Gaming as a Writing Tool

 Gaming as a Writing Tool

If you find yourself stuck for story ideas, and you play role-playing games, (RPG’s) can be a great source of materials for short stories, and/or novels.

My introduction to gaming was a campaign from White Wolf called, “Vampire: The Masquerade.” A group of friends and roommates played, and they taught me. I had not started writing in earnest then. My first character was a clanless vamp by the name of Veronica Harker. She was a witch who put a spell on another vampire, compelling him to bite her (and thus turn her). It created a hate/hate dynamic between the two. He hated her for making him turn her, and she hated that she had to respond to his “call,” when he needed her. He also hated himself as he succumbed to her spell. They did come to grudging respect, however, over the centuries.

Her sire Lord Bloodstone came to the realization that her skills were an asset. At this point is where our campaign began. On a side note, one of my favorite lines from the campaign was someone said, “You can’t swing a dead cat around without hitting one of them Bloodstone Boys!” Our territory was in Kentucky if I remember correctly.

When I began writing regularly again (beyond just poetry), I saw that gaming helped with various aspects of storytelling. And that is what an RPG is, a live storytelling. Character creation, World Building, Plot, all are vital in running a successful campaign/game, and if you have a good GM/DM, they are good at creating the story in which your characters play in.

Each character has a sheet, with their “Stats,” this is something like a character sheet for writing. Stealth, Strength, Stamina, Charisma (how charming your vamp is to get what they need/want), as well as physical characteristics. Talents are another area where this is vital for a game. Each level in the stat adds dice to your roll as well.

In Vampire, each “Clan,” has attributes/skills that are particular for each one. Ventrue, the blue bloods, are the high society folks, the Nosferatu are the 180-degree opposites (ugly and vile), Clanless (can’t remember the name they were given), Malkavian, Tremere, and a few others. For the Malkavian I played in a live game once (or Live Action Role Playing-LARP), my particular insanity was I thought I was Dot from the Animaniacs. I was going around to people saying, “Hi, I’m Dot, I’m cute.” My friend Mark just shook his head, started to say something, then just shook his head again.

For settings, WW came up with sourcebooks for campaigns in different parts of the world. London England, Washington DC, were just a couple of them. You also got a feel for research as well. These details made your campaign more realistic. Details such as governments, cultures, religions were used to enrich the story.

My favorite part was Character Creation. Building the history/backstory for my character was really awesome. She was from the 1300’s England, so I actually had some fun researching that time period, and actually creating her backstory made it easy to write “Fiction,” about her too. It was just a short leap to doing so.

If you enjoy creating a world where vampires exist, or sword and sorcery is your thing, I highly recommend role-playing games. It’s so much fun, and creative as well. Enjoy.

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2Wanda D. Hargrove and Christine Kwasniewski