RPGs and shared-world fiction

[cellio]

I enjoy playing in role-playing games like D&D. This is despite the fact that I am not a very good role-player, though I would like to get better. (I started out as a munchkin, back in the high-school days, and it took some years to learn that there was more to it than that.)

Ralph's game is the first I've played in for more than ten years. It's also the first game that clearly has a Story; the others have been collections of adventures, but if there was an overall theme it eluded me. (There was one other game where it looked like there could have been an overall story, but the campaign shut down relatively early so I never found out.)

Playing in a game with an overall story must be kind of like writing in a shared-world anthology. Everyone participates and affects the course of action, and everyone is responsible for sticking to the canon. It's different from writing in someone else's universe, though, like writing Star Trek novels or fan fiction, because the creator is right there with you in the shared world.

For reasons I no longer remember, I decided that my character in this game would keep a journal. (Ralph had just set up an LJ community for game stuff. I think I wrote the first entry on a whim and later decided to keep doing it, based in part on positive feedback from Ralph and a couple other players.)

Initially, that journal let me work out character background -- stuff that didn't really affect the story per se, but was part of the character. Over time, of course, I've been (trying to) record my character's take on the world around her, and sometimes as part of that I invent details that never happened in the game. Ralph has been cool with that, and he's been playing along by giving me extra non-game character moments.

This aspect of it has enhanced my enjoyment of the game more than I thought it would. Part of that is undoubtedly that I'm a much better writer than I am a speaker -- I can be slow to realize things, so the character journal gives me a chance to say things I didn't think of during the game session. Another part of it is that writing fiction is pretty unusual for me, so it's (if you'll pardon the expression) novel. And part of it is probably that Ralph trusts me with that small part of the world (and I know he's reacted to things I've written with tweaks to the game at times). All in all it's been pretty neat, and I think I'll be a little sad when the story (and thus the campaign) ends.

Now if I can just keep the character from getting killed by a vampire or something... :-)

Comments

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I also would like to get better as a role-player. (It's one of the reasons I'm so interested in My Life With Master.) However, as a player of the game, you're enjoying yourself and you're a cause of enjoyment in others--and that makes you a good player; everything else is just icing on the cake.

The Story-with-a-capital-S aspect of this game is also novel to me. I've been in two multi-adventure campaigns. One was just a series of adventures, certainly. The other does have an ongoing plot, but it doesn't seem to have the ongoing themes, symbols, and motifs that mine has developed.

Playing in a game with an overall story must be kind of like writing in a shared-world anthology.
It's also very much like serial fiction, like comic books or TV shows or Dickensian publication-in-installments. In particular, there's a limit to editing; once something has been seen, it's very hard to change it, even if you come up with something better.

Your journal has been a wonderful contribution to the game. I too am better at writing than I am at improvisation and acting, so I quite sympathize with that as a way to add to the experience. And it really does bring out some of the themes and character developments that don't show up in play as much.

Plus, it mitigates the fact that I'm bad about taking notes. :-) I've been leaning on you and your journal for note-taking and timekeeping, and I really appreciate it. I'd love to recruit you for that task in my next game. :-)

I too will be a bit sad when the story ends, but I hope that there will be a sense of closure and achievement as well. (I've never been in a campaign that finished its story, myself. I'm excited that this one looks like it will.)