All My Friends Are Stories is a project designed to help people tell collaborative stories through Table Top Roleplaying Games (TTRPG). There are so many ways to play TTRPGs: you can play them for the crunch, the strategy, the social time with your friends -- but if you're playing them to tell stories that feel like stories, this is the place for you.

I want to make one thing clear: I'm not saying you SHOULD aim to tell stories. And I'm not saying you should aim to tell GOOD stories. But if you want to tell good stories, you're going to need some tools.

TTRPG is EXTREME

Imagine you called up a writer and said "hey, I want you to improvise a novel, in front of our friends, but we get to decide what all the main characters do and also we leave some major plot elements up to chance". In terms of storytelling activities, TTRPG is an extreme sport. Except most of us aren't writers, actors, improvisers, directors -- we're just nerds who love to tell stories with our friends. And so we're left with this frustration: there's a gap between the story I want to tell, and the story I'm able to tell with the skills and experience I have. My goal is to create resources (similar to the ones used by other storytellers) to help you tell the kinds of stories you want to tell.

Most people playing TTRPGs are telling a story for a very small audience: the other players. But if you want to take your storytelling to the stage (via podcast, livestream or recorded video), now you're performing for a potentially much larger audience. And while all the TTRPG guidance and advice will still apply, you'll probably be interested in Actual Play(AP) advice as well. AP just refers to any show where you play a TTRPG as a performance (as opposed to shows where they talk *about* TTRPG, but don't actually play them). The lingo here is suprisingly contentious, but I don't mean it with any particular connotation. Even if you want to make an AP without storytelling as your primary goal, you'll find some of the advice about AP useful (the production learning curve is STEEP!).

Volunteer-run, freely shared

Everything on this site is available for free, and you are welcome to share it with anyone who might benefit. If you want to support the project, consider signing up for our Patreon. If you'd like write guidance to share, email allmyfriendsarestories[at]gmail.com. One day, I hope we can bring in enough revenue to pay writers for their contributions and sponsor projects, but for now everything is done on a volunteer basis. Funds generated by the Patreon go towards maintaining the website (paying for the domain, paying for art assets).