At the Crossroads of Creative Writing, Technical Writing, and Composition

Writing is at the heart of role-playing games; however, much of the existing literature addresses the use of writing (for) tabletop role-playing games (tabletop RPGs) only tangentially. This chapter argues that tabletop RPGs offer students the ability to practice writing skills from across the areas of creative writing, technical writing, and composition and provide instructors in these academic silos the opportunity to highlight the interdisciplinary nature of writing beyond academia. While instructors must acknowledge and address potential challenges of incorporating games into the curriculum, it is possible to create academically rigorous assignments that introduce and reinforce important writing skills that students will need as they progress through college and into their communities and careers. This chapter offers instructors a heuristic for planning a course and a scaffolded assignment sequence and strategies that could be implemented in their classrooms.