I’ve been playing Everest Pipkin’s The Ground Itself with one of my D&D groups lately, as we work on building out the world I created while writing about worldbuilding for Tabletop Roleplaying Games. It has been a lot of fun to create this location with my friends, all of us co-authoring the world’s elements as we build off each other’s ideas, take ideas in directions the others wouldn’t have considered, and generally have a more fun time than we expected we would. The open-ended prompts based on the deck, the somewhat chaotic nature of drawing things from a deck (our first time period burned through half the deck before we got to jump in time), and the always energizing exchange as we flowed between casual, light roleplaying in a handful of scenes to discussing what one of us meant when someone established symbotic relationships with plant creatures. All of this has been a delight to share with my friends as we work on fleshing out a world to experience with characters we already care so much about.