What this D&D psychology book taught me about game writing

If you write tabletop roleplaying games, you know there are a not a lot of books specifically on writing TTRPGs. Most of my writing craft comes from training as a fiction writer and reading screenwriting books. One of my goals for this year was to study TTRPGs more, and so I picked up a copy of The Psychology of Dungeons & Dragons by Jamie Madigan.

Now Madigan has a PhD in psychology, so the examples in the book are backed up by research and real-life cases. And that’s hard in a new area like tabletop roleplaying – despite the millions of fans and players around the world there is very little specialised research into TTRPGs.

But this methodical approach quantifies a lot of the vague sentiment we have around game writing for TTRPGs. It answers the question of what makes a game satisfying for players, and covers topics like worldbuilding, why we like to roleplay, and dealing with in-game choices.

As a professional game writer, I wanted to talk about a few of the concepts I found particularly helpful, but I strongly recommend picking up a copy of this book even if you’re not a writer, because it has a lot of helpful advice for players and GMs too. And while it broadly talks about Dungeons & Dragons, the lessons here are applicable to most game systems.

The most valuable chapter for me was the first one, where Madigan talks about self-determination theory. It’s this idea that people will engage with voluntary activities that allow them to experience competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Tabletop roleplaying games do all three, which is one of the reasons people love them. I found this so helpful as a game writer, because you want players to go away from the table feeling satisfied, but it’s hard to sometimes say: what makes a player feel good at the table? Now as a writer and GM, I can go back and think, am I allowing the players to demonstrate their competencies, make choices, and facilitate good relationships.

It also raised some interesting questions for me as a Call of Cthulhu writer; when you’re writing in systems where you sometimes lose autonomy in the case of insanity or death, how do you provide players with the sense of choice in how these things are roleplayed? I think the answer is to allow them to contribute to their characters’ loss of autonomy, by asking them how they go insane or getting them to narrate their own death.

The second valuable lesson I took from this is the idea of player frames, which is a theory that came from Gary Allen Fine in the 80s. The theory goes that players view the world through three frames:

1. The frame of the real world – so things like munching on donuts while rolling dice at table. Or maybe their worries from work or external issues that they’re bringing to the game.
2. The frame of the game system – so this is the rules, applying them, arguing with the GM about bonus actions etc.
3. The frame of the player character within the game – which is seeing the fantasy world and interacting as your character, Bob the Barbarian or what have you.

This was so helpful for differentiating what makes people break out of the believability of the world, and what keeps people in. All three frames operate at the same time, and can cause friction with each other. For example, listening to grumbling stomachs while you’re trying to concentrate on saving throws can be eminently distracting. Reducing the friction between these things can lead to a smoother game.

The final thing Madigan does a great job discussing is looking at morality systems within TTRPGs, and proposing a more rounded way of looking at morality. We all know about the 3×3 morality grid of lawful good to chaotic evil (Chaotic Neutral for life), but it’s not always helpful to think in dichotomies for a rich roleplaying experience. Madigan talks about Moral Foundations Theory, about how we view morality in terms of values rather than stark binaries. It got me thinking about how I can introduce moralities to my game systems, and how these mechanics could differ from traditional good vs evil storytelling.

After reading The Psychology of Dungeons & Dragons I have a much better understanding of why people play TTRPGs and what makes them satisfying. I think this book a valuable tool in a game writers’ arsenal – alongside GMs and players – because psychology and human interaction affects everyone at the table.