Anyone who reads the roleplaying side of these forums knows I like to write a lot. Anyone who's seen the campaigns section of gamecircle.org knows I like to write fiction, too. So I was wandering around the various forums out there, and I noticed a bit of short story writing going on. Now, I am no brilliant writer, but I can do better than a lot of stuff out there.

So, who'd be interested in seeing me post some short stories, and seeing other better writers post, too? I'm sure that amongst our members, since we've better writers than me, we must have a few aspiring and better fiction writers, too?

What would I write about? Well, lots of things. My favourite genre is postapocalyptic, but often the stories of those are either depressing and too short, or have some Loner Badarse, American white straight sorta-Christian male as the hero. I was thinking of having as a hero, an Aussie woman convert to Islam. Hell, I don't challenge myself much when I roleplay, I may as well challenge myself when I write!

So, anyone want to see people write and publish here some short stories?

Coincidently, I've been looking for a new home for my work since my posting home of the last few years (RPGHost) has bugger all traffic these days.
I mostly write comedy and sci-fi, often both at the same time. My (arguably) most successful works were based on freeform RP chatroom characters myself and a couple of friends used to play - I'd have to rewrite most of them from scratch just so anyone who wasnt intimately familiar with the existing characters/ universe would hope to understand, but at least it would get me writing again.

You thinking a separate forum JimBob, or just posted in off topic?

Yeah ...what about that ? Would a new forum make sense for stories? Or could we just work it into one of the existing sub-forums?

 JimBob made me remember a story I never finished thats post-apocalyptic. Its one I always nicknamed "A Man and his Cat", in contrrast to the famous Harlan Ellison story.


- E.W.C.

Well, I was assuming there wouldn't be many, and so it could just be posted in Off-Topic. I guess if we got some volume, we could ask for a new subforum. I'd be inclined not to ask for one, though, it'd become a little ghetto and no-one would read it.

I think each authour would have to be clear on whether they want feedback or not, and/or constructive criticism. I'm more keen on finished products, rather than being a little writing circle. The writers can send stuff amongst themselves to polish it, we shouldn't try to make forum members into copy-editors, but instead entertain them.

I've floated around a few other forae/chatboards. Most have a specific subforur for fiction and comments regarding the fiction. Putting it in offtopic would result in people getting lost amid the political and philosophical diatribes. Perhaps a subforum of offtopic? Talk to the mods about it. I'll critique you like I would anyone else.

On doing some writing, I have discovered that I am not a good writer (of fiction), but that I don't care. I can write things with an interesting and fun story, but not describe them evocatively or make the reader really care about the characters. But as I said, I don't care, so I will continue to write and put it out there anyway. However, probably not where I'll be critiqued. I know I'm crap, I don't need some bugger with a cartoon avatar to tell me so, I just want to have fun and write interesting stuff.

Much like my roleplaying, actually

I think that's a great idea, but i have a counter-proposal.

How about posting *short* stories to the RPG forum? The challenge then is for posters to create scenarios or RPG rules for the piece of fiction that starts the thread.

Example: JimBobOz posts 'Post Apocolyptic Blues' that details the search of a survivor from an ecolgical disaster for his sister, who he thinks may be alive. He has to brave the caves of the 'stunties' and travel through the badlands, gaining details from the isolated camps there as to his sisters whereabouts.

Poster 2 comes along and says Gamma World! Here are the stats for 'Survivor' and a template for Stunties. Here's a map for the caves, a rumour table for unearthing his sister and a random weather generator for the badlands.

This might get messy with posters having ideas for other systems etc, but if people are willing to abide by the choice of either the author, or the first reply in choice of system, then a nice buildup of material for turning the story into a scenario may result.

I would limit the size of stories to 5-7k though. That's enough to get a tale across and shouldn't make peoples' eyes bleed from reading them. I would also suggest that any writers compose stories that are 'systemless'. That is, don't write with a system in mind, just tell the tale, hope people enjoy it and then see how folks turn it into RPG ideas.

Kill two birds with one stone with this. Some cool fiction from budding writers, honing GM adventure building skills and leave a resource for posters and lurkers alike to plunder!