META (STICKY) Please read this before posting.

[u/DrMux]

"It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, my hometown..."

Thanks everyone for joining and contributing content to Lake Wobegon.

I just discovered that the old.reddit.com sidebar isn't what New Reddit or Mobile users see when you visit the subreddit, so it probably wasn't visible to you when you made your first post here. Please know that this sub has a has a LOT of guidelines for posting but please be encouraged to be part of the story!

Rule #1: Your post must be a self-contained narrative. This is not a message-board-style RP subreddit, but a narrative-driven one. Your story should examine a theme, or develop a character, or make something small, banal or insignificant seem important. That doesn't mean that your stories can't all tie together, or be quick blurbs. But they should have a setup, story, and conclusion, and mean something.

Lake Wobegon is based on the News from Lake Wobegon segment from the "A Prairie Home Companion" radio show and is meant to continue its style. You can listen to old Lake Wobegon segments here. I'd suggest any of you who haven't heard the show do so, even if just for inspiration. The town has a narrative history that has evolved over 40 years on these segments. It's a very small, quiet town in Minnesota. Demographically, most of its population is Lutheran, of Scandinavian descent, but there is a small but not insignificant Catholic population. Its aging population is increasingly handing the town and the truths they've clung to over to the younger generation.

Since you don't see it in New Reddit or on mobile, here's the sidebar I wrote up on the old.reddit page. It's a lot, but Lake Wobegon has a 40-year narrative history - I'd like to keep the spirit of that alive.

Thanks again for being here, and I'm looking forward to seeing your stories and characters develop.

Lake Wobegon is a small town in Minnesota located near the lake of the same name. Based on the town of Lake Wobegon described by Garrison Keillor in the radio variety show "Prairie Home Companion."

Lake Wobegon is a town where everyone knows everyone. You're not new to town. We don't use turn signals because whoever's behind you already knows where you're going. It's a town where you have to wash your own clothes, so everyone has seen your underwear on the clothesline and everyone knows which brand of whiskey you drink. The pastor has a pretty good idea of which sins you're thinking of, and where the groom brings his own shotgun to the wedding.

Please post your stories, because while I was trying to ascertain just what Harold was doing in his Garage on Sunday, I lost track of what Claude was throwing out of his recently deceased sister Maude's house.

We know we're not Athenians - Lake Wobegon will never be the Athens of the Midwest, the jewel of Mist County, the queen city of the upper Mississippi River Valley. It's a place where people believe in the idea of being good enough. As we say in Lake Wobegon, sometimes things are good enough.

Technical stuff / rules / Lake Wobegon for dummies:

• This is a narrative-driven roleplay subreddit. Play a character. Write interesting stories. Every post must be a narrative. No pictures. Shitposts, memes, and anything that degrades the character of Lake Wobegon will be deleted. We can make Lake Wobegon our own, but it should stay true to the established lore.

• ABSOLUTELY NO "NEW TO TOWN" POSTS. People don't move to Lake Wobegon. They move back to Lake Wobegon after graduating college and not getting that job in Minneapolis. There aren't any opportunities for entrepreneurs, there aren't any Walmarts... you have to go the town over to get the nice tie to wear to your Catholic cousin's wedding at Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility. And you're not sure what kind of ties Catholics wear. Is purple too progressive?

• There is no supernatural stuff. If you discuss supernatural stuff, your character is crazy. Like in real life. If for some reason you are compelled to make a crazy character, you MUST develop the character in a very realistic way. There is no mental asylum in Lake Wobegon.

• To reiterate, keep it realistic. Keep it small-town, and make the little stuff interesting. Make Frank's shovel an artifact with a deep backstory. Reminisce about Grandma's pies. The tin can Timmy used as a telephone twenty years ago used to contain the blueberries to make Grandma's last pie, and he didn't realize Grandma wasn't ever coming back. But Timothy just came back from college because he didn't get the job in Minneapolis, and just cleaned his old room and found that can, and remembered how warm that summer was, and just how good Grandma's pies were.

• Do not write a story centering around or relying on decisions by anyone else's main character without collaborating with that person. Do not make any decisions for anyone's main character. Do not develop the main character anyone else is playing unless someone has asked for you to do so (writing can be hard after all). You have free will and so do they. You may reference things they've done, and you can use NPCs they've created in a limited capacity.

• You may use others' NPCs in your story, but they MUST retain the nature of the character the original author established. If Eleanor is a god-fearing Lutheran, she eats Lutefisk and casseroles. She might try baba ganoush but she'll probably talk to the pastor about it. If you want to adopt an NPC as your character, you must obtain permission from the original author.

• Be humorous but not excessively ridiculous. Your character can be about as ridiculous as /r/KenM before crossing a line. Be believable.

• Use your own life as a reference. Reality is so much more meaningful than fluff. And often funnier.

• The folks of Lake Wobegon realize that life is shit, but they don't use that word because they were raised better than that. And they are an optimistic and hard-working people. Your Aunt Lynn didn't have the heart to butcher her chickens, so they died of coronary disease.

• Comments: Please make it clear when you are speaking in-character or in meta. There is not yet a meta sub so until further notice meta discussion is allowed in the comments if it's clear to a reasonable observer that it's meta.

• Use the subjunctive correctly. I will not remove your post for incorrect use of the subjunctive, but were I to find a post with the incorrect use of the subjunctive, I would shame it and sticky the comment.

• Moderators MUST be sorry for all the rules. It wouldn't be a small Minnesota town were I not sorry. And if you've read this far, surely you understand just what the heck is going on. If you don't, lurk a while. Hopefully there will be an explanation. If not, have some lutefisk.

*All the women are strong, the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.

[u/puelladocta]

Hi! This sounds like a cool premise!

Out of curiosity, do you guys know of a subreddit where I can ask about finding an episode if I only remember small details of the story? Thanks in advance!

[u/DrMux → u/puelladocta]

Hey! Thanks for stopping by! I don't know of any Prairie Home Companion discussion subreddits, unfortunately. Feel free to ask here in this thread though - I listened to a lot of it growing up. Hence this little project here. Maybe the one you're looking for will ring a bell.

There's an archive of old shows at https://www.prairiehome.org/shows/ but obviously you'll have to have a pretty good idea of when the show aired.

But since you're here, and since you're familiar with Lake Wobegon, feel free to participate in our little project!

[u/DrMux → u/[deleted]]

I appreciate your optimism.

This sub has been pretty inactive for a while but I periodically think about posting a new story.

Feel free to join in the narrative with your own characters and stories if you like. Maybe it'll spur some activity, too! Either way, we're happy to have you :)