RPG-a-Day Catch-up Day: Four and Five
We’re back with even more RPG-a-Day 2021, a month long series of prompts from Autocratik and Casting Shadows to encourage creativity and conversation in the TTRPG community. You can see the full calendar and a little more discussion of what RPG-a-Day is in our post on the first prompt, Scenario.
Due to a few things happening this week, we ended up falling behind so today is going to be a rapid fire discussion covering days Four through Seven and covering the topics of Rewards, Community, Flavour, and Inspiration. This is going to give me a chance to not only talk about each topic but also to combine the conversations together a little! We’re going to split this into two posts to not be overwhelming – so let’s dive right into Rewards and Community!
Let’s start up front with Rewards. As I hinted at in our day three article, I wanted to talk about them in a non-material sense. I have often heard from game masters that they have a hard time giving rewards because they want to keep the power level from spiraling out of control in the game (which itself is another thought we might discuss in another article later).
This particular issue has come to the fore repeatedly in my off-stream Rime of the Frostmaiden game – rewards for players are almost non-existent or really low power by the book and there’s some grumbling among my players hoping for a lot more progression from rewards and items. Rather than throw in a bunch of items and such to the rewards to increase the power, however, I’ve gone the other route by providing explicit non-material rewards.
By helping the Ten Towns, they’re building a reputation and gaining connections; in any of the towns they’ve helped, they no longer need to search or pay for shelter and meals when they visit and the council members representing those towns have given them recommendations for other towns to move the plot forward and push them towards the actual rewards of the campaign.
The point to touch on here is that sometimes characters get more from the people they’re working for than just financial or material rewards. Reputation and recommendations – or just being owed a favour – can sometimes be worth far more long term than any amount of actual physical reward. So when you want to provide rewards to your players but are afraid of throwing them too much “stuff,” don’t be afraid to give them social rewards instead.
All right – Community! Honestly, as a website and stream platform, this is fairly important to the concept behind Five Foot Square. It should go without saying but a supportive community – not just for a single website or stream or podcast, but as a whole – is exactly what the tabletop space needs to thrive and grow. So, for this one, I’m just going to direct you to some amazing communities or games you should check out with the Five Foot Stamp of Approval (it’s still square):
Carrion Comfort Studios
Home of Abnormalcy where you can find myself every Friday evening, Carrion Comfort is host to one of the first games we reviewed on the site, The Interstitial War (original review, post-Season One review). They produce a lot of content covering a number of genres from the personal horror of their World of Darkness games to the superheroic antics we get up to in Abnormalcy to their own rock inspired Lancer game – and that’s barely scratching the surface. They also have an amazing supportive and active community on their Discord and are always looking to bring new people in to their games to give as many people as possible a chance to play.
Check them out: Twitch, Twitter, YouTube
Seakmony Academy
Seakmony is an absolutely amazing Fifth Edition D&D game run by NeoSoulGod (who plays in both Let the World Burn Away and Court of the Shattered Kings) and also features Big Tex (also of both our games) and Rhea (who plays in Court of the Shattered Kings as well) along with other incredibly talented players. In fact, it was the second game we reviewed here on the site! I would highly recommend checking it out if you want a magical academy setting with a slightly different feel.
Check them out: Twitch, Twitter, YouTube
Vancouver by Night
A rather recent addition to my list, I haven’t had a chance to catch up on all their content yet but the group puts out the awesome Vancouver by Night and their newly launched Changeling: the Dreaming game, Toronto by Day – not to mention their awesome D&D game, Would-Be Heroes (you can see Zev from Let the World Burn Away on this!). Aside from producing awesome shows, the core base is also Canadian – and I always do my best to support other Canadian creators.
Check them out: Twitch, Twitter, YouTube
Near Dark Society
Another recent addition to my list, Near Dark Society runs an amazing World of Darkness show in Chicago by Night and an awesome D&D 5E game with Death Attack. I’m just getting started with their content (and there’s a lot of it) but I have yet to be disappointed with anything I’ve watched or listened to yet. And from what I’ve seen, the quality of the content just gets better and better as you move on to the newer episodes.
Check them out: Twitch, Twitter, YouTube
Of course, there are other communities – please let me know what you favourites are so I can check them out and shout them out!
Check back soon to see part two of our catch up featuring a joint discussion of Flavour and Inspiration!
