Alright, this week’s post is going to blend my profession in story craft with my one of my absolute favourite hobbies: tabletop role-playing. Yes, I am a language nerd, story nerd, and a Dungeons and Dragons nerd. I’ve already discussed how to use role-playing generally to help you develop your characters in a previous post. Here, I’ll show you how you can use tabletop role-playing games specifically to help you hone your writing craft and character creation.

Role-playing as your protagonist can help you remove the omniscient author in you. It can help you get into your character’s subjective perspective as you find your protagonist in situations you never would have imagined on your own. But before I get into how you can use tabletop role-playing games as an author, I’ll quickly explain how they work. (Feel free to skip ahead to the next section if you’re already a fellow tabletop RPG nerd – I won’t judge.)

How Tabletop Role-Playing Games Work

For those who don’t know, tabletop role-playing games are like narrative board games, and they’re referred to as tabletop RPGs for short. In a tabletop RPG, one person takes on the role of the narrator. This narrator comes up with a setting and designs the challenges that the characters are going to face. This narrator is most often referred to as the dungeon master, or the DM for short. The rest of the players get to create their own characters to play as and make choices within the narrator’s world. A session usually starts with the narrator describing the setting, what brought all these characters together, and the challenge that the characters are currently facing. Then the players say what their characters do (or try to do) and the narrator tells them what happens.

It’s a game that happens entirely through spoken language and imagination. No one person is in control of the story or where it goes. Instead, the story dances between each player’s decisions and the narrator’s world creation. It’s a new form of storytelling that isn’t like anything we’ve had before, and in a lot of ways it brings oral storytelling into the modern age.

In every tabletop RPG, there needs to be a system in place to determine whether a character succeeds or fails when they take a complex action. A player may say, “I shoot an arrow at the monster.” Does the arrow hit the monster or miss? Different tabletop RPGs will have different rules that determine how you answer that question, but almost always it will depend on a mixture of chance and the character’s skill.

Seeing a Game in Action

If you still don’t have a clear idea of how tabletop RPGs work, or just want to see it in action yourself, I highly recommend you listen to either the first episode of Critical Role season two or the Critical Role one-shot with Stephen Colbert. Critical Role is a show where a bunch of nerdy voice actors sit around a play Dungeons and Dragons. It’s brilliant and both of those episodes are great at introducing how tabletop RPGs work.

How to Pick Which Game Mechanics to Use

There are lots of different types of tabletop RPGs. Each one has different rules and game mechanics to match a specific genre. The most common tabletop RPG genre is high fantasy. Most of these fantasy systems include rules for casting magic and mechanics for battles with monsters and other enemies. Another common tabletop RPG genre is horror. The mechanics in horror games focus on escaping monsters or threats rather than directly fighting them. The system of rules you use will in a lot of ways determine the flavour of how you play.

Here are how some different systems will affect your gameplay. The easiest tabletop RPG to play is the one that you and your friends are already familiar with. That being said, if you are open to learning a new system (or have to learn one from scratch anyway), you can use this list as a guide to pick a system that best matches your genre and narrative style.

High Fantasy

Dungeons and Dragons: This is the most popular tabletop RPG by far. It’s built for high fantasy worlds. The game has almost endless options for races (human, dwarf, elf, etc.) and classes (wizard, fighter, druid, etc.). Its mechanics are somewhat complex to learn, though it’s not as complex as Pathfinder. This system is optimized for battles and exploration as the key plot-progression points.

Dungeon World: This is a much simpler high fantasy RPG than Dungeons and Dragons. It requires less dice and somewhat less rolling, and all the information you’ll ever need to know about your specific character can fit onto a single piece of double-sided paper. While the battle mechanics for Dungeons and Dragons are much more detailed and rigid, Dungeon World’s mechanics focus more on character development than explicit plot actions. Every time your character fails an action, she gains experience to help her level up. You can also level up by resolving or developing bonds with other characters.

There can still be character development in Dungeons and Dragons, but Dungeon World explicitly motivates players to seek them out. A lot of people talk about stories being character or plot driven. While all stories are driven by both character development and explicit plot events, you could say that Dungeons and Dragons’ mechanics focus more on the plot events whereas Dungeon World’s mechanics focus more on the character development.

Horror & Thriller

Dread: Dread only has one mechanic: a Jenga tower. There are no character sheets and no stats. Just the tower. Every time you take a significant action, you need to pull a piece from the Jenga tower. If the tower remains upright, your character survives and succeeds in the action. If the tower topples, your character either dies or experiences a fate worse than death.

The brilliance of the Jenga tower mechanic is that it simulates how tension and suspense builds over time. As the characters continue to explore, the chance of failure increases at every pull. It’s a simple and brilliant mechanic. The game is best suited for situational horror. In these games, the characters either explore a dangerous place (like a haunted building) or try to escape from a dangerous situation (like being lost in the woods).

Call of Cthulhu: This horror tabletop RPG is more typical, with a full character sheet that turns your character’s strengths and weaknesses into stats. The consequences for failure in this game are more psychological. Every time a character fails a significant action, they experience something horrifying that gives them an uncontrollable impulse for the rest of the game. That impulse could be to constantly check any reflections for shapes in the background. Or it could be to compulsively howl at the moon every time they see it. These mechanics mean that the characters are slowly slipping into madness as the game progresses. The characters must not only escape the evils around them, but find a way to do so that will keep their sanity intact.

Other Genres

Alright, that’s the end of games that I’m personally familiar with, but there are lots more tabletop RPGs than what I’ve personally played. Here’s some more genre options that you can learn more about by following the link:

• Science Fiction: Starfinder
• Classic Action: Feng Shui 2
• Mystery: BubbleGumshoe
• High School Supernatural Drama: Monsterhearts

Preparing to Role-Play as Your Protagonist

Role-playing as your protagonist is fantastic way to really get into your main character’s head. But before you can role-play, you need to figure out your character’s personality, goals, strengths, weaknesses, and secrets. Here are some questions to help you prepare to role-play as your fictional character:

• What is a key event from your character’s childhood that has shaped his identity, his beliefs about the world, and how he interacts with others?
• What is your character’s personality like? Is she clever or dull, brave or timid, loud or quiet, outgoing or shy, curt or courteous, ect.?
• What is your character’s larger life goal – the one that drives all his motivations? The character may not be consciously aware of this larger goal, but it underpins all of his decisions. It may be “to be a good person,” or “to achieve ultimate power,” or “to be in control of his own life.”
• What is your character’s immediate goal – the one that is specific to her current situation? This goal will likely be a stepping-stone toward her larger goal. Perhaps it’s “to save an innocent life [a part of being a good person],” or “to seek out a magical artifact [that may grant the bearer great power],” or “to earn some money [to increase self-reliance].” Talk with your DM ahead of time to give this goal some context that is relevant to the specific session you’re about to play.
• What secrets do your character have? To what lengths will he go to keep others from discovering them?
• How does your character speak? Does she use flowing, flowery language or is she curt and say as few words as possible? Is her tone of voice high and chipper, soft and timid, gruff and aggressive, or cool and sophisticated? Practice speaking in this way before the game starts.
• What are your character’s strengths and special abilities?
• What are your character’s weaknesses, quirks, and fears?

Be sure to send your DM any relevant details about your character’s backstory before the session starts.

Learning from the Session

Once you understand your character’s motivations, personality, and mannerisms, you’re ready to start role-playing! Once the session starts, you’re not the one in control of the narrative anymore – you’re just in the perspective of your character. See what surprises you about your character, be open to new possibilities, and let the communal creativity at the table inspire you. Happy playing everyone!