RPGs and Writing

My antagonist and protagonist are standing in a room together. The antagonist wets a cloth and tosses it to the protagonist so she can clean up her injuries.

I spend the next twenty minutes staring at the screen trying to decide if my protagonist will catch the cloth or let it drop to the floor. And what does either of those actions mean? And if she does catch it, does she snatch it from the air in anger before hurling it back? Or does she spread it out in her hands while she thinks about how in the world she ended up here? And if it drops, does the antagonist come pick it up? Does she kick it or step on it to drive home her point? Does it sit between them like a metaphor for all the things left unsaid? Or maybe she finds some clever way to use this seemingly innocuous item as a weapon?

And here's the beauty of this situation: I control it. I control every last piece of it.

But here's the ugly stepsister of this situation: I control it. I control every last piece of it.

Every. Last. Piece.

And that's asking a lot. There's a lot to consider. A lot to figure out. All the threads need to weave in and out of each other to compile a tapestry so complete I could use it for a parachute. My character's lives will depend on it.

Within the last year and a half or so, I started getting into Role Playing Games. And it took a while to let go of that enchanting ugly stepsister called "control" with whom I had become so familiar in my creative endeavors. I was suddenly a very different part of a story, and I didn't have to decide what would happen if that cloth was caught or not, or what it might mean down the road, or what every other character in the world's reaction might be to a cloth that is accepted or rejected from the air. Instead I only had to answer a single question, and I had to answer it fast because there were five other people in the room staring at me. Waiting. It's one simple, enticing, aggravating question asked time and time again: "What do you do?"

Playing in RPGs taught me to view stories differently. To take the same risks with my novel's characters that I do with my RPG characters. To make a decision and let the chips fall where they may. I learned to separate myself from acting as "Lord of the Story" and to instead look at my character's invisible stat sheet and work from there, letting their successes and failures drive the story. Whether I have one character in the scene or twelve, I can go around the room asking that familiar question "What do you do?" then take into account their strengths and weakness before letting them act. The beauty of this–in both RPGs and writing–is that it keeps things moving, because it's awfully hard to redirect a missile that isn't moving. But if you've got motion, you have all sorts of energy you can use to travel or destroy or turn towards the moon or crash into the sea. Letting things sit stagnant isn't fun in RPGs, and it isn't fun in writing either. I've gotten better at preventing scenes of stagnancy since I started RPGing.

But then there's this other animal born of RPGs - actually running a game. Which of course I had to try. I wanted to step behind the screen and pull the strings, build the world, take back a modicum of that feeling I have become so accustomed to when writing novels.

In some ways, GMing is a billion times easier than writing. Primarily because I don't need to make all the decisions. I don't need to adopt every major character's voice, determine all of their motivations and desires, or– the most thrilling piece of all–I don't need to determine the protagonist's answers to "What do you do?" Instead I just need to present them with the question and determine the outcome of their answer.

And sometimes, I don't even have to do that. Because RPGs have a beautiful little thing called mechanics. The numbers that rule the game even more than I can. You want to pickpocket the baron? You want to attack the monster? You want to convince the villagers that you are the legendary hunter they've all heard stories about? Roll the dice. We'll see where the numbers fall and go from there. It might mean flat out failure or great success, but either way the decision isn't always in my hands. And I kind of love that.

While I haven't taken to rolling dice while writing just yet (although I've been tempted) the concept does carry. How difficult will it be to convince these people to help you out? Maybe quite difficult, but if you start offering them bribes or buddying up with their pals, they might just be a little easier to persuade. Thinking about sticky situations more mechanically has made my narrative outcomes come more quickly and with less cursor blinking.

That may sound like leeching all that I-spell-gray-with-an-e poetic whimsy out of the creative process, but in reality what it does is leech all the I'm-over-analyzing-this-because-I-spell-gray-with-an-e out of it, forcing you to get on with the story. If you want to go back and sprinkle unnecessarily flowery metaphors over the bones of the scene later, that's cool, but at least get that rotting corpse on paper.

But then in some ways, GMing is also a billion times more difficult than writing. Primarily because there are a handful of unreliable co-authors at the table who can and will throw everything out of whack the minute they get their grubby little mitts into the story. They're called players, and when you ask them "What do you do?" odds are good they're going to give you some insane out-of-left-field response that forces you to reconsider everything in an instant. They'll say things that make you go, "I'm sorry. You want to do what?"

While this is challenging, it is also fantastic. It improves your improvisation skills (sorry to break the illusion, players, but yes, more often than not I'm just making stuff up trying to keep pace with your antics. I'm looking at you "first we rescue the innocent fawn from the crawling claws so later we can slaughter it and bathe in its blood" crew). Dealing with these unanticipated turns teaches your mind to not only improvise quickly but also to consider  multiple paths more readily. Where I might have previously considered two or three options for my characters I now find myself giving them a bevy of options, all at varying degrees of insanity.

But there's the drawback to this whole beautiful beast of RPGs, and it's simply this: distraction.

Between GMing, playing in, and thinking about RPGs, their lovable (or hate-able) characters, and their unique worlds, the amount of time and creative mental space left over for writing can quickly disintegrate to a mere modicum of what it could have been. Particularly when I'm feeling stuck in my writing. It is so much easier to ignore a problem scene in a book when there are other tempting creative outlets looming right at the edges of my vision, ones with other ready minds to rely on for help with road blocks.

It's a problem I haven't solved because, frankly, I'm just enjoying myself too much to worry about it. But one of these days I'll crack down and make sure I'm pumping out a solid word count again. I probably won't be back at the 1000 words a day I was at prior to diving into the world of RPGs, but I want to at least find balance between these two loves, and perhaps even a beautiful synergy.