Hello everyone! For those of you participating, I hope you’re doing well with your word counts! I’ve always said that Nanowrimo is the best experience to tell a story to yourself so you can prepare to write your next draft! Even if you don’t make it to the very end, you can at least say that you tried! And you’ll have more words written than 0 and that’s the real goal!
This month, I’ve started working with a new group of people to start an RPG group. It got me thinking about my experience with previous table top games in the past and thought I would share some of my thoughts about my relationship with role playing games as a writer!
A good portion of my experience comes from playing Dungeons and Dragons. Surprisingly, I didn’t get into D&D until I was in my late twenties. I got really interested in the game through Critical Role and decided to finally give the game a try. I’ve had a few people lead games for me and I’ve even run a few myself! The more I play these kinds of games, the more I realize how crucial they are for writers.
Firstly, games like D&D, Monster of the Week, Pathfinder and others are all about storytelling. Whether it’s a quick jaunt into the haunted library or an epic adventure across the lands, your adventuring parting is going to be telling a story together. From your introduction, there’s a call to action (usually a monster of some kind), which leads to finding more adventures, meeting mentors and questing together. Sometimes, subplots will arise and take you in directions you didn’t expect. As the GM, as much as a player, you have to learn to operate both as a planner and pantser when organizing your next move. The game constantly changes and you need to be prepared for unexpected changes.
You need to keep your characters goals in mind when playing and writing. Whatever whacky antics you get up to, wherever you send your character in the story, the most important thing is that you’re keeping your character’s goals in mind. Whenever I run a game, I always ask my players “What does your character want?” No one is going to give up a comfy life on the couch to go hunting dragons, but if a dragon burned down their house, they have much more reason. Like writing, TTRPGs are based on character decisions and interactions. While the plot may be about your characters fighting a dragon, the story is about your characters’ trials to facing that dragon.
Another thing I love about RPGs is how many different ways it can go. One decision, one mistake, one choice can change the outcome. As a player, it’s thrilling! As a GM, it’s mind boggling that a single role cant take away months of campaign prep in a single blow. Like writing, you may start off in one direction, but find a different thread to tug on that you find more interesting. The rest is finding how all of those ideas work together.
I almost always will find ways to test things. When I get an idea, I’ll trying writing it out as a scene or play with a character’s voice by speaking things I’d want them to say (my neighbors must think I’m a delight, I’m sure). My other favorite thing is to incorporate the ideas into games that I play. If I don’t introduce something as a new writing, people are more likely to tell me the honest opinion. If a character sucks or something doesn’t make sense, I trust my friends to tell me the truth about it. There’s a certain amount of trust that is between GM and players: the players trust the GM not to try and kill them outright and the GM expects the players to play true to their character (not as a gamer). It’s not unlike the relationship between writer and audience.
If you game, what do you like most about it? How do you use it to improve your writing?