Hello!
I´m running a dungeon world campaign on play by post (actually derived from the Rise of the Runelords campaign). Since players have very different rhythms, I am tempted to have some of them play scenes from the past in the meantime. But I am stuck by the following: how can I make those scenes important (and so potentially deadly) knowing they take place in the past? Is it a technique you people use and how do you circumvent this pitfall?
Thanks a lot
I don’t see how you could make a scene in the past (for the character) deadly BUT you could certainly do a love letter type scene (see Apocalypse World 2e) to provide a “what happened in the meantime to character X” dependent on a single roll. Or, similarly, you can make it this same thing a flashback with prescribed results.
E.g. Love letter for what happened while character went back to town and waited for the characters during their adventure…
10+ - you (the character) describes a scene where they got a great deal on a used rare item for 10x less than it would normally cost
7 - 9 - Pick 2
- Faction X got you out of trouble on your way home. (Faction X = a faction with local influence).
What was the trouble and what do you owe the faction in the future in exchange
for their help?
- You saved expenses staying with a friend / acquaintance / benefactor. Who are
they at risk from due to their generosity?
- You managed to buy any new non-magic items for regular price but also had an
item and money stolen from a cut-purse. What did you lose along with your left-
over coins? What did you see of the thief before they escaped?
You could also include something like a “Love letter” about an off-screen fight
During the fight (where you presumably off in a corner)
10+ - You defeated Monster X and protected something. Describe your heroics and what or whom you protected.
7 - 9 - You defeated Monster(s) X and Choose 2:
Edit: I mis-read the purpose and revised accordingly. I might still use this approach but I would tell the players that this will be a regular occurrence when they miss a a few days or so. That way when they come back there will still be time and story continuity and they may have taken damage without recovery in the meantime. The nice thing about DW is that you don’t need to worry mechanically about the challenge rating. Just play the baddies less tactically or add more soft moves than you would otherwise.
Thanks. the whole love-letters approach is indeed very interesting, and I was really pleased to read the different stakes you listed, which indeed could make the scenes much more dramatic.
[a short precision though: I´m not planning to insert scenes for players who are lagging behind. I´d rather create true, long-term flashbacks for the most active players. I realized my phrasing was misleading]
So, you are thinking of letting the active players move along and then circle back everyone into a flashback when the less active players are re-engaged? I think it would be easier and more acceptable to your active players if you run the off screen flashbacks for the slower players to catch up.
I love using flashback scenes in gaming, and often do so.
In my experience, the best way to do this is in a gaming environment where the participants see the activity as one of collaborative writing/storytelling. Take the “present” as a creative constraint for the past, in other words - when playing out a flashback, your job is to make something which enriches the present, or casts a different light on it, but does not contradict it.
Usually, this means that something like death (or other stakes which would invalidate what’s happening in the present) is off the table. Flashbacks are about establishing the details of how something happened, moreso than the excitement of wondering whether someone makes it alive through an adventurous moment. They serve a different function and operate under different constraints.
I would imagine that would be easier in play-by-post than in face-to-face play, since you can think about it carefully and frame things accordingly. Be explicit about the creative constraints, and play accordingly (“we know that the Prince escaped from the prison cell that morning… but how did it happen, and who helped him?”).
However, there are some other things you could do, to bend that basic idea a little bit:
Accept contradictions in terms of what’s happening, and be willing, as a group, to come up with justifications later. (“Hey, we saw the Duke die in that flashback, but he’s alive now…” “Ok, I guess that means he has a body double!/I guess it means he has a means of coming back from death!”) This is unsatisfying for most groups, but could be a really fun creative challenge for others.
Cut the scene or “fade to black” when something potentially troublesome starts happening. (“And we see the Duke hurtling off the tower into the darkness… ok, let’s end the flashback there.”)
TV shows and movies love to do this, to make us think things happened a certain way, only to reveal later that we drew the wrong conclusions from what we saw.
So, make sure any tense “action” scenario is ABOUT something other than the survival of the protagonists involved - that something else, which is meaningfully in question precisely because we don’t know, in the present time, how it turned out.
What I like about this “love letter” approach is how explicitly it sets the constraints for the various possible outcomes of the scenes - there’s a great clarity there, as we intentionally omit any outcomes which don’t work with our timeline.