By now, no non-traditional suggestions I make should surprise you. But on the off chance this one has, you really should hear me out when I tell you that writers should play Dungeons and Dragons, especially if writing fiction. There is a ton of overlap between how a D&D world is structured and world-building a story. IFYKY (if you know, you know), and if you don’t, that’s why you’re here! We’re going to explore the overlaps and suggest ways in which you can justif—I mean, utilize playing D&D with your friends to help you overcome writer’s block or work through a tricky character transition you’re not sure will hit.
What is Dungeons and Dragons (D&D)?
Skip this section if you’re familiar!
D&D is a tabletop group role-playing game that allows you to design a character, including backstory, talents, and limitations, to interact with other party members within an established world. This world is generated by a Dungeon Master (DM), who is usually a devious little sh*t . . . noooo, they’re lovely, creative individuals who spend so many hours building the world you’re playing in and sometimes destroying. If you have a DM in your life, you should talk to them about world-building within your own work. Chances are, they’ve had someone push back on something similar before.
You wouldn’t know what that’s like, though, right? You have never been the person to challenge your DM’s rules, right? Yeah, that’s what I thought. So you see, there is a lot to learn from your friendly neighbourhood Dungeon Master.
If you’ve never played a game before, ask around your friend group to see if anyone plays themselves or knows a DM to introduce you to with the idea being you join a beginner group to learn the ropes. It can take multiple “sessions” (official player meet-ups where the game is played) to finish one game, so make sure you can commit to the play time. Remember, you can put in as much or little effort as you want when playing D&D. I suggest challenging yourself to grow as a character creator and upping your realism skills by embracing a fantasy world that allows you to play out the “what if” in a safe and regulated environment. Meaning, you don’t have to wait until beta reviews to see if your new hook worked or if readers had a hard time following your logic.
How D&D can improve your world-building skills
Anyone who has ever played D&D understands how complex the game can be. Not only do you have to learn what your character can do, you also have to learn the rules of the world around you. Whether you can speak draconic or breathe underwater or eat berries or cast spells will influence what you can and cannot do in the world. Your skills, spells, armour, and even character’s background will come into play when you’re on a campaign. Toss in your party members and their complex characters, and you’ve got yourself quite the story.
Did you catch that? You’ve got yourself quite the story.
Play the game
The amazing part about D&D is that you don’t even have to create the world. You can just be a person living in it. You can learn the inner workings of this DM’s creation and maybe sympathize a little more with the reader who said they were pulled out of the story on page 76 because it didn’t feel real to them; the scene didn’t work for some reason. Well you know what else doesn’t work? Using Mending on a human being. Simply being exposed to the nuances of a D&D campaign will help you think more creatively when your written characters run into issues, or you realize you’ve made a logical fallacy in your world-building.
You’ll find there’s a campaign for everyone. You don’t need to play for months and months if you don’t want to, but like your editing process, you can only get so much out of an hour.
If you’re looking to try your hand at D&D for a creative boost to your writing skills, consider the following:
- Prepare a game character that fits your written world; either a random person who would be an NPC in your story or try out one of your main characters and see how much you can act like them (including dialogue!)
- Include key elements in your character’s backstory that allow you to work through some of the trickier parts of your work-in-progress so the challenges you experience during campaign can benefit your narrative
- Find a world that is similar to the setting of your story so you can interact with those world-building elements in a practical way, with someone giving you feedback on how those interactions will go and why
- Memorize some of the dialogue or phrases you worry are “cringe” and work them into your gameplay to test them out on group members
- Play many different types of characters and worlds! The more you know . . .
Try your hand at Dungeon Master
This is a more advanced move, but totally worth it if it’s in your purview to do. Being a Dungeon Master is truly being an author. You write the whole campaign, right down to the nitty-gritty details like what the physics are and what food characters have access to. You can be as detailed or not as you want, much like an author—are you the kind who goes “magic!” or do you carefully explain what will and won’t work? No wrong answers, but you need to understand the rules (at least loosely) so that you are consistent. Inconsistency will pull your readers (or players) out of the story.
As a DM, you can make a world entirely based on your written story if you want! Take the world-building you’ve done for your written projects and turn it into a playable D&D campaign. Experience events similar either in actual actions or simply outcomes to gauge how well they work. Experiment with scenarios you can’t quite visualize in your writing alone. You can even assign characters, if your group is willing, and share the details of your world so they can interact with it. Your group will teach you things about the story that you’d never anticipate otherwise. The inspiration for that disastrous explosion in chapter 7? Dungeons and Dragons. Thanks, Steve.
While you might be thinking “this only makes sense for fantasy or sci-fi writers,” it works for other genres as well. It definitely is most useful to fiction writers, I won’t deny it, but the improvement to dialogue, scene writing, descriptions, etc. that come with playing or DMing D&D apply across the board. (hehe.) If the most you get out of playing D&D is more natural-sounding dialogue, then you owe the game a huge thank you.
Want to talk more about your D&D campaign or current WIP? Email me: mgardner@rightyourwriting.com
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