roleplaying games as great fiction

Hey, Randy - I used to collect a bit of Warhammer (just a leetle! Blood Angels mostly,) and play Vampire (I forget the name of my tribe, but it was the artistic fellas with the rose icon.) I agree - if it's to your taste, the books written by some of these fantasy chaps are high quality. Of course, fantasy and sci-fi is a much maligned genre, and people tend to think of it as more 'trashy', but that's their problem, eh?

Thanks hen for your reply. one word of caution about my typing i am dyslexic so the words may be a little jumbled.:) i find that some very good writers are doing some fine work in the rpg feild and you do have a very good point that scifi and and fantasy have a bad reputation. but still any thing that prompts the mind and lets one creativity loose is to me a good thing. another saddly over looked genra is erotica. funny how we encourage our children to read about warfare but cringe when they read about two people making love. but hey thats the world we live in . if you wish please feel free to reply to this letter. Randy Evans

I must admit I don't have a clue what this stuff is. Are these games like Dungeons and Dragons, which are then used as a basis for creating a story? I think the problem with scifi and fantasy is that it is often so boring, predictable, and poorly written. I often get the feeling that the authors thinks I should be scared simply by virtue of his labelling the piece as 'horror.' Most of the scifi, fantasy, and horror pieces posted here, sadly, could be described in that way. On the other hand, there has been some wonderful stuff in years gone by, such as Golem and other books by Meyerink, Walpurgisnacht, the stories of La Fanau (sp). For that matter, a case could be made that William S Burroughs, one of my favorites, writes scifi/fantasy. Actually, I have a collection of classic fantasy/horror stories (beyond Poe) and it is great, but none of them were written recently. They're all over 50 years old, I think.

I got in to warhammer for a little bit though I really enjoyed the painting more than anything else. I would like to say that some computer games fulfil a similar role. Back in the day on the old Commodore 64 or Spectrum or Amstrad the text adventures (You are in a small room with a troll crying in the corner. There are exits to the east and south. You are carrying a bag of sugar and a crow bar.) were wonderfully creative. Probably my first piece of properly thought out writing was in an attempt to create my own text adventure. It was called 'depressed' I seem to remember. And the only possible outcome of the game was suicide. I was such a nice boy. More recently the final fantasy series, monkey island, day of the tentacle, secret of mana etc etc are ingenious, funny and inspiring.