What happens when a grand adventure ends? What does retirement even look like for a TTRPG adventuring party? Do they stick together and open a cafe? Or do they go their separate ways and embark on new adventures, making new friends along the way? Reunion by Matthew-Marmalade dives into this, presenting an emotional game about heroes meeting back up several years after their adventures conclude.
As with most TTRPGs, Reunion starts with players crafting their characters. However, rather than rolling dice to get stats, Reunion has players answer questions to generate a list of traits. These questions cover what your character brought to their old adventuring party, a memorable moment they played a big part in, what they did after the party split up, and how they’re coping with their new life away from the group.
The Nature Of A TTRPG Character’s Retirement
This character creation system is a fantastic choice as it means that while players can opt to create new characters for Reunion, they can also use characters they played in previous games, no matter what system that game used. This also means that players could bring characters from different TTRPG campaigns to Reunion, allowing them to spend a little longer with characters they love or write a retirement for a character who didn’t get an ending in their original campaign.
The game starts with a phase it poetically dubs “Years Apart.” At the start of this phase, each player draws a card and consults the included prompt tables. A one-minute timer is then started. For the duration of this timer, the players sit in silence and consider the prompt they’ve drawn, how their character deals with it, and the lasting effects it has on them as a person.
The Reunion Gathers
Once the timer ends, the Reunion phase of the game begins. During this segment, characters talk freely in character until one character asks another about what has happened in their time apart. The character then gets a chance to weave a tale about their experiences away from the party, inspired by the prompt they were considering during the Years Apart.
However, before saying how the story concludes, the player rolls a pool of dice (with the player getting extra dice for each fitting trait their character has) and takes the highest roll. A high roll means a good resolution, a middle roll leads to a mundane outcome, and a low roll leads to a terrible outcome. This continues until every player has had a chance to tell their tale, and the conversation comes to a natural conclusion.
Once it is done, another Year Apart starts, with each player drawing a new card. However, as more Kings are drawn from the deck, the Year Apart timer increases, jumping to two minutes after two Kings have been drawn and three minutes once all the Kings have been drawn.
Reunion offers several different options for ending the game, suggesting that the session can run until a pre-decided amount of time has elapsed, all of the Aces have been drawn, all of the cards have been used, or just when the players don’t want to play anymore. At this point, a final Reunion begins, where players can talk freely and wrap up any loose ends before the game ends.
Capturing The Feeling Of Passing Years Through Play
Reunion is a fantastic game that wonderfully guides players while giving them space to tell the deeply personal stories that matter to them. One of the game’s highlights is its prompts, as they strike a perfect balance between providing firm direction while remaining open enough that players don’t feel trapped by them. A big reason for this is that the game splits each prompt into three sections: beginning, middle, and end. So, each prompt starts with a firm theme and direction to get the player thinking. Then, the middle section gives the player a more open-ended question to ponder and spin however they wish. Finally, the ending section (and its associated dice roll) adds tension and opens the door for memorable improv moments during the group phases of the game.
Plus, the prompts are nicely varied, covering everything from major life-changing events to mundane slices of domesticity. This is a fantastic choice as it makes every group section feel like a real-world Reunion where some people come to share amazing triumphs, and others arrive burdened by unimaginable trauma. This variety also means players can explore and experience every facet of their character’s life and history, leading to many emotional and memorable moments.
Silence Makes The Game Experience Better
The Years Apart phase is also wonderfully designed. The minute-long silence is a stunning example of this design, as it enhances the gameplay and helps give Reunion its unique melancholic tone. Firstly, the moment of silence means that players have space to really consider their answers, avoiding situations where the game grinds to a halt because a player hasn’t had a chance to come up with their tale due to being distracted by other players talking. Plus, the silence enhances the tone. Not only does it make each group section feel like a different distinct event, but it also captures the feeling of people being dragged apart by life’s constant ups and downs.
Reunion is the perfect game for players who love to dream about their favorite TTRPG character’s retirement or for players who like their stories to have epilogues and solid ends. So, if anime like Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End has you craving some nostalgic but melancholic after-the-end storytelling, then Reunion is more than worth your time.
Jonathon Greenall is a freelance writer, TTRPG designer, and visual artist. They love creating and exploring the often overlooked corners of indie media, spotlighting things that dare to be different.