by Zac Payne ’24
Since my high school days, I have been a fan of Dungeons and Dragons, and Tabletop Role-Playing Games in general. Among the many aspects of D&D that I enjoy, one of the highlights is how it (and its contemporaries) has helped me think about writing differently, particularly in light of two shared aspects: audience and collaboration.
Creating a story in D&D has several layers to take into account. First of all, what is your audience? The answer to this question informs every other part of campaign planning for Game Masters. If the group all wants to play a horror game, or a twisted tale of a group of villains fighting each other for world domination, the story will obviously be different than the somewhat standard hero story encouraged by the game’s systems. Knowing the kind of game the players want, and what characters they have made to play that game, makes the Game Master’s job much easier. This idea connects to any writing one may do. One’s audience determines a lot about the choices that will be most effective in an essay: the kind of tone used (formal or informal?), the content included (an audience who knows about the topic doesn’t need much background information), and even the organization of the paper (a news article might have a specific focus on a strong title, while most college papers require a clear thesis, for example).
The other aspect is collaboration. In D&D, the story is told through a combination of the Game Master and the Players. The Game Master essentially sets the stage, and establishes the secondary characters in the story, while the players make the major decisions and take the most important actions, affecting the world around them. While the players are, to some extent, the ‘audience’ of the Game Master, they are also collaborators, pulling on the threads of narrative the Game Master creates. Players will often have different ideas of where they want the story to go than the Game Master had in mind, leading to the Game Master needing to improvise on the spot to allow the story to continue. This connects surprisingly well even to essay writing. When writing an essay, the author will use particular sources to help bring more ‘meat’ to their larger point; these sources may not always agree with each other, or even with the author. In some cases, a source with a particular take on the subject may cause the essay-writer to revise their entire essay in light of that source, similar to how a Game Master might alter the path of a D&D campaign to accommodate players’ choices.
In short, audience and collaboration are essential to both D&D and writing as a whole. A Game Master familiar with what their players want out of the campaign will have a much easier time creating a world that will be fun for everyone to play in, while an author who knows their audience can similarly cater to their audience stylistically and content-wise. In D&D, the collaboration between the Game Master and the players makes the entire story tick, where in writing, the sources one uses can also begin to take on a life of their own, leading to a changed essay. Looking for writing advice in the things one enjoys can be a great way to learn more quickly.