Tabletop Role-playing games (TTRPGs) are vital in my narrative game design practice. Through storytelling and improvisation at the game table, the world grows and naturally takes shape as players traversed it. The first step can be something as small as one character that will catalyze a metropolis. As not every detail can be planned accordingly, this type of worldbuilding allows me to focus on a macro scale. Certain plot points that are inevitable become anchors that the players and myself can use to create whole towns or even some of the most memorable non-player characters (NPCs).
Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition (DnD) was my first introduction to TTRPGs, and with it grew the world of Spaara. A world of 6 years in the making, Spaara has been the primary setting for my large-scale DnD campaigns. The driving elements focus on moral ambiguity and the lasting effect of “good” or “evil” decisions that change the fate of the world.
Currently, in the works, Guided Rite is a TTRPG I am creating. Guided Rite serves as a role-playing game with a system that is malleable without the use of homebrew material. The goal of the game is to showcase the diversity and unique stories given to each character, and by doing so, mirror the diverse population playing the game. The system is based on a d10 dice pool, where the added sum is used in the overall statistics. This removes categories such as “base stats” and “modifiers”, and relies on a physical amount of one kind of die.
If you want to read about how I use DnD and storytelling in my music composition [click here].
