Evolving Questions

I began playing the game Dungeons & Dragons in 1977, only three years after it was first published. It’s an unusual game in that one of the players, the Dungeon Master, must design an adventure, a haunted castle or a labyrinth of caves and tunnels, for the other players to explore. Often these adventures have a story of some kind, usually revolving around a wicked villain whose devious plans must be foiled. Though D&D was based loosely on the work of fantasy writers like Tolkien and Robert E. Howard, the adventures were a hybrid blend of narrative, gameplay, and a bit of improvisation.

Simply put, it was a brand new artform, which meant, when I started drawing out my first dungeons, there were only a handful of examples from which I could draw inspiration. This was a rare and fantastic creative luxury. Imitation is a useful learning tool, but the real excitement comes when you find something new. With adventure design, virtually everything was new. It was as if I’d started writing fiction a few years after the someone had penned the first novel.

Of course, none of this meant anything to me at the time. I just thought the game was fun. Also, even though humans have been telling stories for as long as we’ve had language, every time I start a new one, I do feel a bit as though it’s the first I’ve ever told, or at least that the ones I’ve told before are of no use to me now. It’s not really true, of course, but I don’t want to tell the same story twice, and the page is so utterly blank, and, most importantly, I am not quite the same person I was yesterday.

This is always the real challenge artists and people in general face from day to day. Like it or not, we keep evolving. When I was a thirteen and pulled out a piece of graph paper to draw a new dungeon for a game that was an evolution of games, I still had to answer the same question I must answer today when I open a new document for an essay: what am I interested in today? You’d think it would be an easy question to answer, but often isn’t. It requires I be present with myself, without judgment and without expectation. Just be there and listen.

This is where all the stuff I love has come from. All the songs I’ve loved and books I’ve loved and movies and games I’ve loved grew out of someone somewhere slowing down enough, being open enough, being curious and courageous enough to ask this one question. Ask it, and you will see how life is always new and always changing and always waiting for your answer.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

William KenowerWriting, William Kenower, Evolution, Dungeons and DragonsComment