Today, though, we’re going to be talking about something that is very near and dear to my heart. TTRPGs! In fact, though you can’t see it, I have an entire shelf filled with TTRPG books. These are rule manuals for playing TTRPGs, and if you don’t know, TTRPG stands for tabletop role-playing game. These are games that you play with other people around a table where you create characters and you tell a collaborative story in a fantasy or science fiction world.
I’ve been playing them for almost 20 years now, and not only as a player, but also as a game master or the person who sets the stage and helps the players tell the story that their characters are involved with.
TTRPGs are fantastic for a number of reasons, but the thing I wanted to talk about today that I wanted to sort of highlight is how playing games like D&D has changed my mentality around storytelling. I think that’s a really important thing to highlight, because sometimes we don’t understand the point of what we’re trying to do. When we don’t understand the point, it is way easy to miss the mark. It’s way easy to just not produce something that meets other people’s expectations, and when you don’t meet expectations, especially reader expectations, then people stop reading.
One of the sort of inconvenient truths about being an author, and one of the things that I had to grapple with as a young author, was that nobody inherently wants to read your work. Don’t get me wrong, some people might want to read it because they like you. Like your mom, right? My mom tried to read my books because she likes me, but she doesn’t really like the subject matter that I’m writing about, right? She’s not into fantasy. It was a little bit harder for her to get into the books because she just isn’t a fan of fantasy, but she likes me, so she read them anyways, right? And then eventually stopped.
And this is my point, is that even if people are reading your books because they like you, they will eventually stop if you are not meeting their expectations. It’s okay that we don’t meet everybody’s expectations. It’s all right that my mom doesn’t read my books. It’s all right that people who like me just aren’t interested in what I write, but again, this is something that took a while for me to really wrestle with and understand.
See, we have this idea that art is primarily about the artist’s expression. That is true to a certain extent, but at the end of the day, and man, I know that I’m going to start a fight with this, but at the end of the day, if nobody else likes or appreciates, or is able to resonate with, or is able to empathize with your art, then what’s the point? You can scream out into the void all you want, but if nobody’s there to hear you or to connect with you on an emotional level, then what good does the screaming do?
I mean, sure, there’s some catharsis in it, but if I wrote books just for myself, if I wrote books for only me, then I wouldn’t be a full-time author. I’d be able to do it, you know, on the side, or I’d be able to do it while performing another job in order to make a living, but I wouldn’t be able to sell enough books to live off of the proceeds.
And so there’s this delicate dance that everybody who wants to be a full-time author or wants to make money with their books has to engage in, which is that you have to write things that aren’t just for you, that are for other people as well, that meet their expectations.
And so I want to talk about how GMing, again, being a game master for TTRPGs and being a player for TTRPGs really helped me wrestle with this idea of what is my art and what is a product that is for other people. I hope that this can help you as well.
If you’re not someone who has ever played a TTRPG, I would definitely recommend it. Finding a group can be hard, but if you can find a good group, it can be hugely transformational in the way you understand and tell stories. I’m a great example of that. I credit a lot of my success to tabletop role-playing games.
And there are sort of two different pieces to that. I’m going to frame it as, you know, what I learned as a player and what I learned as a GM, because GMing and playing are two different skill sets and they are skill sets. Some people have this idea that, you know, if you go and you sit down at a table, then it’s sort of like free for all and whatever you want to do is fine. You’re there to play and express yourself, so you can just express yourself, right?
And those are the people, either as GMs or players who lose groups really, really fast. Anybody who’s been involved in the TTRPG scene for any length of time knows that there is a difference between a good player and an annoying player. There’s a difference between a good GM and a bad GM.
Now you’ll notice that I use some different terminology there, and that’s because I can be a good GM and a bad GM. I don’t actually think you can be a bad player. I think you can just be a player that nobody wants to play with. You might say that that makes you bad as a player, but being a player is a lot more nebulous than being a GM, right?
Being a GM, you have a very specifically defined role. You are there to facilitate the game, and if you do that well, you’re a good GM. If you do that poorly, you are a bad GM, right? But as a player, you’re there to interact with the world, and there’s a lot more nuance to how that works out. I don’t think we can categorize that as like good player and bad player.
Anyway, I’m getting on my soapbox again. I’ll get off it. The point is that in learning to be a player and in learning to be a GM, I was able to refine my storytelling technique from both sides. At the end of the day, TTRPGs are about one thing and one thing only, and that is having fun. Because that’s what all games are about, right? There’s always an aspect of a game that might use your brain or require interaction with other people, or require interaction with a board, and you can grow in skill and ability in those things, but at the end of the day, if you’re not having fun, then it’s not a game. A game is something that you have fun with. So, if you’re sitting down at the table to play a TTRPG, either as a GM or a player, and you’re not having fun, then something is wrong.
So, what does this have to do with writing, though? Well, at the end of the day, what’s the point of a book? It’s to gain something out of it. It is to gain some level of enjoyment out of it. In that way, writing and playing a TTRPG mirror each other very closely. They’re both forms of entertainment, right? And you might say that, well, not all books are fun. Sure, but the person who is reading it continues to read it because they are getting something out of it, right? They’re getting either fun and enjoyment, or they’re getting catharsis. They’re getting something from it, which is why they continue reading it. In the same way that a game is fun, and so we continue playing it.
So, at the core, there is something that drives the individual doing the activity to continue doing the activity, right? As a player, when I sit down at a table, if I am not having fun, I will either leave the table or I will not come back for the next session. As a reader, if I’m not getting catharsis out of this book, if I’m not gaining something from the book, I will put it down and I will move on to something else.
That immediately identifies for us the benchmark that we have to hit, either as an author making a book that’s engaging enough to keep somebody there, or as a player at a TTRPG table making sure that I and the other people there are having enough fun that we stick around.
So, let’s talk specifics. What did I learn as a player that enabled me to tell better stories? This is nuanced, but I hope that I can communicate it clearly to you. As a player, I learned that it’s incredibly important for everybody to have their moment to shine. I’m going to talk about this a little bit more when I get into GMing, but this is a really important piece of being a good TTRPG player, and it’s a really important piece of being a good writer.
Tabletop role-playing games are, at their heart, a collaborative experience. The players are there to interact with each other, to pilot a character through a setting and a story. If they don’t feel like their character is able to interact with the world in a meaningful way, well, what’s going to happen? They’re not going to have fun. They’re going to stop playing, and that ruins everything for everybody.
So, it’s incredibly vital that people have their moment to shine. What’s really interesting, though, is not everybody needs the same kind of moment, and this is what I learned. When dealing with characters in a story, nuance is important. Everyone needs to feel as if they have the space to be themselves, right? Because when you don’t have that, you end up with these flat, one-dimensional characters.
I’ve played with people who were content to be relatively obscured. For instance, I played TTRPGs for a long time with a good friend of mine who was content to sit there and listen to the story and didn’t really need a whole lot of interaction, but every once in a while, every few sessions, he would want to do something really, really cool. His contribution to our collaborative storytelling effort through this TTRPG was these brief moments of awesome, where he would just pull something out completely wild and drastically change either the scene or the storyline or the situation. Our GM and the players at the table had to learn how to adjust to that, to let him have that bright moment of glory. Then again, he was just content to sit in silence for multiple sessions after that.
I played with another friend who was the exact opposite. He never did anything big and flashy, but he always wanted to be involved. He always wanted to be in the middle of the action. He always wanted to be talking. He always wanted to be interacting. He was always coming up with ideas and wanting to try this and that and the other thing. He didn’t have these big, flashy moments, but he did have a consistent presence.
These are different kinds of characters. Just like there are different kinds of players at a table who are going to pilot their own characters in different ways, this helped me understand that in a story, not everyone is the same. Not everyone requires the same amount of attention from the author. Not everyone requires the same amount of cool action scenes or witty dialogue, but everybody does require their moment to shine. Otherwise, you again end up with just these sort of flat characters.
As a player, sitting there and observing how other people operated their characters gave me these really good templates for understanding how characters in my stories should behave. Even the most obscure character wants to feel important. They want to feel like they have agency. They want to feel as if they can move the story forward. It’s important as an author to give them that opportunity. This might come in the form of a shopkeeper who only has a couple of lines or maybe is only seen once or twice doing something interesting. Doing something that makes them the hero of their own story. Maybe it’s the way they’re interacting with somebody who works in their store. Maybe it’s the way they’re interacting with the main character, but the point is that every character should believe that they are the hero of the story. That this is a story about them and whoever they’re encountering is merely a footnote. Because again, that’s how people operate.
So, it’s really important as you are telling a story, whether at the TTRPG table or through a novel, that you understand that dynamic and that you give your characters the room to breathe.
So, that’s what I learned as a TTRPG player. Everybody needs their moment to shine.
What about as a GM? Because I’ve GMed quite a few games in quite a few different systems over a long period of time. Well, before I get into that, I just want to give a shout out to this video’s sponsor. That’s a joke. This isn’t really a sponsored video, but we just launched a BackerKit campaign for a TTRPG module. It’s a 5e D&D module for Battle Mage Farmer Tales of the Ecclesia. This is a multi-session module set in the world of Battle Mage Farmer that allows you to take control of class holders and play a fantastic adventure. It’s set in the valley. So, you are going to be able to interact with some of your favorite characters from Battle Mage Farmer.
There’s also an additional novella that goes along with it. This novella sort of explains the backstory of some of the characters you get to pilot. Like I said, it’s on BackerKit now (check it out here).
Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, GMs. Being a GM and what did I learn about writing from that experience? Like I said, I’ve been GMing for quite a while. I’ve GMed multiple very long campaigns and had a great time doing it. I also had the benefit of sitting under some fantastic game masters as I was learning to play D&D and all sorts of other TTRPGs. I learned a huge amount from them.
One of them taught me a lesson that I have been able to apply in my writing ever since, and that is that players need to feel as if they are in charge. Players need to feel as if they have agency. Why is this important? Well, it’s because agency is everything in life. The ability to dictate what you do and when you do it is one of the most important psychological anchors for humans ever.
If you’ve ever had a job where you feel like everything is out of your control, you don’t get to make the decisions, you just have to sort of do the work, chances are that you’ve hated it. If you’ve ever been in a situation where you feel like you should be able to control your environment, but for whatever reason, everything is just spiraling and you have no ability to determine what will happen next, chances are you’ve hated it. In fact, nobody can live in those conditions. When we don’t have a sense of control over our environment, humans very quickly deconstruct.
Now on a much lighter scale, this is what happens when TTRPG tables fall apart. When a GM doesn’t give players agency, when they quote railroad them into doing exactly what the GM wants because the GM wants to tell a very specific story, players hate it. Those are the tables that players don’t come back to. If you want to be a good GM, you have to give your players choices.
Now that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to give them absolute choice or absolute freedom to do whatever they want, whenever they want. In fact, you shouldn’t do that because that’s not how the real world works either. I cannot simply walk outside and choose to fly. Now I can go and buy a plane ticket and get on a plane and fly in that way, right? There is choice, but my choice is constrained by what is possible and what is not possible. It’s okay to still have those guidelines.
What’s not okay though is forcing players into action, not giving them the possibility of choosing their own outcome. This is one of the reasons that choose your own adventures were so popular when I was younger. It also leads to a reason that a lot of people get frustrated with books they read.
As an author, it can be exciting to tell the story you want to tell, but the problem is that when you are so focused on telling the story that you want to tell, it can sometimes come through in the way that your characters engage with the world around them. The sense of agency, the feeling of agency is one of the most important things for a story.
And as a writer, I had to learn that if I don’t give my characters a feeling of agency, then the reader will be uncomfortable with those characters, will be uncomfortable with the way that the story is progressing. When somebody reads a good book, they’re going to mirror the feelings and the emotions of the characters in the book. If, as an author, I don’t give my characters agency, or at least the feeling of it, then that uncomfortable feeling will be reflected in the reader.
And if that’s the case, then they’re not going to continue reading because they want agency. They want the ability to affect the world around them. Readers, especially fantasy readers, are specifically reading for that feeling, that feeling of being able to engage with this fantasy world.
The question is, as a writer, how do you do that? How do you make your characters have agency? There are a whole lot of writing tricks that you can use to give your characters the feeling of agency, and I’ll only mention a couple of them here.
The first and most important is that you want your characters to be active instead of reactive. If for the entire story, the character is just reacting to everything that’s happening around them, it removes that feeling of control. It’s okay if at the beginning of the story they’re reacting to the situation as everything falls apart around them, but at some point they have to make that active switch from, I’m just the punching bag, you know, the person who’s suffering as a result of all of these things happening, to I am now going to be the instigator. I’m going to be the person who is active in choosing how this story progresses, right?
And so that switch, or that feeling of active choice, is the biggest and most important thing that you can do for your story. Just as, as a GM, that’s exactly how I’m going to give my players the feeling of agency, allowing them to drive the story. Now you’re the author, your characters can end up wherever you want, because you get to choose the outcome of their actions, but it’s important that they choose, even if they are choosing poorly, even if their choices have disastrous effects, that’s fine. They just have to be the ones to choose.
And then the second trick that you can use is internal defiance. That is to say, having a separation between the character’s thoughts about a situation and what they actually do. Again, you have to be a little bit careful with this, because you don’t want to get into a situation where the character feels impotent or cowardly.
At the end of the day, your goal as an author is to engage your reader with something that will keep their attention, just like a GM’s job is to engage their players with something that will engage their attention and allow them to have fun. I think it’s really important that we understand these two pieces, that all the characters in our story need their moment to shine. They’re all the main character. Characters need agency if we want to grab our readers and have them hang on for dear life.
This is just a couple of ways playing tabletop role playing games has really helped my writing. I would definitely encourage you, if you’ve never done it before, try to find yourself a group. It can take a while to find a good group, but once you have a good group, man, it is worth so much, not only as a writer, but just for the sheer fun of it. Role playing is something that can take a while to get into, but man, is it fun.
YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/x4LiUraHdv8
Thanks for reading and watching.
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