Dungeons and Dragons and Media Planning

Full disclosure: I’m a total nerd. Hobbies include video games, copy-editing, and tabletop role playing games (TRPGs) like Dungeons & Dragons. Running my first campaign this Halloween (using the Dread system) forced me to flex the same muscles I use creating a media plan.

I understand running a tabletop RPG isn’t for everyone, so I’ve compiled three media planning parallels I noticed when planning and running my game.

1. Understand your audience- In Dread, players build their characters through questionnaires instead of dice rolls. I had to ask questions that inspired storylines and then build encounters around their answers. Asking generic questions gave me generic characters, but asking more interesting questions helped me build narrative hooks. The questionnaires were my psychographic research, giving me insight into the motivations and intentions of the people engaging in my story.
2. New experiences are king- According to experienced game masters, horror games are often difficult to run because they require total buy-in from the players. To build buy-in, I tapped into my theatre experience and decided to physically set the scene. We played the game by candlelight, and I used ambient soundboards and scary sound clips to make the scenario feel more real to my players. Almost everyone in the game later commented that the theatricality of the session made it especially fun and spooky. I gave my players an experience that only I could create, leveraging my unique skillset. When planning experiential marketing, it’s essential for brands to provide something totally unique. That’s what generates buzz.
3. Embrace the unexpected- TRPG players and consumers share one very important quality: they rarely behave exactly as you’d expect them to. I had to design a rough storyline that would work no matter what direction my players decided to take. In media planning, that translates to analyzing campaign performance in real-time and being unafraid to make adjustments to the original plan. The ability to respond to major market shifts is crucial, and analytics are empowering media professionals to effectively tackle the unexpected.
   
   

My game turned out to be a critical hit, and I gained valuable insight into media planning. Any fellow D&D geeks out there who want to weigh in? Let me know in the comments.