By Kyle Grindstaff

 Creating stories for tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), such as Dungeons & Dragons, was one of the primary factors that led me to take up writing as a hobby. And selfishly, one of the first things on my mind when I decided to pursue creative writing in college was, “I sure hope my education will make me a better dungeon master!” While I can attest that my wishes have come true, the opposite also happened. Running TTRPGs for my friends has made me a more flexible and confident writer.

         I have come to a realization while running my D&D games that the less time I spend laboriously (but lovingly) planning my sessions, the better. The unpredictability of my players’ decisions throughout the game often forces me to toss whole scenes and characters away and improvise new ones on the spot. This unpredictability could manifest in many forms: perhaps they decided that they would rather murder the noble who, unbeknownst to them, was holding crucial information to their success, or they take a liking to a stray goblin they interrogated and forget about the quest to make friends with him and skip town, or something else entirely. It’s hard to know what my players are going to do, and I find the same when writing my own personal stories. It’s hard to predict where my mind will go next.

         I’ve learned to embrace this flexibility that I have developed when running TTRPGs and use it for my writing. I always start with a loose outline, but I’m never afraid to ditch those plans and follow either my own instinct or the characters I write when they evolve to be something more than an idea I created in my head and ink on my page. By doing so, I allow and trust my characters to guide the story along rather than myself as an omnipotent figure beholden to a list of notes. As writers, our characters will always develop and deepen past their initial concept, and I believe we are doing ourselves a disservice if we are to believe that the story’s core outline is set before we even begin writing the first words of the draft. 

         For writers who are meticulous planners to a fault, I encourage you to let down the pen for a moment and pick up a set of dice. When running a D&D game, you could have the most expansive world set with clashing political factions, ancient lore, and a captivating storyline to match. As your players engage with your world and foil your plans and expectations, you’ll likely find the most memorable moments are made when you let go and see where they take you. I guarantee that if you take that feeling and transfer it to your personal writing, embrace the chaotic unknown, and allow your characters to tell the story they want to share, you’ll discover confidence and flexibility in yourself that pages of cushy notes could never provide, and maybe a new hobby too!

Exercise: 

In the spirit of embracing the unpredictability of a TTRPG, a fun writing exercise I try when I feel particularly stuck in my writing is to let the dice decide my character’s actions.

Assign Your Character’s Stats 

A character has six statistics: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. 

–       Assign these stats to whatever you think your character would have. -1. +0, +0, +1, +2, +3, 

–       A 0 is the skill of an average person for a frame of reference

Example:

Let’s say my character is Anette, a witty scoundrel from the backwater slums of the city. Her stats would look like so: 

  • STR (+1) 
  • DEX (+3) 
  • CON (+0) 
  • INT (-1) 
  • WIS (+0) 
  • CHA (+2)

Difficulty Classes (DCs)

DC’s (or difficulty classes) is the number on a 20-sided die your character needs to roll or higher to succeed.

  • They range from 5 (easy), 10 (medium), 15(hard), 20(very hard)
  • If you determine that your character’s task is a medium difficulty (DC:10), the result must be a ten after determining your roll and modifiers from your stats to succeed.
  • Note: if you don’t own a 20-sided die, there are many virtual dice that you can find online!

Putting It Into Practice

Here’s how it would look in practice: 

  • Anette has to infiltrate the baron’s mansion in search of a magical crystal. She begins to pick the lock, and I determine that’s a medium difficulty (DC:10) and needs a certain amount of finesse (dexterity). I roll a 6. A +3 isn’t enough; the lockpick breaks. She’ll have to improvise. 
  • Anette instead hides in a bush and lures the nearby guard. When he approaches, she tries to tackle him. It’s late at night, the guard is tired, and she is attacking from behind. I determine that’s a hard difficulty, but I’ll take it down to a DC: 13 instead of 15 to show she has the advantage. She is using brute force to attack (strength). I rolled an 18! Anette tackles the guard and knocks him out, stealing his keys. 
  • After infiltrating the mansion, she finds the magic crystal. It hums with raw archaic energy. She tries to figure out what it is, I determine that’s a DC:20 using her knowledge of magic (intelligence). I roll a 12. To make matters worse, she was never properly educated, and that falls to an 11 due to the -1 intelligence I gave her. She supposes she’ll just have to trust her contract and turn in the bounty blindly without knowing its potential.

Feel free to play around with the DCs depending on the situation as I did. Although my example isn’t in prose, you can see how the randomness of the dice adds to creating dynamic highs and lows throughout the writing process and helps you as the writer improvise just as much as your characters might!

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