before the next installment was a nightmare... I'm not sure who came up with the idea, but a few of those groups moved to bulletin board services and online chat forums (we didn't have social media back then). The narrators could monitor the chat forums, add information for long term storyline elements through NPCs avatars who would write comments on the boards, and characters could interact with one another between sessions to keep the game alive when they weren't physically in each other's presence. It opened so many new ideas about what a game could be (many of which are common place now, especially with live feeding platforms like Discord being regularly used to conduct sessions these days).

I've basically got the same sort of thing happening with my twin school groups at the moment...I've set up Discord servers to simulate this type of away-from-table play, and apparently some of the students have actually set up their own servers to discuss what's happening in my games (since I know a few of my students have been reading the blog, and trying to work out who they are in posts 7 and 19, one might pop up soon and comment on that). It's not like the days when we'd actually do spy-styled dead drops scattered across hidden locations in Sydney, but then again there's no risk of police involvement when they read suspiciously dropped messages about kidnapping someone, or hiring hitmen... (those were interesting times).

It's just a case of making use of what you've got, and taking advantages of tools and techniques that will add something extra to your game, when other elements might be detracting from it.

A core group at a table is a great thing, a group of a dozen or more starts to really get unwieldy, and that where these other techniques can really come into their own. I could easily write another series of posts about how to run a LARP, but I dont really need to, because most of my thoughts can be found in a series of booklets I wrote a few years back.

Let's consider some other things that might help to improve the play experience away from the table. 

I've toyed with the idea of a game system that could be played while taking a walk, or perhaps during some urban exploration.

It probably won't work for every game, and might be best in a story about grungy urban magick, or perhaps even a cyberpunk setting. The trick is trying to come up with a game systems that doesn't require dice, or a flat surface to roll on (or lay cards on). A few LARP systems might work for that... but again, we probably don't want the kind of LARP system that might attract the unwanted attention of security guards or observers who might take the activities the wrong way.

I mentioned back in the post about cinematic storytelling that one of the local pubs has started running public D&D sessions. I think it's a great idea, because the pub that's doing this has a "secret" entrance and is set up like a 1920's speak-easy. It automatically provides a degree of atmosphere before you even get to the table, it helps set up the liminal space, and the players know they're here for a game.

But there are always other things you can add to the experience away from the table. One of the earliest ideas in this space (and one of the easiest to implement) was called blue booking. If players are going to write epic backstories for their characters, then the theory states that they might be willing to write some pages about what they do during the down-time between active sessions at the table. These aren't necessarily related to the events at the table, they just flesh out the backstory of the character while other events are happening around them. I haven't had a player who has done this for me during a tabletop game, but it has made things far more interesting in those monthly live action games in the distant past.

These are just some ideas, I'm sure there's plenty more out there.