It has come to my attention that I’ve acquire a tiny bit of local renown as “that lady who scrapbooks during [insert name of role-playing game (RPG) here]. As if a 60+ woman regularly participating in RPGs isn’t unusual enough, at the gaming table I pull out a box of stickers, clippings, and colored pencils and proceed to illustrate the adventure in my carefully-selected, thematically-appropriate notebook.
I wasn’t in on the first wave of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D). (If you weren’t either, that’s what the kids play in Stranger Things.) I’ll admit I was mildly intrigued by the prospect of a guided, “let’s pretend” table-top fantasy game, but my little brother was way into it, so, by definition, this was not for me. I was busy being an edgy-in-my-own-mind teen.
Flash forward twenty years or so. My little brother is running a baby version of AD&D for my children and his oldest daughter, and I join in. Family togetherness time, right? And so, I found my way to the land of cooperative storytelling games and have hung out there ever since.
The Twitterverse tells me that “AD&D” or “RPGs” are often people’s first thought when asked “What’s a good storytelling game?” AD&D-type roleplaying games generally include: a facilitator (game master), a description of the story world and set of rules for how things work (system and/or setting), and a rudimentary plot (published by the game company or written by the game master). The players create characters consistent with the game world, again according to a set of rules, who will make choices and experience the consequences of those actions as they navigate the story’s twists and turns.
All this will sound very familiar to writers and students of story. All fictional worlds must have internal consistency, even—no, especially—fantasy and science fiction worlds. Anything can’t happen: Events must make sense according to the world rules the author presented to the reader, and character actions must be consistent with their personalities, goals, and past experiences. In an RPG, a group of people negotiate the plot developments, rather than the author, thinking it through alone.
It wasn’t very long before I moved up from the kids’ table and began to play RPGs with other adults. A good number of these folks were writers and artists, well-practiced at weaving story, so our adventures were high quality and illustrating the story was a natural impulse. In fact, at least one of the authors regularly developed her story ideas visually. Pretty soon we were exchanging stickers, bringing in glue sticks and glitter, and generally making a nuisance of ourselves.
For an ongoing campaign (that is, you are going to play the same character, week after week, in a continuing storyline), my first consideration is the game journal itself. So many cool notebooks are out there—I choose one that fits the character concept. Here is a notebook from 2007 for a traveling bard / secret agent called a Harper, for an AD&D game in the Planescape setting. (A particularly fantastical fantasy land. My Harper, Silé, didn’t technically belong there, but, hey, why not? Multiverse travel is a thing.)
To scrapbook, one needs scrap as well as a book. When the available stickers didn’t meet our group’s needs, someone started printing out pictures on sticker paper. Before long we were cutting out pictures from magazines. I’m not much of an artist, but sometimes a bit of drawing was just the embellishment needed. Tiny stencils helped.
The journal is for recording the RPG adventure, so your writing implements are important—nowadays I’m all about a good fountain pen, but in 2007 it was shiny, colorful gel pens and the like. I recycled a lot of my children’s abandoned school supplies and Easter basket loot into my gaming bag.
A story can be told in many ways, sometimes all at the same time. By playing and journaling collaborative storytelling games, I can enjoy story through imagination, interaction with friends, description and dramatic narrative, and creation of a visual record of the experience.
