RPGs & Writing - guest post by Steven Arellano Rose Jr.

RPGs: Child’s Play We Writers Still Play

By Steven Arellano Rose, Jr.

Many of us speculative fiction writers have been playing RPGs (role playing games) since as far back as kindergarten. However, the RPGs we played at that early age weren’t necessarily card, board or video games. Many of them were live action RPGs (also known as LARPs). Like other RPGs, LARPs involve players assuming the roles of a game’s characters. Unlike other RPGs, they involve the players physically acting out the characters and their situations.

Many gaming groups go to parks and act out their favorite fantasy, sci fi or even horror characters (zombies have become popular for this type of gaming). This form of activity, LARP, contains structured plots and rules where players are rewarded points when meeting certain challenges. But, because these are role playing games, the plots are often not fixed but are continuously developing by the players and their characters’ actions and decisions. Well, perhaps minus the game point system, many of us have been playing RPGs of this sort since as early as age five.

 

Before we reached teenage-hood when we would get more freedoms, our world was that of books, TV, movies and video games. And so we mimicked the characters of those medias. It wasn’t enough to simply watch them on screen or even maneuver them on it by way of a gamepad. We wanted to participate in the adventures of our favorite characters of science fiction and fantasy because we got tired of the everyday world of school and home controlled by adults. So we played LARPs. This was common with all us kids. The only difference between us writers of speculative fiction and other grownups today is that we never stopped playing out these childhood fantasies. We never stopped playing RPGs.

All that said, my first experience with LARPs that I can remember was when I was around five or six back in the ‘70s. I, my brother and friends would engage in our active fantasies of super hero adventures, especially Batman which was one of our favorites. We did similar with Star Trek’s characters. Then when the first Star Wars movie came out we played our favorite characters from that, acting out our own stories and adventures. That was the great thing: unlike the comic books, TV shows and movies these characters came from, we didn’t have to stick to the storyline of a single episode or movie; we could develop our own stories, creating our own adventures and journeys into our imaginations.

As an adult, I play RPGs in the form of board, card, and video games. I don’t get as much time as I would like to play them and much less time for LARPs. Whenever I get a weekend void of any events or am just plain board with everyday routine, I’ll play electronic RPGs such as Facebook’s Vampire Wars, Spore, or Beast Quest, or deck-based ones such as Arkham Horror. Some people can never stop playing their childhood fantasies and so are die-hard players of these and live action games. But don’t get me wrong, I’m proudly far from immune from this Peter Pan syndrome of a type. That’s why I write science fiction and horror.

Fiction is, in many ways, RPG in writing. When I write science fiction or horror, I have to take up the role and so the mentality of not only my protagonists but also my antagonists and secondary or minor characters. In order to advance the story I need to know what my characters would do in given situations and when I make one character handle a situation differently than another would, doing so takes the story in a direction different than the one it started in.

So I’m a writer of fantastic fiction because I am one of those people who can’t stop playing RPGs of a sort. We writers and artists of speculative fiction are Lost Boys and Girls; we refuse to grow up.

Author Bio

Steven Arellano Rose Jr. is a freelance writer and artist. He published his first short fiction collection, The Fool’s Illusion, in 2013 and recently came out with a horror short story, “Circa Sixty Years Dead”, on Kindle. Besides horror and dark fantasy, Steven writes science fiction, movie reviews and computer technology articles.

The following are Steven’s many other interests: treasure hunting for ‘60s and ‘70s pop cultural artifacts; jazz, rock and disco; video games; diet colas; history; mythology; Eastern meditation. You can catch him at his blog www.FarOutFantastic.blogspot.com or tweet him at @Starosep2.

 

Links To Books

The Fool’s Illusion: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F785ZJQ

“Circa Sixty Years Dead”: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LHCFW5M

RPGs & Writing - guest post by Renee Cheung

I am honoured to be guest blogging at Christine’s and to follow up on her post about RPGs and writing. She and I go back quite a bit, to the days when we used to write together on Play by Email RPGs. (If you want to find out more about what they are, read her post here) and in truth, she was one of the people that inspired me to improve on my writing at the time, and she continues today to inspire and encourage me to write.

Maybe I’ll start at the beginning. Writing was always a bit of a chore for me, until I stumble into Yahoo Groups and found people writing together, controlling characters and creating stories. I immediately fell in love with the idea and joined in with an unholy enthusiasm that concerned my parents (I was in high school at that time).  Although I was really, really bad in the beginning, (some of my posts were literally one sentence!) I got better with practice. And that practice carried me well forward today in writing, whether it’s writing stories or technical documentation for work.

I won’t bore you with details about the latter. Really, it’s quite boring. Unless you’re writing it while drunk on champagne jello. But then again, I would think quite a few boring things would be fun if you were drunk on champagne jello.

Anyhow, back to RPGs! As Christine mentioned in her past post, playing in these forums forced players to be character-focused and to be flexible in how events evolved because you never knew what other characters would do or say or react. It also gave everyone a chance to form some pretty strong friendships through the storytelling. (Exhibit A right here!)

I also wanted to touch a bit on the mechanics of writing that these RPGs have helped me develop. Because everything was through the written word and because other players depended on what each other wrote, I had to be very descriptive as a player. If my character walked into a new room, I had better describe that room well. Anything not mentioned was fair game for another player to build on and describe. And so, every post became an exercise in making me consider what to write and what to leave out, how to describe everything from the setting, to the mood and tone, to my character’s expressions and actions. On the other hand, I had to consider how to do it without overloading the posts with so much detail that it would not give other people’s characters room to breathe and act? (No one likes a control freak, especially when it comes to these RPGs.) Now when I write, I constantly ask myself the same questions. What do I want the reader to picture? What do I want to leave up to their imagination?

Christine also spoke a bit about experimenting different writing styles and characters and I wholeheartedly concur. Very often, many players including myself played more than one character. An easy trap to fall into was to have every character sound and act the same way. However, when you have them all interact in the same RPG, it becomes very obvious and I grew to learn the importance of developing distinct characters. This included everything from the way they react, their values and back stories, to their mannerisms and the way they talk. It is something I am still working on to master, but it is something that RPGs have brought to the forefront of my mind.

Another mechanic is in setting up conflict and this was especially important when I started my own RPG. Portals to World was meant to be an ultimate fanfiction crossover RPG and as the owner/moderator of the group, I was the one that set up the premise, the setting and the overarching conflicts that came in the characters’ ways. (For those that play Dungeons and Dragons, it’s the equivalent of the Dungeon Master who sets up the quests that players with their characters go on, usually via NPCs or non-player characters.) It became an exercise of how to set up situations and how to present them to the characters. Is it an in-your-face earthquake (or in my case, a random portal just opened up!) or is it a more subtle sinister creeping hint of a big bad coming that would span over multiple posts? Still, sometimes the conflict becomes a dud because it was just too easy, or sometimes it becomes a corner that gets hard to write out of and as the moderator, it was something I just had to roll with. Being the moderator of a RPG taught me to set up conflicts well and also taught me to be flexible when something doesn’t quite pan out the way I anticipated.

As I pick up writing back up again after a long hiatus, I fondly remember what I learned writing in those PBeM RPGs and I sincerely hope that there would be a chance to do it again some day. Perhaps not in that particular form, but to experiment with some sort of dynamic real-time storytelling. Have you played in any sort of storytelling games and if so, how have those affected your writing style? I’d love to hear more!

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Find out more about Renee on her website and blog.

Renee is one of the twelve amazing authors featured in this year's IWSG anthology, Hero Lost: Mysteries of Death and Life. Her story, "Memoirs of a Forgotten Knight" is set in the Physical/Digital world. A fantastic read! The anthology will be out at the beginning of May.

Check out her fantastic new release, Tales From The Digital.

Somewhere along the way, humans found a way to anchor magic into technology, bringing about the commercialization of once-mystic energies. Little do they know that by doing so, they also created a conduit for the fae and other creatures to migrate into a whole new land...

RPGs & Writing - Imagination and Friends

I'm kicking off a series of posts about how playing role-playing games (RPGs) has affected my writing. This topic not only excited me, but other authors I know. I'm eager to have some of my writer friends share their experiences through guest posts too.

I've always loved writing stories. It can be a lonely venture, though. I used to play imagination games with my friends where we'd play out stories. Back then, I had never heard of RPGs. I didn't play my first Dungeons & Dragons game until I was in university. But I was already addicted to something else before then.

I loved playing PBeM RPGs. What are those, you ask? Play by email (or play-by-post) RPGs are games groups of people as their characters interact together in a predefined environment. Many groups have rules about not only the parameters of the world but also the conduct of the players and subject matter allowed.

I played in all sorts of groups. Most of them in Yahoo Groups. Fantasy, science-fiction, dystopian, and tons of Harry Potter groups. Yes, I do love playing in that world!

 

What I liked most about these RPGs was that I didn't know what the other players would come up with next. I loved the twists and turns, the weird surprises, and the amazing stories we created together. Since I'm a pantser, I reveled in it.

With all these different types of worlds, I was able to experiment with different writing styles and various characters. I discovered that I loved to write about relationships - be it romantic, friends, enemies, etc. It was the characters who attracted me and drove me to become the character focused writer I am today. (One of the most character driven groups I had been in was a dystopian called Descent Into Sin. Deep, dark stuff.)

While these RPGs helped to mold me into the writer I am today, there was something else I loved about them: the friends I made. These friends encouraged me to write more of my own original work and gave me the strength to submit it to various venues. I had my first short story published because of their support. And even to this day, over fifteen years after I started in my first PBeM group, I'm still in contact with some of these amazing people. Not all of them write or play anymore, but they have never ceased to be fantastic cheerleaders and super friends.

Have you ever play in a PBeM RPG? A tabletop RPG like Dungeons & Dragons? What were your experiences like?

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I would like to extend an invitation to any writers who have played RPGs. I'd love for you to guest post on my blog about your experiences. If you're interested, please leave your email in the comments below, or email me at christinerains.writer@gmail.com.

Friday Five for August 14, 2015

1. For those of you who missed Wednesday's post, this month is the one year anniversary of my newsletter, Geeks, Freaks, & EEKS! I'll be sending out my newsletter later today and subscribers will have a chance to win some swag including a unique Christine Rains dice. PLUS, if you subscribe, you get a free ebook. You can have your choice of The 13th Floor Complete Collection or Of Blood and Sorrow.

2. I'm getting lots of writing done with my son in school. I'm finished a novelette last week and I'm over halfway done with the second novelette in the trilogy. I hope I don't get so excited with all this writing that I burn myself out before the month is out!

3. Tomorrow is the monthly meeting of my local critique group. The flash piece I wrote this month for it was tons of fun. Funny how I keep going back to the monster under the bed, but this time, I put a horrific sci-fi twist to it.

4. I've been trying to think of an original wondrous item for Paizo's RPG Superstar contest. Every time I think of something, I look it up and it's been done! I don't get to play tabletop RPGs much any more. I'd love to game more, but it's difficult getting our friends together at one time. Maybe if I start thinking about an item now, I might have something for next year's contest!

5. The only thing on my schedule for the weekend is my critique group meeting. I do love not having anything to do. But then that sometimes leads to this conversation that can last for hours itself:
Me: "Let's go do something."
Hubby: "Okay. What do you want to do?"
Me: "I don't know. What do you want to do?"
Hubby: "I don't know. Not much is open."
Me: "Yeah, and it's raining. What can we do?"
Hubby: "I don't know. What do you feel like doing?"

Have a terrific weekend!