Are Role-playing Games Killing My Muse?

When I was little, I was always making up stories in my head. I’d have conversations between characters in there. Sometimes I’d even act out scenes. Sometimes Barbies were involved, I believe.

I also played with the girl next store and we would re-enact movies we loved or pretend to be cartoon or t.v. characters and play in her backyard or my living room. I sort of outgrew that foolishness, but I did turn several of my creative musings that came from this into short stories and one really bad novel in high school.

In college, I returned to the stories in my head, the conversations between characters only I could hear, and even the acting scenes out alone in my dorm room.

Yes, I was weird, but I got weirder.

After college, I got into role-playing games with my circle of friends. It seemed like a good way to feed my creative mind. I even kept character journals for the longest time. I agonized over character creation. I loved interacting with others, never quite knowing what was going to happen next or how other characters would react.

When I discovered play-by-e-mail games, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. After all, what could be better than merging my two loves — writing and role-playing?

I’ve played in quite a few play-by-e-mail games since then though currently I’m only in one. Now I wonder if it’s become too comfortable to depend on others to push the stories along, to come up with the plots, to create the scenes. I wonder if I’ve become so content in that state, that I have lost the ability to muster up my muse and find a world to write in or characters to interact with. Heck, even in the play-by-e-mail games, I don’t like to have my own characters interacting with each other. It’s boring to me.

I miss the muse in my head, developing characters and stories and plots for them. I wonder how to get the muse back in there.

tags: writing, PBeM, roleplaying games

2 comments

1. on March 10, 2006 at 3:12 pm

   Mike P. said:

   You know, I’m in a somewhat similar situation to your own.

   I graduated from college four years ago with a major in creative writing, and was pumped about writing my own novels, spanning fantastic worlds and containing characters powerful enough to keep my future readers awake at night.

   Unfortunately, real life kind of got in the way, and now I’m working at a great-paying but stressful job, and now most nights I’m content to come home and vegetate in front of my TV.

   I do, however, participate in a table-top role-playing game, and starting next month I will be joining my first LARP (live-action role-playing) game.

   I’ve often felt as you do, obsessing about the game and imagining what it would be like to really live in my character’s world.

   If you truly want to keep your muse while playing such games, take control of one and GM it yourself for a while. There’s nothing more exhilirating than writing the outline of a story for the others in your group to follow, and watching as they spring your traps or find clever ways around your obstacles.

   From the short time I spent designing and GMing a series previously, I found that my creative juices flowed better than ever. As much fun as it is to find my characters in stories coming to life as I write their travels, something about the idea of literally having real people living my plot gives me one thing I cannot get otherwise: unpredictability.

   Of course, a writer would tell me that, if a character is well-written, the character will begin to make choices for him/herself. While this seems true, it is, obviously, not 100% true. But allowing others to follow the plotline gives the writer insight into options for characters that he/she may not have thought about previously.

   Sorry for rambling on, but leading your own campaign is a great way to keep your muse. Just write a similar plot to a story you’re comtemplating, and see how it unfolds, then use those results in your own writings. Hopefully this would work as well for you as it has for myself.

2. on March 10, 2006 at 5:49 pm

   n. mallory said:

   I did actually GM several games, one very long running one. I found it to be very frustrating because I found that the players refused to think for themselves or out of the box. I’ve had similar issues with PBeM games. It kind of makes me think that given fantastic scenarios, most real people would just stand around asking other people what they should do.

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