Inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons

Recently, my husband has been on a big Dungeons & Dragons kick, getting some of the latest starter sets, reading blogs and watching YouTube channels. He was into it as a kid, but video games had largely replaced D&D when I was growing up, so while I was vaguely aware of the game, I had never played it until very recently.

It seems to be a fascinating platform for storytelling, though it's similar to a play in that the written story isn't fully complete until it's performed, or played, in the case of D&D. And, like a play, the actual performance can deviate quite a bit from the original script as the players have their own unique interpretation of the story and the dungeon master can change things on the fly. You'd think it'd be boring, watching YouTube videos of people playing the game, but some of them have pretty high production values and are very well done. While some parts can be tedious, especially when people are just introducing their characters or explaining the rules to new players, I've mostly found it a lot of fun to see how people react to the different scenarios presented by the dungeon master and how they work together to get through the quests.

I'm also starting to think that it might be great way to get me writing again. After creating my D&D character, a human rogue named Kara Evenwood, I've spent the last couple of days writing a backstory for her and it went a lot more smoothly than I thought, ideas coming at me at a rapid pace. Plus, if you get stuck, you can always refer to the player's guide for inspiration, or check out the years worth of blogs, articles and videos on the game. For example, I picked Kara's name from the guide because I couldn't think of anything on my own and I plan to steal settings from the guide as well since I don't have names for any of the places in her backstory, or any ideas for where exactly these locations are in the game world.

D&D as a character creation tool

D&D seems to be a great platform for creating fictional characters in general—just a good way to get thinking about your character's personality, strengths and flaws and what happened to them to make them the way they are. All things you don't necessarily need to include in a finished story about them, but that are important to know to flesh out your characters and make them believable.

Another thing I find fascinating is that there are people who have been playing this game since they were around 12 years old who are now middle aged, meaning the worlds they have created have over 30 years of content.

Anyway, I'm going to continue building out my character's backstory and the world she lives in, and then maybe that will be a stepping stone to writing some proper fictional stories about her, beyond the basic description of her life I have so far.

I played my first game of D&D just last night, using one of the scenarios from the new starter kits you can get. This lets you play with as few as two people, since the player can get a pre-made sidekick that they also control, with the other person filling the role of dungeon master. You'd probably get your ass handed to you trying to do a quest by yourself. As it was, I thought Kara and her sidekick, a halfling named Quinn Hightopple with a love of kicking people in the groin, were going to die at multiple points in the quest, but they prevailed in the end, with Kara gaining 25 gold pieces and rising to level 2 for their success. Quinn was selected from a pre-made set of characters that came with the particular kit my husband bought, but I've already been thinking about ideas for stories about how he and Kara met.

In other news, I still need to finish my review of The Glass Hotel and either delete or complete the short story I wrote a week or so ago. I'm almost done The Marrow Thieves, which has turned out to be deeply depressing, but is the first book I've read that's helped me get closer to truly understanding the full impact of residential schools on indigenous people here in Canada. Once I've finished reading the book, I'm going to write more about my thoughts on it and the difficult issues it brings up. Definitely something that deserves a separate post and more in-depth discussion.

Finding time for all of this writing is going to be tough as I've recently been given a lot more responsibility at work and without getting into details, work has been very difficult to the point where I'm questioning my future with the company and if I even want to continue in my field. So it's made it tough to find the time and energy for writing in what free time I do have.

But, I think Dungeons & Dragons will provide a good structure to get me writing again and, more importantly, having fun while doing it.