April's here, and it's time for more
I dunno about y'all, but I, for one, am a big fan of video and tabletop games. I like to incorporate them into my stories, and I often have fun when I see others do the same, so I wanna see folks' recommendations of stories that feature either video or tabletop games (or both!) in a notable way. They don't have to be central to the story's plot, per se, but they should be important to the character(s) and play into a few scenes at least.
As usual, please try and steer clear of adult-oriented content if possible, since I want these recommendations posts to be accessible to as many readers as they can be. Likewise, stick to either already-completed stories or stories that are actively being worked on.
As a final note: I've tried to avoid putting recommendations of my own on these posts out of a desire not to show favoritism to anyone's stories in particular, but would people find it helpful if I started including those?
I'm looking forward to seeing peoples' responses!
Melanie E.
Comments
If you done did dat . . .
Then you would have beaten me to the punch — ‘Cuz the amazing story that best matches this description is the incomparable Wednesday Knights, now available on Amazon Kindle for the breathtakingly low price of $3.49! Focused on a group of mostly friends that parlayed their love of roll-playing games into modest internet fame by live-streaming their weekly sessions, the story is filled with memorable characters, gentle humor, and a beautifully paced, blossoming romance. TG fiction at its very best.
— Emma
I appreciate the recommend!
:P
If I included recommendations of my own on these posts I would be actively avoiding anything I wrote, even if it fits the theme. Seems a bit too self-serving of me to do :)
Melanie E.
Not to Rain On Anyone's Parade...
For me personally, the cost of TG has been far too high, personally. These days, I am reading main stream fiction. We don't get a do over. Though, I might be able to pass as a male if needed. Since 2004, it's been a fantasy. Horror story at times. It's possible that I might have been content as a mild, feminine male, though not gay. There is no sense in going further. There are dire health issues that seem to demand my attention.
Unfortunately not from bc
Trouble with horns.It's an Entertaing read: https://www.scribblehub.com/series/55539/trouble-with-horns/ I have two other stories in my mind but for one I can't remember the name only the story and the other one I only have the pdf I don't know where I have the story from I will write a comment as soon as I'm on my pc
Chaos, anyone?
https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/50820/sonic-and-voyag...
BTW? There are a lot of captions and art that depict the softer side of everyone's favorite Hedgehog; especially on DeviantArt.
Love, Andrea Lena
May I humbly suggest...
This is shameless self-promotion, but gamers and a tabletop game feature prominently in my story, Broken Echo. It consists of five interconnected stories, each told in different styles and time periods. The first starts off as a pretty traditional swords and sorcery tale. It then rolls into the next story, which uses the old trope where we discover that the characters in the first story are actually players adventuring in a D&D game. But then quite unexpectedly, the female character of one of the male players comes to life, apparently there to help him romance a girl he likes. Unfortunately for the guy, things get complicated when the female character decides that the best way to accomplish this involves trapping him in her own body!
The other three interconnected stories also involve varying levels of immersion in games, but you'll have to read the story to know more. :)
Trouble With At Least Some Game Stories...
...from the atandpoint of this topic is that the games are the "before" element, when the protagonist is a nerdy type locked into their computer before becoming a young woman and opening up to the world. It's often a symbolic thing. Flummox's excellent novel, A Blank Page (https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book-page/66963/blank-page) makes it work pretty well and there is something of a payoff, when one of the remote players moves to the area and becomes a "live" friend.
Invisible, by Leslie Moore, sticks with the game even as our hero/ine expands her horizons and becomes a gamer superstar. It's been repackaged for Amazon Kindle as Being Invisible().
The RPG elements in the Tuck saga (http://www.barkingduck.net/ehayes/writings.htm) were always a welcome sideline, though as the plot got more serious in the later chapters we saw less of them. (The serial stopped being updated in 2009 after 142 parts, except for a three-part follow-up in 2013, but was believed to be the longest continuous original story on the Internet in any genre at the time it petered out, solidly over a half million words.)
Eric
This one
might not be tabletop or video but you can’t miss “A Piece In The Game Of The Gods” by Morpheus
RPGs
A recent PM chain pointed out that there have been a number of stories in which members of a gamer group find themselves inhabiting their avatars in a world corresponding to their game. Many of them were never completed and, sadly, probably never will be. (On the other hand, Amethyst's Apocalypse Dawn is still being updated. most recently on February 1. URL is https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book-page/90695/apocalypse-dawn .)
Two stories that did reach an ending are Elsbeth's Beyond the Pale ( https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/book/39324/beyond-pale ) and The Gate to Aragnatha, by Lynn Lefey, from Sapphire's Place, though of course that's hard to reach these days: https://web.archive.org/web/20120709005529/http://www.sapphi....
Eric