Do You Want to Play a Game?

I'm such an eighties girl. sigh. The music, the dancing, the Aqua Net....

Okay, maybe not the Aqua Net. Anyway, aside from a touch of nostalgia, I do have games on my mind today, for several reasons. One, I've ventured into MMO land a teeny tiny bit, and two, I am thinking of play testing my next fantasy universe as an RPG.

I got the idea from the MFRW online Summer Camp. The brilliant coordinators and teachers shared a wealth of information on marketing and other writerly topics, but the one that really struck a cord for me was on role-playing for creating scenes. Great material, and well worth noting, but it got me thinking about other ways to use role-playing as well. A little light bulb flashed and I got very excited. Probably too excited.

You see I've always been a gamer girl. Not in the new way, mind you. Not in the shooting zombies, electronic, system update kind of way. I'm just not that hip, or that young. No, I'm  an old fashioned gamer girl, you know, the kind with dice. Yeah, it's kind of geeky.

I'm okay with that.

So, I love role playing games, table top, dice wielding, Doritos eating style. And while I was taking that seminar on scenes I couldn't help but think of how fun it would be to run a campaign in my new universe, Kingdoms Gone. It wouldn't even be that difficult. I could whip out a world book, character classes and the specifics of the magic system. Heck, I'd already done the world building for the books! All I needed was some players, and oddly enough, finding those isn't hard either. Not, when someone else is willing to DM.

Even better, my gamer friends are also writerly sorts. My brain churned with the possibilities. Could I get some fan fic out of this deal? I like to think so. I like to think, that this will work. Either way, I'm going to give it a try. The results will be up in the near future on the Kingdoms Gone blog. I hope to make a useful enough world book that others can employ it for gaming purposes as well. I also hope to have a place for posting fan fics that result. If they result.

Now, all I have to do is stay off the MMO long enough to get it done.

I'm also curious if anyone has tried this either officially or unofficially? Who out there has done a little role playing in their own worlds? I know a lot of folks who have gone the other way--written stories based on games, but has anyone gamed based on their stories? If so, how did that go? I suppose I'll soon find out.

Wish me luck,
~ Frances