Okay, I'm not really a champion at D & D - although Weird Al is.
But I AM a gamer. And proud of it.
Not a gamer in the video-game sense - though I'm that too. I mean a gamer as in a player of pen & paper RPGs.
The reason I'm not a champion at D & D is that I haven't played actual D & D in about 25 years. But I play a lot of other role-playing games. Or more accurately, I run RPGs while Christina and our friends Gregory and Jennifer (and others, varying from game to game) play.
I've run (in the last five years) a superhero RPG, a Star Wars RPG, a Stargate RPG, and these days I play a swashbuckling RPG.
So what's an RPG? It's simple. You know how kids (and most likely, you, at some point) would play cops and robbers or cowboys and indians or Star Wars or whatnot? You'd be a character, chase after the other kid, say you shot him and he'd say "did not"?
That's the earliest form of gaming. You take on a character (or character type) and play out their adventures. The rules are there to define that character, to help avoid the whole "did not" "did too" element. Though in gaming, you rarely fight each other. More often, each person creates a character who is part of a team.
But that's the basics of gaming. It doesn't define what it is for me (or Christina, or anyone we play with). We're not just telling adventure stories (though there are adventures). We're creating characters, and telling the stories of their lives.
For us, as we've gotten older, gaming is a way to invent new, fully developed and well rounded characters and build an entire series of stories around them.
In other words, it's great practice for writers - which we all are.
The players create characters that ultimately wind up in our writings.
"Once In A Blue Moon" came from an idea we had for a fantasy RPG.
"The Tomb" is based on Christina's character from our Stargate RPG as well as a key character she teamed up with in that game.
Powers for many of the kids in our "New X-Men" run came from characters we created in our superhero game.
We're at work on a novel based on one of Christina's favorite gaming characters.
When we commit to playing a game, we invest all the same energy we invest in writing. But because it is for us and our friends, there's none of the hangups and frustrations inherent in writing for a living. There's no editor who might change the character concept. There's no pitch process before we even get to write.
A lot of writers write for themselves. They write stories and then if those stories find a market, great. If not, they've gotten better at writing. They've enjoyed writing.
We work so many jobs, most of which pay so little. We have to juggle so much paid work, that we don't get a chance to do spec work. And using our free time to write something with no way of translating it into paying the bills can be daunting.
So, instead, we use gaming as a way to stay creative, even in our free time.
So, for those of you who write and are frustrated by writing yet another piece 'on spec'... I recommend it. You'll be creating in a different way, generating ideas. And you'll be having fun.
For those of you who enjoy writing 'on spec,' for the sheer love of writing... I'd still recommend it. Because gaming forces you to view all stories as being inherently about a character. As a player, you focus on one character, usually in a big, vast world with large genre elements and huge casts. But you get tunnel vision when you play a character. You view the whole story through that character.
It's a great exercise for a writer who may get caught up in world building or complex plotting.
Now, I think well thought out worlds and intricate plots are good things. But viewing it all from a character's perspective helps you use those things to further a character arc. Because without a character arc, you rarely have a good story, no matter how compelling the world or well crafted the plot.
Anyway... my free advice for the day. Check out an RPG. Create a character. It'll help you as a writer, and help you think like a writer if you're not one.
