07.18.05
D&D – Capturing Your Creativity
Like I promised, I am going to write a short blurb about Dungeons & Dragons and how it can help your creativity, mind, vocabulary and overall understanding of games.
First, for the unknowing, D&D is really the basis of roleplaying games (RPG’s). A great many games have since adopted forms from it, such as dice rolling for randomness and various classes/races. What I’m really trying to point out is that even if you didn’t know it, many of the games you are playing probably have some of their foundation with D&D.
Now, how could D&D help your creativity? Well, this occurs in several ways. It really depends on your primary role.
As a player, it will help your mind mainly. You must think logically to defeat your enemies, or convince your friends, to balance your gold or to solve a puzzle. You learn to think in terms of the game, not in terms of yourself. You don’t say, “I can’t do that in D&D”, you would say, “I may fail, but I will try!” You become an actor, a performer, and your main audience is your group of players and yourself.
As a Dungeon Master (DM), it becomes a lot more complicated. You must create the worlds, the towns, the people, their history, and everything else. While the books provided help you with this, it is your job to make it captivating and fun. I, personally, try to get a good story going that may interest the players (if not it doesnt really matter too much). Having fun is the key to D&D.
DM’s have the hardest job. They need to know the rules. They also need to know where to bend or break them. However, the job goes much further. You must play each non-Player Character (NPC) individually, according to their personality. Continuing, you figure out their motives, their goals, and everything about them.
Generally playing D&D (or writing a campaign) will increase your vocabulary. As a player, you may want to use words that probably don’t make sense or didn’t exist in the terms or age you are speaking. This forces you to act a bit more in character (IC) as well. As the DM, you don’t want to use the same words to descibe similar settings. To keep people interested, the descriptions need to be interested. For example:
“You slash with your sword and hit, dealing a critical 18 damage.” — That is terrible compared to,
“With confidence and skill, Walter swings his longsword towards the torso of the beast, ripping through fur and flesh before exiting the other side, leaving a bloody trail.”
Suppose you were to describe the same hallway twice:
“It is about 10 feet wide and 40 feet long, and 10 feet high. The walls are made of stone. Its dark.” — Bad. Very bad. Compare,
“The hallway is dark and damp, the only light appears to trickle in from a few cracks in the ceiling. The masonry walls are in bad shape and are crumbling in spots. While the hallway is wide enough to allow two of you to walk side by side, you may not wish to because of the mold and plants growing in some spots along the wall and floor. You cannot see how far the hallway continues due to the lack of light, but you may want to watch your step.”
There is a huge difference. However, the second still lacks two things. First, the description of the height. This may be variable. Since the players shouldnt really know exact terms of height/length/width, you could side it is about as tall as two halflings or some such thing. Secondly, you may want to add a little flavor or excitement. This could be done with such a statement as, “You think you hear something move in front of you,” or say something about the shifting shadows. In any event, it is a much better description. The PC’s should never really be given exact measurements (that can backfire btw).
Thus, every room will have its own flavor. Its own taste. In essence, its own story. Your provide the tale for the players, the players play the tale for you. In turn, you basically play a book. Writing a campaign is similar to writing a book, with a few important exceptions. You don’t actually put in real dialogue unless it will happen. Also, its more likely you will log statistics than traits about NPC’s. You can let other DM’s add their own flavor that way.
Although hard to describe, DMing is a very valuable experience. If you plan on being a writer, you may want to pick up and read the DM guide even if you don’t play D&D. If offers a lot of tools and suggestions (such as town creation and the like).
This little article didn’t turn out quite how I wanted, but hopefully it was entertaining enough to read. I must go now. Adios.