RPG Storytime

Separate from my writing, (and often taking my time away from it,) I’ve been running a couple game channels.  The first was a war game channel where I show miniature war games and other things from that community.  I wanted to expand into other games so I built a channel called Bandwagon Games where we have all sorts of board games, computer games, miniatures games, etc.

            But the one I’m most excited about is a show called RPG Storytime where I feature role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, which is the first one.  The stories are created from games that have been played, and summarized using miniatures.  This particularly appeals to me because it embodies my three favorite things to do: gaming, storytelling, and making movies.

            It’s also a good tool for promoting.  As I’ve discussed last week, people connect more to video than they do to words.  Despite the fact that I’m a writer, or perhaps especially because I’m a writer, I have to admit this fact to myself.  Movies connect with multiple senses, such as sight and sound, while books force us to imagine things.  This is, of course, the strength of books, but it’s also what makes it harder for us to connect with the audience.

            RPG Storytime allows me to tell a story visually and to promote to a new audience, the gamers.  This works particularly well for my science fiction writing as those are two audiences that are closely related.  Nonfiction readers aren’t so much into games as much… Well, they’re sometimes into the war games, especially if they’re into military history.  But for the most part, this is a promotional opportunity for my sci fi and future fantasy writing.

            I plan to eventually turn some of the stories I’m making through RPG Storytime into books themselves.  The hope is that those people who connected with the videos will want to buy the books as well.  There will likely be people who wouldn’t have given the book a try, but because they got sucked into the Youtube videos, which were free to watch, they may have that emotional connection to want to get the books and read more.

If you’d like to see RPG Storytime, webisode 1 of the Dungeons & Dragons storyline is at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuO4eWuagZ0

A New Form of Storytelling Through Roleplaying Videos

When I first learned about the concept of a roleplaying game in the 1970s, I was confused.  How could you have a game with no board, no cards, no pieces even?  I was blown away when I learned how Dungeons and Dragons worked, and how it was a story being made up by several people sitting in a room together.

There are many people who have forgotten this concept, and turn role playing games into mathematical equations, (also referred to as roll playing.)  But the people who truly understand the concept know that it’s about creating characters and a story and everyone making it together.

I always knew the strength of using this to create stories and even books, or even as inspiration to make a movie.  What hadn’t occurred to me until recently is how the medium itself can be used to create a storytelling video; one where you do not use the story as a script, but rather you show the people creating the story to begin with.

This has been achieved with Wil Wheaton’s Titan’s Grave where he and four players create a story by playing a role playing game and taping it with a professional crew.  What’s groundbreaking about this is the fact that it’s not used as the structure for the story, but rather is the story.  The concept of a storyteller has of course been around for eons, and has been popularized the last few decades on A Prairie Home Companion.  This takes that concept and increases it by five in the way it has five storytellers all doing it together, and you get to see the story form in front of you.  It’s made all the more exciting by the fact that the end is not predetermined.  Characters can die, and the party can even lose in the end.  It’s a mixture of a story and a sporting event all in one.  And the fact that it’s low budget means they’re less likely to pander.

I’m looking to do my own role playing videos as soon as I can; thus mixing the three things I enjoy most, storytelling, gaming, and videos.  I have several I want to do, including D&D, Outbreak, Savage Worlds, Star Wars, and Deadlands, which has already been started, but without cameras.