Creating Stories at the Table – With Gaz Bowerbank

We’re back and we’re making stuff up. Sure, it’s a bit disjointed, filled with inconsistent characterisation, narrative dead ends, and terrible jokes, but it sort of feels like a story. What do you expect when a bunch of people create it on the fly, all pulling in different directions? Any story there owes more to cheap beer and bad dice rolls than careful planning. If we read this tosh in a book, we’d ask for our money back. Yet, somehow, we’re all happy with it. And anyway, it’s still better than a Dan Brown novel… Main Topic: Creating Stories at the Table This episode is a lively discussion of what it means to create stories at the gaming table. Just talking about RPGs in terms of stories is likely to start an argument, and this episode is no exception. What do people mean when they talk about stories in the context of an RPG? Is an RPG scenario constructed anything like a story? And whose responsibility is it to create a story at the table anyway? We’ve paused our discussion of The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath for a few episodes as Matt has been seriously ill. During his absence, we have called upon some of our good friends in the podcasting world to stand in as guest hosts. This time, we are joined by Gaz Bowerbank, co-host of the What Would the Smart Party Do? podcast. Gaz’s co-host, Baz Stevens, joined us a few episodes ago for our “Everything is Horror” discussion, so we thought it was time to complete the set. * Gaz on Twitter* What Would the Smart Party Do?* “Puppy Love” for Tales From the Loop* “Unbearable” for Vaesen* “Midnight Hunt” for Vaesen Links Things we mention in this episode include: * Genre Emulation episode* Appendix N* Critical Role* World of Darkness* Live performance with How We Roll at PodUK 2019* How We Roll* Hot War* Nathan Ballingrud interview* Legend of the Burning Sands* Legend of the Five Rings*