Spotlight Scenes with Moyra Turkington

Transcripts available at diceexploder.comWhen you’re playing roleplay-heavy D&D, what does a scene look like? Since the game doesn’t give you much in the way of tools for doing so, are you framing scenes intentionally or just kind of letting them happen? And if the latter, is that serving you well?You very well might be, but I’ve become obsessed lately with how we frame scenes in roleplaying games, and today I want to talk about a mechanic that does so very firmly: spotlight scenes, a procedure in which each player in the game gets a turn to say what they want the next scene to be.To do that, I’m joined by Mo Turkington, designer of many great structured freeform larps including the well-lauded Rosenstrasse and her latest release Lumberjills. We get into the history of spotlight scenes, the pros and cons of including rules for framing and ending scenes in your game, and how even a mechanic like this one that feels so structural and procedural, when used int he right context, can have a beautiful, thematically resonant message in it about agency and self-actualization.Ad LinksSong of the Scryptwyrm by Almost Bedtime TheaterFurther ReadingLumberjills by Moyra TurkingtonI Say A Little Prayer by Tor Kjetil EdlandJust a Little Lovin’ by Tor Kjetil Edland and Hanne GrasmoRosenstrasse by Moyra Turkington and Jessica HammerMontsegur 1244 by Frederik J. JensenRed Carnations on a Black Grave by Catherine Ramen and Juan OchoaSocialsMoyra’s games on itchSam on Bluesky and itchThe Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.comOur logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!Dice Exploder on Patreon

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