Romance Gaming

I was going to call this "Top Three Romance Games" but I couldn't even name three!  Which makes me sad, because they're really fun.

I never really was a big gamer - until I stumbled across Big Fish Games in 2007/2008.  I'd never played a hidden object or time management game before - and I was instantly hooked.  (I'm ashamed to admit how much I've spent there over the years!!)

They have such beautiful, incredible games with fantastic worlds and fun puzzles.  Love spooky cemeteries?  Old castles? Insane asylums? New planets? Murder mysteries? Edgar Allen Poe?  You name it - there's probably a game for it.  I like this style of game because they're compact and contained.  I'm pretty compulsive/obsessive and if I start a game (or book), I want to play (or read) straight through to the end.  So huge worlds like Dragon Age are terrifying to me.  I'm literally afraid I would not be able to stop playing.

However, over the years, I've turned into a brooding duke staring morosely into the fire and declaring that he's suffering from ennui because I haven't played a really new and different game in a long time.  My favorite game dev teams haven't been wowing me quite as much.  The favorite worlds or themes are overdone.  Kind of like when you glut on your favorite author's series and the little writer tics like overusing certain words suddenly becomes glaringly obvious.

I didn't want the same-old story line.  "You're a a). detective b). reporter c). long lost family member and you've been sent to find the missing person in a town where all the people are mysteriously a). turned into statues b). disappearing c). plain old dead. As you enter the town, an ominous specter or shadow startles you and a). your horse runs away b). your car runs off a cliff c). you see your sister/brother/father/client taken by the mysterious villain a). who's always one step ahead of you b). in a cloud of smoke c). in a huge flash of blue or purple flame."

Then I heard someone talking about a ROMANCE choose-your-own-adventure game called Regency Love. It was so fun, so charming, and while the graphics were lovely, it wasn't over-the-top loaded with complicated graphics like the HO/TM games I'd been playing.  In fact, I started to think....

Hey.  Maybe.  I could possibly. Write one.

Because I love the style and fun.  It's a game - plus a story.  Add in romance, and I'm all in.

I'm still hoping to develop my own romance game and have bought some software to try out.  It's just making sure I set aside some time to do it (and it's going to take a year or more to even get up to speed in the coding arena).  

In the meantime, have you played any romance games like Regency Love?  The only other game I've played was Speakeasy Tonight (which I didn't like quite as well as RL).  If you have any recommendations PLEASE shout them out!

The Rise of the Geek

When I was growing up, being a geek wasn’t something to be celebrated. Sure, we were out there—trying like hell to get the syntax of commands just right in text-based computer roleplaying games or spending umpteen hours mastering the jumping puzzles in Pitfall. Or maybe running a marathon laser-disc rewatching of Star Wars or crying because Knight Rider got pre-empted. Again.

(Should I admit that I’ve done all these things?)  

Over the last few years, being a geek has not only become something that’s more accepted socially and quote-unquote cool, but also recognized as a market filled with potential. And that’s led to geeky merchandise springing up everywhere—t-shirts, bags, mugs, keychains, jewellery, basically any sort of peripheral you can think. And then there are the conventions.

There are so many now. Just a few: Comic Con in San Diego, Comic Con in New York, Fan Expo (among others) in Toronto. Even my hometown, tiny little Ottawa, has a comic convention—and every single year, it is PACKED.

As a gamer, though, there’s nothing quite like the experience of PAX (Penny Arcade Expo). I’ve never been to the west coast version of this con, but I’ve attended the east coast version, in Boston, twice. In fact, I’m typing this from beautiful Boston. I’m here with my husband, as well as my writing partner, Kelly Jensen, and her husband.

And about three-quarters of the North American gamer community.

If you’ve never been to PAX East, it’s important to note that it’s not just geared at computer gamers. I’d say tabletop gaming makes up about half of the draw of the con. You can pick up so many different types of games, from Mah-jongg to Cards Against Humanity. You can sign up for game tutorials or to try out a new version of Dungeons & Dragons.

The real draw for me, though, is seeing the video games. There are demos, tournaments, and lots of enthusiasm about all sorts of games from independent studios to large ones. BioWare, in particular, has a special place in my heart. Kelly and I met because of a mutual obsession Dragon Age: Origins that resulted in many, many in-depth character discussions. When we attended PAX East in 2013, we were blown away by the Mass Effect tribute the company put on. Unfortunately, this year their presence wasn’t quite as massive, but it was still a lot of fun to see people dressed as characters from the latest BioWare game (Dragon Age: Inquisition, if you’re keeping track).

Oh, and let's not forget all the merchandise you can buy, some of which is seriously neat stuff. Like hand-crafted suede top hats. Or modernized bean bag chairs. Or tables designed for gaming, complete with dry-erase inserts that you can draw out your campaign. 

It never ceases to amaze me how big geek culture has gotten, but it doesn’t really surprise me. There is so much creativity out there to admire and celebrate—and it’s a lot of fun to mingle with other like-minded folks for a weekend.

Signing off from Boston. Happy gaming!

How Online Gaming Influenced My Writing

Hi again, Here Be Magic readers! With my fantasy novel Valor of the Healer dropping tomorrow at CarinaPress.com (about which I'd just like to remark YAY! and also HOLY CRAP I have a book coming out!), I'd like to chat with you all about some of the background of the story. And in particular, my online gaming background that influenced aspects of all three of the viewpoint characters.

Out of all the things I've written to date, Valor of the Healer has the longest-running history throughout my life. Way back in middle and high school, I was writing novels that eventually formed the basis of the backstory for Valor's world. And sometimes I was even writing them during class, while pretending to take notes! (One advantage to writing out a story longhand in a spiral-bound notebook!) I still have those stories, and while they are very, very much the products of a young writer, I keep them around nonetheless for nostalgia. In those stories, you can see the very earliest versions of the nation of Adalonia, and the character who eventually became the Anreulag in Valor of the Healer.

Later on, once I'd gotten out of college, I discovered MUSHes. The name is an abbrevation of Multi-User Shared Hallucination, and they are a type of online, text-based roleplaying game. Generally they were based on the setting of a work of SF/F, and the idea was that you'd be able to create a character in that environment and roleplay with other characters in real time. I played on several of these games, including ones set in the worlds of Elfquest, The Dragonriders of Pern, and Star Wars.

The character of Kestar Eyrian Vaarsen is in fact named after a couple of characters played by my friend Amanda, with whom I roleplayed extensively on PernMUSH back in the 90's. The character in my book was originally a lot more like the characters of K'star and E'rian, but he eventually evolved into his own person. Nonetheless, he's named after those characters, in homage to all the awesome roleplay fun I had with Amanda.

But sometimes the settings were entirely original, like AetherMUSH, which was the creation of Astra Poyser Laughlin, who you'll see called out in the Acknowledgements of my book. The reason? AetherMUSH was the place where the first versions of Faanshi and Julian were created.
I found my MUSHing experience surprisingly useful for developing writing skills. On several of the games I played on, if you wanted to play characters with special abilities or "feature" characters--i.e., the game's versions of characters that appeared in the original canon, such as Han Solo on Star Wars MUSH--you were generally required to create an application for those characters. You'd have to think about questions of backstory for the characters, what they may have done before if you were inheriting them from previous players, and what sort of plots you'd want to roleplay with those characters while you had them. It was immensely helpful for character development skills.

And on the best MUSHes I played on, such as Aether, huge emphasis was placed as well upon one's plotting skills. You'd often be called upon to create "tinyplots", interactive plots where your fellow players could join you in carrying out a particular story. Again, valuable writing experience. You'd need to sketch out the broad details of the story, while also accounting for alternate ways for the plot to go depending on the actions of your fellow players.

Eventually, I got to the point where I kept regular running logs of all of my characters' activities. To give readers of the logs more of a sense of continuity, I'd also write "What has gone before" introductions to them, and sometimes side prose snippets as well to link them together. Once I started doing this, people started telling me that reading my logs was just like reading a novel.

Once I committed to writing for real, I had to give up MUSHing--due to not only time constraints, but also due to how the skills I'd come to feel were required to MUSH effectively were ones better spent on my writing work. But to this day, I look back on my MUSHing time with great affection and I still have my archive of roleplay logs. In those logs, you can find the original versions of Faanshi and Julian in particular, characters that never actually interacted with one another in their first incarnations! Bonus fun fact: the AetherMUSH version of Julian had wings!

How about you, Here Be Magic readers? Are any of you gamers of any sort? Fellow Here Be Magic author Tia Nevitt is a fellow former MUSHer, and I'd love to hear about any of the rest of you who have gaming backgrounds, especially if your gaming experiences influenced your writing in any way. What were your favorite games to play? Do you have any characters from your gaming days who are insisting you tell stories about them now? Tell me all about them in the comments!

Inspiration – where do you get yours?

Inspiration – where do you get yours?

Recently the Wookie and I went out for International Tabletop Day, a wonderful event held by local gaming stores and encouraged by the likes of Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day – a chance to try out and enjoy games that you might not usually try and hopefully buy. We went down to Morgantown to a faboo gaming store, the Four Horsemen in Morgantown Mall. If you're in the area, I highly recommend them for all your gaming and comic needs!

Anyway we found two new games – Smallworld and the X-Wing Miniature game. Both very different from each other but I came away from the day re-invigorated and ready to leap back into my current work-in-progress with plenty of ideas of how to make the story better.

Now I hear you saying – what? How can playing a fantasy game along the lines of Risk and a shoot-em-up dogfighting game help encourage the muse?

As most writers will say – it's the story, stupid. Not only was I playing these games and making up stories in my mind about this and that I was watching others play Warhammer and WarMachine and Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon and… well, you get the idea. So many stories waiting to be told and so many different universes all colliding in one store and in my wee widdle mind.

So we came back with more games for our already over-stuffed game room, myself with a heedful of new ideas and thoughts and the thrill of finding new games to play. The next time you find yourself searching for inspiration consider digging out that old copy of Scrabble or better yet, get thee hence to your local game store and check out all the wonderful games waiting to suck you into their reality.

Good luck and keep on having fun!