Many years ago we were browsing the Lone Wolf Development booth at GenCon, when we first heard about their newest product:
Realmworks.
Realmworks is a computer program that helps to organize and manage the work of people running role playing games. We were enthralled at the thought of creating an entire world, plugging it into this program, and having every slightest detail tracked for us, in easy-to-navigate files.
Russ, of course, immediately saw the possibilities for Dungeon Masters (and other Game Masters, as the system is agnostic, and supports any game and genre you could mention).
I, however, saw something a little different.
One of the greatest joys I get from writing is world building. You focus on whatever you’d like, from history to currency to commerce to religion. You can riff on an obscure sect of some strange discipline for days on end as the backstory of a minor character you might see once and never use again.
But keeping track of all that work has always been a challenge.
And that’s where I saw Realmworks shining. I would be creating these worlds, and filling layer after layer of maps, journals, and other source documents with my own imagination.
It was wondrous!
It was also WAY outside my technical comfort zone, and although I tried, I couldn’t keep it up, and went back to my spread sheets, hand drawn maps, and multiple files of word docs. I know I’ve made some mistakes here or there, but I just never got comfortable with the program.
But I know other writers could make great use of the system, or others like it, as competitors have sprung up all over the landscape.
But, as usual, I have digressed…
Writing is SO MUCH like dungeon mastering! Or game mastering…you know what I mean.
And I have only come to appreciate that more and more as I’ve done both over time.
You’re creating worlds, and creatures, and characters, and then you’re sending them through a series of events (or adventures), all aimed at some goal established by you.
With role playing games, of course, once the world is built, you lose a lot of control. Other people have a partial claim on your creation. They take some of the directing of the story away from you and into their own hands.
That’s the fun of role playing games, after all: the shared story-telling.
But even then, with the plotting and the scheming and the planning, writing’s not that different from running a role playing campaign! If you’ve written long enough, you know that sometimes even your own characters can go off on their own and make a mess of your script. With RPGs, at least you know to plan for the treacherous little bastards!
So, if you’ve ever played in a role playing game, or even better run a game or a campaign, you’ve already done SO MUCH of the work of writing! It all breaks down into the golden triangle: World, Characters, and Events. You’ve got the world building down, and you’ve planned events! And with all of the non-player characters you’ve had to sprinkle through your world, you’ve done some of that too!
Next time you’re laying out a gaming session, give a moment’s thought about what kind of a book it might be. You could well be surprised: YOUR next adventure might be a lot closer than you look!
And if you’re a writer, why don’t you look into one of the countless RPGs out there? There are games for ALL possible genres…and I mean ALL… you might have fun letting some real people run rampant through your world.
And who knows? They might just give you some ideas you hadn’t had before?
That’s all I’ve got for now.
Go write!
And we’ll talk again soon.
~Craig
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