{"id":49548,"date":"2023-10-18T19:16:04","date_gmt":"2023-10-19T02:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=49548"},"modified":"2023-10-18T19:16:04","modified_gmt":"2023-10-19T02:16:04","slug":"roleplaying-games-and-the-writing-itch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/?p=49548","title":{"rendered":"Roleplaying Games and the Writing Itch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I don’t hide the fact that the protagonist of The Repossessed Ghost<\/em> 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<\/em> 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<\/em>, and the fact that the character’s voice started in some other medium didn’t matter to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you have not read it, let me recommend that you do, especially as the inciting incident takes place on Halloween.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49548"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49551,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49548\/revisions\/49551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briancebuhl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}