Tag Archives: Justin Alexander

Teaching storytellers: recipes, ingredients, how to cook

Posted on by Henry

How do you go from “Running a game of D&D sounds fun” to “I have some idea of what to do”?

You could do what I did: play enough RPGs at an early enough age that you don’t remember  feeling daunted by or awkward about the transition from playing to running games. I figured running games was just what you were supposed to do. I paid attention to how my siblings ran games, and I tried to replicate that.

That obviously won’t work for most people. They could try the adult version, playing lots of games run by other people until they have some idea of what to do themselves, but what if they don’t have a good play group? What if they want more tools?

What other entry points can we (the RPG community) offer? What resources and pitfalls should we and new storytellers be aware of?

When I think about resources and pitfalls here, I think of ingredients and recipes. Roleplaying game materials are strong on ingredients; RPG books often include lots of “what” and “who” and even “where” to use in your stories. But these materials are often weak on recipes, and they certainly don’t teach you how to cook; they don’t offer much “why” or even “how”.

Without understanding the “why” and “how,” what is a would-be storyteller to do? How can we help new storytellers learn the why’s and how’s of the art of storytelling?

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Whimsy’s Throne is live on DriveThruRPG!

Posted on by Henry

You can find the first two World Seeds here. If you read and enjoy these World Seeds, please leave a positive review. That would mean a lot to me.

My goal, as I said a little while back, is to continue producing these Seeds for the foreseeable future. If you’d like to see the process in action, learn about how I’ve repeatedly edited out half—or even two-thirds—of the words in a piece, or see the art as it moves from concept to completion, you can do that at Whimsy’s Throne.

There’s still more to do, of course. I want to find another artist to work with next—if you make art, and would be willing to make something like what you can see in those Seeds for $400, let me know. I also want to have more legible covers for the DriveThruRPG store, which will require some tinkering.

And I’m trying to figure out where in the World Seeds (and how) to add a reference to Ginny Di’s video about advice she struggled with as a novice GM. I want these World Seeds to be as accessible as possible, to engage people in as many ways as possible (hence having both art and words). And while I can’t address the audio-preferred crowd very well in my pdfs, I can share videos that fill that gap. And I think her video has a usefully different approach to a lot of the advice my World Seeds give or imply.

It’s not advice that veteran storytellers are likely to need, but these World Seeds are supposed to be accessible to storytellers of all skill levels (ideally without feeling pedantic and overbearing). And while you could (and likely would) reach her conclusion by reading lots of material from The Alexandrian (like this, or this), I think she does a good job of saying it fairly concisely… and in a way that some GMs might understand more readily. I don’t know whether I want to expand World Seeds into a broader “RPG education” tool, or whether I want to do that in some other format, but I keep finding tidbits to add because I want these World Seeds to be a complete package for people at any level of comfort and confidence with storytelling.

Next week I might miss a post, as I’ll be traveling. I’ll be back before too long though. You should see me here again the week after.