A couple years ago, I guess it would be now, I had the idea of going around the country playing D&D with different groups akin to Keith Baker’s Have Dice, Will Travel. I don’t get out much, and it seemed like a way to combine one of my favorite pastimes with visiting people I don’t see often and getting out of town for a while.
I floated the idea around, and it got some interest…and then I got swept into the launching of a console as well as life getting in the way in general. I let the idea sit and simmer in my brain for a long time.
Since then, I started running a group through the top 10 modules (according to this list) in a weirdly tied together homebrewed plane. I had the players come up with caricatures, and we rolled with Old Skool until we shifted to what was then called D&D Next because AD&D’s rules are pretty convoluted for newer players.
I wish I’d recorded the early sessions of that game. They were interesting. In party we had a knock-off Dudley Doo-Right, a 20’s gangster, a member of the black panther, a stage magician, and a Tasmanian Devil parody. The game is ongoing, and I’ve started recording those sessions…maybe someday I’ll put them up here. I have to make sure it’s ok with all the players first.
Things eventually calmed down, and I got back to pondering the Wandering DM idea. And I’ve fleshed it out to this…
A group of six players is going to create the party, and play the first session. They’ll then write down what happened from their character’s point of view into notebooks. I’ll collect the character sheets and notebooks, and move on to a new table where I’ll hand out the sheets and the notebooks. The players will only know what the previous players have written down, will play the next session, and write their own entries. The goal here is to create a D&D version of the Telephone game.
I’ll record each of these sessions, and put them up in podcast form, waiting a few sessions between uploads (or until the end) to help maintain that lack of knowledge of the previous groups’ actions.
The last session will return us to the first group that made the characters, where they will get to see where the adventure has brought their creations and finish out the adventure.
Sound like fun? Awesome. If you want to be a part of it (and in the US for this first try), please fill out this. Haven’t played before? I don’t care. If you’re awesome, funny, and able to tell a story, we’ll get you sorted out. This isn’t about rules and holding steadfast to mechanics, it’s about the tale that we will create together. I’ll be running with the new Dungeons and Dragons rules, so if you want to get yourself acclimated, read this.
That’s about it for now. Until next time, game on.