I play what we've named "cinematic D&D" which is basically collaborative story telling. There's one person assigned "storyteller" and each of the others are characters. The storyteller sets the scene, builds the world (or easier, borrows an existing world, eg. LOTR, Witcher, Blade, etc.). You then play in the same way: 1. storyteller describes the situation. 2. players describe what their character does. 3. storyteller describes what happens.
After you play a bit the story will flow. It's a really great, creative way to pass some time. It also helps if you treat it as cooperation rather than adversaries, even if the storyteller is "being" the adversaries. What I mean by this is not to block the other person's ideas, to accept & include them and ultimately make a good story. This applies to everyone, not just storytellers.
What's the longest/your favourite fanfic you've written?
I've never posted any fics anywhere, actually. I generally just get on discord and type out extremely long-winded character & dialogue scenarios for my friends to live-react to, hahaha. I guess I love the "audience." It's especially fun because they get to provide input along the way, like "okay wait but what if [x charcter] responded like this..." It's like I'm the narrator giving them occasional dialogue options, ha. I had a lot of fun doing a pretty self indulgent tenth doctor au the other month, and right now I'm enjoying "writing" about the BG3 cast along with my friends' player characters. I do have a Geralt x Reader fic sitting in a Google doc right now that I may one day post, god willing and the creek don't rise. We'll see.
I love reading all the stories here; I’ve been up and down the notes and I have several versions saved to my drafts, one of which I’ve begun writing out my own Fae story on. However, this post has actually had an influence on how I interpret the play I’m currently in, so it seems only appropriate to reblog a version of it on the eve of our play opening as well.
The play is called Almost, Maine, and it’s a subtly surrealist series of small town romances. The blurb on the back of the script describes it as “a midwinter night’s dream”. Basically, weird, seemingly mystical things are happening in the lives of people in this town as they fall in and out of love, and at the end of the night, everyone sees the northern lights. You could read it just abstractly as ‘the northern lights make weird (or should I say wyrd) things happen’, or you could even rationalize most of the things away, but I’ve decided that it makes sense that Almost (that’s the name of the town) just has a very heavy Fae presence and the Fae--likely excited by the northern lights--are meddling in everyone’s affairs--much like in Midsummer Night’s Dream.
I even decided that one of the characters I play, Ginette, actually is a Fae who left the Fae realm because she’s in love with a human, Pete. That explains, for me, how she *SPOILERS* walks all the way around the Earth in about 10 minutes for him--it’s done with the Fae magic she has, but in my interpretation, she has literally travelled all that distance for him. Then, when the northern lights appear at the end, it’s even deeper for me, because I’ve decided that for Ginette that’s a sign that the Fae have finally approved of her romance with Pete.
Pete would be incredibly overwhelmed by all this. He freaks out when she says “I love you” for the first time. It’s best he doesn’t know all this.
Anyways, I know this is a digression from the main subject matter of this post, but I just wanted to share how considering the Fae has been useful to me in deepening my acting and my character backstories. Thanks for all the great stories!
Irish people; The faeries aren’t real
Irish people; No fucking way will I go in that faerie ring