G.ZEEP@MIT-EECS (08/06/85)
From: Wang Zeep <G.ZEEP%MIT-EECS@MIT-MC.ARPA> The basic rule for science fiction & fantasy is: Ideas are the easy part. Character development is the hard part. This doesn't mean that stories that stress characters over plot are automatically better -- lopsided IS lopsided. But the best stories must have strong characters as well as strong plots and ideas. A D&D game is just a series of related puzzles. It takes an intelligent player to allow her character to mature as well as gather experience points. If you have that sort of intelligence, and can put it into a story, fine, but if you are simply telling the battles and melees as they happened, it will be boring and unsatisfying. Some readers may not realize why they are unsatisfied, but they will notice that the story seems pointless and thin. The Liavek series are a good example. My impression was that the world originated as a gaming world, but that the gamers became authors and wrote about incidents and stories that didn't occur in the course of the game, or manipulated events to fill literary goals as well. Obviously, hyper!brust can correct me, and as I am just a fledgling writer, my views are untested and subject to change, but I feel that no real stories can be written using D&D (or Traveller or ....) as the sole source of material. Games may be useful as templates (just as dreams or real life or "idea books" are) but the real story has to come from an understanding of people. wz -------