What is Textplay?

This site, this “D&D Adventure Wikithing” is entirely Solo play. I call it Textplay because the goal it write out the adventures in an interesting way (hopefully). I play the DM, the PCs and the NPCs, but I write from their perspectives as much as possible.

What’s a Wikithing?
I tried various options for publishing Txtplay. I am primarily writing in OneNote but I link out to many wiki pages in the Forgotten Realms wiki and others. I thought the best tool for publishing my own writing might also be a wiki except without the community editing features. I tried several “wiki” tools and they all had way too many features to work around so I decided to use a simple wordpress blog and structure it like a wiki. It takes a bit of work to organize things this way… but far less than trying to work out of “wiki software”. So this is not exactly a wiki… it is wiki-lite, or wiki-ish… it is a wikithing.

There is the basic structure to the Textplay. It goes something like this:

] This is the DM speaking – talking “to the table”.
Imagine being at a table playing D&D and the Dungeon Master (or Game Master, or whatever) describes what is happening around you and giving you opportunity to engage in the theater. The DM may speak “out of character” at times… but my goal is to keep that in Scene Notes sections, not the Adventure Textplay sections.

] NPCname “is saying this”
Since I am maintaining a difference between NPCs and PCs, this syntax identifies that the DM is speaking on behalf of NPCname. NPCs will never speak OOC, and will never talk “to the table”.

PCname] This is a PC talking to the table and “this is the PC talking in character”
Because I want to replicate what happens at a D&D table, at least to some degree, the PC will speak in character with quotes and will describe their actions without quotes as if talking to the DM and other players.

When the DM rolls dice, it will happen “behind a screen” and will represented with this symbol
[()]
When you see this, the dice are making decisions and determining outcomes, but I do not want to bog down the reading with all of these dice rolls.

When a PC rolls dice, it will be visible as such
PCname] I attempt to climb the scaffolding
1d20 Athletics 4 +5 = 9 [Fail]

PCname] I attack the goblin with a stick
2d20a Attack 13 +3 = 16 [Hit]

You can see the DM provides a result after the roll. If the player rolls with Advantage, it is marked as 2d20a and the better of the two is displayed.

That is pretty much it for syntax. I may or may not include a table with initiate rolls. Sometimes it is just easier to track on a notepad. But maybe later I will prefer to see the initiative order in the Textplay… who knows.

Article info