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salineaWhen 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.)
Main similarities and differences outline
Both fanfics and RPGs focus on a certain culture that I like to call Geekdom. It's genre. It's Science Fiction and Fantasy, with a dash of Noir and thriller. It's superheroes, wizards and cyberpunked ninjas. Fanficcers and gamers both worship Neil Gaiman, laugh at Ann Rice, and cry for Orson Scott Card's biggotry. They both spend way too much time on the internet and they're both involved in extremely time consuming hobbies that their neighbourgs, parents, or coworkers might not understand. They both like reading a lot, and spend too much money on collecting the objects of their passions. They both love Princess Bride and can quote Monty Python lines by heart.
They both spend a lot of time analysing with minutiae their favourite fictions, bitching about how badly said fiction was adapted to movie and insulting their favourite author when they feel they have 'betrayed' them and sold out. They both are so involved in their favourite fictionnal world that they want to be active in it. To subvert the popular culture by making it truly theirs and are not content to be a passive consumer. They both can be pretty snobbish about that fact.
Fanfics is usually a female dominated acitivity. Oh, you can find a token male writing or reading fanfics here and then, but the gross majority of fanficcers are women.
Fanfics are, obviously, literary works, and artistic ambition is one of its point. In fanfic dominated fandom, whether you're a ficcer or not, you tend to be big and recognized if you're able at writing, graphics, or essay & analysis.
Fanfics explore a specific published fictionnal work (whether book, movie, TV serie, comic book, manga or anime, video games etc.) by writing about the characters. There's not a dearth of plot focused fanfics, but it's more frequent than not that they focus on the characterization and the relationship of characters rather than on plotpoints or the metaphysics of the world. Most often Fanfics focus on relationship - romantic ships. Gen is a genre muss less popular than either Het or Slash.
Roleplaying Games is usually a male dominated area. You will find many women gaming as well, and their number has been growing steadily in the last ten years, but they're still a minority within the group, and on RPG forums gamers are routinely whining about why there's not more women among them (Usually a cue for flame & wank)
As an activity, RPG requires both "soft" and "hard" skills. The game itself is based on numbers, statistics and rules meant to simulate the world and the characters behaviour in either a realistic way, or a way fitting the genre conventions. However, roleplay skills, acting, the quality of a universe or a character background writeup are also soft skills which can be valued a lot. People who like the first or the second approach can often oppose in dicussions and caricature each others, but in general most people agree that a compromise of both is necessary for the best games.
RPGs explore fictionnal worlds by making up rules to make sense of the metaphysics, by expending on the background (writing up whole cultures, developing the history, detailing technologies and magics etc.) and by giving means for people to create their own character. They don't usually take up on existing characters, they create a whole new character to interact in the world. The rules generally focus on the means and abilities those characters have, and the actions they can make. The games generally center around a scenario where there's a situation to fix, some antagonist that the Player Characters will have to face one way or another. They usually involve very little romantic or sexual action, and when they do, it's often handled either with a great deal of discretion and fade to black, or extremely clumsily (think : "roll endurance+ athletics to see how many times you made her come"). Exceptions exist, but from my experience they don't happen very often.
As you might know, the big main difference between with Fanfics is that RPGs isn't always based on canon body of works. There's quite a few games written from an actually fiction (Call of Cthuluh after Lovecraft, the Star Wars game, the Buffy rpgs and many other TV shows rpgs, Middle Earth RPG, various superhero games made with the licence, many Big Eyes Small Mouth games made likewise etc.) but many of the most popular games are totally original work as far as the setting goes. However even with those, it's obvious that their inspiration stems from the same Genres that inspires Fanficcers. Nobody is going to claim that Vampire:the Masquerade bears no relationship to Ann Rice's work, that Neil Gaiman wasn't an inspiration to Rebecca Borgstrom's Nobilis, or that Shadowrun wasn't written with the genre of cyberpunk as defined by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling in mind. Obviously Dungeon&Dragon itself owes a lot to JRR Tolkien and Jack Vance, and just looking at the Source Material page of any RPG book that's got one will set you right on that subject.
The other difference is that most RPGs are published. They're official, they're the canon, or at least the extended universe part of canon. They're not merely fondly tolerated or looked down upon like Fanficcers are by the officials.
They're also much more well known by the big, fandom ignorant, public. They might be extremely vilified, stereotyped and mocked by it, but I bet if you asked random people about RPGs and Fanfics, they will be more likely to know what a RPG is than what a fanfic is.
The World Weird Web
As activities go, both Fanfics and RPGS are social activities. They both are area which allow actors to interract with like-minded people, to meet them, to have fun with them and to interract around a very specific and somewhat esoteric subjects.
Fanfic itself, though it doesn't date from the Internet, has greatly increased in popularity and accessibility with it. Most of activities around fanfics involve the web, through publication, reading, reviewing, reccomanding, betareading, archiving etc. From there people often friend and meet in real life, but the bulk of the activity around fanfic is Internet based.
RPGs were big before the arrival of Internet, however it certainly did take to it eagerly. Pages recounting game chronicles, providing scenarios, game ressouces, original write up of groups, house rules etc. etc. were certainly already popular by the time I started roaming the Net in the mid 90's.
Forums for theorizing and exchanging ressources but also play by e-mail games or chat games (on mIRC at the time) were also very popular.
However, as an activity, RPG is meant to be done in small group of friends who know each others, and is not a Net based activity in the same way Fanficcing is.
Though ficcing is a more obviously solitary activity, it's more often than not an excellent pretext for socialization.
Though gaming is a primely social activity, I certainly know people who love reading and creating games in a way that is extremely solitary.
In many ways, people who like a specific game and love to tailor rules and create ressources for it and the people who love a specific fictionnal world and like to analyse and write fanfics for it function in a very similar way on the Internet; To the point that I keep wanting to call a RPG milieu a 'Fandom', but I'm not sure if I'm the only one who'd understand why or not.
I think one of the most amusing similarity between Fanfics and RPGs is that both tend to create their own little cultural world which includes very specific and esoteric terminologies, acronyms and expressions (you almost need a list of common used words just to understand either a Fanfiction or a RPG discussion coming from the outside - let alone speak local)
This linguistic overabundance is often redundant, needlessly complicated and riddled with private jokes. People love to create those new expressions and tracing back their origin can be a very strange and funny journey.
It's not impossible that this trait is common in general in the Internet of course, but I do think it's even more popular in both RPGs and Fanfic-dom.
Both are very escapist hobbies. You get lost in your own world where you can forget about the stress of everyday life. There's a definitive appeal of exotism, strange adventure. The frequent debate between the proponants of a most realistic approach against those who'd rather have it all be imaginary because they don't want it to be realistic is common to both activities.
They're both realms of activities where creativity and universe building (damnit, I'd read a great post on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
metafandom a couple of months ago that said there was a world especially made to say "universe building" and i can't remember what it was) are important. Where people want to share their visions with other, and are likely to be interested by group creation. Ficcers and gamers are both interested in original way to narrate (a roleplaying game is nothing but a narrative frame to storytell at several). And they're both into taking this popular culture that they both like so much to retell it, explore it further, and subvert it.
Mary Sue met Powergamer in a bar, the ensuing fight destroyed the universe
Of all the differences between both domains, I believe the main difference between Fanfics and RPGs, I believe the most pertinent is the difference focus as regarding characters, world metaphysics and plot.
Fanficcers' main focus is the character of the canon world they're writing about. They might be interested in the universe and use it in interesting way to propel their story, but their work tend to be character driven.
And the big no-no, the WORST possible thing that a fanficcer can do, the thing they'll be mocked and reviled for, is creating a glorified self-insert that'll become the hero of the story and steal the spotlight away from the canon characters. Aka, a Mary Sue.
Which incidently, is exactly what a Player Character made for a RPG is supposed to be.
All right, maybe not to the caricature and ridicule point that a Mary Sue is. But a Player Character is, essentialy, a self insert of the player** (check one), that is powerful and able in ways that the Player isn't (check two), who, along with the other Player Characters, is supposed to be the hero of the story told in the game (check three, player is out).
In a roleplaying game, having the Non Player Characters (who in the case of a RPG adapting an existing fictionnal work may very well be the same canon characters explored in a fanfic) be the all powerful star of the story solving the problems is a practice that show of bad Game Mastering.
(** : I'm aware this statement could be discussed by many, as not every characters creared will bear any kind of similarity to the player who did so. However I'd argue that any character that a player will act as for the purpose of interacting within a setting is, by its very nature, a self-insert as it allows to insert ourselves within the world. Whether or not it bears any similarities to ourself, it becomes one of our aspect)
Which doesn't mean that if someone took out Mary Sue from their story and tried to bring them to a game it would work so easily. For one, RPGs tend to give a limited amount of points to buy the character's various abilities and powers, and Mary Sue tend to have them in so great amount that they'll have troubles getting them all. Which bring us to what is a RPG's real equivalent to a Mary Sue (and might help us differentiate a Mary Sue in all its reviled ways from a legitimate OC) : the powergamer, aka twink or minimaxer.
Basically a player who creates their character with an eye for the systemic advantages that'll give their character the maximum amount of various advantages and powers for the least amount of point. To no one's surprise, twinks often tend to be described by their creater as dark, tough, cold in demeanour, silently stoic, handsome/beautiful despite the mysterious scar on their face and have strange names with two many "y" in them. You get the picture.
This, of course, isn't the reason they're hated by gamers. The reason is that they don't play nice with the other children, that they expect everyone to stand in awe of their character nonetheless, and that they want to deal with all the story all by themselves with their mighty powers of doom.
In other words, where the Mary Sue is reviled because she steals the spotlight from the canon characters (her equals as main characters in the fanfic), the powergamer is reviled because he tries to steal the spotlight away from the other Player Characters (his equals as the main characters of the game).
Still it remains that the focus in fanfics is usually to erase as much as possible the writer's ego and bias from their work. In Characterness is valued. Adequation to canon is important. Creative approaches are not unwelcome, but the most popular pairings tend to be either canon, or exist in subtext, and the most crackful ones looked at oddly. In RPGs however, people who houserule and create their own adequations to the setting (or even their own amateur games) are the ones impressing. Creating the most original possible character to play is what is valued.
Borderlines
I said in the introduction that I was surprised so very few people crossed over from one activity to the other. That's not entirely true, there exists a lot of kind of practices that are in between RPGs and fanfics and seem to stem of both in essence. However what is true is that, as far as I've seen, the two as groups and 'dom of the internet do not interract directly.
Freestyle roleplay seems to be very often favoured by Fanficcers. I overall know very little of it, so I can't say how it was created, by whom, and whether those who did knew RPGs well. Fact is that Freestyle Roleplay is basically rules light RPG were the players act the part of canon characters, and sometimes not even that. Oh, and they often have a greater emphasis on romance and sex too, but we already covered the fact that fanfics-dom had a much better handling of those two.
More narrative in content, more about having fun just interacting between characters, but still roleplay of a specific character - original or not - FRP seems to me to be truer crossover between Fanfics and RPGs. In fact the first time I did some freestyle roleplay it was in the context of a RPG forum and in the setting of the World of Darkness games.
From the other side, Roleplayers do write fictions. Fictions involving their character, narrating their background, or even Fictions involving the Signature Characters of the official setting (If that's not a Fanfiction I don't know what is). They've done so for a long time. Yet I know of no Fanfic fandom for a RPG like I know some exist for Video games RPG.
Considering how close both activities are, that people are not afraid to get involved into activities that replicate the other, i don't quite understand why both 'doms seem to be unaware of each others. I've never in the couple of monthes I've been following discussions onmetafandom seen any reference to RPGs. If in fandom where official RPGs exist (like the Buffy one) Fanficcers are interested in trying out the game and how to allows to explore their world through yet another mean, I've never seen anyone mentionning it.
I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on the subject.
Are you involved in Fanfictions, either as a reader or as a writer ?
Do you play RPGs ? Have you ever created ressources for an RPG ?
Do you feel that they're similar or not ?
Do you feel interested by the other activity ? If not, what doesn't attract you ?
Any other comments ?
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.)
Main similarities and differences outline
Both fanfics and RPGs focus on a certain culture that I like to call Geekdom. It's genre. It's Science Fiction and Fantasy, with a dash of Noir and thriller. It's superheroes, wizards and cyberpunked ninjas. Fanficcers and gamers both worship Neil Gaiman, laugh at Ann Rice, and cry for Orson Scott Card's biggotry. They both spend way too much time on the internet and they're both involved in extremely time consuming hobbies that their neighbourgs, parents, or coworkers might not understand. They both like reading a lot, and spend too much money on collecting the objects of their passions. They both love Princess Bride and can quote Monty Python lines by heart.
They both spend a lot of time analysing with minutiae their favourite fictions, bitching about how badly said fiction was adapted to movie and insulting their favourite author when they feel they have 'betrayed' them and sold out. They both are so involved in their favourite fictionnal world that they want to be active in it. To subvert the popular culture by making it truly theirs and are not content to be a passive consumer. They both can be pretty snobbish about that fact.
Fanfics is usually a female dominated acitivity. Oh, you can find a token male writing or reading fanfics here and then, but the gross majority of fanficcers are women.
Fanfics are, obviously, literary works, and artistic ambition is one of its point. In fanfic dominated fandom, whether you're a ficcer or not, you tend to be big and recognized if you're able at writing, graphics, or essay & analysis.
Fanfics explore a specific published fictionnal work (whether book, movie, TV serie, comic book, manga or anime, video games etc.) by writing about the characters. There's not a dearth of plot focused fanfics, but it's more frequent than not that they focus on the characterization and the relationship of characters rather than on plotpoints or the metaphysics of the world. Most often Fanfics focus on relationship - romantic ships. Gen is a genre muss less popular than either Het or Slash.
Roleplaying Games is usually a male dominated area. You will find many women gaming as well, and their number has been growing steadily in the last ten years, but they're still a minority within the group, and on RPG forums gamers are routinely whining about why there's not more women among them (Usually a cue for flame & wank)
As an activity, RPG requires both "soft" and "hard" skills. The game itself is based on numbers, statistics and rules meant to simulate the world and the characters behaviour in either a realistic way, or a way fitting the genre conventions. However, roleplay skills, acting, the quality of a universe or a character background writeup are also soft skills which can be valued a lot. People who like the first or the second approach can often oppose in dicussions and caricature each others, but in general most people agree that a compromise of both is necessary for the best games.
RPGs explore fictionnal worlds by making up rules to make sense of the metaphysics, by expending on the background (writing up whole cultures, developing the history, detailing technologies and magics etc.) and by giving means for people to create their own character. They don't usually take up on existing characters, they create a whole new character to interact in the world. The rules generally focus on the means and abilities those characters have, and the actions they can make. The games generally center around a scenario where there's a situation to fix, some antagonist that the Player Characters will have to face one way or another. They usually involve very little romantic or sexual action, and when they do, it's often handled either with a great deal of discretion and fade to black, or extremely clumsily (think : "roll endurance+ athletics to see how many times you made her come"). Exceptions exist, but from my experience they don't happen very often.
As you might know, the big main difference between with Fanfics is that RPGs isn't always based on canon body of works. There's quite a few games written from an actually fiction (Call of Cthuluh after Lovecraft, the Star Wars game, the Buffy rpgs and many other TV shows rpgs, Middle Earth RPG, various superhero games made with the licence, many Big Eyes Small Mouth games made likewise etc.) but many of the most popular games are totally original work as far as the setting goes. However even with those, it's obvious that their inspiration stems from the same Genres that inspires Fanficcers. Nobody is going to claim that Vampire:the Masquerade bears no relationship to Ann Rice's work, that Neil Gaiman wasn't an inspiration to Rebecca Borgstrom's Nobilis, or that Shadowrun wasn't written with the genre of cyberpunk as defined by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling in mind. Obviously Dungeon&Dragon itself owes a lot to JRR Tolkien and Jack Vance, and just looking at the Source Material page of any RPG book that's got one will set you right on that subject.
The other difference is that most RPGs are published. They're official, they're the canon, or at least the extended universe part of canon. They're not merely fondly tolerated or looked down upon like Fanficcers are by the officials.
They're also much more well known by the big, fandom ignorant, public. They might be extremely vilified, stereotyped and mocked by it, but I bet if you asked random people about RPGs and Fanfics, they will be more likely to know what a RPG is than what a fanfic is.
The World Weird Web
As activities go, both Fanfics and RPGS are social activities. They both are area which allow actors to interract with like-minded people, to meet them, to have fun with them and to interract around a very specific and somewhat esoteric subjects.
Fanfic itself, though it doesn't date from the Internet, has greatly increased in popularity and accessibility with it. Most of activities around fanfics involve the web, through publication, reading, reviewing, reccomanding, betareading, archiving etc. From there people often friend and meet in real life, but the bulk of the activity around fanfic is Internet based.
RPGs were big before the arrival of Internet, however it certainly did take to it eagerly. Pages recounting game chronicles, providing scenarios, game ressouces, original write up of groups, house rules etc. etc. were certainly already popular by the time I started roaming the Net in the mid 90's.
Forums for theorizing and exchanging ressources but also play by e-mail games or chat games (on mIRC at the time) were also very popular.
However, as an activity, RPG is meant to be done in small group of friends who know each others, and is not a Net based activity in the same way Fanficcing is.
Though ficcing is a more obviously solitary activity, it's more often than not an excellent pretext for socialization.
Though gaming is a primely social activity, I certainly know people who love reading and creating games in a way that is extremely solitary.
In many ways, people who like a specific game and love to tailor rules and create ressources for it and the people who love a specific fictionnal world and like to analyse and write fanfics for it function in a very similar way on the Internet; To the point that I keep wanting to call a RPG milieu a 'Fandom', but I'm not sure if I'm the only one who'd understand why or not.
I think one of the most amusing similarity between Fanfics and RPGs is that both tend to create their own little cultural world which includes very specific and esoteric terminologies, acronyms and expressions (you almost need a list of common used words just to understand either a Fanfiction or a RPG discussion coming from the outside - let alone speak local)
This linguistic overabundance is often redundant, needlessly complicated and riddled with private jokes. People love to create those new expressions and tracing back their origin can be a very strange and funny journey.
It's not impossible that this trait is common in general in the Internet of course, but I do think it's even more popular in both RPGs and Fanfic-dom.
Both are very escapist hobbies. You get lost in your own world where you can forget about the stress of everyday life. There's a definitive appeal of exotism, strange adventure. The frequent debate between the proponants of a most realistic approach against those who'd rather have it all be imaginary because they don't want it to be realistic is common to both activities.
They're both realms of activities where creativity and universe building (damnit, I'd read a great post on
metafandom a couple of months ago that said there was a world especially made to say "universe building" and i can't remember what it was) are important. Where people want to share their visions with other, and are likely to be interested by group creation. Ficcers and gamers are both interested in original way to narrate (a roleplaying game is nothing but a narrative frame to storytell at several). And they're both into taking this popular culture that they both like so much to retell it, explore it further, and subvert it.Mary Sue met Powergamer in a bar, the ensuing fight destroyed the universe
Of all the differences between both domains, I believe the main difference between Fanfics and RPGs, I believe the most pertinent is the difference focus as regarding characters, world metaphysics and plot.
Fanficcers' main focus is the character of the canon world they're writing about. They might be interested in the universe and use it in interesting way to propel their story, but their work tend to be character driven.
And the big no-no, the WORST possible thing that a fanficcer can do, the thing they'll be mocked and reviled for, is creating a glorified self-insert that'll become the hero of the story and steal the spotlight away from the canon characters. Aka, a Mary Sue.
Which incidently, is exactly what a Player Character made for a RPG is supposed to be.
All right, maybe not to the caricature and ridicule point that a Mary Sue is. But a Player Character is, essentialy, a self insert of the player** (check one), that is powerful and able in ways that the Player isn't (check two), who, along with the other Player Characters, is supposed to be the hero of the story told in the game (check three, player is out).
In a roleplaying game, having the Non Player Characters (who in the case of a RPG adapting an existing fictionnal work may very well be the same canon characters explored in a fanfic) be the all powerful star of the story solving the problems is a practice that show of bad Game Mastering.
(** : I'm aware this statement could be discussed by many, as not every characters creared will bear any kind of similarity to the player who did so. However I'd argue that any character that a player will act as for the purpose of interacting within a setting is, by its very nature, a self-insert as it allows to insert ourselves within the world. Whether or not it bears any similarities to ourself, it becomes one of our aspect)
Which doesn't mean that if someone took out Mary Sue from their story and tried to bring them to a game it would work so easily. For one, RPGs tend to give a limited amount of points to buy the character's various abilities and powers, and Mary Sue tend to have them in so great amount that they'll have troubles getting them all. Which bring us to what is a RPG's real equivalent to a Mary Sue (and might help us differentiate a Mary Sue in all its reviled ways from a legitimate OC) : the powergamer, aka twink or minimaxer.
Basically a player who creates their character with an eye for the systemic advantages that'll give their character the maximum amount of various advantages and powers for the least amount of point. To no one's surprise, twinks often tend to be described by their creater as dark, tough, cold in demeanour, silently stoic, handsome/beautiful despite the mysterious scar on their face and have strange names with two many "y" in them. You get the picture.
This, of course, isn't the reason they're hated by gamers. The reason is that they don't play nice with the other children, that they expect everyone to stand in awe of their character nonetheless, and that they want to deal with all the story all by themselves with their mighty powers of doom.
In other words, where the Mary Sue is reviled because she steals the spotlight from the canon characters (her equals as main characters in the fanfic), the powergamer is reviled because he tries to steal the spotlight away from the other Player Characters (his equals as the main characters of the game).
Still it remains that the focus in fanfics is usually to erase as much as possible the writer's ego and bias from their work. In Characterness is valued. Adequation to canon is important. Creative approaches are not unwelcome, but the most popular pairings tend to be either canon, or exist in subtext, and the most crackful ones looked at oddly. In RPGs however, people who houserule and create their own adequations to the setting (or even their own amateur games) are the ones impressing. Creating the most original possible character to play is what is valued.
Borderlines
I said in the introduction that I was surprised so very few people crossed over from one activity to the other. That's not entirely true, there exists a lot of kind of practices that are in between RPGs and fanfics and seem to stem of both in essence. However what is true is that, as far as I've seen, the two as groups and 'dom of the internet do not interract directly.
Freestyle roleplay seems to be very often favoured by Fanficcers. I overall know very little of it, so I can't say how it was created, by whom, and whether those who did knew RPGs well. Fact is that Freestyle Roleplay is basically rules light RPG were the players act the part of canon characters, and sometimes not even that. Oh, and they often have a greater emphasis on romance and sex too, but we already covered the fact that fanfics-dom had a much better handling of those two.
More narrative in content, more about having fun just interacting between characters, but still roleplay of a specific character - original or not - FRP seems to me to be truer crossover between Fanfics and RPGs. In fact the first time I did some freestyle roleplay it was in the context of a RPG forum and in the setting of the World of Darkness games.
From the other side, Roleplayers do write fictions. Fictions involving their character, narrating their background, or even Fictions involving the Signature Characters of the official setting (If that's not a Fanfiction I don't know what is). They've done so for a long time. Yet I know of no Fanfic fandom for a RPG like I know some exist for Video games RPG.
Considering how close both activities are, that people are not afraid to get involved into activities that replicate the other, i don't quite understand why both 'doms seem to be unaware of each others. I've never in the couple of monthes I've been following discussions on
metafandom seen any reference to RPGs. If in fandom where official RPGs exist (like the Buffy one) Fanficcers are interested in trying out the game and how to allows to explore their world through yet another mean, I've never seen anyone mentionning it.I'd like to hear other people's thoughts on the subject.
Are you involved in Fanfictions, either as a reader or as a writer ?
Do you play RPGs ? Have you ever created ressources for an RPG ?
Do you feel that they're similar or not ?
Do you feel interested by the other activity ? If not, what doesn't attract you ?
Any other comments ?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Absolutely brilliant post
Date: 8 August 2005 03:21 am (UTC)Re: Absolutely brilliant post
Date: 8 August 2005 03:12 pm (UTC)The problematic of control (of the setting, of the characters, etc.) is an interesting angle I didn't talk much about, indeed. It's especially an interesting issue regarding FRP (where usually the only and most important rule is about controlling other characters) , and relationships with canon and Golden Ruling. RPGs widespread control more easily between the players and more easily reshape the "canon" of a game, whereas in Fanfics there's a more struggling approaches to canon, because they built on a canon that's not necessarly made for them to exist and they must build on the negative space, subtext or rely heavily on interpretation. The fight to control the legitimate interpretation of the text can be seen in Shipper wars. In RPGs there's some people who can't stand house ruling and changing the setting, but what would be seen as going A/U in Fanfics is generally more easily accepted.
Thanks for your comment and I'm glad you liked the post :)