The Ayrelon Times

ROLEPLAYING VS DICE ROLLING, THE VALUE OF STORYTELLING AS A DUNGEON MASTER, AND WHAT IT MEANS AS A WRITER. This topic has come up a lot on social media recently. As a former hardcore pen & paper roleplayer, and current author, I figured I might have a unique perspective that will at least be an entertaining read, if not help some of you with your games, or your approach to novels. Now, I’ve covered some of my thoughts in previous blog entries. You can go hunt them down and read those first if you’d prefer, but it totally isn’t necessary. Without further ado, let’s get into it… after all, this is going to be fairly long. Why now? With the popularity of Stranger Things, many people around the world are being exposed to Dungeons & Dragons for the first time. They get to watch kids on screen have a blast playing a game they have no understanding of, and for some that piques their interest. So they jump online, or talk to friends, and try to gain an understanding of this strange gam...

I mentioned briefly in another blog entry that I accomplished a lot of my early world-building through hosting pen & paper role-playing games. I ran dozens of players through epic campaigns in Dungeons & Dragons , Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition (the majority of them), Rolemaster 2nd Edition and Palladium Megagames . The reasons for this were: I wanted to continue building my fictional world I loved being Dungeon Master and controlling a plethora of non-player characters each session It let me flex and hone my on-the-fly storytelling skills I thoroughly enjoyed role-playing in general It let me receive real-time feedback from players, so I could refine things that missed the mark or emphasize things that landed properly Those sessions lasted between 1994 and 1999. Many players came and went, but there were a core of them who flowed through almost every campaign. Most of my campaigns lasted five to six months, and we played between one and three sessions per week… ...