Game Writing from the Perspective of a Non-Gamer
Maybe you’re game. Essay. 1000 words, 5-minute read.
Game Writing from the Perspective of a Non-Gamer
By Ray Tabler
Right up front, I’m not a gamer. Not anymore. Back in my mis-spent youth, in the days when gaming required moving little pieces of colorful cardboard around on a map, overlaid with a hexagonal grid, playing games was a big part of my life. Avalon Hill was my drug of choice. And I hesitate to reveal how much of my limited disposable income was spent feeding the monkey on my back.
Typically, gamers need other gamers. Not always. There are and were solitaire games. And it is possible to simply lay out the boards and pieces, and revel in the gaudy complexity of it all, caressing the… Ahem! Anyway, it forced me to travel down to the public library’s basement meeting room on Saturdays, to interact with others who shared my hobby.
Most of the people I re-fought long ago wars with were introverted, technically oriented nerds, like me. We carefully maneuvered corps around European battlefields (Third Reich), marched battalions of two-dimensional companies across posterboard landscapes (Fire & Steel), or sailed thumb-sized dreadnoughts through a concrete floor North Sea (Jutland). I missed falling down the Dungeons and Dragons rabbit hole by a year of two. We board gamers and clutches of middle-school D&D kids, huddled around separate tables, eyed each other suspiciously across the big basement room. They were even paler, and less-athletically inclined than us, unlikely as that sounds.
Eventually, I drifted away from the hobby. Not from creeping maturity. (That still hasn’t caught up with me, mentally.) Rather, a shocking realization dawned upon me. Not only was I not very good at the games I played, but the actual playing also sort of bored me. Even more boring than could be accounted for by continually losing. The act of playing games did not draw me into this world. It was the history I craved, the back stories from which the games emerged. The games themselves were nothing but carnival barkers, luring me into the enormous, and fascinating tent of human history. That is an addiction I’ve never recovered from.
There are still a few battered copies of board games, stuck far back in a closet somewhere. Sentimentality prevents me from disposing of them. Although, I haven’t actually played the darn things in decades.
At a recent science fiction convention, I attended a panel on game writing, out of mild curiosity. The discussion turned out to be more interesting than expected. Along with the mechanics of a branching narrative, the panelists explained writing the back stories, game bibles, and novelizations for (mainly) science fiction and superhero role playing games. The task echoed in my head, automatically drawing parallels to and contrasts with the historical board games of my youth. The game bibles for historical games are the many facets of human history. The back stories were coauthored by billions of people who lived that history across time.
I felt a kinship with the subset of gamers who obsessively study game bibles, immersing themselves in minutiae which, to be honest, doesn’t really help in winning the games. My feet had trod a similar path. There are literally hundreds of official Dudgeons and Dragons books, packed with arcane factoids and descriptions. Attempting to count the number of novels set in this universe, blatantly or thinly disguised to avoid IP infringement lawsuits, made my head spin.
Okay, I’m not saying that obsession with game minutiae indicates poor skill at the game. That was probably just me. 🙄
There’s even an academic discipline devoted to games; ludology (Latin for “game study”).
This mania is not limited to D&D. If there is a game (video or board) with a significant following, there will be a voluminous library of world building, and probably novelizations to supplement the playing, and promote immersion in the world of the game. Traveler grew out of Larry Niven’s Known Space universe. Just as D&D (arguably) sprang from Lord of the Rings.
What is new (or so it seems to my admittedly errant gaze) are the many examples of fiction, printed and dramatic, arising from games. Halo spawned novelizations, and a TV show. Fallout also has a TV show. As does The Last of Us. Angry Birds, Five Nights at Freddie’s, and Minecraft all spawned motion pictures. Makes sense. A popular game comes with a ready-made fan base, eager to buy tickets or tune in.
Game writing is, to my pleasant surprise, a big business. Imagine that. An aspect that the panelists mentioned above covered was the range of game writing software available to create branching narratives, Twine, Inkle interactive fiction tool, and others. I can’t vouch for any of these, not having used them. But the panelists seemed to like them.
An audience member, discussing aspects of a branching narrative, brought up the Morton’s fork technique. John Morton was English King Henry VII’s tax collector. Morton was famous for squeezing taxes out of the king’s subjects, no matter what. If a person lived modestly, Morton reasoned that he must’ve saved money up and could pay his taxes. Conversely, big spenders must have plenty to spare and could also pay taxes owed. Morton’s fork refers to a situation which appears to offer a range of choices and still leads to the same outcome. Of course, Star Trek’s Kobayashi Maru scenario popped into my head.
In closing, game writing appears to be a lucrative or at least diverting area of endeavor. Not for me, alas. It requires sufficient knowledge of the game in question, and/or a gaming frame of mind. I’m probably too old a dog to learn these new tricks. But maybe you’re game.
END.
The game writing panel mentioned above took place at Magical Confusion 2026, Telling Stories Through Game Writing. Panelists were Stephanie Loree (moderator), Anthony Eichenlaub, Mur Lafferty, Steph Campbell, & Addie J King. https://magicalconfusion2026.sched.com/event/2DUc3
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I tended to prefer sports video games when I played in the old days, because they at least had finite endings. That's important to me.
So I never got into D&D and other things of that kind, but I immediately realized the kinship between its worldbuilding and the kind of things I create as ancillary elements to my fiction, so I have tried to learn more about it and its' strategies.
A great read, Ray. I’d never thought about board game players as gamers before you article :)