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The cool thing about RPGs that I wish more people would know about is that you can just say “no I don’t think that happens” and no one can stop you in any way that matters.
I was thinking about this today after seeing some Bad Tweets about character death and after talking w/ @TheRpgAcademy on an #AcadecOnline panel this afternoon but no one can stop you from saying “no, what actually happens is...”
I wish I could remember who said it but an OLD episode of RPG Design Panelcast had a story of a character in a historical fiction game contracting some serious illness and the player looked the GM in the eyes and said “No, that doesn’t happen.”
I lived w/ that power move in my back pocket for literal years until recently in my IRL group when my character dove from a cliff to save his boyfriend. We rolled falling damage and it was A Lot. The GM said “this would kill you.” I said “That’s a bad story. That doesn’t happen.”
The group collectively came up with a workaround that served the Fiction and followed through on the stakes set up by the circumstances. My character washed up on shore w/ 1hp, boyfriend nowhere to be found.
Many sessions later, my character leapt from a waterfall to save a friend and again we decided that the rules were Bad. But this time, my character was pulled from the crashing waves by familiar hands. Guess who.
A phenomenal story of mystery, drama, and love was the result of me saying “no, I don’t think that happens.”
And this was just me saying “no” because it wasn’t the way I wanted the story to go! It was purely self indulgent narrative reasons!
So go ahead and say “no” more often in games, whether it’s something like “no, I don’t see the story going that way” or “no, I don’t feel comfortable with this”. More people should tell their GMs “No”. And GMs? If someone tells you “No” that is a GIFT.
If a player told me “No”, a GIFT! It opens the door to a convo where the entire table can find the most interesting outcome. It’s the player telling you what they want! God I wish more players would say “No that doesn’t happen”. Try it at your next session & tell me about it!
Since 50+ people have now liked the original tweet, I feel obligated to say you can try this in any of the 20+ games I've made, all of which are on sale right now to help get me to conventions this year! https://twitter.com/LeviathanFiles/status/1148636243686756353
We’re at 150 likes so I’m instituting a rule that if you wanna come in and @ me on this in anger, you have to purchase one of my queer games like Athletics or Hot Gay Bro Dragons or This Is A Game About Fishing. I’m tired & have very little money and no one is paying me to Tweet.
*the sound of beating a dead horse muffled in the distance*
Not that I have to justify anything about this but I liked that my GM got a kick over this
Not that I have to justify anything about this but I liked that my GM got a kick over this
Fuck it, y’all wanna bend my ear on this or any topic, I am open for consultation work! https://twitter.com/leviathanfiles/status/1150899516356345856?s=21
