The Culture: What It Looks Like To #WinAtRPGs

It's Wednesday night.

You get home from work. Dinner's ready, and after that some time helping the kids with their homework before bed.

After that, you step into the home office and check your campaign's Discord server. It's time to sort through the Downtime Actions.

The first group you look for are the Patrons. Only three of them, so far, but they go first because their moves have a huge impact on events. Paolo's writing from Brazil, and his actions tie up The Emperor of Vimarr for a month (which conveniently allows him to focus on his international move Uruguay). Ken's shitposting from Australia, and you are not surprised to see him write up another round of war crimes for The Dragon King. Katia's settled in now in Georgia, and the One Holy Apostolic Church has announced a Crusade against the Moon Cult fleeing from the Dragon King.

You bring up the campaign calendar, plot those actions on it, and then bring up the campaign map and do the same. With time and space sorted, off to see what the adventurers are up to.

Doug's regulars are all in training this week, so they're taking the week off for other things--work events, family holidays, etc.--and a couple of the irregulars are showing up to pursue a lead on a spellbook belived to have the means to replicate a Flametongue enchantment in it. Sarah's regulars are off to finish exterminating a Hobgoblin army spurred into the Fighter's domain by the Dragon King after successfully assassinating the King's man behind it. Tom's group have their main characters midway through a long term in Time Jail, so their backup gathered up some hired muscle and they're going after a bounty offered by the Church to clear out a silver mine taking from Vimarr two months ago. As for your table, your regulars are all ready to go deep into that ruined elf city to find that rumored elf relic weapon.

Another round of plotting time and space goes down. Maybe an hour, especially once you're up and running.

On Thursday you post responses in the relevant channels during your lunch break. While some of the others play using Voice Chat, you're lucky enough to have your crew be local; they're coming over on Saturday. The others play either Friday or Sunday. Doug posts the overall campaign update--the one with no confidential information--to the campaign blog, while Tom turns that into a script for the campaign YouTube channel.

Friday night you get the kids around the table to help you put tomorrow night's session together. They're still early in elementary school, so you're asking them to color some things you ran off from your office printer and do some basic math; they're not quite ready to play just yet. Instead, you explain why playing this sort of game and not just playing a videogame has its merits; slowly, but surely, they're getting it- they're your kids. They'll learn how to win at D&D when they're ready.

Your spouse may not share your hobby, but said spouse does appreciate you sharing it with the kids and how you use it to teach real things to them.

Then, when it's bed time, it's also time to read them a story. They can handle shorter fiction at this age, so you grab a copy of Cirsova and read them one of the more child-friendly tales.

Life is good.