D&D and Creativity // Dana Ewachow
In this guest-edited month, Dana Ewachow has asked writers to explore how the classic RPG Dungeons & Dragons has influenced their lives and artwork.
A grid-map lies in the middle of the fold-out table. It’s a cheap table, one that I technically borrowed from my parents’ house, but haven’t come close to returning. The map is still stained with green, black, and blue marker, showing the remains from old drawings of caves and castles that didn’t quite wipe off with water and paper towel.
The edges of the map are crowded with dice bags, character sheets, and dull pencils. Phones are out—sometimes to answer texts, other times to look up rules in a hurry. It’s faster than flipping through the manuals that are sitting in their own chair in an intimidating stack, getting their own seat at the messy table. Tall cans of beer make rings on the crumpled pieces of paper. Opened bags of chips and hard candy are tucked in front of the cardboard screen at the head of the table. It’s not the most convenient set-up since I have to grab handfuls of chips and Swedish Berries and carefully pass them to theDungeon Master over the barrier.
The miniatures are lined up in a single square, standing at the threshold of a dark room. I know there’s something in there. The DM is hiding it. I can sense his anticipation from behind the screen like he’s suppressing a laugh. He’s waiting for one of us to make the first move and step in.
If this were real life, I’d take my lit torch, turn around and hightail it out of there. I don’t want to tempt fate and become a welcome target for flaming arrows, daggers, and magic missiles. ButI’m not me. I’m a character with unbridled confidence and a host of spell slots. I don’t have a family to go back home to. I don’t have anxiety. And frankly, I don’t have high enough Wisdom stats to know better. That’s enough to get me to cross the threshold and step into the shadows.
The DM smiles. “I’m going to need everyone to roll initiative.” I hold my breath, pick up my D20, and toss it in the air.
*
I am my own worst enemy when it comes to writing. I agonize about whether my first lines will be good or funny or clever or new. I will start typing and then immediately delete it. I’m planning and editing before the words come out. I’m already crumpling pages up and throwing them in the garbage before they’re close to finished.I can’t let go of that self-consciousness. It makes moving forward painstakingly slow.
But when I play Dungeons & Dragons, I can create anything on the fly. I can make dialogue. I can describe action. I can spit out pick-up lines, dole out backstory, solve mysteries and improvise songs (yes,I play a bard). I can leave that doubt behind—not because I don’t want to cling to it, because of course I want to hold onto my security blanket of insecurity. I leave my doubt behind because the game can’t function with it.
You can’t stop and think for too long when you’re playing Dungeons & Dragons. You’re too busy trying to break your way out of jail cells, fight off hungry creatures and survive surprise attacks from your enemies. You’re looking for traps, unlocking vault doors, solving puzzles and double-checking to see if that chest in the corner is hiding a pile of gold coins or a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. Everyone else at the table is looking at you to take your turn or say a line. You can’t tell them to get back to you in five minutes as you come up with the best answer.
The game requires constant momentum. There’s no hesitating. You have to say something, do something, or leave the table.
The famous RPG fuels creativity in a lot of ways. It encourages players to get outside of their comfort zones through fantastical characters—spend an afternoon as a protective dwarven cleric or maybe a terrifying half-orc barbarian. It pushes you to navigate the manuals full of lore about deities, demons, monsters and heroes. But,I think the most important thing that this game does is it stops you from overthinking your “creative process.”
It forces you to ignore your internal planner and editor. Sure, the results are messy and sometimes downright chaotic, but at least there’s content to work with. And who knows? You’ll often be surprised about the amazing things you make up when you’re no longer fretting about making a masterpiece.
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For November, I asked writers to send in pieces on the topic of creativity and Dungeons & Dragons. They sent in childhood stories about imagining ferocious battles in the comfort of their living rooms. They sent in personal essays about their campaign characters revealing parts of their true nature and teaching them that the fantastical often comes from a place of truth.They sent in confessions of tumultuous tables and safe spaces. It was wonderful to read them all.
We start the month with Michelle Brown’s mesmerizing poem “Cave of Illusions” from her book SafeWords (PalimpsestPress). “The Cave of Illusions” is an underground cave featured in one of her previous Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. The cave deepens as the player walks through it, and never seems to end. How long can you explore the depths before you want to stop and turn around?
Then we have “Performing the Tale: On Telling Story as a Dungeon Master”from Jeremy Luke Hill and Ethan Hill. The father-son duo plays the table top RPG together, with 13-year-old Ethan taking the helm as theDungeon Master. The collaborative piece navigates the differences between the art of storytelling as a DM and as a fiction writer.
Later in the month, we will have pieces from Ian Baaske, Steven Pope, Dr.Kelly A. Dorgan, Thanos Filanis, Hannah Lee, Priya Sridhar, and The Puritan’s own Spencer Gordon.
Dana Ewachow is a copywriter living in Toronto. Her fiction has been featured in LeShindig and GraphitePublications.Her reviews and creative non-fiction have been featured in TheTown Crier, Mooneyon Theatre, IXDaily, and Rabble. She has played an obnoxious bard named Chaddeus (Level 7) for almost two years.