The Dramaturg: a compendium playbook
A downloadable playbook
Why even play these games in the first place? Ask around, and you might receive a myriad of answers: the social atmosphere, the fantastical settings, the crunchy mechanics.
Sooner or later, though, it all comes back to the story: the ones we tell it with, and the ones we tell it for. We are narrative-driven creatures; the story pulses through our veins, beats against our bones. What better way to celebrate that than to help each other tell it—to help the story become its truest potential self?
ðŸŽ
The Dramaturg is a system-agnostic playbook for use in tabletop games. Rather than playing the GM or an individual character, the Dramaturg takes on the role of an outside audience member, focusing on connecting the players and their characters to the story's broader narrative throughlines. The playbook riffs on traditional dramaturgical practices in order to support the storytellers—the players—in keeping their play grounded, dramatic, and true to the game that they want to tell.
Made for the August 2019 Lead Roll Jam, hosted by jackdawfactories.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
This is really cool. A great GMing tool.
That's a playbook about active listening, and helping the story to move forward.
What's wrong about samuraï games writen by white people ? Creators don't do any researches? (I don't know much about samurai games)
Your sentence:
I guess that's the most important here ☺
PS: I really like the "Clarity of distance" move. Very funny !
Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad that you found it an enjoyable playbook. :)
I'm mostly making a joke about the prevalence of samurai games written by white people, moreso than any of their actual quality; that being said, most games that fall under that umbrella, at least ones that i've experienced, are misguided at best and appropriative or outright racist at worst)
oh ok thank you for the answer. That's true problems of racialization are often pointed out, such as problems of lack of research on reality and inclusiveness on some games