Kara Waltersdorff

HUM-402
Draft / Outline

Importance of Collaborative Storytelling in Dungeons & Dragons

1) Introduction

a) Depending on who you are, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) has many different

implications. From a fun game to some and to a blasphemous curse to others, D&D has

had many people intrigued or afraid for the 44 years that it has been played. While D&D

is a fun game, it also has many positive and important benefits to its’ play – in the social,

creative, and practical realms.

b) Socially, it helps build friendships and strengthen teamwork in social groups. Creatively,

the ideas of unconventional storytelling and randomness, paired with the collaboration

between players and Dungeon Master (DM), cause an expansion of ideas and thought

processes. How do I apply D&D practically, you might ask? The answer to that is that

D&D requires the ability to make difficult choices, problem solve, collaborate and think

creatively to be successful in play.

2) Social

a) Friendship / Relationship Building

i) “I genuinely, 100% have the insane belief that if everyone played D&D just once, I

think it would make the world so much of a happier place. I think it would bring so

much humanity and play and imagination to people. I think that if everyone got to

enjoy the experience of Dungeons & Dragons it would be a different world.”

 - Marisha Ray

ii) "It was interesting making those relationships much closer. you can't not be close

after something like this. It was a four-year long theatre run that we did almost

every week." – Taliesin Jaffe

b) Collaboration / Teamwork

i) “One player, identified as the “Dungeon Master” (DM), is tasked with developing a

fantasy world and describing its spaces and inhabitants to the other players. Each

of these players develops a single character that inhabits and explores those

imaginary spaces […]” (pg. 1298 of Paladin Ethic)

3) Creative

a) Unconventional storytelling

i) “Perhaps the feature that most captures the modern imagination in D&D is the way

it encourages us to approach the lack of system, whether in our lives or in the

game, as if that were a system (pg. 1311).” – Paladin Ethic

ii) “D&D is built upon a paradoxical tension between free exercise of narrative

imagination and complex rule-based limitations (pg. 1298).” – Paladin Ethic

iii) “There is nothing wrong with using a prepared setting to start a campaign … On

the other hand, there is nothing to say that you are not capable of creating your

own starting place” (Dungeon Master’s Guide 87).

a) Randomness

i) “Success in an action is then determined through dice rolls, which are compared to

these stats (pg. 1298).” – Paladin Ethic

b) Working w/ the DM to create stories

 i) “Yet players do not develop the spaces, characters, or interactions through the

freeform imaginative license of the storyteller as traditionally understood; each step

is guided and limited by the rules of the game (pg. 1298).” – Paladin Ethic

ii) “Actual play is often more confused, as players attempt to understand the DM’s

description and argue with the adjudication of results, but this simplified example

gives a general sense of the way that D&D combines the free play of the

imagination with rationalized rules.” (pg. 1299) – Paladin Ethic

2) Practical

a) Collaboration

i) It was assumed that individual groups would maintain the creative spirit that

produced the game: “New details can be added and old ‘laws’ altered so as to

provide continually new and different situations. . ..If your referee has made

changes in the rules and/or tables, simply note them in pencil (for who knows when

some flux of the cosmos will make things shift once again!) (1303).” - Paladin

Ethic

a) Working Under Pressure

i) “Many features of the setting are represented numerically with scores (referred to

as “stats”) assigned to various character attributes (e.g., strength or dexterity). The

difficulty of various tasks, such as hitting a monster or dodging a trap, is also

represented numerically. Success in an action is then determined through dice

rolls, which are compared to these stats (1298).” – Paladin Ethic

b) Making Hard Choices

 i) “[…] there is a tension at the heart of a game [like Dungeons & Dragons], in

which the players seek to exercise their imaginations through the rationalized

constraints of rules (pg. 1300).” – Paladin Ethic

c) Creative decision making/creativity

i) “Long before [the show] I’ve heard interviews – heard writers and actors and

directors talk about how playing this game in the 80’s set them on their course to

doing what they do now.” – Liam O’Brien

ii) By way of comparison, Gygax forewarned the readers of his guide that “What lies

ahead will require the use of all of your skill, put a strain on your imagination,

bring your creativity to the fore, test your patience, and exhaust your free time”

(Dungeon Master’s Guide 86)