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| An Everyday Scene from 1984. The year, not the movie. |
This is post number 9 in the series “30 Days of Tales from the Loop,” a celebration of the game set in an 80s that never was.
Tales from the Loop encourages gamemasters to provide a mix of two different scene types: those involving the Mystery (your weird adventure idea) and those involving Everyday Life. In addition to varying the action to keep things interesting, providing these different types of scenes also highlights the weirdness of the Mystery scenes by contrasting them with the mundanity of Everyday Life.
Everyday scenes are easier to come up with when you are familiar with your players’ Kids—and the resulting scenes will likely be more memorable for the players. But I don’t KNOW your players, so here are some general ones to get you started (in addition to the ones you’ll find in the rulebook).
Everyday Scenes Without Apparent Trouble
These are some relatively simple scenes from a Kid’s life that don’t require any dice rolls.
- All the Kids participate in a Spelling Bee.
- Mom takes Beth to shop for clothes.
- Dad and Kara make snow angels in the back yard.
- Jenny’s grandparents show up in time to see her dance recital.
- Jaclyn’s boyfriend buys her the new Michael Jackson album.
- Haylie’s essay wins a school-wide competition.
Everyday Scenes With Trouble
These scenes involve some element of challenge, potentially involving dice rolls and suffering negative Conditions.
- The neighbor nearly runs over Joe’s dog, and doesn’t seem concerned about it.
- Mom caught Dad smoking again, after he promised he’d stopped.
- Dad is awake and waiting when Marie comes home late at night.
- Grandma hasn’t been taking her medication, and now she’s starting to say (and do) strange things.
- Jason’s swim is interrupted by his big brother, who loves to dunk people under the water.
- Greg’s big brother breaks his boom box and says he’ll beat Greg up if he tells Mom.
I’d love to hear YOUR Everyday Scene ideas!