Did fantasy roleplaying games sidetrack your writing career?

[Harbreak Challan]

Although I remember my D&D days with great fondness, I can't help wondering what I might have done if I'd been writing fantastic fiction all those years instead of drawing dungeon maps and sitting around my friend's kitchen table killing orcs and eating nacho chips. God knows it's hard enough even now to tear myself away from my computer games and sit down to write, sometimes.

I'm willing to bet that there is a lot of lost creativity and talent out there that has been siphoned off into gaming, and now, electronic gaming.

I seem to recall reading an interview with the late Kenneth Bulmer, where Bulmer complained that role-playing had severely cut down his productivity. (Like Bulmer had to worry about that, with umpteen dozen books to his name.)

[Scott H. Andrews]

I can certainly see how RPGs, or any other addictively fun hobby, could take time away from writing.

But I also think, especially for some of the mid-30s writers out there, that D&D actually helped our later writing careers by encouraging us to be creative. There are lots of successful epic fantasy novel series whose settings were developed first as RPG worlds, then were later used for novels--Raymond E. Feist's Midkemia and Steven Erikson's Malazan Empire come immediately to mind.

And playing RPGs I think also encourages general creativity beyond just world-building. Here's a great article (http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ridler_howe_05_08/) by a couple of my writer buddies that talks about the influence of RPGs on several famous fantasy writers.

So maybe the key is the old ancient Greek idea of everything in mderation. :)

[ErinHoffman]

I think I would generally be skeptical of any claims that creative time investments are zero sum -- meaning that doing one thing necessarily takes away from time one would have spent writing, or doing something "more productive". This argument is frequently made regarding video games and other "pure" entertainment forms.

Though there are definitely places where they overlap, I think creative expression and entertainment fill two separate functions in the mind. You can encourage one over the other, but entertainment can't take the place of expression for people that have the drive to express, and expression can't fill the hunger for entertainment, which is a need more like sleep.

I think this concern also comes up in areas like fanfiction where it's assumed that a person could as easily be writing "real" fiction as fanfiction, but they're two different things -- one is entertainment and the other is an act of creation. The lines do get fuzzy in places, but I think the motivations that bring a person to each don't. I think generally a lot of people spend time voicing empty regrets "if only I didn't do X so much, I would be writing more" when really the only thing that will get you writing more is to make a commitment and follow through on it. You don't have to necessarily do other things less, you just have to reorganize your time so that you're doing the writing more. Sometimes this time balancing can reduce entertainment time, but I don't think reducing it completely would be effective any more than reducing sleeping or eating completely would positively impact one's craft. A lot of entertainment forms actually actively feed the creative brain, and I think the same can be true of tabletop roleplaying.

All of this is kind of amorphous, but I don't think a person who is fundamentally a writer can be stopped from writing by any entertainment form -- there's usually something else going on that's stopping the flow (depression, anxiety, etc -- things that are assuaged by distraction). I think a better question than "why do I want to roleplay?" is "why don't I want to write?". I also think a lot of people think they want to write until they actually find out how much work is involved in doing it properly. ;)

[Rosiphelee]

I'm also inclined to think that both roleplaying and fanfiction can be very productive ways to develop creativity, although both can encourage lazy worldbuilding when writers turn to original fiction. The value, and the pitfall, of both is that they offer huge creative communities which the writer or gamer can contribute to and be guided by. A canny fanfiction writer is certain to get comments on their work and direct communication with their readers. Roleplayers have the others in their game to interact with (I'm guessing - never been much of a gamer myself). With the exception of the odd collaborative world, that support network isn't there for original fiction, at least not on the same scale. The more involved you are in one of those communities, the hard it is to step out into the cold and start telling your own stories to a far less appreciative audience.

[Jim Johnson]

"Sidetracked?" Not at all. Pen and paper roleplaying games were a big part in getting me started as a writer. Through playing and running RPGs, I started learning how to put plot together, how to create and develop characters, how to listen for dialogue, and gave me a start in world-building.

RPGs gave me a few tools for my writing toolbox. I think they were time well spent. :)

[John Arkwright]

For a few years I played 20-40 hours per week of online interactive role play games. For the last six months of that I wrote a novel.

Then I had a difficult summer semester to teach and got out of the habit of RP. Suddenly I had a huge chunk of time to devote to writing! I have thought about starting RP again, especially when the writing doldrums hit, but I can't bear to.

I have had plenty of RP during my lifetime. I played D&D for about 300 days/year in high school and played in college. I did interactive storytelling RP on AOL during the mid-90's--an incredibly imaginative exercise. And I have done a few online RP games.

Like Mieville in the article, the RP approach sometimes serves me well. For one story, my city was a vital setting so it was natural to draw a map and jot down some things. For another story I made lists of the protagonist's and antagonists' strengths and weaknesses in order to enrich the conflict. To get a handle on a particular type of priest's abilities, I pulled out my Champions book which lists every manifestation of power or skill that I can imagine.

I need to stay out of the time sink of RP if I am going to keep writing. The RP experience enriched my approach to writing, but finding balance in RP games seems beyond my "flow" addiction.

[Saladin]

Cool discussion. I think I've gotten the best of both worlds. I can say that without Gary Gygax (along with Marvel Comics writers from the Kirby/Lee to the Claremont/Shooter eras) I might not be a writer. Oh, that set of first edition AD&D books! I learned a lot more from them than just worldbuilding skills -- I went to ****ty schools and there is no way in hell I'd have known at such an early age what 'matriarchy' or 'thaumaturgical' or 'nigh omnipotent' meant without the Dungeon Master's Guide! And I learned about ancient Sumeria and Scandanavia (cartoon version, but a start) from Deities and Demigods, not from history class.

But. I stopped gaming after high school -- about the time I started to seriously pursue poetry writing and performing. Having all of that rich material floating around in my head, but being forced (since I wasn't gaming) to let it out in poems (and, later, fiction) instead of in a campaign, did something very good to my creative process.

Video games (at least the non-online, non-social kind I play) are another matter. Time-suck, plain and simp. Erin Hoffman's right that every minute of this sucked time would probably not go to writing anyway -- one needs to have a brain-dead zone-out hour or two each day -- but I do think that, like TV, video games can make it too easy to let that one or two hours become three or four or five.

[John Arkwright]

Video games (at least the non-online, non-social kind I play) are another matter. Time-suck, plain and simp. Erin Hoffman's right that every minute of this sucked time would probably not go to writing anyway -- one needs to have a brain-dead zone-out hour or two each day -- but I do think that, like TV, video games can make it too easy to let that one or two hours become three or four or five.

My only vice now is Civilization IV. I bought it two years ago, but did not play it much when I first got it. It is nice because I can put it away when I have to. But Civ won't give me many writing ideas.

However, Orson Scott Card wrote Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus after sinking too much time into Civ. I think he probably just felt guilty and had to justify his playing. But it's one of my favorite Card novels.

[Scott H. Andrews]

...there is no way in hell I'd have known at such an early age what 'matriarchy' or 'thaumaturgical' or 'nigh omnipotent' meant without the Dungeon Master's Guide!
For me, it was that huge list of specific-named weapons, mostly pole-arms, in the Player's Handbook. Glaive, voulge, fauchard, bardiche, billhook--I remember carrying that list through a museum in Glasgow when I was ten. Other less specialized, more useful words came along later. :)

[Sarah Avery]

Fantasy roleplaying games helped me resurrect my writing career. My creative writing teachers in college wanted better for me than genre fiction so they harried me into grad school, where I abandoned fiction altogether to write dreary scholarly stuff. I mean, if you write a dissertation chapter on the modernist poets' obsession with the idea of ritual sex, and the chapter is boring start to finish, something is seriously wrong. Gaming was a part of my geek identity that I couldn't bear to let go of, so when I finished grad school, I was able to remember who I was and steal my life back. Getting a Ph.D., now, that was a waste of writing energy and creativity.

[John Arkwright]

I know exactly what you mean. My PhD was in economics so I never killed the literary magic. Economists kill the "decision making" magic. "Wow, why do people act in that bizarre way?" . . . a few dozen boring pages later . . . "Oh, that's not bizarre at all. I think I'll take a nap."

I wrote this poem about how analysis of magical things kills the magic. (http://thearchoftime.blogspot.com/2008/04/scholar.html)

Then I blathered on, explaining the poem. (http://thearchoftime.blogspot.com/2008/05/scholarship.html)

[Boris]

I think rpg could've derailed my writing, but I never developed the habit.

I have a sister, who outplayed me when we were kids, which discouraged me. I'm also busy with work, writing, etc. to take the time to play.

[Scott H. Andrews]

Getting a Ph.D., now, that was a waste of writing energy and creativity.
Hahahaha. :D Mine's in chemistry, so a lot of people think it would be good for writing SF. But mostly it just makes me see all the holes in the flimsy science that's in a lot of SF and prevents me from enjoying it.

[Michael B]

Never done that much roleplaying, but it has never cut into my writing time any more than work, traveling to work or eating meals have. I find ideas can come from almost anywhere and that can often be the hardest part.

[Saanen]

I've never been able to RP as much as I wanted to, and haven't played in years now, but the entire RP culture when I was in middle/high school led me to write fantasy. I probably would have been drawn to it anyway, but I don't know. I read a lot of the D&D tie-in books--Dragonlance, anyone? I can't stomach them now, but I was seriously hooked on them in high school. I played online RPGs too for years, Ultima Online mostly, and that is really a total time-waster. I loved playing, but once I finally quit for good, my writing output skyrocketed.

Y'all are scaring me with your PhD stories! I've been thinking about plunging back in for another degree, either a second master's or a PhD in lit, but I don't want it to kill my writing. I wrote all through grad school, though, except when I was working on my thesis. Erk, a dissertation--nope, I think I'll put it off a few years. :)

[Brian Dolton]

I started role-playing a looong time ago (1975/76, yes I'm one of those sad original D&D crowd) and there's no doubt it was an outlet for creativyt for a long time.

However I gave up GMing a couple of years ago because I found that my time was limited and the FRP part of my brain seemed to overlap almost totally with the writing part of my brain. Since no-one's ever paid me to run an FRP campaign, whereas some editors have been good enough to pay me for the writing part, I've channeled my efforts exclusively in that direction.

I'd like to get back into role-playing at some point, but I suspect it won't be for a little while yet...

[Grace Seybold]

I find that RPGs and writing fill entirely different creative niches in my brain. For me, roleplaying is entirely about collaborative storytelling. I don't like it to be about "Hey, look at me and my cool character!" and I've never been able to play long-term with people who see it like that. (Not that it isn't a perfectly valid approach - just doesn't mesh well with me.) I see it as a group project, where at the end of it, hopefully, we've managed to come up with something really neat and memorable together.

Fiction, on the other hand, has so far been an almost entirely solitary pursuit for me. I've tried writing stories with other people exactly twice, and it didn't turn out well. When I'm dealing with written-down words I become a giant control freak. This even happens when I'm doing non-fiction with someone else, which I'd think ought to be easier since we're mostly dealing with facts. Nope. Mostly can't do it, and don't want to.

So I don't see RPGs and writing as things that can take energy, creativity, etc. away from each other, because for me they're so very separate. It would be like asking me if I thought that, say, knitting had sidetracked my writing career. It just doesn't relate.

[Carl T. Abt]

RPGs—D&D in particular—helped make other worlds real to me. They had stats for monsters so they weren’t just a cool illustrations: they had definite physical characteristics. I wasn’t writing at the time I played them, so I don’t know if there would have been a conflict between the two.
What I regret, is that I didn’t actually play much of it. I just daydreamed about the characters I would make. I can count on one hand the number of times I actually sat down with my friends and played the game. I almost never got to hone my storytelling skills or interact socially through it. It was just a way of dreaming. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t all it could have been. And I spent a ridiculous amount of time on it.

[Brian Dolton]

In response to Grace - I suspect I could quite happily play RPGs as well as writing. But I was GMing - so building worlds and characters and plots - and that just wasn't working for me.

[Crone]

I don't think RPGs interfere with writing but I do think they shape it - and not in a way I, as a reader, like. I like an emphasis on character and language (Tepper, Modesitt, Cherrhyh) and a lot of the recent things I've started and usually not finished read like they were put together from a kit. Standard characters, standard quests and one damned battle after another.

[Grace Seybold]

It's interesting you should say that, Crone; I just finished reading Tepper's latest, The Margarets, and I thought it was a lot more standard-issue-SF than most of what she's written. I think I'd have to go all the way back to Northshore/Southshore for writing of hers with such formulaic characterizations. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed The Margarets, and I thought she did a great job making the different versions distinct, but at the same time there was nothing in them that seemed unexpected or out-of-the-ordinary. I'm used to seeing such wonderful characters from her (Gibbon's Decline and Fall is one of my favourite books of all time) that even though this one was quite good, it was still kind of disappointing by comparison. I really hope this doesn't indicate the start of a trend.

[Crone]

The Margarets isn't one of my favorites - probably my favorite Tepper is The Gate to the Women's Country. About equally, the many volumes of The True Game. I like the way she picks up characters from past books and throws them in as minor characters. She's one of the few Fantasy/SF writers I can think of that has memorable language. She's a very workman-like writer, turning out something every year.

[Grace Seybold]

The Gate to Women's Country is one of my favourites also, probably about tied with Beauty. I need to reread the True Game books; I haven't read them in ages. I'm still trying to find two of the Mavin Manyshaped books, which don't seem to show up in used bookstores around here very often, so once I get those, I'm going to go back and read the whole True Game batch at once.

[starweaver]

I think this was true in my case, sort of. I wrote quite a bit in my teens and early twenties, but got discouraged by the rejections. When I discovered D&D, it became my outlet for creating imaginary worlds. I don't think it was actually the cause of my turning away from writing, though; just an alternative form of expression that satisfied some of the same needs.

[ckastens]

Great thread, sorry I came in to it late.

My experience is that anything done in excess is bad, and that includes writing. If you spend all your waking hours writing, it might be good in the short run, but I think it (and other things in your life) would suffer in the long run. Same thing with RPGs. If you enjoy them, spending some time playing them is a great idea, and it is a creative exercise that could pay off in other areas. If you do nothing else with your time, probably not a good idea. Ideal is spending time on both.

So that's just my take, balance in everything is best.

[M. Arkenberg]

Actually, my writing career had sidetracked my fantasy roleplaying! It takes too much effort to convince myself that a character can't do a certain thing because an arbitrary rulebook and dice say so. I approach the games as if I were writing a story, which makes it difficult for me to play by the rules!

[Scott H. Andrews]

It takes too much effort to convince myself that a character can't do a certain thing because an arbitrary rulebook and dice say so. I approach the games as if I were writing a story, which makes it difficult for me to play by the rules!
Heh! That's really funny, and interesting. "Whaddaya mean my magic-user can't wear armor? She has a perfectly good character motivation for wearing it!"

I do think that's one of the reasons I enjoy a great story more than a great RPG--because of the unbridled freedom for the author to create anything that they can make work, unencumbered by anyone else's rules.

[scottybrown100]

I find pen and paper games to be a distraction when one is the DM, or writing for the DM. It is very easy to fall into the trap of creating a world, rather than introducing a world through fiction.

On the other hand, when playing a pen and paper RPG, I find the amount of fantasy inspiration that enters the subconscious is great to draw upon. While most RPG quests are cliched, and improper for fiction, the settings, characters, and overall adventure can be very insperational.

-Scott Brown