RPG Tools: Break Your Own News

Continued from last week, so let's repeat the intro: The modern GameMaster is always looking for online tools to help make their campaign more immersive. After all, many of us have been relegated to playing online - the pandemic pushed it, but so did adulting, now parents can take a short break to put their kids to bed, etc. in the middle of a session, no problem - and GMs have to create the immediacy of the in-person experience somehow. A lot of online tools are subscription-based, and that interests me less. Over the course of a few articles, I want to look at a few, neat, online tools that can make a difference in keeping the players engaged, the equivalent of the props and hand-outs you might have crafted and passed around in the old days.

This week: Break Your Own News!

There are several tools like this, including ones that look like newspaper articles - feel free to search the internet - but the principle is the same. When Player Characters have an impact on their world, and their accomplishments could be reported by the media, tools like this which were designed to help in meme design can provide a visual that is then sent to the players, archived on their Discord channel, etc. Breakyourownnews can also be shaped for mobile phones/Instagram, so think of the fun your players will have when they suddenly receive one of your news alerts.

The purpose here, as always, is to create a memento for the players that cements their adventures in between sessions. The visual, which you can upload to the site after writing the headline and ticker tape, reminds the players of the moment. If their missions are secret, that's not necessarily an impediment. The media may not know what happened and therefore only cover it from one angle, but the players can elbow each other and say, hey, that was me.

As you can see here, the media has no idea what just happened, except the CONSEQUENCES of what happened. Ticker tapes can not only provide more detail, but could also be used to seed rumors or information that didn't make it into the game session. If, for example, I wanted to point to the NEXT adventure in the above news, I could have focused the ticker tape on Dr. Grimm's escape, and told the players WHERE he fled to.

Now, of course, this would be a weird device to use in a campaign where there is no traditional media. This tool in particular is for present-day adventures, or those occurring in the Near Now. You might find others that are more futuristic, but regardless, your D&D campaign won't support television. You could STILL do it, though. It then becomes less about creative an immersive artifact from the game world, and more about crafting a souvenir to share with the group. The defeat of a dragon, impossibly caught on CNN, is a lark and everyone knows it. But damn, it's cool to have that on my phone!