StoriesRPG - Drama Clocks Boost!

Welcome! This is a two-page, printable tool for creating climactic moments of tactics and tension - without combat!  Whether an epic chase, the struggle to save a sinking ship, or a desperate search for a medicinal ingredient, this will help you create collaborative goals and a real sense of drama!

As a certified teacher, I find the narrative focus in most TTRPGs to be reductive - the action and adventure tends to focus only on violence as epic, tense, or exciting.  This tool is what I use in my TTRPG writing classes to help kids experiment with creative, non-violent solutions to complex, dramatic problems.

Though designed to work with the StoriesRPG core rules, it works with any tabletop RPG, creating  countdown to a ...

• Consequence: What will happen if the players do nothing!  To prevent it, they'll need to make ...
• Moves: Actions that could help prevent the consequence - of any sort they can imagine!  Though their individual actions might succeed, they'll need a total number of ...
• Triumphs: In order to stop the clock and save the day!  

This helps you craft narratives that are epic and intense - but teaches players to use charm, investigate, fix things, and a whole range of interesting options to deal with drama.  If used with another game, such as D&D, just substitute Moves that make sense for the system - skill checks, spells, or abilities that might help - and Triumphs and Troubles that work ("Ouch - lose 1d6 HP as a boulder hits you!").

Here's a quick link library for all the StoriesRPG resources to help ramp up the fun:

THE PODCAST

• Stories RPG is an all-ages podcast in which we play story arcs that intersect with our play-at-home games in every genre, letting you listen along and learn to play with us! We have fantasy, superheroic, scifi arcs and more - listen along, download the games, and play parallel to our parties!

THE GAME ...

• Full Toolkit: The base game plus ALL the boosts, for a $1 discount!
• Core Rules: A one page RPG focused on helping players tell stories of drama, excitement, and adventure together.  All you need is four 6-sided dice, paper, stuff to write with, and at least two people!
• Scenes: A tool for outlining scenes for stories or games that's easy, collaborative, and intuitive.
• World Building: How to help kids build their own worlds, with their own lore and internal logic.
• Drama Clocks: Epic, spine-tingling, edge-of-your seat scenes where every Move counts - but without the violence!
• Power Ups: An approach to "powering up" where writing becomes joyous - a source of character growth and peer support!
• Teller Moves: A set of 16 quick-reference cards with strategies to help you run an engaging, collaborative, compelling, educational game for anyone!
• ArithMagine: An alternate mechanic for StoriesRPG that improves numeracy as you play!

WORLDS & ADVENTURES ...

• Starsworn: A monthly set of print and play, play to learn adventures with read-aloud passages, coloring book illustrations, maps, and a podcast that follow a group of heroes on a parallel quest!  The full book is over 120 pages of adventure! Legends say magic came when the stars fell.  At this year's Starfall fair, a group of everyday people will rise to become heroes when they fall again - and be swept up in grand and heroic events!
• Gigacity Guardians: The city needs saving! As new students at Signora's Sun's Sanctuary for the Stupendous, you'll need to master your powers, find good friends, and face masterminds and mayhem in the superheroic world of Gigacity!
• Partnerz In Grime: Play as a crew of unruly goblinz hiding out and causing mischief in the hooman world!

COMING SOON ...

• Gigacity Guardians, Chapter 2: Join the Kickstarter to print up the coloring-book, superheroic RPG this fall!
• Starsworn, Chapter 4: The saga continues as the crew investigates the towns of Belleweather and Bastion - and the mysterious Radiant Lord!
• Luna Uni: This scifi arc of the game follows a crew of misfits in a utopian future as they break laws and expectations at the universe's center for radical learning: Luna University! The game is currently being used to teach writing in multiple classrooms to rave results!
• Educator's Guide: This will be a longer work, and explain, step-by-step, strategies for using StoriesRPG to teach academic content in classrooms, including Common Core Standards, assessments, pacing guides, grouping strategies, and more!

Feel free to reach out with any questions, and hope you enjoy the games, the worlds, and the podcast!