"Meanwhile..." - A Troupe-Style Storytelling Technique for Tabletop Role-Playing

    Many years ago, I was playing in a long-term game of Mutants & Masterminds when the story hit an unexpected juncture. The methods we used to get around this challenge would later become one of my favourite GMing techniques. We called it "Meanwhile..." and rather than describe it in a bunch of abstract, hard-to-follow language, allow me to tell the story of how we first came up with the idea.

First, let me set the scene and establish our cast. 

Tony - The GM
Me - playing Science Ape, a superintelligent gorilla inventor with a rocketpack and raygun
Drew - playing Guitar Hero, a slacker and wannabe rockstar with a cosmically-powered guitar
Steve - playing Fracture, a runaway former government supersoldier turned streetwise vigilante
Shaun - playing Blindside, a former celebrity athlete turned thrillseeking super-speedster

(L-R: Blindside, Science Ape, Guitar Hero, Fracture)

    The situation was as follows: The Player-Characters had encountered an alien NPC who had come to Earth to beseech Guitar Hero to help save his people from a mysterious threat. While Guitar Hero and Science Ape's players were keen to go (especially if it meant Science Ape could get his mitts on some of that delicious alien technology!), Fracture and Blindside's players were less enthusiastic. Both felt their characters' abilities would be of limited use in an outer space setting.

    At the same time, Tony, our GM was starting to get burned-out and thinking of taking a break while he recovered and had the chance to do some more planning for upcoming adventures.

    As it happened, Fracture's player, Steve, has been playing a lot of 'Mass Effect' and was keen to run the outer-space arc, which would not only give Tony time to take a break, but would give him a chance to actually play for a bit instead of being the perpetual GM. And so, the party was split. Guitar Hero and Science Ape went on as usual, with Shaun and Tony creating all-new, space-based characters: a robotic hero called  Voyager who was capable of transforming into a spacecraft, and Prism, a telekinetic alien heroine who channeled her powers through a psychic gemstone. 

    We began to refer to this arc as a "Meanwhile..." which, in this case, was short for "Meanwhile... in outer space!"

    As the space arc was winding down, I suggested doing a second 'Meanwhile...' about what had happened to the characters who'd stayed behind on Earth while Science Ape and Guitar Hero were in space and with that, "Meanwhile... in Hong Kong" was born.

    During this arc Tony, back as GM, would run a game of mean streets and deadly international intrigue as Fracture and Blindside teamed up with two Hong Kong-based Heroes (the gunslinging Black Ghost Fox and superstrong Iron Grasshopper) as they foiled an attempt by Fracture's former mentor, King Tiger, to unite the major organized crime families under the control of his master, Doctor Sin.

    After that, whenever the story called for it, or when the GM and/or players felt like a break, we'd have one of these side-arcs. Sometimes, it would be a different GM, as in the time when Blindside's player ran "Meanwhile... in Europe". Sometimes, we'd all create new characters, as in "Meanwhile... at the Benson Academy" where we created teen heroes and ran a superhero high-school based side campaign. Sometimes, it'd be a mix of existing characters and new ones (as in "Meanwhile... in Outer Space" and "Meanwhile... in Hong Kong").

    It's a great way to combat burnout, both with players and GMs looking for a change of pace, and it simultaneously allows the group to expand the world. Later, characters from previous 'Meanwhiles' can be brought back into the game as guest-stars, team-ups or even new regular characters as each player develops a small roster of different characters they can choose to play as.

    I'm using a superhero game as an example here, but it can be used across almost any genre. You might be playing a fantasy adventure game about intrepid heroes plunging into sinister dungeons and battling hordes of monsters, however, there's no reason you couldn't, say run a side quest where the players take on the roles of members of the local thieves' guild for a game of gritty urban danger, or the court of a nearby noble for some backstabbing and courtly intrigue. For a short time, they might even play a band of orc raiders, a group of ordinary townfolk or a shadowy cadre of assassins.

    You might potentially use a Meanwhile... to set up future events, or shine a light on past events as the players play through a tumultuous events which led to the collapse of the temple, the ruins of which their main characters are currently exploring. 

    You can even cross rules systems. A friend of mine had an idea for a Cyberpunk game. In the Night City Setting, there's a game called Body Lotto, where the city tallies up how many corpses were found and turned into the coroner's office overnight, with the winner receiving a cash prize. In his game, the PCs would play low-ranking morgue workers in Night City who would be contacted by an organized crime group looking to rig Body Lotto. 

    In the end, we played it as a Meanwhile..., but instead of using the Cyberpunk 2020 rules, we ran it as a game of Fiasco, while still setting it in the same version of Night City from our regular Cyberpunk 2020 game.

    In the same way, there's nothing stopping you from running a short run of 'Blades in the Dark' in your Fantasy campaign world, 'Mutant City Blues' in your Supers campaign world, using 'The Quiet Year' to map this history of your Post-Apocalyptic game, or countless other combinations.

    The end result of all of this is a way of giving everyone a chance to try something new and shake off the cobwebs so that, when you return to your regular game, not only is everyone feeling revitalized, but the world and the game you're coming back to is made even more rich, detailed and immersive than it was before.