(no subject)

[ksmith]

Am I the only SF/F writer who never played D&D?

Comments

[christymarx.livejournal.com]

I haven't. And I write/design computer games.

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

I've never played D&D. I don't like games much, beyond Scrabble, Boggle, Bananagrams, 500 Rummy, and Hearts.

[ccfinlay.livejournal.com]

Nope, I didn't either.

[lisamantchev.livejournal.com]

I wasn't introduced to the game until college, and even then it was by people who didn't play. So there was no one to suck me through the 4th wall. *G*

[justinelavaworm.livejournal.com]

Not me, neither.

[difrancis.livejournal.com]

Never did. Not any RPG. Wanted to, but didn't live near anyone (grew up on a cattle ranch). And then, when I got older, I realized that if I did play, I would never, ever write. So I don't. I don't even play electronic games much. Same reason.

But I love Bridge. And I don't have anyone to play with (need four people and while my husband plays, we need two more.) And I will play bridge for hours on end if anybody lets me.

Di

[pxcampbell.livejournal.com]

OMG, I'm shoulder-shaking laughing at your icon.

I love it!

[pxcampbell.livejournal.com]

I played a couple of times long, long ago in a fantasy - eh, galaxy far, far away.

My circle of friends (those of us who tried it) weren't geeky enough. (No offense to those who got into it.) We ended up switching our need to feel part of the SF/F-verse by devising drinking games to play while watching Deep Space Nine.

Do you KNOW how many times they say Bejorian (sp?) in each episode?

[torrilin.livejournal.com]

It's a fun toolset for "let's pretend", but... the dice get in the way a lot. I prefer to play in a situation where the GM does all the dice wrangling. Better yet, let's palm the dice off on a computer.

D&D does have lots of useful material for teaching worldbuilding, but it's aimed at teenage boys who mostly haven't thought about little details like "where does DINNER come from?". This means if you are not a geeky teenage boy, a lot of the material is a bit obvious, and some of the assumptions will really grate.

So don't feel bad if you've never played.

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Yes. :)

[elizabeth-welsh.livejournal.com]

No. Okay, well I'm a hopeful, and I never played D&D. However, I did gather with a group for that purpose. Something happened that we never actually played.

I don't think role playing is necessary for writing fantasy. I feel confident that J.R.R. Tolkein didn't play.

[sazettel.livejournal.com]

I dabbled, but was too much of a control freak. If I was playing, the GM kept doing things other than the way cool possibility I worked out. Ditto if I was GMing, the characters never went along with the way cool storyline properly.

And do NOT get me started on D&D's damaging effects on the fantasy genre. Unless you really,really want to.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I'm a card/board game person myself. I would like to learn how to play poker better than I do.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

;-P

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Yeah--my geekiest year was '78-'79, when a bunch of us would adjourn to the TV room to watch ST:TOS. But then that fizzled.

We didn't even drink. Might have helped.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

And do NOT get me started on D&D's damaging effects on the fantasy genre. Unless you really,really want to.

Do go on.

::sits back, sips tea::

Led to some repetition and cliche, did it?

[pbray.livejournal.com]

I've never played a traditional D&D game where I had an avatar and rolled many-sided dice. In high school I didn't know any other sci-fi fans, and when I hit college, my friends and I were hooked on the text adventure computer game Zork. Zork had D&D style adventures, but there was no personalization of your individual character, you simply played until you were killed and then started again.

[chang3002.livejournal.com]

Does ass-pie-ring writer count? I never played it either.

[afraclose.livejournal.com]

I've played in the past, during one particular semester of college, but that was it. Just don't have that kind of time on my hands anymore. It takes a lot of work, especially if you play in person instead of online.

However, I was involved in an online RPG for many years, but it was more like a round-robin story than traditional D and D.

[afraclose.livejournal.com]

*blink blink*

[sci-o-biscuits.livejournal.com]

I played often when in my early twenties. I was Bobo Brumsdaughter; and also played the role of a wizard. Bobo was my favorite character. She had huge muscles, was a terrific warrior, blonde hair, wore a green bikini - kind of like Red Sonya but with blonde hair.

[arconna.livejournal.com]

No, there are millions of people who've never played D&D (probably billions) and of them there have to be several thousand SF writers, whether writing at your level, higher, or lower, or whatever, who've never laid hands on a D&D sourcebook or a character sheet.
That being said, I played D&D a little during one year of High School but I never really got into it. I think the problem is that if you jump into a game like that you should do it with people that don't know anything about it too, otherwise you just get discouraged. That was my problem. I jumped into a game where everyone else, basically, knew all about it and understood it, and I didn't know a darned thing at all. So when I made a mistake or said something silly, they just laughed and ridiculed, which ruined the whole point of playing for me anyway.
So I got into other RPGs (Rifts, for example) and played with people who knew very little so it would be more entertaining for me and them.
Yeah, so don't worry about it. If you didn't play D&D you're still cool :P. You write SF, that's an automatic Cool Point for you.

Oh, grrr, I was going to buy Endgame over Christmas but the only copy the book store had was all banged up and I don't pay full price for books that are mangled :(. It was depressing though, cause i saw it on the shelf and the spine looks perfect and I was thinking "YES, the LAST COPY, aha!" only to find it was all beaten up. If I see it in there the next time I wander in I'll buy it...it's been on my list for a while.

[mithriltabby]

The folks at Expeditious Retreat Press have done some really nice work with their A Magical Society line.

[delkytlar.livejournal.com]

I don't know. Roll for truth. 2d6.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Led to plenty of stuff that isn't repetition and cliche, too.

Jane Austen led to plenty of repetition and cliche. So did Tom Clancy. Let's not cast blame at the feet of anyone other than the writers who can't free their brains enough to do something different, and the editors who keep publishing the crap. (I might blame the readers, but I really have developed the sense that the readers are starving for better books, if only they could find them.)