Dungeons, Dragons, and Technical Documentation: why technical writers should play tabletop roleplaying games (Part 1)
Introduction
You might have heard that Dungeons & Dragons — or D&D for short — is a game with elves, wizards, and twenty-sided dice. If you’re a technical communicator, you might spend your time writing user manuals, API documentation, or SOPs — in other words, stuff that matters, stuff that helps people get their work done. What could a technical writer have to learn from D&D? How could it possibly make you a better communicator?
I understand you might be skeptical, but the fact is that D&D rulebooks are rich case studies in technical communication. They contain documentation of the game’s rules and mechanics and detailed information about fantastical worlds, both of which is essential to play the game. Furthermore, playing the actual game — running the campaign for you insiders — is an exercise in maintaining a shared imaginative experience; this requires communication that’s clear, engaging, and creative.
This will be the first of a two-part series of blog posts about Dungeons & Dragons and technical writing. In this post, I’ll give you a brief overview of D&D and why clear technical communication is so important for the game. In the second post, I’ll share and discuss examples of effective (and ineffective) technical communication in D&D.
What is Dungeons and Dragons?
Even if you haven’t played D&D before, you’ve likely heard of it, whether it’s from the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, the Netflix show Stranger Things, or its recent renaissance thanks to live-play streaming shows like Critical Role. That said, you still might be asking: What is D&D?
In short, D&D is a tabletop role-playing game (RPG) where you take on the role of a character going on adventures, usually in a fantasy world resembling Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings. In fact, D&D served as the template for many RPG video games, so if you’ve played anything like Skyrim, World of Warcraft, or Elden Ring, this probably sounds familiar. D&D differs from these games, however, because you play with a group of friends and build the world, the story, and the action only with the rules, dice, and your imaginations — no computer or gaming console required. Instead, one player takes on the role of the Dungeon Master (DM). Instead of playing a character, the DM serves as chief storyteller, moderator, and referee for the group. I’ll get into some details of how this works below, but first it’ll be helpful to know some history of the game.
A Brief History of D&D
The game has its roots in tabletop wargaming. These are games where players control armies of painted miniatures and take turns playing out intricate battles. The early versions of D&D in the 1970s focused almost entirely on tactical combat, each player controlling a single character, such as a warrior or wizard. Players delved into the dungeon to fight the dragon, among other nefarious creatures, and the game relied heavily on miniatures and maps.
As the game evolved, however, narrative aspects became more prominent. Who were these adventurers? Why were they delving the dungeon? What were their hopes, dreams, and fears? In other words, you weren’t just controlling a character in the game, you played a role, like an actor without a script. This is when D&D went from just dice and miniatures to something more; it became a game of group storytelling. I like to think of it as a cross between a intricate boardgame and improvised theater.
How Do You Play D&D?
This might all sound very loose and hard to picture, so without detailing the vast system of rules, I’ll describe the basic structure of the game. Though nearly all tabletop roleplaying games, including Dungeons & Dragons, follow the same, repeating three-step process:
- The Dungeon Master (DM) sets the scene for the other players. He or she describes what’s going on in the fantasy world where the story takes place. For example, are the players in a town? Who’s there in the street? What’s the weather like? Is there a tavern, armory, or a blacksmith?
- The players describe what their characters say and do. Where do they go? Who do they talk to, and what do they say? If a group of bandits blocks players’ path, do the players draw their swords and prepare for battle or do they try to negotiate?
- The Dungeon Master describes the results of the players’ actions. This can include what other characters in the world do or say. In some situations, the players and DM roll dice that dictate random outcomes. For example, a roll of the dice might decide whether a character persuades a castle guard to let him pass or whether another character lands a blow against the enemy with her battle-ax.
Though the settings, vocabulary, and specifics of the rules can change, nearly every tabletop roleplaying game follows this same procedure, and the beauty of these games rests in the simplicity, flexibility, and openness of this process. The only limits to what you can do in the game are 1) the fantastical world the DM creates and 2) the rules that govern each character’s capabilities (e.g., casting spells or dizzying acrobatics). As I’ll describe in the next section, this is exactly why documentation of the game’s rules and clear communication between the players are so important.
Why Technical Communication is Essential
To understand why technical communication is important for D&D, you first need to understand why it is essential for any game. Games are made up of two things: 1) the goals all the players agree to and 2) the restrictions placed on how to achieve those goals. In other words, the rules of any game, whether it’s chess, basketball, or monopoly, make the game possible. In chess, for example, the goal is to capture the King. To do this, the players take turns moving their pieces around on the board, capturing opposing pieces, and outfoxing the other player, but each piece only moves in certain patterns. In basketball, the goal is to score points by placing the ball through the opposing team’s basket, how you’re allowed to do this, however, is very restricted. Without rules, there is no game.
Looking to D&D, however, both the goals themselves and the restrictions on how to achieve those goals are incredibly open. In the early days of D&D, the goal was simply to slay the monsters and plunder the gold. In a more story-based game, however, the goal depends on what the DM and the other players decide. Sometimes it’s simple, like saving a town from a threatening monster or tracking down a long-lost artifact, but the players’ goals can be as complex and nuanced as those of the characters in any novel or film.
How players achieve that goal, the very element that makes D&D a game, is where technical writing comes in. The players can take almost any action, as long as the character is capable of it; the player has nearly infinite options. That in mind, the character’s capabilities need to be clearly defined in a way that are useful for a player to make choices. Then, given the openness of the choices, there need to be clear rules on how to resolve actions in the game. From a game-design perspective, rules for a tabletop RPG like Dungeons & Dragons must both 1) be comprehensive enough to address the choices a player might make and 2) be flexible enough for the DM to apply the rules to novel situations. Though vast, there are a finite number of positions on a chess board; in D&D, the possibilities are infinite. Furthermore, due to the vastness of possibilities, players consult and use rules documents while playing the game. Characters’ abilities are documented on a reference sheet used during gameplay, and players consult the rulebooks frequently. If either of these elements isn’t 1) clear, 2) accessible, or 3) useful, they’ve failed, and the game ceases to be a game.
In the next post in the series, I’ll walk through several examples of technical documentation in Dungeons & Dragons and how they demonstrate strong technical writing.
