John Doe Era and April 3rd

John Doe Era

(original post at my Table Top blog)

Savage Worlds has this mechanic that happens during down times(like if the group is camping for the night, or staying in a motel between cities, etc) where you invoke an "Interlude".  In the Interlude, a character is given a chance to expand their character's story and personal life out of the context of the game.  A trend that started in the Happy Jack's podcast circle of friends was that the GM would get an Interlude out of someone without them realizing they were Interluded.  Speaking from experience, it is hard to get an Interlude going without people realizing, and without that, the Interlude can feel artificial and out of place at times.

The new idea, though, is something I feel is one of the best I've come up with in a while.  When explaining it, I used the name John Doe, so that's why its called the John Doe era.  I was watching The Walking Dead the other week, and in it the group skips ahead about 9 months.  You are not specifically told what happened in those 9 months aside from the fact that the group because more like a family to each other, and a whole lot of surviving happened.

 thought to myself "what if I skipped ahead a certain amount of time, and told my players that someone had joined the group and now is not a part of the group anymore".  This was the era of John.  At the interludes I would ask the person something about that time.  "its nights like this that remind of why you liked John, maybe you want to tell the group a good memory"  or "one time you saved John's life, why did you never tell the group, and what happened that day?" and after the character of John is built, I pull out the big one, "why is John not with the group any longer".

April 3rd, 2014

Something happened yesterday that I believe would have had many of you freaking the hell out and probably jumping around like a mental patient.  I was on the porch yesterday, having a nice little cigar, when I decided I wanted to sit in one of our rocking chairs.  I sat down and moved my hand to the armrest, and noticed a very dusty cobweb attached to it.  This was a little strange, as I've sat in this chair a lot recently.  Things were made clear when I went to clear the cobweb, and the "dust" jumped to life and started crawling both toward the wall and all over my arm.  Yes, the "dust" was probably 20ish baby spiders, recently hatched and blurry eyed in the world.  Now, I am lucky in that I have no fear of spiders for myself.  I kill spiders only for 2 reasons, fear of them hurting my tiny dog(have only killed one due to this) and if its dangerous to humans(of which only brown recluses and black widows are in my area).  I think I got the 7 or 8 that were on my arm to a safe place without any of them dying.

Later, while having a beer, a big woolly adorable jumping spider came out of hiding, "I heard about how you treated those young'uns, good job" he said, gave me a thumbs up and crawled back into his shaded area.

Easter is getting closer and closer.  I think I've decided to have a six pack of Sweetwater Blue.  Sweetwater is the local acclaimed brewery in the Atlanta area.  They specialize in lagers generally, a type of beer I do not typically drink.  However, I am expecting to be in front of a grill for over 6 hours on Easter, and a nice, refreshing lager with the slight hint of blueberries would be perfect.  I only ever use wood based fuel, not gas, so there's going to be lots of thick smoke, and so to cut through all that heavy smoke and grilled flavors, I'm going to want a very nice, cold beer.  If you can get it in your area, go ahead and try it.  Just remember that Sweetwater is not a brewery that pasturizes their beer, so you need to get a very fresh one if you're more than a few stays away.