Scott, one of my favorite writers recently said that all stories are character stories. The plot is how the character reacts to certain situations. There is no plot if there are no characters.

So, everything starts with a character, in a situation, with a problem. Whether it's what to do with an apartment full of dead plants, a young magician heading out to see the world, or an epic space battle, it's a character story. It’s about what the characters do in their situation, how they react and the consequences of their actions.

I’ve been a storyteller for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I told my friends stories. When I learned to write, I’d make up stories in school. In high school and college, I had teachers who helped me refine my writing. I can’t say enough good things about those teachers and the writing and literary foundation they gave me.

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about the way people tell stories, and how I tell my own, from tabletop and text-based roleplaying. Let me see if I can explain.

In college, I started playing a wonderful game called Dungeons & Dragons. You rolled up a set of stats, picked a character class, added weapons or spells, and went on adventures with other characters. Part of the fun was in killing monsters, solving puzzles, and finding treasure, but most of it was in creating a character who grew and developed along with his or her skill set, and in the interactions with party members, townspeople, and monsters along the way.

I created a whole race of characters that will probably end up in a book at some point. I created a history, a world, and a weakness that made them a delight for me to play. I firmly believe that the character’s weaknesses are just as important as their strengths, and sometimes a lot more fun to play.

Tracy Hickman once said there are three types of roleplaying gamers. Fighters, who like to kill monsters and get treasure, puzzle solvers, who love mazes, puzzles, and mysteries, and talkers, who want to talk to the barkeep, the town crier, the governor, the guard at the gate, the wandering minstrel, and any monster that will understand them. (The groups are his, the details are mine.)

A good Game Master or Dungeon Master will find a way to involve all three in an adventure. A storyteller needs action, plot (problem), and dialog. A story is pretty boring if there’s no talking, nothing to solve or learn, and no action. A good writer will have variety in their story, too. And interesting characters. The best characters have some quirks, some flaws, and something that catches the reader’s interest.

Back to my D&D days. My dear friend, Jaleta, had a wonderful character named Bulala. She was a half-Orc exotic dancer and a rogue. People paid her to keep her clothes on. Town adventures were never boring with Bulala. Or her thief, Meeka, who couldn't resist stealing shiny things.  It’s no surprise she wrote a series of books.

Playing AD&D and other tabletop RPGs taught me to balance adventures with humor. Combat with conversation. And I learned how to work with different personality types. Some of them are reflected in my stories.

Does that mean that I think all writing should be like roleplaying? Definitely not. There are all sorts of stories, and all sorts of storytelling. Adventure is just one. But the principles are sound. Like D&D, you learn the basic rules and modify them to suit your needs, as long as they make sense and work for the world you’ve built. And I learned that you can’t please everyone. You just do your best and hope that you’ll attract the people who like what you do.

I still love D&D, and other tabletop roleplaying games, but now I’ve found another way to combine my love of storytelling and gaming. It’s called simming. Basically, it’s a combination of text-based role-playing and cooperative storytelling.

Mostly, the sims take place in a Star Trek-based universe, but there are games in various universes. As in tabletop, there are fighters who want ship battles and ground combat, who generally play security and helm, the puzzle solvers who play science and intelligence, and the talkers who play counselors and diplomats. There are also fixers who do some puzzle solving and some talking as medical, engineering, and operations.

Everyone does some talking, some character development, and some puzzle solving as they work together to solve the overall plot problem or “mission.”

While you do have the same three groups in simming, these roleplaying gamers generally fall into two categories: gamers and storytellers.

Gamers want to blow things up and get the reward because that’s the goal in most video games. They want to have all the cool gadgets or abilities and be the heroes. Storytellers generally come from a reading or writing background. They are more interested in how the character develops and grows through the situations. It's not just about winning, it's about how the character reacts, and dealing with the consequences of what happens.

Simmers come in all shapes and sizes. Some like action and adventure, some like romance and relationships, some like writing about daily life. All are valid. All are important to tell a well-rounded story. Some like a bit of everything. You can have a story that’s seat-of-your-pants action from beginning to end. You can have a story that’s about the development or failure of a relationship. Both stories will work. I personally like a bit of everything. I like an adventure that goes somewhere, with at least one love story on the side, and I like to see how people live.

I'm not into hard science or gadgetry, but I like writing science officers. They’re generally historians or archaeologists because I enjoy studying the past. For tabletop, I’m a chaotic-good ranger-magic user. I'm a character development/fantasy/puzzle-solving person who likes some adventure as long as it's not too technical. I have a lot of respect for the people who get into the technical side of storytelling.

Gamers like story, too, but they're more about winning and being heroic. They are the ones who may bypass story for combat and get bored with character development. They’re the ones who remind us that if we get too bogged down in detail, we’ll lose the reader. A lot of gamers are readers, so we need to remember that these people are important, too. Especially when we’re building a world. Give them things they can wonder at, things they want to explore.

Bottom line is, you can’t please all the people all the time. Your stories can’t have everything in them. Focus on what you like, on how you “play” and polish your craft. Practice your game play, your story creation, and your character balance. Then have fun. Because if we as writers don’t have fun, why play the game?

I think it was Tracy who said, “It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” As role-players and storytellers, it all comes down to that. How you play the game, or write the story, and how you help others have fun along the way. That, too, is something I learned from roleplaying.