One of my favorite things about RPGs is that we don’t know what will happen until it does. Sure, there are play styles where a framework or plan for events has been pre established by one or more participants. However, my preference is for playing in a manner where the outcomes, events, “scenes” and timelines are a mystery to all involved, including the GM.

I had a couple of reactions to the word thread, one of which I put in today’s YouTube video, and the other here. When I think of the idea of a thread in this second manner it brings to mind Theseus entering the labyrinth trailing a thread behind him in order to find his way out.

Before we enter the labyrinth that is game play, we are like Theseus. We have no idea what we will encounter or which way we will go. But after the session, we can follow the thread that we have laid down, and narrative of events is now ours to own and look back upon.

When my friends and I talk about past sessions, in a very real sense we follow the thread that we wound through the maze. I think this is uncanny. Don’t you?