I realize that this is a tad outside the norm for columns/articles on Suvudu, but if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to tread slightly into personal anecdote territory and talk about a bit of my own writing experience. I think it’ll serve as a pretty good illustration of some things I talked about in my previous columns, regarding using role-playing games as a springboard to fiction–and, in a more general sense, showcasing how the instinct to tell stories can find inspiration from almost anywhere.
My very first published novel–and indeed, my first piece of published fiction that wasn’t part of a larger RPG rulebook–was tie-in fiction. I wrote the novel Gehenna: the Final Night for the line of novels based on the Vampire: the Masquerade RPG. I got that gig because of the work I’d done for the game itself, and while the writing of that novel–which came out six years ago–isn’t up to my current standards, I’m still exceptionally proud of it. I think it was a pretty good “first novel,” and I wouldn’t have had the opportunity, or the knowledge to write it, without the RPG-writing experience. More specifically, trying to capture the mood of horror that the game was attempting to evoke enabled me to write that novel, and I’ve since used those techniques in some of the darker scenes of my fantasy writing.
But that’s a pretty simple, straightforward example. Let’s go back further.
Gehenna was my first published novel, but it was far from the first novel I ever wrote. I’ve written quite a few since (and during) college, some of which I’ve since salvaged for future publication, and others of which are completely unsalvageable without a word-one rewrite, and which I have put into the category of “learning experience.”
The very first novel I ever completed was called Whitechapel. The main character was both a vampire and Jack the Ripper. And yes, I know now just how tired a trope that’s become, but at the time, I thought I was being so clever. (I still maintain that my actual background for that character is better than most, though. So there.) While the character history was great, though, the book falls into that aforementioned “learning experience” category.
But my point is, this character was first created for Vampire: the Masquerade. Without the game, I wouldn’t have come up with the character–and the character, in turn, inspired me to write an entire book around him.
Let’s go back even further. Back all the way to middle school, and a 13-year-old Ari. Whitechapel, written in college, was the first novel I ever finished. The first novel I ever attempted was written in middle school. I actually did finish the work; it just wasn’t long enough to qualify as a novel (even if it had been good enough which, of course, it wasn’t).
And yes, that book was based on my favorite Dungeons & Dragons characters. The plot was about as generic as you can get, with a pure-hearted but sorrowful paladin attempting to lead an uprising against the evil, conniving regent (who also happened to be a secret necromancer). But again, it was a story inspired by my RPG experiences, and even that far back, I learned lessons regarding fiction-writing that I’ve never forgotten.
(It was also then that I learned that you can’t try to translate D&D campaigns directly, but instead have to modify and re-envision the concepts.)
So okay, I wouldn’t have been writing without the RPGs, but it goes deeper than that. I’ve been gaming since I was nine years old. A friend of mine introduced me to the classic “red box” Dungeons & Dragons Basic game, and I was off and running. From that point onward, there wasn’t a week–hell, scarcely a day–for the next few years in which I wasn’t envisioning characters or plots or adventures. If I had to point to the factor that most inspired in me the urge to tell stories, it would be these early years of role-playing.
But I need to go back farther still. See, there’s a reason I was receptive to the idea of D&D and role-playing games. If I may draw a clumsy metaphor, if D&D planted the seed of the desire to tell stories, there’s a reason that my mental and emotional soil was fertile enough for it to grow.
Like I said, a very clumsy metaphor. Hey, you want my A-game, buy a book.
Anyway, let’s delve even further in the Wayback Machine, to very young Ari. Preschool and kindergarten, four- and five-year-old Ari. And also Jack.
Jack was… The term “hobby horse” isn’t quite accurate. You know those stuffed horse heads on a broomstick, so kids can pretend they’re riding? Yeah. Jack was one of those, with a goofy yellow head. I’m sure he was new at some point, but I only remember him as kind of worn and ragged.
He was also magic.
You see, once every few nights, for–Jeez, I dunno, at least a number of months if not a couple of years–my father would tell me a “Jack and Me” story at bedtime. And in these stories, with the proper magic words, Jack came to life and took me to visit and have adventures with my favorite characters. Luke, Han, and Leia; Spider-Man; Superman; even, once or twice, the dragon-slaying Prince and Princess Aurora from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty.
And yeah, I was a child, so they were child-appropriate stories. I still remember one in which the Star Wars crew got my birthday wrong and threw a party for no reason; and another when Spider-Man was sick, so I had to fill in wearing my Spider-Man pajamas and using Jack’s ability to fly to fake web-slinging. Yeah, silly stuff. Kid’s stuff, in every sense of the word.
But you know what? It made a huge impact. (Obviously, given that I still remember it at all over three decades later.) Sure, I’d been making up my own Star Wars and Spider-Man stories with action figures, but that was just playing. These were real stories, told by an adult. While I obviously didn’t recognize it at the time, I truly believe that that’s where I first recognized that, hey, people have to actually make up the stories that I like watching/hearing/reading/whatever. And I also think that’s where I first got the urge to tell stories. I tried it a few times, coming up with my own “Jack and Me” stories; it never worked, and I gave up pretty quickly. But that, I believe, is what RPGs tapped into, with me at least, and led–however circuitously–to me becoming a writer.
So, point one? RPGs really can inspire, not just authors but any sort of creative endeavor. Point two? So can almost anything else. If you have kids, tell them stories. Doesn’t matter what kind, just tell ‘em. And point three? Thanks, Dad.
