Written by: Artemis Westover, Staff Writer
Imagine telling a story.
Now imagine telling a story but all of your protagonists have full autonomy.
NOW imagine telling a story where all of your protagonists are fully autonomous AND they can do magic.
I do that for fun. I build universes full of unique cities and factions and people. And every couple of weeks I guide a group of characters through this world that only lives in our collective imaginations.
Dungeons and Dragons is a collaborative tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG). It has been around since 1974. For the uninitiated, here is a brief rundown of how it works:
Technically, the game only needs two or more people to play, but the best sized groups are between 4 and 7 people. One of these people takes on the role of Dungeon Master. This person runs the table, tells the story, and embodies the world that the players inhabit, from shopkeepers to dragons. The other people are players. They each create their own characters by choosing from a plethora of fantastical races (dwarves, elves, orcs, etc..) and giving them a class. Some classes are more traditional magic users (wizards, clerics, druids) and some are non-magical and more combat-oriented (fighters, monks, barbarians). Once a world has been created, along with characters to populate it, the storytelling can begin.
For the majority of its existence, D&D was a hobby— just a game that nerds played in their parents’ basement. But in the 2010s, there was a shift. Now I am no D&D scholar (not yet), so take it with a grain of salt that I credit 2015 as the year that changed D&D forever. In 2015, a group of “nerdy-ass voice actors,” led by Dungeon Master Mathew Mercer, and including such names as Laura Bailey, Ashley Johnson, and Marisha Ray, sat down to stream a game on Twitch. This became the massively popular show Critical Role. The show was a wild success. D&D nerds, anime nerds, and cartoon nerds all found something to love in watching this group of friends have fun.
Yet what made Critical Role so special is that the story was incredible. DM Matthew Mercer had created a beautifully complex world with a deep magical lore. People did not just watch to giggle at some grown-ups goofing off and rolling dice, they were fully emotionally invested in the lives of these characters and the immaculately crafted world they lived in. This group of highly visible, popular actors “coming out” as D&D players, led other people to do the same. CollegeHumor launched Dimension 20. Celebrity guests on Critical Role such as as Deborah Ann Woll, Joe Manganiello, and Stephen Colber made D&D cool again. But not only that, Critical Role showed people that D&D didn't have to be just a game, it could also be a deeply artistic and expressive storytelling tool.
I need the theatre world to realize this as well. TTRPGs have the potential to be a powerful generative tool for creating devised theatre. There is already a lot of overlap between the two approaches to storytelling. The goal of TTRPGs is collaborative storytelling. The idea is that each player controls a single character and the Game/Dungeon Master controls the world. This dynamic easily transfers to a theatrical ensemble, where some control the world and some control the people in it.
Here are a few other ways to integrate TTRPG approaches into the theatre making process. Picture it:
You are the director of a devised piece. You have determined the world your story takes place in and you know what challenges you would like your characters to face. You set up the world and its conflicts with your actors, and then you set them free to explore. Using a fixed world but a mutable story is a preliminary example of a TTRPG approach to devising.
A step up is to think about the mechanics of a character instead of more abstract motivation. One of the central factors that separates TTRPG-style role playing from traditional long-form improv is the mechanical rules that TTRPG characters must adhere to. So what happens when theatrical characters are created the same way? What rules must they follow? Can you create rules of space or movement? Rules of character interaction or emotional expression?
Often in theatre these rules are discovered through experimentation but what happens if they are decided ahead of time?
Then there are more guiding, moral questions. Who is this character loyal to? Is there anything they are sworn to defend? Is there anything they are sworn to destroy? These questions are vital for TTRPG players to answer about their characters, but they are also questions that actors are asked to consider in their character work. I am not proposing a reinvention of the wheel here; exercises like these are already used in rehearsal rooms when working with a pre-existing story. What if they were also used to create the story?
Something that doesn't often get incorporated into theatremaking is the element of chance. The central gameplay mechanic of D&D is rolling dice. When a player makes a choice, the DM can have that player roll a 20-sided die and the result, plus a modifier, determines the outcome of that choice. No matter how strategic you are, or how well you build your character, rolling a one has the power to drastically change the future of your character and your world. This risk is the thrill of D&D.
Chance and risk are not new concepts in theatre. Most long-form improv takes a risk on the audience's suggestions and many other improv games incorporate some sort of randomized suggestion. While an audience can be guided to stay within the performer's control (ie: the performer prompts an audience for specific suggestions, “give me a location that fits on the stage”), the dice follow no god. Incorporating this kind of chance into a theatrical process could be a thrilling way to determine outcome, whether it is a generative tool used in the rehearsal room or an aspect of performance.
An example would be the character lottery at the beginning of Everybody by Branden Jacobs Jenkins. This could also look like the roll of dice determining the status of characters, or how well an interaction goes.
In rehearsals for a pre-existing script, actors must work to decide why their character made the choices they did. In D&D, the actors actually get to make the choices, and experience the consequences. They can very literally change the world they exist in. TTRPGs can provide a framework for creating a new kind of immersive theatrical storytelling. We can immerse performers in the world of their characters and tell the story as it's being written.
There are many ways that a TTRPG based approach could change how we make theatre, but speaking personally, theatre has changed the way I play D&D. One of the roles of a dramaturg is to understand the environment and context in which a play exists, and this skill has transferred for me into an awareness of the world in which my stories are told. It has made me a better lore keeper and world builder. When I'm DMing my role as a dramaturg and my role as a storyteller are one.
TTRPGs have come a long way, and mainstream media is just now starting to see their potential. There are so many things we can learn from Dungeons and Dragons that could change the way we make theatre.This exploration was just a dip into my investigation of this format. There is so much more to be explored. So, what do you think? Do you want to go on an adventure?
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