Ripped From the Headlines!

Ysod - the mise en scène

If I didn't tell stories I probably wouldn't do this thing.  This game about telling stories with friends - I assume that it's got, at its heart, an interest in storytelling generally.  So I like to tell stories.  When I was young & feckless I didn't - not as much - since I tried to live it up & do things that were story-worthy.  Now, I'm aged & sensible so I tell stories about the bygone time of my reckless youth to my kid, saying They Were the Best of Times & Also They Sucked A Lot Too. 

When you tell tales, especially as time goes by - so fast now - You end up seeking out context - what was going on in at the time.  "Well, that summer I lived on couches & sometimes the sidewalk - It was a hot summer in a college town & I was a ridiculous mess for most of it.  I remember, I couldn't stop listening to that first Liz Phair record & everyone was sad when Jerry Garcia died." 

"Next year things got more sensible but also more boring, for me.  The houses all broke up, people were moving around & I couldn't tell you what I was going to do with myself.  I remember that that there was a cult of Star  Trek fans that killed themselves because of this comet that appeared in the sky for a good part of the year.  I ended up finding a girlfriend after dating a lot & then going back to college & doing better that time."

Nostalgia for the middle 1990's aside-  there's a context to your experiences that sets them in a place & time.  A lot of the time, in the moment, in the game, it happens that the players aren't living with any context - there's a dragon menacing the town & it needs slaying.  There's a Cult of vampires in the woods scaring the village.  And those are stories, probably cool ones - but there's just a dash of verisimilitude that would make these stories a little bit more punchy - a little more interesting to be a part of. 

As I work through my scheme of building a world through imitation of a mythic conception of reality - I've come to regard this verisimilitude as having a truly essential role.  Building up place, setting the scene - I relate these to the Kabbalistic Ysod - the foundation.

Soon...  Soon.

Naturally - I assume that real-life has no purpose nor any guiding principles or intention - and so to replicate that at the table, I've started building some random charts. 

Currently - we are playing In The Ruins - the next-best-thing, a variant of GotN linked deeply to its own setting.  Soon, playtesting will be complete, but as it continues I'm working up my own line of gazetteers.  The old D&D ones were my favorite supplements, so I'm happy I can make my own. 

For verisimilitude & random chance to prevail I've been putting together some tables, to reflect life in Sword of the West (that prince of cities) & I started out with headlines.  What's afoot in the city?  What's the news they're all talking about out in the streets? 

Depicted Here:  My lack of interest in sports...