Role-playing games can take many shapes and forms beyond the dice-rolling of Dungeons and Dragons.
One game designer wrote a live-action role-playing game meant to be
played specifically at the chain restaurant Olive Garden, and it’s
strangely heartfelt.
Jeff Stormer, a podcaster and game designer living in Philadelphia, told Kotaku over Twitter DMs that his idea for an Olive Garden live action role-playing game started out as a joke.
“A
podcaster friend of mine, James Malloy, was messing with another
podcasting friend of ours, Meghan Dornbrock, about an Olive Garden gift
card he spotted in a photo she took, and he @’d me on Discord asking if
I’d write an Olive Garden LARP,” he said. Stormer says he is not one to
refuse a joke request, so he finished most of it in the span of an hour,
then circled back to complete the rest a few weeks later. “Then, months
later, I was out drinking with my wife, and realized I’d never tweeted
it to the official Olive Garden Twitter, and, for some reason, felt they
needed to see my masterpiece,” he said.
The game is simple. Titled after the restaurant’s tagline, “When You’re Here, You’re Family,”
the game asks the members of your party to form a new society as a
community. The adventurers order Olive Garden’s classic deal — unlimited
soup, salad and breadsticks. As each round of food gets delivered, the
characters become a new “family” and, therefore, a new generation of
their community. They reflect on how things have changed, for better or
for worse, thereby building out the mythology of the generations of
“family” they have created. Once several generations have eaten their
fill, the players can order a coffee, at which point their characters
become a new group of pilgrims discussing why they’ve decided to leave
their previous community and embark on a new life. Stormer ends the LARP
with a reminder to tip your waiter “extremely well.”
“My
favorite moments in the LARP are probably right in the beginning and
right at the end — when the players/’Community’ decides where they’re
headed and why they have to leave, and then when the cycle repeats
itself in the end,” Stormer said. “That, or the way the game subverts
the idea of ‘family’ by making every generation kind of embarrassed and
frustrated with the generation before. That feels very honest to the
conversations I’ve had with people about family histories.”
Stormer
said that he hasn’t done the LARP yet, though some of his friends have
reached out to him to tell him about Olive Gardens nearby, so it’s a
possibility. He is very serious about becoming an Olive
Garden-sanctioned LARP designer, though. “I don’t expect that title to
come with benefits or pay or anything — just the bragging rights is
enough,” he said. “Now, do I expect to actually GET that title? Probably
not. But it’s important to have to dreams. ”If Olive Garden isn’t
impressed, Stormer said he’s got some killer ideas for Red Lobster.
“…
the way the game subverts the idea of ‘family’ by making every
generation kind of embarrassed and frustrated with the generation before.” – ‘Subverts’? Sounds more like ‘represents’.
Concept: the secret boss of a video game is the merchant you’ve traded with this whole time, and their combat capabilities are based entirely on what you sold them.
For example, did you sell them Necromancy skill books? Well shit they can summon a skeleton army.
Yeah I’m really scared of the guy with 30 rusty iron swords and 200 fruit cakes
does anyone have reccomendations for: lovecraftian/eldritch horror themed rpg adventure, roughly compatible with any version of d&d but especially something that converts well to Basic or 5e,
and Doesn’t involve an asylum, doesn’t vilify or fetishise mental illness, doesn’t involve rape or anything like that trying to force being “dark & gritty”
I’m actually glad we don’t live in an RPG world. We really take for granted being able to coexist with most animals. I don’t wanna have to pull out a longsword and beat the shit out of six crabs and two snails while a starfish snipes me with magic bullets every time I go to the beach.
Other often used DM proverbs that are actually thinly layered warnings;
“You can certainly try.” “Do you say that in character?” “Do you say that out loud?” “You can try to touch it.” “Where are you looking?” “Are you paying attention to what’s going on over there?” “That’s going to be hard, but I’d love to see you pull it off.” “It’s your choice.” “Do you really want my opinion?”
Clippet or “Clippy” is the eldritch entity that resides in the Office Plane, a demiplane that takes the form of an infinitely tall office building filled with cubicles. Each cubicle houses a damned soul bound by chains of paper clips as they perform mundane paperwork for the lower planes as their eternal torment. The demiplane is reachable through the door of a brutalistic building in the city of Dis on Baator. Clippy does not profit from his work but simply enjoys helping others at the expense of his eternally damned employees. He will often seek out warlocks to aid in hopes that they will seek business with him in the afterlife.
Clippy Patron Warlock Features
Assistance: At 1st level, you can use your action to focus on one humanoid creature of your choice other than yourself within 30 ft. of you. Using your concentration, you provide aid to that creature. That creature may add 1d6 to any one damage roll of their choice during each of their turns.
Desktop Divination: Also at 1st level, you can automatically detect when a creature within 300 ft. of you is writing something and the nature of the inscription, but not its precise contents. For instance, you can determine that someone is writing a letter but not the contents of the letter or to whom the letter is addressed. You instantly learn the direction and distance to each writer in range relative to you.
Template: At 6th level, you can create templates of your spells to easily replicate them. Each time you complete a short or long rest, you may instantly create a spell scroll of any one spell from your list of spells known called a template. Any creature can use the template to use the spell scroll, even if they cannot normally cast spells. You can only have one template created at a time but you can change the spell stored in the template whenever you finish a rest.
Save Your Changes: Starting at 10th level, when
you cast a spell with a duration of 1 minute or longer, you may immediately take 5 points of psychic damage to double the duration of that spell (up to a maximum of 1 hour).
Don’t Show Me This Tip Again: At 14th level, you can use your action to attempt to banish a creature. You target a living creature with an Intelligence score 4 or greater using your action. That creature must make an INT saving throw. On a failed save, the creature vanishes and reappears in the Office Plane (the home of your arcane patron). The creature remains there as long as you maintain concentration up to 1 minute. While banished in this way, the creature takes 3d10 psychic damage at the start of each of their turns. The target can attempt a new saving throw at the end of each of their turns, escaping on a success. During each of your turns, you can use your action to impose disadvantage on the creature’s next saving throw. If the creature is reduced to 0 hit points while banished or if they are banished for an entire minute, the creature becomes eternally trapped on the Office Plane where they are slowly transformed into a paper clip, one of the many that form the endless paper clip chains that weigh down the souls of the damned. Once you use this ability you must finish a long rest before using it again.
Spells
Chains of the Office Plane
3rd level conjuration
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: 120 ft.
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Components: V, S
You call upon the paper clip chains of Clippy to bind your foes. You choose up to five large or smaller creatures within range, each no more than 10 ft. apart from at least one other target. The creatures become linked to one another in one long chain. Each creatures becomes linked to the nearest other target. If two targets are the same distance from one another, you choose which ones are linked and how, as long as it produces one unbroken chain. All linked creatures move at once when one target moves and cannot move more than 10 ft. away from a target they are linked to. This unique movement expends the movement speed of all creatures in the chain until their next turn. An affected creature can attempt a STR saving throw using their action during their turn to break themselves free from the chain. On a successful saving throw, all creatures linked to that creature are no longer linked to that creature.
Conjure Office Supplies
Conjuration cantrip
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: 5 ft.
Duration: 1 hour
Components: V, S
You summon your choice of either Calligrapher’s Supplies, Cartographer’s Tools, or a Forgery Kit. You also conjure a writing desk in a space within range. Only one set of tools and one desk can be summoned using this spell at a time. You may dismiss the summoned objects using a bonus action.
Clippet’s Magnificent Cubicle
7th level conjuration
Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: 5 ft.
Duration: 8 hours plus half an hour for lunch
Components: V, S
You create an extradimensional doorway to a cubicle of Clippy’s Office Plane. The door will only open for creatures that speak the passphrase you determine as you cast the spell. The doorway leads to a 10 ft. by 10 ft. room. The room contains an ordinary desk with plenty of paper and writing implements. A medium sized humanoid employee wearing a collared shirt and khakis and the paper clip chains of the damned also appears in the room. The employee follows your commands to the letter, but at half the speed of a regular person. There are also various magical tools available which allow you to do one of the following:
Shred any one paper or parchment using your action.
Make a copy of any paper or parchment
using your action
.
Bind up to 100 pieces of paper or parchment together into a book
using your action.
Cast Scrying (save DC 17) on a crystal cube located on the desk.
Invocations
Clippy’s Binding Blade: (Clippy Patron, Pact of the Blade feature) You can summon a pact weapon that takes the appearance of sharpened paper clip with a hilt. Whenever you deal damage to a creature using this pact weapon, the creature must make a STR saving throw against your spell save DC or become restrained until the start of your next turn and take an additional 1d6 bludgeoning damage from the attack.
Summoning this weapon takes a warlock spell slot and lasts for 10 minutes.
Paper Clip Familiar:(Clippy Patron, Pact of the Chain feature) You can summon an avatar of Clippy for your familiar when you cast Find Familiar. The avatar takes the form of a paper clip with eyeballs riding a floating sheet of paper. The familiar has the same statistics as an Imp but also grants you a +2 bonus to all INT, WIS, and CHA ability checks while it remains within 5 ft. of you as it provides you with useful assistance.
Page Navigation: (Clippy Patron, Pact of the Tome feature) You can detect paper and parchment within 300 ft. of you at will. You can use your action to teleport using your book of shadows to any piece of paper or parchment within 300 ft. of you by spending a warlock spell slot.
you: touch AC
me, an intellectual: passive Dexterity saving throw score
here’s a bunch of weirdly in depth d&d questions i have that’s going to take me years of experience to answer so it’d be helpful if someone knows any of this already: so when gygax says, pretty much constantly, that keeping track of in universe time is essential to dungeon crawl campaigns,
1) does this still hold up as true? is there really no way to wing it that DMs have found in the last 30 years?
2) does it still hold up if you abandon wandering monsters for a dungeon with only keyed encounters?
3) what’s the easiest way to count time at the table? should i get an abacus or an app or something like that to calculate time spent?
I have never been in a dnd group where time meant a dang thing when it came to the dungeon crawling parts. I’m sure it could be relevant in some games and used somehow, but it being essential isn’t true any more j guess. Now, OUTSIDE of dungeon crawling I’ve seen it be relevant and used in some interesting ways once in awhile, but even then, still not totally relevant. Only time it’s consistently relevant is when spells that last for a certain amount of time are used, and if it’s not during a match, during which time is easier to track because TECHNICALLY every round is 6 seconds long in in-game time (though rarely seems plausible lol), dms usually just spitball the time that’s passed and let players know when"yeah I think [amount time specified in rulebook that the spell lasts] has passed" or not. Or at least from all my various experiences, including my own short time dming. Didn’t see anything in the rule book about how to track time out of battle and if it’s necessary or not in 5e, and don’t even remember anything about it from when I used to play 3.5e.
yeah that’s the thing i’m interested in DMing 5th but also i’ve read a lot about the Basic editions from the 80s and they sound fun and i’ve been reading bits and pieces from all over the game’s history, mostly because a lot of things in 5e make a lot more sense if u know more about the history. and i’m specifically thinking of this bit in the 1st edition DMG that’s Gygax being like, he will personally come to your house and eat your dice if you don’t track what your characters are doing for every minute they’re inside a dungeon.
the old versions have this thing where turns and rounds are different depending what you’re doing. so it was everything happens in 10 second rounds in combat, but outside that there’s 10 minute exploration rounds. the idea being that your character takes about 10 minutes to scour every 10×10 square in an average sized room and spend the right amount of time finding secret doors and traps and hidden stuff and making their map. and 10 minutes every hour is spent taking a break, and every few hours you get a random encounter to tell your characters to search the dungeon quicker. and 5e has this only as a table saying how fast you can travel and still find hidden things, but it doesn’t have anything on dividing up time outside of combat. but the earlier versions make it really clear that if you don’t track every 10 minute chunk of exploration, you’re doing the game wrong. like, As Wrong As You Can Possibly Be, and u should fuck off to play a different game
and I know 5e must work perfectly well without tracking time like this, otherwise it would be in the rulebooks. I was just thinking specifically because old versions had a very different default play style, where there were megadungeons that took up whole decade long campaigns, or it was one dungeon and then wilderness travel and then the next dungeon, and having a storyline was something that came secondary to Hauling Treasure. i think if it’s a game like that, if i play through a megadungeon in 5e that’s like 50 levels deep and that’s most of the campaign, then i’m pretty sure i’d need to start counting time again. to keep track of hours for wandering monsters and when to force rests on them, because the game then becomes really focused on attrition and resources like light and food, and it’s like “every minute that we don’t get healed up again or find a safe space to rest we’re probably going to die”.
which sounds fun, i’m just a bit in the dark about all the specifics, and i’m also not even sure how well 5e as a system copes with something like that, and how i can simplify something as math-heavy as this to fit my DM style and not be dead weight at the table.
here’s a bunch of weirdly in depth d&d questions i have that’s going to take me years of experience to answer so it’d be helpful if someone knows any of this already: so when gygax says, pretty much constantly, that keeping track of in universe time is essential to dungeon crawl campaigns,
1) does this still hold up as true? is there really no way to wing it that DMs have found in the last 30 years?
2) does it still hold up if you abandon wandering monsters for a dungeon with only keyed encounters?
3) what’s the easiest way to count time at the table? should i get an abacus or an app or something like that to calculate time spent?
🍓🧀 (archive) 