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Young Writers Society


Combining D&D with SBs



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Mon Oct 03, 2022 10:52 pm
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BrumalHunter says...



I'm not asking because I'm necessarily planning anything or even expecting much of a response to this, but how interested would any storybookers or other roleplayers be in a D&D adventure that's told through storybooking?

Firstly, you can't have D&D without actually playing it, and that alone requires considerable logistics. The easiest way of doing it in this scenario would be to rely mostly on text and not really the traditional D&D sessions that people might have in mind. But would it be acceptable if such sessions took place on a site/application like Discord and then writing the posts are discussed on site here, or would they have to take place in a club, smaller RP threads, PMs, etc.?

Secondly, the scope of a normal D&D campaign is too great for a regular storybook, and people are also used to adventuring together, which would be a hindrance to scheduling sessions and writing the posts. That means it would probably involve several one-on-one roleplays, whether on the site or off it, which in turn requires an adventure that's suited to solo play and an overarching story that lets the participants do their own thing while also influencing each other and, you know, the overarching story.

Lastly, this would be a slow-burn for sure, and how many people would have the patience and commitment for such a project? It would be fun, but most SBs are, and that doesn't stop them from dying. Is there even interest in such a long-lasting RP that would largely lack the frequent collaborations for which storybooking has become more known? (Unless the characters and plot allow for it, of course.)


The way I could picture this happening is through something like a political fantasy story in the fashion of Game of Thrones. You'd have a succession crisis and multiple parties interested in filling the power gap, whereas others might instead just try to weather the storm and come out alive. You could also get people who don't give a damn and just want to go questing regardless of the turmoil around them. Something like a map with major settlements indicated and room for expansion as required would be useful.

A group of, say, five storybookers could each claim a character (or multiple) from a major house and then roleplay their story in the designated place with their DM, who would arbitrate and ensure they don't use information gleaned from the submitted posts when the characters would lack that information (which is poor form in standard SBing already). As time goes on and the characters do stuff, their players could then write SB posts detailing their adventures/intrigues, and they'd be allowed to take creative liberties in the depiction of events as long as the outcomes are kept the same.

This is just one scenario, but since I'd likely be the first/only person to attempt this (unless someone else is inspired by it, in which case: awesome), it's probably the one I'd end up running.

So, thoughts? Would anyone be interested? Does anyone have other, perhaps better, ideas? I'm curious.
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Mon Oct 03, 2022 11:40 pm
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Mageheart says...



I don't know if I'd necessarily do this myself, but this sounds like such a cool idea for a roleplay! I actually took one of my ancient storybooks, Aeyis, and recently turned it into a pseudo-D&D campaign with some friends.

Maybe a good test run for something like this would be a RP Realm or Hollow roleplay? The big distinction I can see between YWS roleplaying and D&D is that it's more up to chance with dice. Doing something with short posts, like in the Realm or Hollow, would be a good way to test out how to have a DM react to a roll writing-wise, and then that method could always be applied to running a storybook later on. It also might work well because a lot of RP Realm rps have some kind of DM scheming up plans in the background, which would work really well with a DM doing the exact same thing in a D&D campaign.

I'm not sure how much sense that made, but I'm very much intrigued by the idea of blending D&D campaigns and roleplays more!
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