Why TTRPGs Changed My Writing for the Better

GM: Alright, [Cleric], you cast water walk and you and your party totally circumvent the magical trap in the sewers by walking on some of the foulest-smelling water known to man. At last, you arrive at what appears to be a large alcove meant as some sort of maintenance area. The light in this area is extremely poor save for the occasional flash of blue light. Anyone who wants to, please roll me a perception check.

Bard: 18.

Ranger: 15.

Warlock: 17.

Barbarian: Nat 20, let's go!

GM: Fantastic. You all hear it before you see it, a deep rhythmic thrum and the discordant squealing of cogs and machinery grinding against its operator in protest. As your eyes adjust, you notice the missing arcane device you have been searching for along with an artificer tinkering with it. It is a massive thing with brass clockwork rapidly turning rings of arcane sigils below an overheated steam engine. A disturbing pale blue light emanates from the machine with each beating thrum that coincides with the turning of the clockwork rings. In the evanescent light sweeping the room, you notice two other figures: a gruff looking man with large muscles who is cleaving close to a figure you all recognize. It is the pale elf wizard from the tea house, though beneath his trench coat you notice his hands anxiously caressing the hilts of two long elven swords.

Party: *Exasperated groans and sighs of annoyance.*

Cleric: Not this guy again!

GM: *smiles evilly* The elf taps his foot against the sewer bricks in annoyance. "Come on, hurry up! They should be here soon!"

The artificer does not look up from his work. "I'm tryin', boss. These things aren't made to purposely explode, you know."

Barbarian, you rolled a nat 20 earlier. Can you roll me an investigation check please?

Barbarian: Oh, I suck at these... 12?

GM: That's enough, I'll give it to you. Thanks to your superb spatial awareness, you surmise that you must be somewhere below the palace in this tunnel.

Barbarian: Damn, I had a feeling.

Cleric: Well, that's not good.

GM: The elf looks up, his right hand gripping one sword pensively. "Strange. I heard the black powder blast from the entrance grate but none of my arcane alarms have been tripped. Interesting..."

Alright, we're going to keep your stealth rolls from just before this and he's going to roll another active perception... *rolls dice* The elf turns around and looks right at you. He grins a wicked smile and cocks his head as he takes a careful step forward.

Party: *Collective expletives and nail biting.*

GM: He begins speaking in the same sort of arrogant nonchalance as he used before. "Oh, bravo, heroes. You are certainly more skilled than I had anticipated, but as you ca-"

Cleric: I cast silence over the wizard.

Bard: And I cast sleep on the three of them.

GM: *Blinks as he comprehends the situation. Shakes his head.* Alright, well, um, you see the elf is attempting to do some sort of menacing monologue but you do not hear a single word of it. Meanwhile, the artificer collapses amidst the machine controls and begins snoring... silently.

Party: *Raucous laughter.*

GM: However! The machine shows no sign of calming and the elf is silently yelling in anger. Suddenly, he grabs both swords from their sheaths as each blade becomes wreathed in greenish purple fire. Please roll initiative.

-An excerpt recovered from the notes of a session of a homebrew D&D session I ran about three years ago using my own setting: Afterfall (see below). It remains one of my favorite sessions to this day.

There is a common adage in the tabletop gaming community: if you want to tell a story as you want it, write a book; if you want your group to be engaged and have fun, become a game master (GM). Personally, I have been a player in some groups where either the GM or a certain player is unhappy with someone else's actions and tries to over-write their contributions to the story with how they think they 'should' occur. In the tabletop space, this is called railroading and it is seen as one of the laziest narrative styles that lacks any real sense of improvisation or creativity. Where my opinions on the matter diverge is that I do not see this type of storytelling as "writing a book" per se. In this article, I want to show how becoming a game master has helped my writing for the better as an amateur self-taught writer.

Character-Driven Storytelling

I want you to think about either a book, video game, or TV program. Think about a moment where a character does something that you believe they would not necessarily do given their character traits and flaws and put it in the comments below. Does that moment serve any purpose in character development or emphasizing conflict driven by their flaws, or does it serve only to force the plot in a given direction that you feel the author desperately wants it to go? How did it make you feel? Were you satisfied with the action, or did it leave you glaring at a rather obvious plot hole?

Many tabletop gamers associate this narrative device with book and short-story writing. They see the written word as the linear manifestation of an author's mind. While this is not an inaccurate analysis for some authors, I feel it does not describe the whole. In fantasy literature, one example I can think of (mild spoiler warning) is in Christopher Paolini's 'Inheritance Cycle' with the hit-and-miss romance of Eragon and Arya. By the end of the third book, Eragon is a barely young adult 'chosen-one' dragon rider with raging hormones and severe emotional trauma while Arya is a hundred-and-something year old elf princess struggling with inheriting the throne after her mother dies tragically in battle and simultaneously becoming the third dragon-rider of the age. While both young adults struggling with their unique destinies, neither are particularly ready for a committed romance with limited long-distance potential and a questionable age gap. While the fans certainly would have loved seeing them getting together, there is a general consensus that that is the most realistic outcome at that point in time for both characters. (Spoiler over)

In essence, stories are generally unsatisfying when outcomes feel forced, and considering the actions of other characters on the plot as a whole is necessary for dynamic storytelling. For example, should I have stopped my players from casting silence on the wizard and sleep on his minions so I could act out the menacing villain monologue that I spent nearly an hour writing? I think not. It certainly ended up much more amusing and memorable otherwise. Besides, it was amusing for everyone to see how much they struggled with an extremely peeved and powerful evil wizard afterwards. Thankfully, there was no TPK, but they did have the rather emotional loss of a NPC's sentient pet flamethrower. Marcy, you will be missed.

Going with the Flow

In my experience, both writers and new game masters have one dangerous thing in common: they think they are master planners that can foresee every outcome. Ultimately, this leads to some rather tenacious writer's block, or -in the case of the game master- that sheer momentary panic when their players ask what the tavern keeper's cousin's daughter's name is.

When this happens, I have the same general advice as Captain Cold from the CW's Legends of Tomorrow:

"Make the plan, execute the plan, expect the plan to go off the rails, throw away the plan"

Yes, I am aware I am a nerd. So, you might also ask, how does one plan for a plan to fail without planning to use a railroad? My answer is simple: throw that runaway train into a funnel. What do I mean by this? Create some urgency related to a measurable goal. Are the characters in a completely different city delivering a shipment of artisanal doilies when they should be investigating a destroyed town for the local lord? Send a messenger from the lord announcing his displeasure at their lack of progress on the contract. Have they spent all morning hungover when a person they've been hired to find is escaping? Remind them that their reward will be forfeit if they do not hurry. Introducing theoretical consequences of vague danger is a fun way to lovingly prod your players while still giving them some agency of choice. And if they still decide against it? Well, the GM giveth and the GM yoinketh away.

I find the same is true for conventional storytelling. While you are telling a story, your story should not necessarily be linear. Think to yourself, "If character X were to make this decision and not me, what would they do?" If the answer is 'fudge around until they find out', then that's the direction you take it. Take Star Wars: A New Hope, for example (Spoilers, even though it came out in '77). Other than riding around on his speeder, talking to strange old men, and whining about power converters, Luke does not feel any sort of call to adventure until the Empire crispens his entire farm and family off-screen. (Spoiler over) Freedom and consequences always make a story more interesting.

Imagery and Description

One of my favorite styles of storytelling for tabletop games is called theater of the mind. This is when a game master will prefer verbal descriptions and simple abstract line drawings to illustrate the scene over realistic pictures, maps, and dioramas. Why? Well, let's face it, not all of us have the kind of budget to run a professional in-person tabletop game like Critical Role or Dimension 20 can. Indeed, theater of the mind is how I started GMing over five years ago at my first session as GM.

The key to running successful theater of the mind storytelling lies in far more than just improvisation and group storytelling skills. One needs to develop a singular narrative skill that will seal the deal for most players: the precise and impactful use of imagery. Even in writing, this skill can be hard to learn in a skillful manner. It is easy to just throw words at a reader, but a detail needs to be relevant to the scene in some manner.

There are a few ways to accomplish this. The way I was shown -and the one I find most success with- is to tie the most important details to at least two of the five senses: taste, touch, sight, smell, and hearing. Sight and hearing are by far the easiest sense as most people are used to writing, but not necessarily the strongest in many cases. Psychologically, taste and smell are suggested to be the best at eliciting similar memories in your audience, allowing them to piece together their own version of the scene within their brain, ultimately aiding sight and hearing when used appropriately. It is not enough to simply state you are in a sewer, talk about the damp, eye-watering smell of mildew and human detritus. Now, the last sense we have is touch. Unless you have a character going around and touching every single thing they see like a near-sighted toddler on a sugar high, it's best to reserve those descriptions for when your audience needs information about texture, material, temperature, and consistency.

Final Words

It is easy to overlook tabletop games as a nostalgic fad or a simple means of entertainment, but it is important to recognize that it is a tool to teach people not only about the value of storytelling but its basic components as well. The reason tabletop gaming is so popular (especially after the pandemic) is the same reason why fantasy and science fiction writing exist: stories and imagination bring people together. Look at the cultural movements that franchises like Star Trek, Star Wars, The Witcher, and many others started. Now look at the movements for similar games like D&D, Warhammer 40k, and many more. And to think, I even look over on my shelf and see many book series that are directly based on TTRPG settings like the Drizzt Do'Urden books by R.A. Salvatore or the Shadowrun novels. From my own observation, I conclude that the style of storytelling used for TTRPGs and writing are intrinsically similar and complement each other well despite their differences.

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If you are interested in the setting from the excerpt at the beginning, that is from one of the alpha playtests for my setting Afterfall. Afterfall is a version of Earth in the far future well after a series of interplanar calamities known collectively as 'the Fall'. Seemingly overnight, myths became real, gods appeared in dreams, and beings of all sorts sought refuge in a world unprepared for reality itself to become upended. Now, over a millennium later, the world is on the mend. However, the consequences of the Fall are not far behind and there are those who thrived under the chaos of the previous age that seek to regain their fortune.

The players are a group of mercenaries working for the Minuteman Universal Security Company (TM), a corporation that contracts the talent of licensed adventurers to vetted clientele of all backgrounds. This is a tale of gold versus ideals, of power versus change.

New sessions will be broadcast on my Twitch and past ones will be archived on my YouTube. If you're interested in watching, be sure to drop in and say hi!