Bob's Thoughts: A Revelation About Creation

At the Atlanta Self Publishing conference a couple of weekends ago I ended up getting into a conversation with an older gentleman about roleplaying games. I'm not sure what started it, but we both shared how long we had been playing (since 2003 for me, the 80s for him I believe). I told him how I came to play for the first time in college, and how as a youth I had never actually been around anyone who had played games like Dungeons and Dragons.

In talking with him I stumbled upon a realization:

Dungeons and Dragons killed writing for me.

Ok, that's a little hyperbolic, and a pretty inaccurate. But hear me out.

I wrote a fair bit in highschool. From an abortive attempt at writing a Warhammer novel based around dwarves, to lots of shaggy dog style pun based flash fictions, I wrote a fair bit. It was something I really enjoyed, and was somewhat decent at. Ok, the dwarf book was absolutely terrible, but the flashes weren't bad.

When I got to college I finally got to play DnD. For the next decade that absolutely became my creative outlet of choice. I did tons of worldbuilding and game design, and for a time that scratched that itch for me. I have always needed to create, and DnD was an easy outlet for such efforts.

By the time I entered grad school though 4th edition was in full swing, and I hated it. The folks I usually would have played with were too far away to play with consistently, and the folks I was around now mostly wanted to play 4e. Gross. So I started playing more MTG, and a tooooon of great board games like Ascension. Roleplaying took a huge step back in importance in my life.

And what do you know...that's when I started to write again.