torgny hylén

TotEM : Theatre of the Elucidated Mind

Added 2022-02-14 10:11:32 +0000 UTC

Hi and welcome to a little idea I’ve been working on for a couple years. Consider this a prototype as I iron out the kinks. If you have any revelations while playing, I’d be happy to hear what worked or what didn’t work for your group.

This is an idea to augment Theatre of the Mind storytelling for VTT spaces by using images as conceptual placeholders. It's especially good at exploration challenges, but I've found quite a few other uses too. In the pdf, I've written a rambling account of how I came to find it useful in my games, along with a bunch of recommendations and examples. I'll leave it to you to read my thinking there.

What the heart of this update is, are the 200 totem images — with more coming.

If you happen to make something cool, send me a screenshot - I'd love to see what you made. If you have a recommendation for more totems, shoot that through too.

Interestingly to me, I've had extreme reactions to this way of playing. My friends really love it and I've had some fantastic comments from other DMs who most likely share my sensibilities of narrative in storytelling. I've also had - although more rare - extreme dislike, to the point that I may have insulted the very idea of player agency and strategic imperative with this approach. No worries, we can all learn to accept that not everyone gets the same enjoyment from the same things.

Last little disclaimer: Understand that this is not meant to replace tactical gridded combat on a battle map nor is it meant to replace pure Theatre of the Mind roleplay. It’s meant to find its own niche between those two extremes when it’s most useful to do so. For me it has elevated specific encounter types while playing online. Maybe there's something in it for you.