Why Dungeon Masters Make Great Marketers

You’re two pepperoni pizzas deep, hunched over as your friends toss dice onto your banged-up basement table. At least, that’s what it looks like. What everyone is imagining, however, is a group of intrepid adventurers fighting a pack of goblins that accosted them on their way to town to return the mayor’s lost prize swine: Porky Pete (named by one of your players, naturally). Not one of them even notices the dryer rumbling in the background.

That’s Dungeons & Dragons, baby.

To sit down for a tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG for those nerd-savvy), be it D&D or any other game, means sitting down for collaborative storytelling. It means escaping into a story of your own making. It means selling a story as reality.

And if that doesn’t sound like marketing, you’re probably not a marketer. So let me explain myself.

Before any dice are rolled, a dungeon master (DM for short) has to convince a group to even show up:

“Basically,” you start, eyes wide with fanatic excitement. “You’ll come over, and we’ll have a kick-ass adventure where you fight a bunch of monsters and find treasure. Oh, you’re the last person we need for the group.” (You’ve said this last bit to everyone.)

You make big, bold promises and try to capture your friend’s imagination. Hoping that one of them will bite and go, “Oh? Pray tell, my good dungeon master,” and not the halfhearted “sure,” you’re totally going to get.

Next, you’re going to need to make sure you’re delivering something the players actually want. Are they interested in classic dragon-slaying dungeon delving? How about a murder mystery in the king’s court? Or maybe they want to be the bad guys for a change.

Then you’re going to have to deliver on that promise. You promised gold, you promised combat, you promised basically anything to get them at the table. But if you ended up convincing them to sit down for a night of slaying dragons, but instead they spend four hours fighting giant rats in a smelly sewer, the eyes are glazing over, the phones are coming out, and everyone’s going to head out early. And they probably aren’t coming to session two.

Delivering on your promise is a golden rule in marketing. You fail that, you break trust. Game over.

Okay, so let’s say you are telling the story you promised. Next comes the fun part. Drum roll, please…. Emotional investment!

The thing is, you don’t just get emotional investment. You have to earn it, my Dungeon Master Marketer extraordinaire. Because It’s the beating, beautiful heart of all marketing—of all storytelling. It’s that mystical magical “Just one more page.”

The good news is that once emotional investment sinks its hooks into your players, the rest gets a hell of a lot easier.

Because when your players start engaging, the story becomes effortless. Your players suddenly offer ideas. They provide feedback. They think of things you could never ever think of in a million billion years.

It’s the dream of every marketer: folks who engage and care about what you’re trying to tell them. And it really can feel like magic. Your words and your ideas stirred some dormant part of your audience to life.

You bring the words; they bring the action.

And while professional marketing may not be as exciting as slaying dragons to save a fiefdom, it operates on a lot of the same levels. That’s why DM’s have a leg up here, even if they don’t realize it. They have to market their adventure, figure out what their players want, deliver on their promise, and get them to engage.

That’s the full marketing package if I’ve ever seen it.

Whether you’re slaying a dragon with D20s, or you just bought a set of curtains because your cat tore down the old one, a story probably brought you there. And chances are pretty high that someone really good at marketing helped you see that story to its conclusion.

Big Dumb Crybaby

I cry a lot.

I’m not talking about a full sob or dramatic weep. I get the eye stings. That salty leakage after a particular thought, sound, sight, or smell brushes up against that little thing we call a soul. It’s a cathartic rush. A gasp.

We’re really good at feeling things. Almost as good as we are at not feeling things.

And we’ve all done a great job training ourselves to not feel things. Not properly, at least. I’d wager most folks consider themselves far too busy to cry. Far too busy to stop and realize that a month, three months, a fucking year just passed.

Exhausted, we spend our evenings on the couch, staring glassy-eyed at devices we’re socially obligated to own. Though at this point, I hesitate to say we own our screens. We just swipe on to the next clip, data harvested, adds generated, continuing, and continuing until Earth completes another run around the sun.

So, I like to cry.

It’s my emotional eruption that pulls me back to the present and the now. I probably sound crazy. Maybe I’m a big dumb crybaby. But let me ask you: when did you last cry?

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’ve been SO busy and overworked that you have cried. A lot. You’ve got that full-body, chest-heaving, vomit-inducing cry. The type of crying that doesn’t just come after your breaking point, but after you forgot how you broke in the first place. No, you’re wrung out like a human sponge, wondering why you can’t just suck it up like a normal person.

Spoiler alert: the rest of us aren’t much better.

By the time you’ve caught your breath, a decade has passed, your hair is gone, and you aren’t quite where you thought you’d be when you were five years old and said you’d grow up to be an archeologist—or maybe that’s just me.

Either way, probably not healthy.

I do my best to avoid those kinds of downward spirals– not that you really can. But a little cry here and there helps. It’s a pressure release in the pipeline that is my discombobulation. A way to decompress from the mess of everything without getting too sloppy. Because boy, do we need to decompress from everything sometimes.

Crying helps me connect. With myself. With others. It helps me relive a moment, good or bad. But it’s hard not to get stuck in feedback loops and dopamine cycles that spin you round and round and round till you’re vomiting on yourself like some fucked up mama bird.

Because I do get stuck. We all do. In the noise, the shouting, the screaming, the anger, the hate. But hot-digity damn is it nice to feel something beyond the snorts, the “hahs,” the “Check this meme out,” and the “oh my god I can’t handle this anymore what the fuck is wrong with me.”

We live in a world where AI is sanitizing our prose. Where our attentions are clipped and dropped into algorithmically laid labyrinths filled with personalized minotaurs that bellow stale memes and politics. A world where every news outlet lures you in with tantalizingly bullshit headlines only to dash you on the rocks of fear and propaganda.

But we also live in a world where a fat little bluejay lives in your yard. Where the weather was so perfect that you spent the afternoon reading beneath that old oak tree. Where you just shared a good beer with an old buddy.

Sure, it’s also the same world where you broke your arm in a skiing accident, where you failed that intro-level math test, and where your car broke down in the middle of a thunderstorm. But that’s life. The good and the bad.

There are tears for both.

We owe it to ourselves to gasp for breath—if only for a second. For me, crying is that gasp. For you, it could be something different. Point is, we all need something, yeah?

AI is destroying your confidence as a writer.

There’s an unspoken rule in creative writing workshops: don’t rewrite someone’s work when giving feedback. At best, it comes off as dismissive. At worst, it can destroy their confidence.

So why are so many people letting ChatGPT rewrite their work?

Just like in a creative writing workshop, when ChatGPT rewrites your prose—even ifyou’ve trained it to sound like you—you lose confidence in yourself.

Many are touting how ChatGPT can be a useful tool, and sure, in careful moderation, it can help you find the perfect word or help you remember a tricky piece of grammar. But like jamming Fritos down your throat at midnight, it’s detrimental to your long-term health.

One generated sentence becomes one generated paragraph becomes one generated page, and boom, you aren’t the writer anymore.

So, next time you’re writing, stay confident. You know what you’re doing. You’ve been doing it for years. And as you type away, don’t for a single second believe that a thoughtless generative printer can do a better job than your beautiful human brain.

Okay with Being Okay

There’s a space in my mind. It sits at the center of my grey matter. A little sanctuary. A tiny chamber that brushes up against everything else. It’s the focal point of my brain in the same way a big, ugly-ass vase is the focal point of a poorly-furnished living room. Even when I’m not actively thinking about it, it’s there, clashing with paint, carpet, and everything else. Unlike some distant memories or old habits, it doesn’t gather dust. I keep it polished. I inspect the vase for cracks and issues, even when everyone tells me there’s nothing to worry about and that I should breathe and stop for a second and—you get the point.

Sometimes, the vase is a pot of water sitting on my stovetop. I left the burner on and decided it was a great time to leave for the day—this shaky analogy is made worse because I have done this before. I’ll be out and about, doing whatever I’m doing, when I sense that simmering. That chemical smell of burning Teflon after the water has been steamed out and the flame sucks the bottom of the pot. Maybe I’m on the couch watching TV, reading a book, driving to the supermarket. Where I am doesn’t matter. What matters is that I need to be worried about something, right? I mean, I left the fucking burner on.

It’s a twisted sense of vindication, remembering something you should be worried about, even if that worry is as empty as harmless as dinner plans or as distant as a due date that hasn’t been established yet. But there is always something to worry about. And like an ugly vase at the center of a living room, or water evaporating out of a burning pot, it demands attention.

Why does it feel wrong to not worry? To not have these things that claw and scream and stoke my fears and anxieties? Even on those days when everything is perfect—the sun is out, the skies are blue, and the danged birds are singing like a Disney flick—I can’t help but say to myself, “Hmmm, I think it’s time to panic.”

How can I sit here and enjoy my time when there are insubstantial, trivial, and neurotic things to worry about? Because no matter what, that water is going to start simmering again, or that vase is going to get in the way, and my brain isn’t going to let me relax.

Because relaxing is the worst thing I can do. Because then the accusations start.

Why relax when you could fill that time with a side gig? Hustle and bustle. Get on that grindset. Stop watching YouTube, or reading a book, or playing a game. Get out and make something of yourself. Stop enjoying the moment and think, think, think, think, THINK. You’re only being lazy. That’s all. If you justify your enjoyment, you’re just coping. Be nervous. Be scared. Be regretful. Look at these last thirty years and ask yourself…could I have done more?

Obviously, don’t do any of that. But it’s hard sometimes, isn’t it? Especially now. Today. Tomorrow. Over the next few years. Brains aren’t supposed to do this, be hijacked by pressures worries, and ever-increasing expectations. I know I’m not alone. Of course, I’m not alone. And while that fills me with some comfort it’s also a bit sad.

We should all be okay with being okay.

I am Afraid to Die

We’ve all been there. It’s say, 1 am, and you’re tossing and turning in bed. Maybe it’s too hot in your room. Maybe it’s too cold. Maybe your partner or roommate is snoring like the world’s sleepiest jackhammer. Either way, you can’t sleep, and suddenly, you’re slammed with that thought that’s been lurking in your mind all day. There’s no ignoring it now. That big terrifying ball of darkness has taken over your brain, and you’ve got to ride this out. It’s time to get existential, baby!

Have fun at work tomorrow!

Whether we want to or not, we’re all intimately acquainted with our intrusive thoughts. These thoughts clamor from the darkness and snuggle up like a toxic ex-partner who just wanted to come over because they miss you. Or they are about as subtle as the Kool-Aid-man bursting through your skull. Everyone’s got their tormentor. It’s shocking how many inventive ways our brains torture us. Thanks for that one, evolution!

These things vary from person to person. You could be jumped by that stupid thing you said ten years ago, or remember how you keep ghosting your friend, or you could have just come to the painful realization that you hate your job. Maybe the world is about to end, and all you can do is lay in bed and panic.

For me, it’s the fear of death. And before I get someone all uppity about how they never want to live forever—no crap. What I’m talking about is the sudden nothingness—the ability to not, well, be. The feeling starts in my chest. It’s like someone has jammed a bunch of cotton balls in my sternum, and every breath cements them in place. Before you know it, I’m curled up against my pillow, counting down the hypothetical days I have left on this rock and thinking about hurtling through the vast nothingness in a universe that doesn’t know or care that I even exist. Some would call this a panic attack. I’d call this Tuesday night.

It only takes one tiny thought before the proverbial dominoes are toppling across your brain, each impact hitting you like a mallet on glass. We all get caught in those downward spirals. The synapses in our brain fire off like a lightning storm, each thought pinging off the next in some grand design whose purpose makes you question what the hell you’re doing on this damned planet. We all feel it.

There is comfort in that, I think.

When you think about it, we’re all just larger-than-average meatballs with overactive imaginations sitting inside the studio apartment that is our skull. Hunks of flesh and blood and water that do nothing but churn and gurgle and sweat and freak out over things we can’t control. Because that’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Fear of the things we can’t control, or the things that we could have controlled but didn’t, or things we may be able to control but won’t. It’s like sitting on a bus and realizing no one is at the wheel. The: “Oh shit, I’m about to crash, and this thing doesn’t have seatbelts!”

With all of the infinite wisdom that my keyboard provides me, I can say with total confidence that there is good and bad news with this mindset. The bad is that we’re never going to have control. I don’t care how stable or unstable your life is. At the end of the day, you can’t change the way of things. We are all out here scrambling together. Just a few million years ago, our ancestors realized they could use sticks for more things than smacking each other. Do you really think that within those few million years—a nano-blink in the grand scale of existence—we would have the capacity to understand what the hell is going on? No, and that leads me to the good news:

It does not matter one bit.

I don’t mean this in a nihilistic, “nothing matters, and we should all give up,” sort of way. Once apathy waddles its vapid way into your brain, then we have an issue. You shouldn’t stop caring. You should stop freaking about all that big stuff. Freaking out in your sweat-stained sheets isn’t going to change anything. But you can change your moment-to-moment. Your day-by-day is malleable. Make use of that. We are all stuck with our brains. Each person has their own unique flavor of fear. Find the comfort in knowing that you’re not going to figure out shit. It is okay. If you are one of those rare few who has found the mystical place of solace and satisfaction, I envy you. I don’t believe you, but I envy you anyway.

We’re all riding this rock as a collection of overimaginative primates made up of a bunch of cells, filled with goop and mitochondria—the powerhouse of said cells—and molecules and atoms, with electricity zapping to and fro, allowing us to panic so.

Wild, isn’t it?

So, I say let’s panic together. Panic, get out of bed, and go do what it is you want to do. Who cares if no one is driving this bus? When your intrusive thoughts Kool-Aid-man blast into your brain or your toxic ex slips under your covers tonight, try to remember that we’re all dealing with the same damned thing. Don’t let the fear tear you down. We’re all here together. We can at least try to enjoy this stupid thing we call life.

I mean, what the hell else are we going to do?

It’s so Easy to Feel Like Sh*t

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It’s so easy to make yourself feel like shit. Seriously, it is! I know you agree. Sit there for a minute and think. Are you thinking? How does it make you feel? I bet you feel super shitty. Yeah, me too. Don’t worry we’re going to get through this together.

During lunch a co-worker told me that the rye chip—that dark little cracker in your Chex Mix—is the worst. Everyone in the room agreed. I sat there and laughed and proceeded to keep my little yapper shut because, well, I fucking love rye chips. To speak out against the Chex Mix council would brand me as a workplace pariah. So, now I feel dumb for liking the little toasted bread flakes. And now I’m thinking about how I’m never going to make it and that I’m going to die unaccomplished, and everyone will be like, “That Bobby guy? He was kind of okay, I guess. A bit annoying, though.”

Okay, maybe that’s an overreaction. Don’t sit there and say you haven’t overreacted before. Especially not after inhaling a bag of Goldfish with the same reverence as a castaway sucking down potable water. I bet you felt real bad about yourself then.

But I’m not here to make you feel like shit. I’m here to help point fingers at the why the how, and the God damn it, I need to stop doing this to myself every thirty-five minutes.

Before my Chex Mix encounter, I was thinking about people. Specifically, I was thinking about how much I hate them. Or, to be even more specific, how much I hate myself. See, thinking about other people is the easiest way to feel truly horrible about yourself—a shortcut to misery. If you want to skip, leap, and trip into a bad day, just think about your more successful friends, family, strangers, or celebrities.

The problem with being me is that I look in the mirror and I see, well me. Other people get the privilege of looking in the mirror and seeing themselves. They see success. They see someone who has their life figured out with lots of smiles and money and tons of friends who think they are all really cool. They definitely don’t look at themselves and think,

“Fuck.”

Comparison is the greatest tool in your arsenal of self-hatred. It doesn’t matter that the other person is also a stupid little human with too many thoughts rattling around their head, just like you and I.

Why am going on this tangent? Why am I dragging you through my pissy-fit when I’m just throwing a tantrum? I’ll tell you why: because we’re all throwing a tantrum together, and I’m here to help if only a little bit. Let me be the first to say it,

It is okay to feel like shit.

We all make ourselves feel bad. We gaze at someone else’s verdant lawns and forget that overnight, we climbed over their fence and painted their grass the most perfect shade of green. We ignore the crows tearing worms out of a soggy lawn, waterlogged from poor drainage. We ignore the dog shit and the wrappers and the entire rotisserie chicken that’s feeding a family of angry raccoons. It’s so much easier to see the topiary you could never afford and ignore the rampant rodents ravaging their garage.

You could argue that there is some kind of comfort in the success of others. You could argue that if everyone’s lives are heaping piles of crap, then the world truly is an awful place, and we should all be sad all the time. Well, I don’t believe that. I think that there is plenty of room to be angry, jealous, and at the end of the day, Okay.

Everyone has their own lives. Their own tastes. Their own bags of Goldfish or Chex Mix. Some people have better things than you: better hair, a better car, more money, and a cooler job. But they also have to look at themselves in the mirror every day and hear the little ghosts in their brain measuring them up to someone else. We can take these comparisons and invert them. Compare yourself to yourself and see that maybe things aren’t so bad. Maybe the you of today is better than the you of yesterday. Maybe you’ve got a pretty kickass life when you stop yelling at yourself.

I guarantee that if you take the time to breathe, you’ll see that you’re a lot more put together than you give yourself credit.

I know. Giving yourself your credit is difficult. It’s like writing a check to yourself at the bank and cashing it at the same teller. What’s the point? Did it really do anything? Honestly, it probably didn’t. You’re going to say, “Hey, good job me!” And then, ten seconds later, curl up into the fetal position on your couch as you compare yourself to your best friend who just arrived at a wine and cheese mixer without you. Little did you know that your best friend is also sobbing, curled up in their car because of some other person that they compared themselves to and so on and so on and so on.

That’s sort of how life goes.

Look, we’ve all got our problems. We’ve got our good and bad. We all spend way too much energy worrying about stupid, idiotic things like our neighbor’s car or our friend’s vacation. I know that I do. I get this weight in my gut, a crushing ball of fear made lead whenever I think about someone far more successful than me. How could I ever compare? Should I dig a hole in the dirt and lie down so I can get this dying thing over with already?

If you said yes, then you are either being far too mean or far too dramatic.

I know that what I say here isn’t going to change your life, or your day, or even the next hour. But you’re not alone with your jealousy or the whiplash of self-loathing that follows. Try to remember that when you swear at yourself in the mirror or in your bed or while you stare down at an empty bag of snacks, your neighbor has probably done something similar before driving off to your dream job. For all you know, they’re about to get fired.

It’s okay to want that. Seriously.

The biggest thing that will make you feel like shit is yourself. It’s easy, and that’s okay. Let yourself feel like shit. It’s human. But let yourself breathe once in a while. Maybe you won’t go on that Hawaiian vacation or buy that sports car. Maybe you’ll feel embarrassed about your strange obsession with rye chips. But at the end of the day, I hope you can say,

“Hey, maybe things aren’t so bad!”

Even if you change your mind ten minutes later.

Wrestler

With my curtains closed, I lurk in my room. My bed is unmade, and dishes orbit my monitor like planets around an LCD sun. A solid imprint remains where my ass has spent the last evening. The door isn’t locked, but it hasn’t been open since sunrise. My phone casts the only light in my room, a small portal to a world colored with anxieties. I clutch it. Scroll. Scroll. Scroll. Stop. Refresh. Repeat.

Messages pile in my inbox, messages I am careful to avoid, navigating past them as if operating a minefield. An email comes in—work. I turn my phone and ignore it. Today is my mental health day.

I spend the afternoon staring at the shadows that sink into my stucco ceiling and the deodorant stick on the floor of my bedroom. My body slumps as if I had been wrestling for hours. With the little energy I can muster, I turn back and forth, curling my blankets around me like a constricting snake. The singing birds remind me of the day passing without me. The sunlight at the edges of my curtains burns with a horrible glow. It’s too nice out. It should be shitty and gray. Instead, it’s clear, warm, and the neighbor’s dog is barking too loud.

My stomach growls with an empty hunger, but I make no effort to feed myself. I’ll eat some snacks when the sun has set, maybe I’ll drink some water too. Right now, I think I’ll just lay here, strangled by my stale blankets, still in my jeans. I told myself I’d make use of the day, but no one needs to know that. Today is my mental health day, after all. So, fuck everything and let me sleep. Or at least try to sleep.

Damn, I’m tired.

Passing Time

I drive through my hometown and back like an echo. I pass storefronts and roads and churches in an afternoon that I’ve experienced more times than I can count. It’s the same glow over the bridge and the river, but for all that’s the same, nothing is the same. The McDonald’s on the corner is right where I remember, but it’s not the same McDonald’s where I tripped and dropped my double cheeseburger. The movie theater has the same name, but it’s painted white, and there’s a line of kids looking younger than I ever did. The old strip is there, but a jiujutsu dojo is open, and six more pizza restaurants glow on the street with signs I don’t recognize. Everything is just a bit off. A little different. But the bones are there. Old and tired, just like me.

I guess this is what happens when you get older.

It’s a feeling of time. When the street has more cracks than I remember. Tree roots gnarl and twist over a sidewalk that I once rollerbladed down. The world is folding and changing, along with the wrinkles on the backs of my hands. Like imprints in the snow fading over time, what I once saw and experienced becomes buried beneath the new. The fresh. The not what I remember.

We all exist in a brief moment. Watching through a narrow window that slides across the string of events we call our lives, able to see just enough forward and then watch as our trail disappears behind us. What was once the future becomes the present, and then the past. Soon enough, the past vanishes. Invisible, just like the future you can’t see.

We ritualize this, the memories that grow fuzzy as the years stamp on. At the dinner table surrounded by friends and family, we rehash the same story about how some aunt or uncle took the wrong turn on vacation or how a cousin broke their arm riding their bike. They are memories of color, smell, and sound. Memories of places that, if you were to travel to them, would have different colors, different smells, and different sounds. The world is spinning, and all we can do is view it through the lens of a memory we have no control over.

We all have thousands of memories lost. Millions of instants pass through our vision, filtered through our brain, and then deleted from existence. You don’t remember the time you dropped your chicken nugget on the street, but remember the squirrel eating corn in the front yard. You remember the feeling of watching the one you loved in high school walking to class with someone else, but you don’t remember what clothes you were wearing.

The point I’m making isn’t very relevant. It’s something obvious and natural. Time exists, or at least, the passing of events exists. We are just along for the ride.

A Short Rant on Rejection

Rejection letters. We all get them. A lot of them. It’s the cost of trying to get your work out there; never-ending, hammering rejection. They are the constant speed bumps for the writer’s ego and confidence. Stories I’ve been proud of have been chipped at email by email until I start to question my sanity. Of course, you can’t let these rejections stop you.

It can be difficult to ford on through an inbox full of people passing on your stories. It’s easy to stop submitting your work. Or to give up hope on a project you believe in. But you can never give up. Sure, try another story, write something else up and fire that off. Keep trying.

It took me two years to get my short story “Automated Coffee” published in Andromeda Spaceways Magazine. Many times, I almost trashed the story. I didn’t. I kept submitting and submitting. You have to keep pushing forward one submission at a time. And while you wait for what seems like an endless waterfall of rejection letters, continue to remind yourself why you love to write. And the easiest way of doing this is, well, to just keep writing.

Write and read. Read and write. Write and read. Do this. Do this every day. Always. Continue to feed your passion. Read what other authors are writing. See what the magazines you are submitting to are publishing. Buy one of their editions. Check out their editors. Do everything you can do to see what’s out there. Immerse yourself in the world you’re trying to be a part of.

Over time these rejection letters can grow numbing. In a way, that’s a blessing. In another way, that can be even more dangerous than getting beat down by them. Use each rejection to fuel you. They are opportunities for you to grow as a writer and to continue crafting your passion.

Out of everything. Don’t ever stop writing.

Mountain Top

I’m climbing this mountain to reach the top. I climb up narrow paths of rocks and dirt. Up and up, one foot after the other. I climb up so I can look down. Look down and scream. Sweating, and tired, I scream at the valley. My echo screams back.

For a lingering moment, my voice ricochets across the landscape. It returns just enough times to remind myself that no one is listening. On top of this mountain, I listen as my words meld into the cutting wind and my sentences dash across pine trees and rivers. I yell to be heard, but the moment doesn’t last. Up here, I am answered by myself. Always by myself.

My voice may turn the heads of those below, but few care about the source or the reason. My voice is a momentary pop in a world of horrible indifference, skidding out on some stranger’s driveway miles away. My energy is spent. I try again, laughing, screaming, and crying. I breathe deep and bay into the world like a lost wolf.

There are only so many times my voice can echo. On hands and knees, I beg the winds that silence me. With strained vocal cords, I shout. To stop means to return to silence. To return to a world that marches to a rhythm of dead voices. On this mountain, for a lingering moment, I am heard. Not by those below, or the birds above, but by myself.

And then I begin my descent.