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Dungeons and Dragons in its simplest form is ‘the land of make-believe’. It can be anything, to be honest. It’s a quest to slay a dragon. It’s a murder mystery on a spacecraft. It’s a zombie apocalypse. The core books are centred around a fantasy setting, but it’s not at all limited to that. You can make adaptations, and there are plenty of free online resources to help you do that.
In the land of make-believe, there are players and then there’s the dungeon master (DM).
As a player, you create your character and play them. That could be the dragon-slaying knight or the cowardly wizard. You write your character’s backstory, what led them to the quest you find yourself on, and then ‘roleplay’ that character.
As a DM, you’re everyone else. You are the wolves that leap out of the brush at the players, you are the tavern owner, and you are the dragon sitting atop a heap of gold. Together, you all work to play your characters and tell a story.
It’s a game where instead of ‘winning’ and ‘losing’, you’re focused on narratives, making decisions your character ‘would make’, and imagining what all of this looks, sounds, and smells like.
“‘Smells’? That sounds weird.”
It is! It’s bizarre. Some DMs, me included, choose to ‘do the voices’ for the characters the players interact with, and that can be a jarring experience for a newcomer whose experience of tabletop games starts with ‘Snap!’ and extends to buying hotels on Park Lane.
But for someone who’s stuck with it, even when I was nervous to try an accent or felt unsure about committing countless hours to prepare for the session, I’ve learned a lot. Here’s what I took away.
Technically, this is a key learning from ‘improv’. But it applies here just as much.
The basic idea is that when someone comes up with an idea, a plan, or an improvement, instead of shooting it down immediately because it didn’t fit with what you had in mind originally, you say:
“Yes,” and then follow that up with what happens. It’s a great improvisational tool, because it allows things to follow-on from each other, despite a lack of planning.
Example:
“You walk into the tavern. It’s quiet, and there’s only a few boring old gents sat in there.”
“Is there anyone that looks like they know magic?”
Despite the fact I hadn’t planned that originally, I’d likely say:
“Yes, and you see they are sat alone, eyes eagerly searching the room.”
Having ‘yes-anded’ there, we’ve collaborated on the story more, rather than it just being my vision alone.
After years of ‘yes-anding’, I feel like the ideas and concepts I have in my head are much more malleable now. Nothing I plan or write down is set in stone, and I feel like editorial review, feedback and criticism fit much nicer into my life because of D&D. My writing is fluid and change is a constant, and that feels more natural to me now than it ever has.
On top of that, I feel that it’s made collaboration easier. You can better consider what other people around the table are suggesting, and what their suggestions would look like. Your first thoughts will stop being: ‘why that might not work’, and instead start to consider ‘what that would look like in practice’.
Some things just work. Like salted butter on toast. There’s no use trying to over-engineer an alternative.
Near the start of our current campaign, around 5 years ago, I was playing a video game and was obsessed with the lore of a certain faction within that game. So, I robbed it.
I didn’t steal it directly, though, I adapted it. I tailored it and trimmed the parts that I didn’t love so much but kept the core of why it worked. I put my sheen of originality on it, and it worked. It’s been going on for years, and nobody is the wiser. (Nor shall they be if those players read this blog.)
Picasso said it best: “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” While I don’t think playing D&D has made me a great artist, D&D has shown me how to take great things and draw inspiration from them to transform them into something new.
That goes for players, too. Your character might be a blatant Gandalf rip-off or a carbon copy of Luke Skywalker, but if you parody that at even a slight distance, you’ll have transformed them into something new.
A challenge of running a campaign for five years is that it’s the same setting, characters, and bad guy for five long years. With a game as versatile as D&D, you want to break out, explore and run wild.
Sometimes, my D&D will start feeling a little stale. Another dungeon with another villain right at the end? I can’t wait…
But my best sessions come after those feelings. D&D has taught me that you can stick with your same projects and have change too.
I’ll throw in a murder mystery, or a monster hunt. Maybe we have a more laid-back, goofy session. The core of storytelling, roleplaying, and choice-making is still there, but we’ve broken out from the easy routines of it.
That’s a metaphor for project work. For clients, you’ll often work on projects doing the same type of work, the same messaging and objectives overlooking the same topics. Sooner or later, you could start feeling tired and yearn for a new project to start.
Thanks to D&D, when I start feeling like that on a project, that’s when I start imagining. What inefficiencies hold us up? What could be better? How can I make something more attention-grabbing?
In short, D&D has prepared me for the longevity of project-work, and provided the essential, project-survival method of ‘spicing it up’.
Dungeons and Deliverables
Dungeons and Dragons is fantastic fun and unique from any other experience. It’s more than a tabletop game, it’s more immersive than any game or film, and you’ll be much more invested in how the story plays out because it’s a story you’ve helped make.
This week marks exactly one year since Alona became immersed in the sweet world of packaging, logistics, and printing.
In this blog, Hannah explains exactly what a PR Account Executives does, and how we fill our days in the NM office.