Comments on: Why Your D&D Game Doesn’t Make a Great Novel

By: Doug

Doug — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 11:18:28 +0000

Since I enjoy both running games and writing stories, I’ve definitely found that they are different art forms in a number of ways. That being said, there are a ton of stories that started off as D&D games or other kinds of roleplaying games, some of which have been very commercially successful.

The thing is, in my experience, you can’t write a game like a novel and you can’t write a novel like a game. Given that, though, if you’re good at writing stories, then your D&D game can still become a good story. You just can’t write it as a D&D game.

A good test might be – write up a few chapters, and then give them to a friend who likes the genre but doesn’t play roleplaying games. If they are confused or bored, it might be because you’re writing the story like you’d write a game. I think there’s a lot that gamers will tolerate in terms of story because we like games so much, and we have fun recognizing what’s going on (what level spell was that? Was that a critical hit?) in gaming terms, even if it’s pretty dull in story terms.

By: Jim Ryan

Jim Ryan — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:46:31 +0000

This is why I’d say that if someone were writing a story based on events in their game — issues of legality and filing off the serial numbers aside — the important thing would be not to feel compelled to stick to what happened in the game itself, kind of in the same way people dramatize fiction “based on real events.” Of course that does go outside the scope of just “writing up a game” and is instead telling a story using the game’s events as inspiration. I have a project on the back-burner (sitting there smoldering next to a bunch of other poor, neglected projects) for a story based on a horror-western game I ran (it wasn’t Deadlands though there were a few minor similarities). When I eventually tackle it again, I pretty much plan to rewrite the whole story from the ground up, throwing in characters and events from the game as appropriate, but not really writing up the events as they happened. I’ll leave that kind of thing to the actual play audio & video recordings folks put out on their gaming podcasts.

By: C.D. Reimer

C.D. Reimer — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:27:51 +0000

I have the opposite problem with my first novel that I’m writing based on my six years as a video game tester. Since my fictional video game company originally made board games in the 1970s, I’m writing about the games in all the various forms over the years.

But that’s all background material. I still have to deliver a blood-splattering, gut-wrenching and heart-ripping ghost story that works for the non-gamer readers. That’s hard.

By: Monica Valentinelli

Monica Valentinelli — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:59:53 +0000

If you notice, in my post I mentioned that “writing up a game” is different from writing a story set in a game. As a writer of game fiction myself, I thoroughly support shared worlds, media and tie-in authors.

By: John

John — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:59:19 +0000

Very true. I once had a friend of mine tell me my writing sucked compared to his multi-part epic about how DnD character whose very name was stolen from another game. His work read like the events of the game, which I admit was already predictable for me because I was in it.

By: Joe Crow

Joe Crow — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:30:05 +0000

Elizabeth Moon, author of The Deed of Paksenarrion might not completely agree with you on that. Neither might Raymond E. Feist (the Midkemia books). Nor Steven Brust (the Draegaera books). All of those books started as D&D settings. Hell, the Paks books are pretty much set in the world of Greyhawk with all the names filed off.

Not that Gygaxian fantasy doesn’t get a little stale after a while, but it’s not necessarily the kiss of literary death.

By: zeke

zeke — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:22:48 +0000

I think it’s also worth noting that things you don’t want to read about anymore are still fun to pretend to do. Saving the princess, or freeing the town from bandits are awesome game material, but really lame book material.