Things That Don’t Matter

Posted by Manda(rific) on January 6, 2011 in Assorted Ramblings, Ramble | 0 comments

In case you came here from somewhere else, have been living under a rock, or skip the vast majority of my blog posts – I run a role playing forum. Of the Harry Potter variety. An absolutely massive one, by role playing forum standards. The average board these days has about 20 players and lasts for 3-6 months. Mine has several hundred and has been kickin’ it since 2001.

The thing about having a board this size is that there is a constant demand for new content. A lot of rpg owners don’t seem to realize that in order to keep things fresh you have to keep adding stuff – they come up with a winning formula and ask themselves why after three months, everyone is starting to get bored. You have to keep creating. You have to expand.

For me, this involves writing. A lot of writing. My end goal as a writer has been for some time now to work on role playing games – not the forum variety, but the kind that publishes books and people play at the kitchen table with their friends. The kind that requires you to draft up scenarios that will challenge and interest the player. You know, World of Darkness. Dungeons and Dragons. FATAL.

Okay, well maybe not FATAL.

My writing for the Vault over the past few years has probably equated to about the size of Paizo’s Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook. Writing that consists largely of things like rules – what you can and cannot do, how to create a character, how to do this and that. Even more, I’m responsible for coming up with completely original content to supplement the information that J.K. Rowling gives us in her novels. My board allows people to play characters from America, so naturally I should be able to inform them what American wizards are like. We don’t hear anything about the foreign schools Beauxbatons and Durmstrang in the series, so I have to provide that information too. We need a few things to make us stand out from the crowd, so I have to do write ups on things that are completely original to our board. Six vampire clans complete with a clan history, abilities, weaknesses, and other assorted fluff. Three completely original magical schools – the most recent one being so far off of anything we see in the Harry Potter series it could probably stand alone as a Mage: the Awakening supplement. Thousands of words, basically for nothing.

The problem with what I’m writing, for starters, is that at a glance it becomes glorified fanfiction. Taking someone else’s world and making it my own, adding things that were never there in the first place. It’s not so much fanfiction for me as it is filling in the blanks – nothing is added that changes the original story or contradicts the canon of the series. It is only ever things that we do not know about.

I suppose in a sense it’s more along the lines of what the folks at Margaret Weis are doing with games like Serenity and Supernatural. People want a sandbox, so I give them the bucket and shovel. No harm in that. Except, perhaps, the knowledge that the tens of thousands of words I pound out every year will never be published or receive any kind of acknowledgement beyond my players’ excitement that they have new information to work with – which, don’t get me wrong, is usually more than enough for me.

The thing about all this is, though, about writing things that don’t matter at the end of the day or don’t give anyone beyond a select group of people something to bat an eye at, is that I genuinely feel accomplished after finishing a new pile of information. I feel like I’ve written something worth reading, and more importantly – I can feel myself honing down a skill. I’ve already got the write-edit-write-edit-edit-smash-your-face-in thing down pat. I can create entire worlds in minutes and improvise answers completely on the spot. Especially in the Harry Potter variety, I know that world – and more specifically, the variant on it that I have created – so well that I can answer nearly any question about it without batting an eye, even if the query calls for information we never even see in the books.

I suppose it just goes to show that what they say about practice making perfect is true, or that writing just for the sake of writing helps keep things fresh. I may not be looking to be published or even thinking about a full-length novel or some great new game idea that will revolutionize the industry, but I feel confident that when that idea finally hits or an opportunity strikes – I’ll be ready for it. By the time that opportunity rolls around, I have absolutely no doubt I’ll have what it takes to break through and write something awesome.

Until then, I have some Potter-verse to muse on. Excuse me while I step into this vanishing cabinet.