Dungeon as Narrative: Rethinking Storytelling

Like a lot of people, you probably got into GMing, because you want to tell stories. You’re probably avid reader of science fiction and fantasy, maybe even an aspiring novelist, and you want to try your hand at writing something. You start developing your world, fleshing out realistic NPCs, and tweaking the minute details. You probably spend a great deal of time making sure every aspect of your world has a compelling backstory. Stop right there.

Your players don’t care. They don’t care that you’ve sweat, cried, and bled to make sure that your world’s history and inhabitants are fully developed and interesting. They don’t care that you’ve constructed character arcs for them that challenge their morals. They want to murder the ever-loving hell out of imaginary goblins, dragons, and Lovecraftian horrorterrors. This is their playground of kill. Yes, even the ones that are polite enough sit there and allow themselves to be railroaded. They aren’t as interested in your story as they are in making their own.

Think about how you interpret the word narrative. When the average person thinks of a narrative, things like novels, plays and, depending on their age, video games come to mind. The problem with our thinking is that pen&paper RPGs aren’t like other storytelling mediums that we’ve had experience with. The players are active participants in the story and they have an infinite number of options, unlike novels and video games which railroad the reader and player. So the game’s narrative can’t be constructed like a novel or a video game. At any moment, a player can choose to make their character walk away from an adventure hook or kill an important NPC. That’s a lot of power, and it needs to be respected if you want to tell an interesting story.

Narrative doesn’t have to just be transmitted through social interaction between the quest-giver and the PCs. Narrative doesn’t have to be the stuff that happens before and after the quest. Narrative is the quest. Narrative is the dungeon. Narrative is the random encounter. Narrative is the treasure. Narrative is participatory. There isn’t one person at the table telling a story, each person at the table is telling their own story. It’s the GM’s job to reconcile the differences and keep all the plates spinning.