Another one I should have remembered before, the Malazan Empire series started out as an RPG as well. The crew who were the core of Imperial power were the PCs who took over the Malaz Isles, and from there conquered the nearby continent and built armies and such.

The two authors don't like writing and playing at the same time, they say doing one steals their energy for doing the other. Which is why we still don't have an official RPG for the setting.

Quote from: Kiero on April 29, 2025, 07:07:39 AMAnother one I should have remembered before, the Malazan Empire series started out as an RPG as well. The crew who were the core of Imperial power were the PCs who took over the Malaz Isles, and from there conquered the nearby continent and built armies and such.

The two authors don't like writing and playing at the same time, they say doing one steals their energy for doing the other. Which is why we still don't have an official RPG for the setting.

Gayness. I play and write all the time.

The Magician series by Raymond Feist was based on his campaign with his "Thursday Nighters" group.

They even published some of their early proto-fiction material as gaming material under Midkemia Press. Super good fiction series. Highly recommend it.

There is no way the d20 system could handle the power-level of the fiction unless things got really loosey goosey.

My wife is a fiction editor, and we're planning on doing fiction to support our setting we're working on. So yeah, we'll be doing game-design and fiction at the same time too. It helps she's a complete taskmaster. If any of you are looking for a writing coach/editor or need resources for publishing  let me know, and I'll forward you on to her. She is superb. Not sure if posting her website is "against the rules" - so if you're interested, just PM me.

I made a mock up of our D&D campaign party in RPG maker for fun, but it was with the permission of the group and I didnt share it with anyone.

Seeing our characters in JRPG pixel sprite form was fun though, and having them use abilities that were direct parodies of spells or attacks they used in session.

I think the woman who wrote the Dragonlance novels did this.

The specific citation I remember was a scene where Raistlin uses the love charm spell on a gully dwarf woman to get her to help them.  That exact scenario and solution came up in her gaming session. 

I always thought that scene was weird because Raistlin love charmed the exact opposite type of girl you think of.  I expect the point of love charm is to be used on a fit, beautiful, young princess or milk maid, and he charmed a short, overweight, ugly, low-IQ (gully dwarves are notably so), and somewhat elderly dwarf woman.  Granted, the result was somewhat the same.  She was taken advantaged of, just as a guide thru the local area instead of a "relationship".

I think most writers would benefit from RPG gaming to get ideas from.

Quote from: Spooky on April 16, 2025, 02:35:40 AM

Quote from: Omega on April 15, 2025, 09:40:08 PM

Quote from: Spooky on April 15, 2025, 06:04:13 PM

Quote from: zircher on April 15, 2025, 11:25:16 AMI'm mainly a solo player these days and that means a lot of writing.  I do make short stories out of a lot of my game sessions.  My current campaign is written in Japanese replay format so it reads kind of like a movie script and is novel length (99,667 words according to Libre Office Writer.)

Coolness. What's Japanese replay format?

From the ones I saw it seems to be like how Gygax and BX D&D presented examples of play.
DM: Having killed the Hobgoblins, you find a set of stairs leading down to the south.
Morgan: We are going down the stairs.
DM: After 30' you reach a round landing with two sets of stairs. One goes down to the east. One goes down to the west.
Morgan: Fredric looks down the east and Silverleaf looks down the west. What so we see?

Including the OOC commentary. Which the BX one has. But also chargen and setup/introduction and so on.

That's interesting. I'm guessing it's "Japanese" format because some Jap magazine serialised a campaign in the Gygax example of play way or something?

Far as I can tell its all inspired by that replay in BX. The Lodoss War articles were effectively a big turorial and in Japan ALOT of RPGs come with large ones even. And you reat them first to get an idea of how to play and THEN read the rules.

Where in the US it became a lost art. In Japan it took off and is nearly an expected element to have for an RPG.

In fact way back my own book has a replay in it because the playtesters suggested it as a useful tool. I had one in all my books back then.

I will be making some stabs at a graphic novel after the semester ends based one of my group's adventures and my blog.

Quote from: Omega on May 02, 2025, 10:11:34 AM

Quote from: Spooky on April 16, 2025, 02:35:40 AM

Quote from: Omega on April 15, 2025, 09:40:08 PM

Quote from: Spooky on April 15, 2025, 06:04:13 PM

Quote from: zircher on April 15, 2025, 11:25:16 AMI'm mainly a solo player these days and that means a lot of writing.  I do make short stories out of a lot of my game sessions.  My current campaign is written in Japanese replay format so it reads kind of like a movie script and is novel length (99,667 words according to Libre Office Writer.)

Coolness. What's Japanese replay format?

From the ones I saw it seems to be like how Gygax and BX D&D presented examples of play.
DM: Having killed the Hobgoblins, you find a set of stairs leading down to the south.
Morgan: We are going down the stairs.
DM: After 30' you reach a round landing with two sets of stairs. One goes down to the east. One goes down to the west.
Morgan: Fredric looks down the east and Silverleaf looks down the west. What so we see?

Including the OOC commentary. Which the BX one has. But also chargen and setup/introduction and so on.

That's interesting. I'm guessing it's "Japanese" format because some Jap magazine serialised a campaign in the Gygax example of play way or something?

Far as I can tell its all inspired by that replay in BX. The Lodoss War articles were effectively a big turorial and in Japan ALOT of RPGs come with large ones even. And you reat them first to get an idea of how to play and THEN read the rules.

Where in the US it became a lost art. In Japan it took off and is nearly an expected element to have for an RPG.

In fact way back my own book has a replay in it because the playtesters suggested it as a useful tool. I had one in all my books back then.

So i can give some insight here but theres sort of this element of walk threw in small detail in a lot of japanese ttrpgs from what I can tell. Like imagine if your favorite non dnd rpg was written with the assumption that at least one and maybe none of the people at the table had ever played before.
Some of this is because a fair chunk of ttrpgs there had a culture of renting a room for the event so you kind of end up needing to provide structure so people dont get stuck or have a big hang up figuring out how to proceed. A good example is both sword world 2/2.5 and the goblin slayer rpg hold your hand a lot to make sure you know how to play so play at the table gos smoothly.
Edit: smoothly not slowly oops.

Quote from: bat on May 02, 2025, 09:53:49 PMI will be making some stabs at a graphic novel after the semester ends based one of my group's adventures and my blog.

In high school we frequently serialized our adventures in comic strips. Drawn with #2 pencil on lined notebook paper. Usually to poke fun at ourselves.

Some of them were really good!

Quote from: Zalman on Today at 07:36:23 AM

Quote from: bat on May 02, 2025, 09:53:49 PMI will be making some stabs at a graphic novel after the semester ends based one of my group's adventures and my blog.

In high school we frequently serialized our adventures in comic strips. Drawn with #2 pencil on lined notebook paper. Usually to poke fun at ourselves.

Some of them were really good!

I was always the artist of our group (due to a deranged uncle) and drew in study hall instead of studying. Have drawn all of my life and just need to focus on this project.