Does anyone write up their adventures for those who can't make it? How detailed do your get? Has anyone considered turning it into a story for entertainment? If you have, I'd like to see it. As an amateur writer I decided to catch everyone up in my group, who missed the last session, by turning it into a couple of pages of fiction. It gave me a chance to practice, and turned out to be a lot of fun. I think everyone would like to see their characters, and their story brought to life on the page if not the screen. So I'm posting mine,

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1muxHRGVaHnjT9WjlnamRDczd6ACd_MeF5JiQTq10ZbM/edit

and would encourage anyone else to post theirs if they have any. Hopefully this something my fellow board posters will enjoy reading and submitting to, and feel free to post feedback if you like. May the creative Force be with you.

I heard that there were some writers that turned their actual D&D campaigns into paperback books. I don't know if there's any truth to that though. I wonder if there are any really good selling books that were just rpg campaigns.

Yes. My understanding is that Margaret Wise and Tracy Hickman created their Dragonlance series based on a Dungeons and Dragons campaign they were in.

I wrote short stories of the adventures of my old WEG group, and had a whole website about it. It was great fun, but I couldn't keep it up for all 25 episodes.

Now I play in a diceless, all-prose Star Wars game that satisfies my writing itch, and is more manageable because I can work in small bursts, and bounce off the other writers.

I look forward to checking out your stuff!

That's awesome. Only read a little until I could get more time. I really like the artwork too. It's tough putting that kind of time in, especially since it's unlikely Lucasfilm is going to say, "Sure sell it. We'd just like a small percentage." I found it difficult to report on the details to convey to the players who missed the game while keeping the flow and entertainment value of the piece. Did you find a similar difficulty, or just go for entertainment value? You play diceless, who arbitrates?

I make recaps of the weekly sessions for my ongoing campaign (link in sig).

It takes awhile to write them as they end up being 2-4 pages in length but it helps as both a retrospective reference and a catch-up tool for when people miss session.

I go for summary narrative style because that is the fastest to write and get it done. They sometimes get a bit detailed, but only insofar as chronicling the action of the session (i.e. I don't go all George R.R. Martin and spend pages describing the food on the table in a scene).

I've toyed with the idea of going back and writing some of the bits as full-on narrative fiction just as a writing exercise, but then get sidetracked by other projects. If I ever end up as a player in a long-running game, I'd likely write up short narrative pieces from the perspective of my character.

My GM is using this for both little narrative recaps as well as other odds and ends related to the campaign.

https://it-s-all-in-the-trigger-squeeze.obsidianportal.com/

I've done so for past campaigns, only the problem comes in that I tend to write from the POV of my character, so he obviously becomes "the star" and far more nuanced since the reader gets to see his thoughts. It's very much the same method that JK Rowling used for the Harry Potter series, where we see everything from Harry's perspective. I've had some of the fellow players get pissy because their characters weren't as "fleshed out" even if all the character did was utter monosyllabic phrases and break stuff. Or that their characters were flanderized and not showing the deeper aspects of the character even as those "deeper aspects" remain so deep that nobody except the player even knows they're there.

What I've done in a number of campaigns for varied systems is 1) write origin stories for the characters, and 2) write what I call "Prologues", which are stories about what's going on with NPCs or events outside the character's knowledge, but which help flesh out the story (and get the players paranoid, of course ). No big campaign secrets are ever given away, just enough information to tantalize, and let the players know that there's nefarious machinations at work (and, of course, to have them think that I have a lot more of the story planned out, ready spring on them at any moment, than I probably actually have ). It helps with the immersion into the story for the players.

I haven't done any prologues yet for the SWRPG game I'm running now, since I've mostly been using canned adventures (they just finished up BtR). But when I start doing my own stuff, I'll probably start writing them again. I did write an origin story for our Force-sensitive twi'lek, since the next adventure will be based around her background. It actually served the same purpose as one of my old prologues, in that everyone is now extremely paranoid about what's going to happen next

I heard that there were some writers that turned their actual D&D campaigns into paperback books. I don't know if there's any truth to that though. I wonder if there are any really good selling books that were just rpg campaigns.

Record of Lodoss War was based on a D&D campaign.

I started using blogger as a repository of game notes. Started out as a dispassionate "this happened then this happened" deal, but became more fun to write when I began writing the posts in-character (and, y'know, it's good to take your bonus RP where you can get it). I'd post a link but (long ago) not everyone in my group was comfortable with the thing being public* (ho-hum).

*To an outsider, our cunning would appear incredibly dumb.

Which makes it all the more cunning.

I started using blogger as a repository of game notes. Started out as a dispassionate "this happened then this happened" deal, but became more fun to write when I began writing the posts in-character (and, y'know, it's good to take your bonus RP where you can get it). I'd post a link but (long ago) not everyone in my group was comfortable with the thing being public* (ho-hum).

*To an outsider, our cunning would appear incredibly dumb.

Which makes it all the more cunning.

Ahh yes, don't divulge tricks of the trade......