Evening Knights,

Today's post I wanna focus more on the player end of things specifically role play. Now, I come from an interesting place in that before I started to actively write and hold a passion for the craft I obtained some valuable skills just playing table top games. By this I mean when I ran games, I went in with a basic plan of how the a session would go, I would normally have at least 2-3 maps of different locations to give them room to roam and on special days even more, however, and any Dungeon Master would agree with me on this: Players are unpredictable. More specifically characters are unpredictable. If one has a decent group in which the players role play their characters, from a Dungeon Masters perspective this can teach a lot about how characters react and feel about the environment their placed in.

For example, I was once a player in a game of Call of Cthulhu (CoC for short, I know right?)  now the basic premise for this game is a group of people of various backgrounds and occupations investigating strange mysteries and lifting the veil on conspiracies, secret cults, and ancient knowledge all set in H.P. Lovecraft's literary universe. So during the session it was me, a journalist, a lawyer, and a thief and in the game we had to break into someones house to look for this journal of a man we suspected was apart of a local cult to Dagon. We we're role playing of course, so it played out something like this:

Thief: Alrighty, so we just gotta get inside, take the journal and scram before he gets home.

Lawyer: You know I can't be apart of this

Thief: Why not?

Lawyer: Well besides my license, the charge of breaking and entering would change that.

Me: We really just need a photo of it and I can handle that.

Lawyer: Look I'll keep watch and run interference if someone comes along, but I can't be seen in there.

This was a very distilled version but the point is, shortly after the game the player who played the lawyer even apologized because he felt he held up the game when this wasn't the case at all. In fact, this gave good realism to the game and introduced a pretty intense scene where the owner of the house did come home early and it created a fun espionage sort of session. This change would never of happened if he had just gone with the flow of the game and continued on the predicted path the Dungeon Master had made. The characters our players make can teach us a lot about choices, and perspective, which of course is what we as writers strive to do constantly in our craft, to achieve great, balanced, and beloved characters and I feel table top is a great way to emphasize this. So for your consideration, maybe look into the hobby or at the very least heed the emphasis of characters and what makes us fall in love with them: The realistic and rational thinking that makes them so real and dear that they become moreso, they become apart us and change the way we feel and see from the moment we close that book and say goodbye to them.

Thank you for reading, you guys have a great day!