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When I was about 15 years old and I was just getting seriously into Science Fiction and Fantasy and into the internet active fandom side of them, I read Roger Zelazny's Amber cycle serie and loved it. When I was finished however I felt frustrated. The ending left too many issues hanging, too many threads untied. And they would never be completed because Zelazny had died. I wanted more; I wanted to keep exploring this universe, to keep shedding more light onto the other characters' side of things and all the countless possibilities glimpsed from the text, so I went ahunting on the internet, and...
From where I started with this you would think I would find fanfics, wouldn't you ?
Well, actually what I found was Roleplaying Games, specifically Eric Wujcik's Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game. Imagine, make up your own Amberite Prince character, and start exploring this world all by yourself, interacting with the other characters etc. I was thrilled ! As things went, it took me two years to actually get into the RPG crowd and start playing regularly. But my point here is : the reason I got into RPGs were exactly the same I find Fanfics so interesting.
Given how obvious the similarities of the pull for both seem to me, you can imagine I was surprised to see how little the actors of either cross over to the other. At first glimpse at my flist, I can find only about 5 or 6 people I know who are interested and active in both Fanfics and RPGs* (over a flist of 110 with lots of people into fanfics). Why were the two so uninvolved with each others ? Is it a case of 'parallel evolution' ? Are there more truly different than they look to me ? Is it merely a question of male fen vs female fen ?)
* : (By RPGs, for the purpose of this essay, I'm going to mean merely Roleplaying Game featuring rules, how light they are, and often a setting, either commercialy published or amateurs, and meant to be played in live in small groups involving one or several player and a game master.
The other kind of roleplay, that is indeed pretty popular among the fandom crowd, which involves the roleplay of existing or original character set in a fictionnal canon world with little to no rules but politeness and mostly played online, I'm going to call Freestyle Roleplay or FRP.)
( cut for the extremely long and rambly essay )
From where I started with this you would think I would find fanfics, wouldn't you ?
Well, actually what I found was Roleplaying Games, specifically Eric Wujcik's Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game. Imagine, make up your own Amberite Prince character, and start exploring this world all by yourself, interacting with the other characters etc. I was thrilled ! As things went, it took me two years to actually get into the RPG crowd and start playing regularly. But my point here is : the reason I got into RPGs were exactly the same I find Fanfics so interesting.
Given how obvious the similarities of the pull for both seem to me, you can imagine I was surprised to see how little the actors of either cross over to the other. At first glimpse at my flist, I can find only about 5 or 6 people I know who are interested and active in both Fanfics and RPGs* (over a flist of 110 with lots of people into fanfics). Why were the two so uninvolved with each others ? Is it a case of 'parallel evolution' ? Are there more truly different than they look to me ? Is it merely a question of male fen vs female fen ?)
* : (By RPGs, for the purpose of this essay, I'm going to mean merely Roleplaying Game featuring rules, how light they are, and often a setting, either commercialy published or amateurs, and meant to be played in live in small groups involving one or several player and a game master.
The other kind of roleplay, that is indeed pretty popular among the fandom crowd, which involves the roleplay of existing or original character set in a fictionnal canon world with little to no rules but politeness and mostly played online, I'm going to call Freestyle Roleplay or FRP.)
( cut for the extremely long and rambly essay )
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