By Chris Acuff

This blog is predicated on the idea of being a GM or player in a TTRPG is primarily about telling a good story with your friends. If you come to these games for other things, that’s great, and maybe you can still get something out of this, but if you are primarily a story teller, then imagine my finger pointing at your face when I say this:

Go touch grass. Go get outside, try cool stuff you’ve never done before Try to understand the kinds of experiences you want to tell stories about in games. 

A little bit ago I started HEMA, or more accurately for me, Longsword fencing. This is me in the orange at my first tournament in 2025. 

I’m not all that good, but it’s rad. A blast. Both a hoot and a holler.

Besides being a good time, it’s an athletic activity that’s good for my health, it’s been a good way to make friends as an adult, and yes, to relate this to TTRPGs, it’s made me way more aware of how melee combat works. 

The secret of writing fight scenes is that the actual violence of action is not really the interesting part, or, it is only interesting because of the stakes it has in the story and how it affects the story. That’s why fighting 3 random goblins a couple times as wandering monsters in a dungeon is not interesting compared to a different fight that might also be easy, but is against some random group of villagers who bullied a character as a kid. (we aren’t going to kill these guys, right?)

Learning sword fighting has taught me how to communicate that tension within the violence of action. I understand what it is like to watch someone else as our blades are caught in a bind, judging for their next move and trying to decide on my own in a split second. I know the kind of mental focus that springs up when you walk up to someone else with a weapon, intending to hit them, and they are doing the same. 

I pull on that experience to make me a better storyteller with combat

Similarly, I have done a fair bit of backpack hiking in my time. (If you ever run into me, and have 30 minutes to spare, ask about the time my friends and I encountered a fugitive on the Appalachian Trail.) 

I know what it feels like to cover 20-30+ miles in a day with gear for many days in a row. I know what it is like to walk through the sometimes subtle, sometimes quick shifts in biome. And I know what it feels like to be on top of a mountain in a rain storm, one where the wind is blowing so fast that when I looked over the edge of the cliff, the rain was blown UP into my face. 

You better believe I pull on that experience in storytelling travel, which so often is the least interesting part of a game system. 

This is not to say you have to go out and do intense things to be able to tell great stories. Do you have a boss that sucks? One who’s presence cows the fun out of you and your coworkers with their presence? Use the feeling about that experience of a huge monster looming over the players. 

In writing, this is called “write what you know,” It DOESN’T mean you can only write things you have direct experience with, what it means is that you bring over things from your experience and relate them to things you haven’t. I have never been in a real fight to the death, but I do know what it likes to hold a sword and go up against an opponent. 

Of course the real secret behind this too, is that your life is also one of these stories that you are telling, and one that is far more important than any you may tell around the table, even with as fun as those can be.

May the stories you tell around the table inspire you to go make some in the real world, and may your adventures from the real world inspire the stories at the table.