Roleplaying

Running a Roleplaying Game

“There are two types of people who plan murders: serial killers and writers. I’m the one that pays better.” — The opening monologue from the TV series “Castle” spoken by Nathan Fillion who plays the lead, Richard Castle.

You can a third type of person to that mix: gamemasters. That is, unless a gamemaster is considered a form of writer, but any gamemaster is more than that: a gamemaster is not only the script writer (of only half the dialog, the rest being the province of the players) but are also the producer, director and special effects operator. (And yes, it certainly pays even worse than even serial killers, let alone professional writers.)

Certainly elements of good writing are involved with designing roleplaying game scenarios and sessions: creating viable and believable characters for the player characters to interact with and settings in which these interactions take place and drawing upon a wealth of story ideas, plausible plots and hoary tropes for the players’ (and the gamemaster’s) amusement. That certainly sounds like what a writer does in writing a story.