Whimsy at your TTRPG table
It might seem pretty natural for whimsy and TTRPGs to go hand in hand. Alot of us use our time in these games to escape the real world and explore a fantastical setting with a group of like minded adventurers. However not every setting, system or campaign is suited to the whimsical. At least not what we typically think of as whimsical, which I honestly find to be a shame. When we talk about the dark gritty realistic campaigns, which I'm here for I love the tough situation it can put the players in, I think we automatically think of whimsy as its kryptonite. In actuality, we could use those touches of whimsy as a touch point to clue in players. Now before I ramble on too much about dark gritty games (I'll do plenty of that in a second) let's first talk about what I mean when I say whimsy.
The like literal definition as dictated by the Mirriam-Webster goddess is
whim·sy - noun
playfully quaint or fanciful behavior or humor."the film is an awkward blend of whimsy and moralizing"
a whim - plural noun: whimsies; plural noun: whimseys
a thing that is fanciful or odd."the stone carvings and whimsies"
Yes technically that is pretty clear on what it means in most applications. For books, movies, music, art I'd say take that definition at face value and run with it. But the medium of TTRPGs is a very different space to work in. Its equal parts a story like a book, movie or musical piece might be but its also kind of like a group hallucination. I use that phrase on purpose - you, a group of assumingly sapient humans, have chosen along with several others to sit around a table with dice and pen in hand to imagine a story together that largely takes place in your collective consciousness. So its not just about how you picture something or your assumptions of how this made up world works. It is in fact about finding a common imagination of these things. When it comes to TTRPGs that can mean a lot of things from NPCs, magic systems, and even a whole country's inner workings. Which brings us back to the definition of whimsy - how is it different for TTRPGs? This collective cohesive hallucination becomes a melting pot of not just character backgrounds but player backgrounds and how their real life colors how they code things in game. We code things based on experiences and what we were taught the easiest examples of this are the gestures we use when talking. In the US the okay symbol means just that in other countries its like giving someone the middle finger. Which means what the group codes as whimsical will largely depend on that melting pot of history and background. As a DM its our job to scoop up that gooey melted goodness and know how to paint in the whimsical clues and details.
Before we go running around with a big whimsy paint brush to go ham with we need to talk about some guidelines of how to use it. In other words how to not misuse or overuse it at least not without intention. Any rules or guidelines I lay out in these blog posts yeeted into the ether are just that, there are going to be instances where breaking them benefits your game. But until you are comfortable using whimsy correctly in your games maybe listen to me. I'm not your boss and this is the internet and we will probably never meet so I mean you do you boo. Back on track now - where should we have whimsy in our games? I'm personally a big fan of small but impactful touches using our IRL coding to flip things on its head and suck my players a little deeper into the world. Its a great tool to help speed along that suspension of disbelief we all look for in game as kind of an A+ to when our players are having a good time in the world we've built for them. Some examples of this are as small as transportation - instead of a horse and cart (snore boring~) maybe griffons or teleportation circles that act like bus stops or an automaton carriage. Take a thing that is kind of background to the game and is often handwaved to use that whimsy brush on. Pop it back to life, add flavor to your game, and pull in your players.
In our standard fantasy game, these small touches do their intended purpose. Whimsy to act as a flavor deepener for our game dish. However, if we flip back to those darker gritter games I mentioned earlier we find that whimsy can have another use. To flag something as not quite right. For our typical fantasy games we'd use the uncanny valley or the touches of macabre to hint that something isn't quite right or to put the players on edge. That wouldn't work in darker games because that shit is everywhere, its the norm. So we use its opposite, whimsy, to flag when our players should start getting antsy. The most perfect example in the world for this is the Grimm's Hansel & Gretel. All of their stories are dark, creepy and don't turn out well for anyone involved. Plopping down a big old house made of sweets, the touch of whimsy, immediately screams at us that something is wrong. Maybe your players are deep in a dungeon having drag out knock down near death experiences. They are dodging traps, taking out cave critters and looting treasures. But suddenly way down in the depths of this dungeon they start to see little touches of soft glowing plants, then mushrooms that form into chairs for them when they approach, and then a long table of desserts. THAT'S SO MUCH CREEPIER THAN WHAT THEY WERE EXPECTING! It throws them off the expected rhythm of the game, gives them a loop-de-loop and gives you an opportunity to surprise them in the campaign.
Up till now we've talked about where you can use whimsy, even in a game type you might not expect for it to fit in. So we've come to that time where I use the big bad NO hammer to tell you some don'ts when trying to implement this in your games. I honestly always just picture the wallace and gromit train track gif but with like a hammer and nails instead for this part of things and don't even feel bad about it. ANYWHO~ some things I've learned don't go so well when using whimsy at the table. 1) There is a difference between a really nice dish with just enough seasoning and a dish that is drowned out by that same seasoning. Its equally as true with anything you do in game. As DMs a lot of our jobs is building layers so that the world seems alive even when the players aren't actively in an area. One of those layers we can use is whimsy - but for the love of god do not make it the only note in your games. When we were kids we all read those scholastic's book fair books that were like rush jobs and were so single note so as to be best suited to over marketing to a younger demographic that everyone who read them believes them still to this day to be a fever dream. Don't become that at the table. 2) Your whimsy might not be everyone's whimsy. I mentioned this earlier but what we have consumed, our upbringings and what we were taught all make slightly different versions of what we build up as whimsical in our minds. Personally, I've consumed a truly amazing amount of things both from my own generation and those of my parents. I was lucky in that my dad was as big of a book nerd as I was. He owned Anne Rice books, the Wheel of Time series, and even did things like read the Wrinkle in Time series to us. But I have friends who grew up with mostly traditional folk lore because they were mainly raised by immigrant grandparents. So while there may be a lot of similarity in the way we both code whimsy, we greatly differ on a few touch points. What I might code as spooky or more horror genre they might ready see as whimsy because of that cultural understanding I don't have. 3) Do not assume your players will pick up on every touch of whimsy. We've all been there as a DM where we were like "oh hohoho my players will love this and get a kick out of this I can't wait for them to latch onto this" and instead they go become besties with that goblin in the corner of the bar we named Bob because they put us on the spot for a name. That's fine let them flow and go where they may. But keep adding those whimsy hints into the game until they latch onto one, then reinforce that as the thing to do. Maybe that is thru reward but that can also be from reinforcing the idea that it means something is wrong or bad. You know almost kill them in a witch's house made of candy, a little oven time will do them good. MMMMMM~ extra crispy players.
I know I said I was going to talk mainly about whimsy in game but I want to take a not so tiny space at the end of this to talk about whimsy in systems. Now don't get me wrong I love some heavily whimsical systems - kids on brooms, lasers and feelings, pugmire, amazing tales and more. Its important when you are trying to figure out where and how to fit whimsy, if you should at all, into a system to know one thing very clearly - YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE. That will influence if your whimsy is mechanical, strictly aesthetic or both. Which will in turn cascade into how your game feels when picked up and played at a table. To a lesser extent, this is true for anyone writing an adventure or 3rd party publication for it. But the base system is going to dictate a lot of that from the get-go and how deeply into that whimsy pool you can dive without breaking things. For instance, I personally wouldn't put whimsy heavy mechanical systems into 5e in say a magical school-type setting who has to overlay things into an already established system. Trying to force that without breaking the existing mechanics and systems in place didn't really feel like it worked. It instead felt like they were trying to play off a different game as a 5e game. That feels like a more light-touch aesthetical whimsy place with system mechanics that maybe instead back up things like experimentation with magic, an NPC mentorship of player characters, and maybe some fantastically whimsical new creatures for them to befriend and interact with which would have fit in better with their existing items. Whimsy heavy mechanics though in a game specifically built to be and only be about kids at a magic school make sense. It lends to the feel of that permeating every aspect and makes the game exactly what its target audience wants. If you pick up Kids on Brooms you want to live out your Tamora Pierce school of magic, Harry Potter chosen one, or Magicians dreams (for the darker among us cause those folks never really had a happy time did they).
Whelp a doodles ya'll a heck of a way to bang in the new year on this blog - With that little rambling over with, I’m JustKay your regular DM Dalliance on the web and I’ll see you next post.