I did a funny retrospective last time. One of my hobby is playing Pen&Paper Games (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabletop_role-playing_game) and I tried to combine this with a Retrospective. I have divided the retro into the following sections (Sorry some of the Pictures have german Text, but should be enough to get an idea of it):

1. Find a hero group

Time: 15 min - 20 min

Anyone gets a very small character sheet where he can create a hero which should represent himself in a fantasy middle-age setting and must have:

• A name (e.g. Sir Thomet)
• A race (e.g. Dwarf)
• A class (e.g. Knight)
• A Level (e.g. 66/100, I sad, find your own scale which can be different to each member)
• 3 Main Attributes: Body, Agility and Mind; The sum of all 3 attributes must be 100% (e.g. Body: 25%, Agility: 40%, Mind: 35%)
• A weapon (e.g Warhammer)
• A armour if you character have one (e.g. plate armor)
• One ore more Magic spell(s) (e.g. Reparus - Can repair everything)
• A slogan (e.g. Mess with the best die like the rest)

After creation everyone tells shortly about is hero (this is more a fun section and helps to train the self image and to dive into in the fantasy retrospective)

2. The Journey

Time: 45 min

In this section we did look back on our sprint Journey. The quest (sprint backlog) we started with and the the way to the goal (the sprint goal). That means having a look on all tickets which we worked on. The hero group tolled me, what each ticket represents in the journey. E.g. a ticket where the way was clear but hard was a representation of a mountain within our journey. There are also other tickets they are lakes where you need to build a bridge, forests where you can get lost, a side quest (e.g. not sprint goal related ticket) or sometimes only a normal way (easy task) or a small village where you can have a rest (and many more).

With that we got a journey map and we talked about all out tickets from the sprint and how they affected us.

3. Monsters, Traps and Treasures

Time: 5 min to write down, 10 min to present

Now the heros find out Monsters (e.g. big things to deal with), Traps (e.g. Wrong decisions) and Treesures (e.g. learn a lot about something). They write them on cars and present them after some time to everyone.

4. Tell the bard

Time: 30 min

After each journey the heros go the a Tavern to celebrate the adventure. And there will always be a Bard who will listen and tell about hero stories. Now the heros must tell the Bard the most 3 important things (Vote) in his journey. That can be something like: which was very well, something they will do in a different way next time

They will talk about the 3 topcis separately and decide if they will do it the same way next time or if now, how they will handle it next time (write down TODOs if needed)

5. Feedback

Time: 10 min

Everyone can tell 1-2 sentece about the retrospective

Closing

This Retrospective make a lot of fun, promotes creativity and is a very good variety. The participants had some start difficulties but after building the heroes they got it. I got very good feedback and the result was also very good. I recommend to anyone to be creative with your retrospectives.