Adventures as fiction?

[Leitz]

One of the things I like with games is reading the side stories and background tales. Two of the things my players have expressed an appreciation for is the continuation of some NPCs and the dynamic nature of whatever world we happen to be gaming in.

Has anyone done any fiction work where the "story" was the adventure series? What sorts of things help make it fun for the players and DM?

L

 

[Sifu Blackirish]

hmmm...

I am old school. 3 LBBs in the black box old school.
I would say it was about 10 or 11 years ago, that I was toying with the idea of writing adventures as a commercial endeavor. What I had in mind was writing a short blurb, just a couple of paragraphs up to a page at the most, to give a player an idea of what their character was like.
Mostly because RL got in the way, I haven't played face to face in years, and the writing has taken over!

 

[sabredog]

My current campaign was picked up from where a former group (3 core members of which have now returned to the area I live in and they came up with the idea) left off about 15 years ago in real life, and 40 years had passed in campaign time. Those who had characters with access to anagathics by the end of the previous campaign are now continuing their adventures after we sat down and worked out a history to fill in the gap and keep things consistent, including what is going on with some NPCs who were important in the prior game and where they are now (if still alive).

It's similar to what I did with my Call of Cthulhu 20's campaign that took a turn into the late 1800's to follow the adventures of the PC's ancestors, and then forward to 2010 (I played this out in '92 so this was the future) when the '20's game ended in '39. I wrote an outlined that was fleshed in in places to cover the activities of both the bad guys and the good guys through WW2 and into the early 21st Century. Some of it was to cover how some PC's dropped out, sons and daughters born and rediscovering the dark truths of their parents and the fight against the Old Ones, etc.

The only serious attempt up to now to put it into actual fiction form as a story is my writing up the adventures of my 10 year-old daughter's Scout in a solo game she and I play off and on. She is mainly interested in coming up with new animals in the game so I've been writing up her animal drawigs into Traveller creatures and then filling in the details about them with input from her. Then I add it to the game and she "discovers" in-game, the fun being her reaction to how they behave and her character naming them and interacting with them in their world. The latest discovery being the Spiny Runner and it's northern cousin, the Black-Quill Runner.

Currently I'm writing those into an ongoing project to document the ecology of one of the more frequented worlds IMTU in my "serious" campaign, and I'll be adding them to the tale of Scout Vicky's Amazing Adventures in Space later.

 

[Icosahedron]

I've written up a modified transcript of the pbp game I've been running for the past five years. We're probably topside of a hundred thousand words now.
The lads like to read it after I collate each batch, but it'll never see print - too many problems with copyright and players who've dropped out...

...And a crap storyline, probably.

If you're gonna do that with any hope of publication, you need to set out an IP agreement before the game starts - if you can get a game to start at all under those circumstances.

 

[ShapeShifter]

I wouldn't recommend it just because *good* fiction requires structure and planning (read: outlines, OUTLINES and OUTLINES!), while tidied-up campaign journals are too 'organic' and lack structure. The late Dr. J.E. Holmes' Maze of Peril reads suspiciously like a D&D campaign journal presented as fantasy fiction, and -- I truly regret that I must write this -- but it definitely needed a good and stern editor to go through it, and demand of the author a complete rewrite. YMMV.

 

[Leitz]

Currently I'm writing those into an ongoing project to document the ecology of one of the more frequented worlds IMTU in my "serious" campaign, and I'll be adding them to the tale of Scout Vicky's Amazing Adventures in Space later.

Please remind Scout Vicky that full reports are due within 2 Imperial days of reaching a Scout station. Those of us who don't do animals well could use the info.

L

 

[Leitz]

Yeah, I had started to collate some of the Traveller Play by Chat. Some years ago I started to do the same with a D&D character. The groups I've been with don't always prioritize character story so I get with the DM and write snippets to satisfy myself.

That's different though, than what I was thinking about here. Sort of what BlackIrish56 was talking about; writing adventures. But in this case, doing a lot of pre-game NPC story development, creating multiple conflicts that can act as adventure hooks, etc. Almost writing a story line with lots of plots but not ending many of them. Sort of what some of the CoTI social groups might have been interested in.

What would people enjoy about this?

L

 

[Hemdian]

I had a go at novelising the last campaign I ran. I have the first 5 chapters done and online plus chapter 6 is 75% complete, but the whole thing could do with some reeditting. You can find it here. I was going for a cross between Star Trek Voyager and Lost ... this was long before Stargate Universe was aired.

 

[sabredog]

That's different though, than what I was thinking about here. Sort of what BlackIrish56 was talking about; writing adventures. But in this case, doing a lot of pre-game NPC story development, creating multiple conflicts that can act as adventure hooks, etc. Almost writing a story line with lots of plots but not ending many of them. Sort of what some of the CoTI social groups might have been interested in.

What would people enjoy about this?

L

This is how I write all of my adventures: chapters in an ongoing campaign that require the PC's to be plugged in to finish the plot. If the players are left out then the whole story arc will go as per my outlines (starting with the big background one all the way down to the outlines for each sub-section) and the way the various NPC's will act depending on individual attitudes and goals. The players are always the chaos that keeps things unexpected and interesting so that not even I know how it will all come out sometimes (thereby requiring constant rewrites by myself between games).

But each adventure is a full outline written as if it were a story that didn't include the PC's. I suppose if I had the talent/time (never enough of that!) I could write them into full stories and such, but I prefer the chaotic/organic results of turning the players loose in them.

In between games I'm also constantly writing new tidbits of info and background for my homebrew campaign universe and filling things out with the sort of stuff that adds life to the vastness space. All of it is grist for the RPG mill, and someday might be the same for something more ambitious. Who knows? I'll need something to do in my theoretical retirement.

 

[sabredog]

Please remind Scout Vicky that full reports are due within 2 Imperial days of reaching a Scout station. Those of us who don't do animals well could use the info.

L

I'll transcribe her reports faster and hopefully have something to post or email in the next couple of days since I have a long weekend and my muse has been beating me with an old IBM Selectric to get me writing, writing, writing!

Three of the animals (two of which are in the ecology monograph what I'm writing right now) are located here if you want a peek: (the Damnthing, Devil Squirrel, and Harpooner)

http://freelancetraveller.com/features/animals/index.html

 

[Icosahedron]

I wouldn't recommend it just because *good* fiction requires structure and planning (read: outlines, OUTLINES and OUTLINES!), while tidied-up campaign journals are too 'organic' and lack structure. The late Dr. J.E. Holmes' Maze of Peril reads suspiciously like a D&D campaign journal presented as fantasy fiction, and -- I truly regret that I must write this -- but it definitely needed a good and stern editor to go through it, and demand of the author a complete rewrite. YMMV.

I agree completely. Any campaign log could only serve as a suggestion for a real novel, but when I said 'print' I was thinking more of a publicly accessible log or a cliffhanger serial in an online magazine. I suspect that there would be copyright issues even there. I dunno what others have found?

 

[BlackBat242]

She is mainly interested in coming up with new animals in the game so I've been writing up her animal drawigs into Traveller creatures and then filling in the details about them with input from her. Then I add it to the game and she "discovers" in-game, the fun being her reaction to how they behave and her character naming them and interacting with them in their world. The latest discovery being the Spiny Runner and it's northern cousin, the Black-Quill Runner.

Here's one for her to encounter:

Here's the story from our universe: revealing-the-unicorn-pegasus-kitten

And there is a ballad about it:
free-mp3-unicorn-pegasus-kitten

 

[sabredog]

Her stuff isn't quite so, er...well painted. But she does the prelim work and I'll fill in the blanks and do more detailed sketches on the important bits afterwards. It's a lot like when I would draw dissections from my labs, but with no subject to work from - more reverse engineering involved.

Here's the Spiny Runner (or "Red-Quill Creeper) per Sarah with some of the notes around it from me -

 

[Renaissance Man]

I've been interested in this idea, not for creating fiction from campaigns whole hog, but rather using gaming -- a recreational activity -- as a kind of writing clinic and fertile bed of ideas.

I'd like to run a "Traveller for Writers" campaign, where players join based on their desire to do a bit of writing. Character generation wouldn't just be getting the numbers on paper, but rather an opportunity to write scenes of important life events.

After every game session, each person is tasked with writing out a more polished, edited, readable scene from the day.

The campaign probably wouldn't work as a publishable book. Maybe a kind of electronic "scrapbook" for internal consumption. All of this writing could be good for generating subplots and ideas, but the real purpose of all of this collaborative work would be to become a better writer.

Of course... don't know how many people want to muddy their gaming experience with take home assignments.

 

[Renaissance Man]

By the way sabredog, I think that's a wonderful idea for your daughter's game. I think I would've just about plotzed if my dad spent time encouraging me to develop my imagination and help me realize some of my ideas.

 

[Icosahedron]

Re 'Traveller for Writers': I tend to do all that anyway. I thought everybody wrote up ideas about their characters...
Ok, so maybe I'm just weird...

 

[Sifu Blackirish]

I've been interested in this idea, not for creating fiction from campaigns whole hog, but rather using gaming -- a recreational activity -- as a kind of writing clinic and fertile bed of ideas.

Well, my Man, you happen to be in luck. I will share with you my secret to writing. Pull your chair up close so no one else can hear us...

When you generate your characters, it is necessary to keep track of skills received term by term. After the reenlistment throw, look at what you have and let the wheels in your head spin until something comes to the surface. It's not as easy as it sounds, but once you get used to the idea, you'll find it is easy.

For example, let me show you what I did for the characters I currently have posted in the Adventurers section of this forum.
Suresh Kuypene was an athlete character I made, and I had to wait until I was done before I could make sense of him. Here's what he received term by term, and my interpretation:

pre-enlist: Acrobatics

term 1: wound, 2 promotions; Sport, Melee Cbt, Instruction, Blade Cbt
(contact hitter, almost always slides with spikes up)

term 2: wound, 1 prom; Blade Cbt, +1 Endur
(many shattered bats - tradition league)

term 3:1 prom; +1 Endur, Leader, Position
(2nd baseman, motivational speaker to team)

term 4:near miss; Medical, Sport
(herbal remedy specialist, defensive team leader)

term 5: Acrobatics, Blade Cbt
(home run hitter, many infield circus catches)

term 6: 1 prom; +1 Endur, Admin, Sport
(on field manager)

term 7: +1 Dext, Sport
(general manager, scout talent review)

Now, read the full writeup on Suresh and you can see I incorporated almost everything you see in the writeup here in the full article. It took four drafts to get it where it is now and I still missed a few things.

You ARE going to keep this a secret, right?