Don't worry - this is not about reprogramming roleplayers who have been brainwashed by the Cult of Gygax. It's about writing.
I was brought up by a reading fanatic (hi Mom) who had me reading wheelbarrows full of science fiction and fantasy at a young age. Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke, Lewis, and Tolkien were on my reading list shortly after I had finished the Seuss books. My first instinct in being whisked away to new worlds was to be just like the authors whose books I so admired.
I drew many Tolkien-esque maps, invented long histories of kings and serfs, and at the age of nine tried to work out whether a planet could rotate around two binary stars in a figure-eight pattern because I had an interesting story idea for the blue-skinned inhabitants of such a world. The biggest problem wasn’t coming up with the ideas - it was actually writing a story.
The first story I worked on - well - it turned out to be a page long list of the monsters that inhabited my world. So much for high drama, but it was a good learning experience. I continued at it, eventually writing ultra-violent espionage short stories that were passed around by my friends in high school, and topping it off after college by writing a full sci-fi epic about a mentally imbalance Islamic computer programmer that attempts to save the galaxy from an invasion of unstoppable space crabs.
I entered the IT field when it eventually sank in that I was going to starve to death trying to make my sole source on income, but I am still rather miffed that I didn't make it as an author. What I write now tends to be only for a small audience - my gaming group. I like to write interludes - short scenes between gaming sessions - to move the plot along and provide information that no one really wants to sit and listen to me drone on about at a table.
An author on DeviantArt that I admire, salshep, recently began posting a parts to an article entitled 'Rehab for Roleplayers.' The title intrigued and confused me, so I had to take a look. The first sentence hit a nerve.
"I can identify a habitual roleplayer from fifty paces. Those who've been spooked by my asking whether they're a roleplayer within ten seconds of reading their fiction will know what I'm talking about. "
Oh great, I thought, she's going to bash role-players. Well, turns outs that poking fun at geeks is not the subject of the article. It's about bad habits and traps that role players get into when trying to write a proper piece of fiction. The article has given me a lot of food for thought. Sure, I have sat down with Strunk and White trying to hunt down crappy prose it my work before, but salshep, well; she really knows role players and goes for the throat. It's like she knows me. Frightening.
So anyway, all of this blathering just to recommend an article. I do recommend it for any writer, but gamers can get the most out of it.
Rehab for Roleplayers, by salshep
Introduction: How to Spot a Drow Illusionist
Part One: Your Syntax Has Been Eaten A Grue
Part Two – If It Walks Like RP and Quacks Like RP, Then It Is Probably Not a Novel.
Part 3 – Echolalia Jones and the Thesaurus of Doom
- Ark
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Lessons
I've always loved gaming. Except, of course, for those times I didn't. I remember vividly that third grade match in the school chess championship - the agony of watching my white pieces being whittled slowly down by the black; the desperate escape attempt by my wimpy king with a queen, two rooks, and a bishop in hot pursuit; and then trying to hold back the tears as my little world crumbled in checkmate. Okay, so I haven't always loved gaming. There have been times when my hatred for a game has outshone the brightness of the sun.
But I do keep coming back. Maybe not to chess, exactly. I gravitated towards table-top role-playing games in my preadolescence, and they still thrill me after all of these years. The standard concepts of winning and loosing were thrown out the window and that old childhood idea of 'play' came back into my vocabulary. There were high and lows and successes and failures, but nothing so disheartening as a 'loss.' RPGs helped me learn to enjoy gaming for the experience itself - interacting with others, forming plans and executing them, and the excitement of not knowing the outcome to a particular decision.
I've learned to appreciate the more competitive games. I even war-game on occasion. Nothing, however, compares to role-playing and those curious folks who enjoy it. I suppose when I'm in a nursing home I'll be drumming the halls, looking for brittle, hunched people like myself to roll dice with. That sounds like a perfect way to conclude a life of game-play.
- Ark
But I do keep coming back. Maybe not to chess, exactly. I gravitated towards table-top role-playing games in my preadolescence, and they still thrill me after all of these years. The standard concepts of winning and loosing were thrown out the window and that old childhood idea of 'play' came back into my vocabulary. There were high and lows and successes and failures, but nothing so disheartening as a 'loss.' RPGs helped me learn to enjoy gaming for the experience itself - interacting with others, forming plans and executing them, and the excitement of not knowing the outcome to a particular decision.
I've learned to appreciate the more competitive games. I even war-game on occasion. Nothing, however, compares to role-playing and those curious folks who enjoy it. I suppose when I'm in a nursing home I'll be drumming the halls, looking for brittle, hunched people like myself to roll dice with. That sounds like a perfect way to conclude a life of game-play.
- Ark
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