Tips for a Great Campaign

Stage Whisper rewards engagement. The more you invest in your sessions, the richer your experience becomes. Here are some tips to help you level up.

If You Want Something, Ask for It

The GM will try to accommodate requests: changes in the campaign, plot points, retcons. If you think the story would be better a different way, just ask for it. Use the "out of character" input mode selector if you want to have a longer discussion while in the middle of a session.

The More You Role-Play, the Better the Experience

When using AI, the more you roleplay, the more you're customizing your experience around something that's unique to you and your campaign. That means you're less likely to see the same old tropes and wording trotted out. If ten people play the same campaign and they all just give one-word replies to decide what their character does, some will likely see roughly the same experience. But if ten people role-played and wrote in detail how their character behaves, and their internal justifications, then their experiences will be vastly different.

Use Retcons or Ask for "Beat by Beat" If the GM Moved a Scene On Too Quickly

If the GM writes a scene, and then moves the scene on too fast, and you feel your character should have interrupted and carried on part of the scene — just say you're doing a retcon of the scene, and play it out from where you wanted.

Alternatively, if the GM is blasting through a particular sequence quickly and you actually want to draw it out step by step so you get the chance to savor the moment or develop the dialogue the way you wanted, ask to play it "beat by beat."

Use Rollbacks If You Don't Like the Outcome

You can roll back to an earlier point in the session if you don't like the outcome and want to try again with something else. Use sparingly though — you can't undo a rollback, and when you do, you might not get the same outcome you desired.

Use Rollbacks If You Don't Like the Outcome

You can roll back to an earlier point in the session if you don't like the outcome and want to try again with something else. Use sparingly though — you can't undo a rollback, and when you do, you might not get the same outcome you desired.

Lean Into Complications

When using the Stage Whisper game system, the purpose of dice rolls and skill checks are to introduce some randomness to the plot, and to make your character no longer automatically good at everything you decide to do. You won't always get what you want, and very often you're forced to play to your character's strengths. But don't worry — the mechanism isn't designed to make you fail and feel bad. It's designed to introduce complications that spice up the plot. Whenever you roll particularly badly compared to what's needed, you gain a complication, which makes the plot more interesting.

For example, if you're sneaking through a castle and you fail a roll, that doesn't mean you fail and the guards catch you, game over. It means you gain a complication — you can still keep trying, but your life just got harder and the situation got more stressful. Other times the complication doesn't hit immediately; it may seed a thread that comes to bite you in the ass later. Learn to embrace complications — it makes the story more interesting and makes your character feel more real and vulnerable rather than superman.

Edit the Campaign Files

If you want ultimate control over your campaign, between sessions you can edit campaign files directly. This gives you fine-grained control over the whole experience — you can change anything: the whole plotline, parts of your backstory, and so on.

Edit the AI generated responses

If there's a small detail you want to change in the AI generated responses, or you want to delete part of the scene because it ran on for too long, you can! Use the "Edit scene text" button. You can even edit older messages as a retcon. However, the further back you go, the more likely it would have already been summarized or entered NPC memory, so edits may not take effect.

Use the OCC mode to ask questions

There is a dedicated "Out of character" switch on the send button. When you sedn OOC messages like this, you're talking to the GM directly, and can ask questions, get ideas, or ask for changes to the campaign files. This OOC chat history will not impact the regular session, although the GM may choose to remember details that can guide the session. This way you can ask the GM to make plans that can affect the session.

Use the 'Suggest Player Action' and 'Continue Scene' button

If you can't think of what to do or say, use the 'Suggest Player Action' to generate three plausible options for your character. It tries to stay true to your character. You can have it always generate buttons if you prefer to play by clicking buttons rather than typing things in.

If you just want the scene to continue without any input, you can click the 'Continue Scene' button.

More tips coming as we think of them. If you've got a tip of your own, drop it in the Discord.