If you navigate to any of the main pages of my site (listed above in a neat menu for your convenience), you’ll find it’s no secret my angle on fiction. I combine my MFA with table-top role-playing games to help authors create immersive stories that keep readers coming back. Of these things, the MFA is pretty verifiable. I can point to it and say I graduated from Seton Hill University, where I spent 2.5 years learning the tools that I use every day. The TTRPG angle, though, is a bit less concrete.
Until today.
Or, rather, until last Thursday night when my bard (and, thus, I) walked the walk of immersive storytelling.
A couple of weeks prior, our party adventured to a tomb, outside of which we encountered a ghost-wolf and its ghoul-wolf soldiers. In traditional fashion, our barbarian charged into battle, closely followed by our monk. Also in traditional fashion, I hung out in the back with the druid and inspired everyone, as I am a bard and very squishy.
For those who don’t know, bards can be combat characters if built right. That is not the kind of bard I built. Mine is excellent at social interaction of all stripes, which is a might less useful when dealing with undead wolves who aren’t interested in talking. After pulling my inspiration trick, I checked every inch of my character sheet in search of something I could do other than stand back and look pretty, finally deciding on my new mimicry spell. If I made myself sound like a wolf, I reasoned, these wolves would think they were being called away or threatened and leave us alone.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is not at all how things turned out. (The monk maintains it’s her fault for giving me the idea, but it was my choice to use it.)
Instead of the wolves running off to fight the nonexistent wolf challenging them, they charged me. Bonus, the ghost-wolf showed up to attack me too. I managed to get away by climbing a tree. At least until one of the ghouls leaped up, attacked, hit me for a large amount of damage, and sent me crashing to the ground unconscious.
After which I thought “I’m an idiot. This was a terrible idea.”
I was assured by no less than three people that the idea was solid but my particular execution was poor. This did not make me or my bard feel better. But as one does, you pick up the pieces of your poor decision-making and move on with the adventure.
Fast-forward until this past week, our group entered a chamber where statues of the judgment and warrior gods presided over a staircase that continuously moved down like an escalator. In order to pass, we had to be found worthy, either by confessing something or proving ourselves.
And just like that, my inner light bulb turned on.
I marched my bard up to the judgment god and asked him not to judge me too harshly for my foolish decision to sound like a wolf while battling wolves, a move which put myself and my companions in danger.
Now, of course, the dice had to be rolled in conjunction with a skill. I chose diplomacy, nailed it with a twenty-seven total, and was lifted gently up the steps.
The dice help to illustrate my point here, but even without them, it stands: my character did something foolish, learned from it, used that understanding on a later challenge, and experienced character development that allowed her to overcome what was before her.
In other words, I put myself smack in the head of my bard, immersed myself in the story, and turned it into a narrative arc that fit her situation, all while keeping it relevant to her character.
And that, folks, is the power of immersive storytelling. When you share a mind with your characters, you can think like them, become them. You can put yourself in their situation, see the best path forward, and come out stronger on the other side. Even more, you get to redeem yourself for your past mistakes (even if your group will probably still tell the story of your epic mimicry fail as a cautionary tale to anyone who wants to try bard in the future).
So, if my bardic adventures have duly inspired you to pursue immersive storytelling, that handy menu includes a link to my contact page, and I’d love to chat about your story.
Or, since I said from the start that I didn’t want to use these posts as a way to just sell my services, feel free to just take this post as the story it is and move on. Either way, I’ll be back next week.
👋 Fair travels,
Mary
P.S. A big thanks to PBarlowArt from Pixabay for the image.
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I blog about books, movies, ttrpgs, and fiction craft to help writers think about bold new ways to tell their stories. Join now so you don’t miss the post that could be the one that changes your entire outlook on being an author. Posts go out at most twice a week.
