In my monthly “woman at work” posts, I always mention what video games I’ve been playing. So for the next couple of posts, I’ll be talking about why games (tabletop and video) are so useful in developing a writer’s skills.
Role-playing first. If you’ve never done it, the players each make a character, and they act out what happens in games. The Gamemaster’s job is to provide descriptions, settings, and plot ideas for that the characters are trying to achieve. Really, as writers, we already do both these things. We create characters that (we hope) readers will find engaging, and we provide the setting, descriptions and plot.
By the way, role-playing games span a wide variety of genres. Fantasy/D&D is probably the one everyone has heard about, but there are also super-hero, space travel, gothic horror, spies/detectives, wild west, you name it. If you have a favorite genre, there’s sure to be an RPG for that.
However, I’ve found the character creation aspect especially helpful in writing. Creating a character that isn’t just like you, develops mental flexibility. It helps you think outside your ordinary groove. You can play with ideas about being a different race, culture, or gender. You can play someone that has amazing skills and abilities, like magic or super powers.
This is exactly what writers do in our stories.
In addition, most role-players will have some sort of background for their character that explains why they are wandering around looking for trouble, as opposed to being a town guard or working in a wizard’s enchantment shop. All these details are things the GM can use to draw the characters into their adventures.
Well, guess what? Writers use the same kind of details to build reader sympathy and draw our characters into story events. Role-playing can be really good practice for leading characters into a story naturally, rather than dropping them in arbitrarily.
Check back on Saturday for more about games and writing.
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Wyrmflight 
I honestly don’t know how much roleplaying has affected my writing as I was a roleplayer before I professionally published my first fictional piece. I had published a non-fiction poem and maybe an article or two before then, but not fiction. But I have professionally published several things that at least briefly used characters used in my roleplaying games.
AND NOW FOR THE COMMERCIAL: There’s a single roleplaying game system that I’ve used to run everything you mentioned: fantasy, superheroes, space travel, gothic horror, spies/detectives, and wild west. And space travel detectives (that was an entire campaign), not to mention wild west science fiction, time travel, dimension travel (that’s been several campaigns), super fantasy, Monty Python, science fiction rock and roll band, World War II superhero undercover investigators, etc.
The game system? GURPS, the Generic Universal RolePlaying System. You can not only run virtually any kind of roleplaying in that system, it makes it very easy to do crossovers. I have one player character (PC) that’s an unaging dimension jumper who’s been in over a dozen campaigns under over a dozen gamemasters.
And yes, I recently got my GURPS Fantasy Folk: Elves published (click on my name), so this is shameless self-promotion. But in my defense, the book briefly talks about Deby Fredericks’ work!