I don’t hide the fact that the protagonist of The Repossessed Ghost started as a character I played in a roleplaying game. He changed between the time he was a character in someone else’s game and when I finally gave him his own story. In fact, it had been over a decade between those two events, and I wasn’t interested in writing a story that felt like a roleplaying game, if that makes sense. I didn’t jot down Mel’s stats or keep track of a mana bar or anything like that. I wanted my story to be a real story, and the fact that the character’s voice started in some other medium didn’t matter to me.

Some of the early feedback came from people that knew me as a gamer, and they kept saying that they could see the character being someone from a roleplaying game, and it made me want to pull out my hair.

In this age of Critical Role and Dimension 20, it’s probably not such a bad thing to have some association between an author’s story and a game they enjoy. Still, that’s not what I wanted with The Repossessed Ghost, and I think my story, in its released form, satisfies my requirements. If you have read it, please feel free to let me know if it made you think of a roleplaying game.

If you have not read it, let me recommend that you do, especially as the inciting incident takes place on Halloween.

Now that the book-pimping is out of the way, let’s talk about what roleplaying games do for me, and how they impact my writing.

I have talked before how reading and writing exercise the same muscles. Roleplaying games also exercise my writing muscles, but in a different way. To strain the analogy, reading is like cardio, while roleplaying games are like weight training.

When I get to play in a good game, I’m forced to focus on character voice in an improvisational setting. I consider my character’s wants, needs, and personality as I try to navigate someone else’s world, and I try to keep it entertaining not just for myself, but for everyone else at the table. A lot of these things I practice in a game setting are exceptionally valuable when making realistic characters as a writer.

As a player in a game, not only do I get to work on my own character skills, I get to see how other people develop their own characters. Some are better than others, but everyone has something you can learn, if you pay close enough attention. I remember one player that annoyed me at first with the way they always talked about their character in third person. After a while, I got into it and really dug what they were bringing to the scenes.

The only problem with roleplaying games as a writing exercise is that it’s really hard for me to find games I can readily play in. My friends have moved on. The twin demons of Scheduling and Responsibilities have laid waste to my gaming groups. What’s a lone player to do?

I play computer-based roleplaying games, watch for opportunities to join other games, and I write. I hope to find or maybe create another regular gaming group, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.