by The Wise Patriot

Created on: February 03, 2009

I remember mentioning roleplaying to a neighbour years back. She thought it was satanic, and denied passionately that her children were roleplaying every day. We've become so enamoured by the idea of dice-based games being the stereotype for role play that we've forgotten the actual definition. Therefore, before we go any further, I'd better define role play:

Role play (or roleplay) is the act of imagining that you are yourself or someone else in a different situation/environment/reality.

The best authors roleplay in order to make a world more realistic. A personal example of this was the development of my fantasy world Hyria. I began with a simple question of what it was like to live in a world infested with monsters. From there, I addressed areas usually neglected (monster origins, biology, etc.). I closed my eyes and would imagine opening them to find myself in that same world. What did I do all day? What sort of things do I know or see when exit the front door? What kind of linguistic differences are there and how difficult is it to understand daily speech?

You can often tell which authors use roleplay to develop their worlds and which do not. For example, when you examine the worlds of D&D and AD&D (and now D20 D&D), you'll conclude that the creators of those worlds irresponsibly failed to visit them! Just look at how many worlds exist with exactly one sun, one (or possibly two, if you're lucky) two moons, an environment almost exactly like our's, oak and elm trees, birds, cats, dogs... I could go on. Meanwhile, look at worlds such as Middle Earth, which was created around fully-developed languages using Norse mythology as the visual inspiration. Or what about Babylon 5, whose author shed tears while penning the death of the first Kosh. His ability to put himself in that situation led to the cast, crew, and audience all feeling as though they lost a loved one.

When you roleplay, you gain empathy for your characters. You feel what they feel and think what they think. This leads to the character becoming far more believable and well-rounded. Also, by walking through the streets of your world, you discover discrepancies and flesh out minor details. There's nothing like your characters sitting down to a meal of well-imagined foods to create a sense of culture and a mix of the familiar and alien. Not every world has invented cheese (sadly), even if every world has a version of Swedish meatballs.

The key to any great piece of work is the ability to draw the reader into it as if they've been transported to another world. Obviously, my examples lean more towards science fiction or fantasy, but roleplay can just as easily be applied to any drama or romance. Ask yourself "What would I do if my lover cheated on me?" and then play it out in your mind, imagining you are your character. Suddenly, you have a dramatic confrontation scene to add to your novel.

If you have made it this far and still fail to see the wisdom of using role play in creating literature, then I will depart with just one more angle for you. Look at all of the novels, comic books, etc. that exist now because a group of people dared to imagine living in another world. Every major roleplaying game has a series of novels, often created around characters that the author actually created to play in the game. Spider-man, an international icon, would not have existed had Stan Lee not sat down one day and wondered what it would be like to be an average college student who suddenly ended up with super powers. The X-Men would never have lasted their first year if not for all of the realistic drama and relationships formed because the writers wondered what it was like to be an outcast.

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