Story Telling Versus Game Mastering: What’s The Difference?

While I’ve been telling stories in one form or another for most of my life, I didn’t automatically gravitate to writing novels. In fact, one of my first story-telling mediums was tabletop role-playing games. 

Many a game master has written a campaign or module for their friends, and after running it, thought, “This would be a great novel.” They set out to write a book based on the epic journey they just went on with their friends. I did it too and I discovered there are a few pitfalls that game masters should be aware of before settling down to write that book.

I’ve both played and run a multitude of TTRPG’s. Dungeons and Dragons was my first, but I’ve also run Rifts, White-wolf (Vampire: the Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocolypse), Star Wars, Deadlands, and even a slew of lesser-known titles and systems virtually invisible to mainstream gamers. I’ve been doing it for more than twenty years, so I think it’s fair to say I have extensive experience in running the gaming table.

As I understand it, books published by authors that proudly claim it was based on a TTRPG they or a friend ran don’t typically do well. Authors seeking to publish traditionally will struggle more than normal to find an agent willing to look at the manuscript. And even in finding an agent, the publishing houses may turn their noses up at these manuscripts as well. 

Indie authors, similarly, will see poor book sales if readers get a hint that the book was based on a TTRPG homebrewed story. The reason why readers, agents, and publishers all behave this way is because, unless the author/Game master in question is experienced in both mediums, the novel often ends up being far less enjoyable than the game that birthed it.

Stories told in fiction contrast greatly with stories told via games because of three important factors; Immersion, agency, and structure. 

In a roleplaying game, a good GM will commonly employ a few different tools to make their players feel as though they’re a part of the fantasy world. One of the most well-known tools is one used by Matt Mercer on the hit YouTube show Critical Role; he does the voices. When a non-player character (NPC) is encountered by the players, the GM will do a bit of acting, altering their voice, making gestures and wild expressions, and even standing up, pacing around the table, and engaging the players directly in the conversation. They make the player feel as though they are talking directly to the character. 

But when writing a novel, you can’t make your reader hear your voice or see your movements. The reader must conjure these representations in their own mind, and as the author, it’s your job to do this without breaking their immersion. The main character encountering a bandit on the highway in a fantasy world would be presented differently for a reader versus a player. The player must be engaged, while the reader must be convinced. 

Which brings us to agency. Both the reader and the player are here to experience the story, and immersion is the driving force behind it. But while a player expects to make decisions that affect the outcome of the story, the reader expects to be told the story in a way that makes them forget they’re reading one. The player has agency in the story while the reader does not. If the player is not allowed to determine how their character reacts during the encounter, their immersion breaks. Likewise, if the reader is not convinced the protagonist would behave a certain way during the encounter, immersion is again broken.

This is where structure comes into it. Stories written for players are done so in a fashion that gives them the agency to affect the outcome and thus they become a part of the world, immersed. 

Stories written for readers are fashioned to stimulate the reader’s imagination, immersing them without allowing them to determine the outcome (unless you’re writing a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, which is ultimately a game). 

While a good story is structured through rising and falling action for both games and novels, how they are presented differs wildly. Game stories must be structured to be flexible, allowing the players to make choices both during events like combat, which is often the rising action for games, and during the falling action which is often seen by players as dialogue and role-playing. They both must be meted out at a pace that keeps the players interested.  

And while the same is mostly true for the reader the pacing is going to be different. Readers won’t be interested in random encounters. If goblins jump out of the bushes to attack the protagonist in a novel, the event should progress the plot. Players will grind to get their levels up or get new loot, but readers just need the story to keep moving. Reading about grinding is a grind in itself. 

Game writing means having to fill in little details the players may ask about, such as how the currency works, the system of government, or what the specific ritual practices are for worshipping a local God. For readers, unless it’s somehow specifically attached to the plot, it’s unimportant and can often be cut from the story entirely. It’s all world-building, which for a novel should be done organically as the plot unfolds. It’s okay to assume your players will want to know the price of a meal, but for readers, always assume they want to know what happens next in the story and nothing else.

I could go on for days about all the ways immersion, agency, and structure differ in fiction writing and game writing, but I want to keep my blog entries short.

 That said if you have a specific question about it you can always shoot me an email. Sullivanhardgrave@gmail.com.