D&D Off the Table
What do we lose when we adapt D&D stories to other mediums?
I don’t know about you, but I’m a little slut for Baldur’s Gate 3.
I currently have about 203 hours on the game, and I’m on my second playthrough. Everything about this game consumed my brain, it’s my own goddamn tadpole that will never leave, I will never be free of this game because there are so many side quests and NPCs I want to meet and I will not stop until I have explored every fucking inch of this game and romanced every possible NPC.
To have D&D translated into a video game is interesting, to say the least. Combat, something that can be a little tedious for me as a player, is suddenly VERY invigorating, as I’m controlling not just my character, but my party members as well. It definitely tickles the micromanager part of my brain. I get to control EVERYONE in my party AND THEY FINALLY DO WHAT I WANT!
Playing Baldur’s Gate 3 has me thinking a lot about how we translate these stories to other mediums. With the release of Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Amazon releasing The Legend of Vox Machina and announcing a Mighty Nein animated adaptation, what happen when we take the stories collaboratively told around a table and translate them to a streamlined narrative experience? Especially when they are existing stories, as in Critical Role’s case?
Because, I’m gonna show myself here, sometimes I’m kind of more invested in the meta-narrative of these stories. What rolls lead to the payoff of the conflict? Why did that player make that roleplay choice? Even in cases like The Legend of Vox Machina or Honor Among Thieves, when the story is so divorced from the people playing the game, I am sitting there thinking to myself, “Oh, that’s when someone critically failed. That line is definitely some sort of a callback joke to something a player said.”
(Unrelated, am I the only person who does this?)
TTRPGs are a strange theatrical medium. If you’re just playing with your friends, it’s an intimate story told
Or, we see it the other way around, like in the webseries The Party. Very little is known about the game the characters are playing, but we know a lot about the people who are playing it. We understand their lives and the conflicts within them, and how they translate themselves into their characters.
This is so revealing of who I am as a person, but sometimes when I play Baldur’s Gate, I imagine that there is a meta-narrative happening. That Amelia Tyler is actually the DM, providing all the voices for the NPCs, and the companions are players at the table. And maybe this is the actor part of my brain activating, but I begin to think about the choices each person makes for their character. What is the subtext of that line? What does that character actually want in this moment?
When any TTRPG is lifted off of the table, two narratives come with it. There’s the narrative of the players and GM, and whatever is occurring in their own lives as the game occurs. Then there’s the narrative of the story being told, the characters, their relationships, and the trials they face as a unit. I have truly yet to see any medium that adapts both stories and gives them the grace and levity they deserve, but can they? Can both stories exist at the same time when removed from the actual play context?
The Baldur’s Gate 3 High Rollers episode was something so special to me, because a meta narrative is now brought into this fantastical story I love. Baldur’s Gate feels like a fully fleshed-out D&D game, I get to see these people act in real time with each other and witness the story play out in real time.
That’s the fucking magic of actual plays, is we watch two storylines tangentially play out with each other. There’s the players and GM, their relationships with each other, the rolls that dictate the flow of the story, and their reactions when shit hits the fan. And then there’s the collaborative tale on the table, the one they tell together. One cannot exist without the other, they both are what makes the experience of watching an actual play or playing TTRPGs with friends so engaging.
Okay. Time to go play 50 more hours of Baldur’s Gate. I’m doing a durge run right now. It slaps. I love this game so fucking much.
