Inspired to Write: Getting inspiration from roleplay games

Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! Can you believe we’re already this close to the end of the month? This means my birthday is right around the corner… and I haven’t even decided what I’ll be doing to celebrate. Yeesh!

Anyway… all month long, we’ve been talking about inspiration. We’ve talked about finding inspiration in our everyday lives, in ways we probably wouldn’t expect. We looked at the inspiration we find from our travels, from television and movies, and even from the music we hear in the background at the store. Our journey took us through books both fiction and nonfiction, and on Tuesday we even discussed getting inspiration from those time-consuming video games, and getting a good use out of that consumed time. ;-) Today, as the finale of our series, I’m going to talk about something I have very little experience with, but something I’m delving into.

Inspired to Write: Getting inspiration from roleplay games

Specifically, I’m thinking of games like Dungeons and Dragons.

Now, like I said, I haven’t actually played DnD yet. I haven’t. So I don’t know precisely what I’m talking about. But I have started watching other people play. I watched through Relics and Rarities on Geek and Sundry’s YouTube page, and I’ve recently started watching Heroes of the Vale—so I at least know how it works, and I’ve seen enough to have actually gotten some inspiration out of that.

Thing is, there’s something really cool in roleplay games, that I don’t think enough authors are utilizing: in roleplay, you, the player, have to take on the role of the character you’re playing. You live as them, for the duration of the game. You have to think like them, behave like them, sometimes even talk and act like them, if your group is fairly hardcore. And that’s something a lot of writers tend to have difficulty doing, especially when they’ve just started out—which is why I really wanted to bring this one up.

For one thing, there’s a whole heaping ton of inspiration to be found just from watching DnD games like the ones I mentioned above (I’ve also heard Critical Role is good, but one of the players annoys me, unfortunately). There’s a lot to be gleaned about thinking through the mind of your character, and being who they are throughout the duration of the story—which, like I said, is something we writers could stand to learn, or, to be inspired from.

So today I give you two options. Either you should try playing roleplay games, and learning what it’s like to delve into a world like this, discover what it’s like to really think through the mind of your character, or start watching videos of roleplay games, so you can see what it’s like for other people to do so, and maybe even get some inspiration from the stories they’re living.

Yes, this one makes more sense if you’re a sci-fi or fantasy writer—but like we’ve been saying this whole time, there’s nothing that says we can’t learn from genres outside our own.

Give it a try! I dare you. I’ll be starting in my own DnD campaign, as soon as I can. When will that be? No idea—but I’ll let you know, when I do.

Again, thank you all so much for reading Too Many Books to Count this month! I’m not sure what we’ll be talking about in July, but I promise it’ll be something really fun. It’s my birthday month, and I’m determined to have as much fun as possible. ;-)

[love]

{Rani Divine}