The humble court wizard. One of seemingly infinite power, who makes the laws of time and space roll over and play dead. Bedecked in dazzling robes and an impressive hat, their command over the arcane arts makes them a force as mystifying as they are intimidating.

[caption id="attachment_272861" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Wizard - Staffan Andersson[/caption]

This is the sort of description I associate with the practice of magic in fantasy settings. It is certainly a touch cliché. I wouldn’t blame anyone for finding this conception of wizardry to be old-hat. However, there are a few useful things we can learn about RPG writing through how we utilize magic in our worlds. The question we must ask is: what distinguishes magic in our setting from science, where the explanations of phenomena are very clear to us? How is the mystery of magic useful to us as Dungeon Masters, and perhaps creative writers more broadly?

This question has a deceptively simple answer. To put it simply, magic should be mysterious.
To demonstrate what I mean, I’d like to pull upon real-world stage magicians as an example of how mystery creates a compelling magic system. When Penn and Teller fire a pair of revolvers at one another only to catch the bullet in their teeth,…

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A conversation that often gets bandied about in roleplaying circles—especially those that want to get a little better at running and writing compelling campaigns—is the concept of realism in roleplaying. The obvious conception is that realism should be kept as far from the roleplaying space as possible; we’re telling stories about vampire underworlds, apocalyptic magic, and cyberpunk futures, they’re obviously unrealistic. This is reductive. Believability is a major factor in all storytelling. It’s hard to engage with a story where things seem to happen on a whim without any rhyme or reason. Our brains seek patterns, and the crux of good storytelling is creating a world that, if not realistic, is at least internally consistent. In a word, what you’re looking for is a sense of verisimilitude in your writing.

Verisimilitude is a word with a bit of a nebulous definition, and I wouldn’t blame you for not being super familiar with the term. Merriam-Webster defines verisimilitude as “having the appearance of truth”. Essentially, something has verisimilitude if it appears to be realistic or depicting something real. 

Acclaimed horror and science-fiction writer, Harlan Ellison once said, “I never strive for realism in what I write, but rather I insist on verisimilitude. I hope when you translate that, the important distinction can be made. I don't need things to be…

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I remember during my time as a counter monkey at my friendly local game store, I had been brought on to sell RPG’s. As a bright-eyed, fresh-out-of-high-school teenager, I thought D&D would never see a major player base in my small town. Then little by little, I started to see more and more kids, who couldn’t have been much older than 14-16 years old coming into the shop when school let out for the day. This was a bit mystifying to me at the time. When did this hobby I’d been playing for years suddenly become big enough that I had as many as four distinct groups of players coming together to play at our tables every week?

RPGs, and especially Dungeons and Dragons have attracted a larger and larger swath of the youth since D&D 5th edition hit the scene in 2014. According to an infographic published by GameRant, Dungeons and Dragons has a player base of 36% between the ages of 15 and 25. Surely a big portion of D&D 5th’s popularity among Gen Z is attributable to its increased presence in popular culture through shows like CriticalRole and Stranger Things. But this is hardly the first time that D&D has appeared in the media: I can remember watching Freaks and Geeks when I was a wee…

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