Have you written a story?

[Tech]

Has anyone written a story where you have your characters from your campaign in it? It doesn't have to be Champions. I'm not referring to a write-up of an adventure episode gamed but an original story with the characters?

[aylwin13]

I've written one short story, an introduction for one of my PC's. Her name is Silhouette. I posted the story, and the original character sheet, here (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28896&highlight=Silhouette). She has earned some XP and has added or tweaked powers since then. Maybe I'll have to revive that thread and post the updated character.

[NestorDRod]

Our group tends to get pretty creative when it comes to blue-booking in our campaigns. In many cases, the "blue-book" entries are pretty much stories in their own right.

A lot of my work has shown up in Susano's site in the World Book section (Kazei 5, Shadows Angelus I and II).

Just curious. Any reason for asking?

[Bloodstone]

Several. Most of them were just short stories or comics to be shared with my game group, but there have been a few that I have considered sending out for publication.

Those, however, are only loosely based on what actually happened in game.

[Certified]

As far as fiction for hero games I tend to do shorts for almost all the characters I post. However, here is a link to one that's long enough to not be considered flash fiction.

Grey Matter (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=60143)

Background for one of the settings more powerful villains but it involves the Xeno Consortium the campaign world's equivalent to the Avengers.

[BoloOfEarth]

I wrote several short stories for a creative writing class in college, featuring a Fantasy Hero charming-rogue-type character of mine. Neither of them were based on anything that happened in game.

The first was supposed to be mainly a descriptive exercise, so I had him walking through a marketplace and spotting (and following) a pretty girl. I got to describe the market stalls, vendors, and of course the girl in great detail. He purchased a fine silk scarf from a vendor that matched her outfit, then used it to introduce himself to her ("I believe you dropped this..."), tied it loosely around her neck... and in the process stole the diamond necklace she was wearing.

The second we had more freedom to write what and how we wanted, so I had him playing a game of poker with the local baron to win his brother's freedom. (He had been caught hunting on the baron's lands.) I included several subtle clues on how he was going to cheat to win the game, but nobody in class caught them until the end. So I guess my verbal Sleight of Hand skill matched my character's physical Sleight of Hand skill. ;)

Both were a lot of fun to write, and it really helped that I knew what the character could or couldn't do. But I suggest you not feel 100% constrained by that, if doing so would interfere with the flow of the story.

[Vulcan]

I tend to write a page or two background story on my characters when I can... Those are the characters I understand and play the best.

For D&D I've done a number of these background stories for both me and my wife's characters.

Vigil was my prime example of that for Champions (he was my WWYCD: Bearing Witness spokesperson), with Dante and Pride coming in second and third. Vigil's backstory went so well, I continued it throughout the campaign - at least to the point where he died.:(

A second time.:sneaky: I'm hoping the GM will bring him back for a third!:D

[Cassandra]

I have a novel planned out featuring many of My Superhero Universe characters.

[Trebuchet]

I've written several which have been posted on these boards; links to them can be found on this page: http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1415238&postcount=14

[Querysphinx]

I have written a novel Cockatrice: Carpe Demon (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1638923&postcount=77) based on my character Cockatrice. The character has changed radically from the time I played her, and the story has nothing to do with the campaign she was in.

Here is a picture (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1586486&postcount=50) of a scene from the book.

[Certified]

I have written a novel Cockatrice: Carpe Demon (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1638923&postcount=77) based on my character Cockatrice. The character has changed radically from the time I played her, and the story has nothing to do with the campaign she was in.

Here is a picture (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1586486&postcount=50) of a scene from the book.

Has this been published? I'm taking a manuscript to Dragon*Con to shop around. Any tips?

[ghost-angel]

Has this been published? I'm taking a manuscript to Dragon*Con to shop around. Any tips?

Brace yourself for rejection.

In all seriousness, you probably have a better chance mailing your manuscript into a publishing house to land in their slush pile. They do read them, just takes a while.

Conventions are a hard place to sell because vendors are busy trying to get you to buy stuff, not buy stuff from you as it were.

If you get an interested party the WILL ask you for your manuscript to read on their own time - bring multiple copies. If you want it back, give it to them in a SASE.

[Certified]

Brace yourself for rejection.

In all seriousness, you probably have a better chance mailing your manuscript into a publishing house to land in their slush pile. They do read them, just takes a while.

Conventions are a hard place to sell because vendors are busy trying to get you to buy stuff, not buy stuff from you as it were.

If you get an interested party the WILL ask you for your manuscript to read on their own time - bring multiple copies. If you want it back, give it to them in a SASE.

I guess I should qualify the shop around statement a bit more. It's still in the rough draft stages. I've been working on it on and off for about two years. What I'm hoping for is just some feedback as I go through it again before sending it out.

Have faith I have gotten used to the rejection thing. Baen's Universe is remarkably quick and Strange Horizons is not that bad either. It's when you get away from electronic submissions things seem to slow down. The normal waiting time seems to be around 4 months before the rejection letter comes in and that is just on short fiction.

[Blue]

Lots. But as happens with time and everything I make (drawn or written), I start to dislike it more and more.

[penemue]

Well, as I mentioned in another post I have gathered my Champions campaign into a how to draw Superheroes book. I also have a super secret comic I am working on that's based on my Canadian Superhero Team Campaign. I hope to start posting it this September.

[Querysphinx]

Has this been published? I'm taking a manuscript to Dragon*Con to shop around. Any tips?

It hasn't been published... yet. I'm superstitious enough that I don't want to jinx myself, but I have to say things are looking hopeful in that department.

As for taking an MS to a con. In my experience, don't take any pages. If you can find someone you want to read it, ask them if you can give them a thirty second pitch. If they say no, thank them for their time and go on to another subject. If they say yes, give them a thirty second pitch. Then they will either say "no thanks," or ask you for more details. If they ask you for more detail give them the two-to-five minute version. Restrain yourself from babbling. Half of a good pitch is knowing when to shut up. If they like your presentation they'll probably ask to see a partial. Get their address and ask to send it to them after the con. No matter what they say, thank them for their time. Be professional.

Also, if you're going to be pitching at all try to dress nicely. I know its a con and there will be people walking around in rubber masks, but you are there for business. I typically put on suit and tie when I'm pitching, even if I change into shorts and t-shirt immediately thereafter.

Quite frankly Dragoncon is the wrong place to pitch. You'd be better off at a writer's conference when the editors and agents go specifically to receive pitches. That's how I sold Sparrow's Flight (http://www.amazon.com/Sparrows-Flight-Fantasy-Curtis-Craddock/dp/1885173857/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218514582&sr=1-12).

[penemue]

That's really good advice Querysphinx.
Repped.

[penemue]

I have some Champions characters in a book coming out in November.
http://www.amazon.com/Manga-Martial-Arts-Lessons-Fighting/dp/1600610293/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218515072&sr=1-8

[Vanguard00]

Has anyone written a story where you have your characters from your campaign in it? It doesn't have to be Champions. I'm not referring to a write-up of an adventure episode gamed but an original story with the characters?

I have written a number of short short stories about characters over the years, but it's only been recently that I've made an effort to focus on writing a novel. I'm a hundred or so pages in, using characters I've played before (and a few others loosely based on those I've gamed with), but it's in "lull" mode. I had hoped to finish it by year's end, but I'm not sure it's going to happen.

[DusterBoy]

All my characters started out as an idea for a story. The first, original idea was that seven kids see a meteorite crash and to to see what's up. It's an alien meteorite, they get too close and get zapped. They get reported missing and a big ole search is conducted. Eventually they get found near the meteorite (which is now just a lump of rock) and get taken to hospital. When they come round, it is discovered they have superpowers.

It was meant to be the S Club 7 of superteams (gah! :eek:) via the X-Men.

It's changed considerably since then. Six of them were easy

Tom (Challenger) is based off Damage (brickette/energy manipulator)
Lisa (Maze) is based off Jean Grey (TK and telepathy)
Wang (Slider) is based off Ice Man (ice and cold powers, duh)
Darren (Maverick) is based off Grunge from Gen13 (absorption powers)
Josh (Blitz) is based off the Flash with a little Impulse (the speedster)
Surinda (Saranyu) is based off Storm or Rainmaker (weather manipulator)

it's Jen Sinclair who is giving me headaches. I can't decide on her powers, even though she's meant to BE THE LEADER OF THE TEAM! AARGH!

I haven't even got a common background. I mean you got two white guys, two white women, a black man, a Chinese guy and a third generation Hindu woman. Is college/uni a good excuse to get them together in the first place?

:help: please

[Pariah]

I wrote a short story involving several of my characters from various campaigns a couple of years ago. I posted it on a blog that a couple of friends (including Lord Mhoram) and I contribute to on an infrequent basis.

Prelude and Conversation (http://armyofdorkness.blogspot.com/2006/04/prelude-and-conversation.html)

Nothing too serious, just writing out an idea that had come to me one day.

[Predatorpt]

I've started a whole superhero universe so I could write some short stories.

At the time I worked on a comic shop, so I had plenty of readers (including from the guys who were translating the Marvel comics to Portuguese). It was nice to have that sort of honest feedback and reviews :D

Unfortunately, I've changed workplaces since then and lost the will to write anything. Right now I'm trying to motivate myself to start writing again - wrote a short storie two weeks ago; wrote a Portuguese villain entry for Tribe's awesome thread (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47468); I'm writing more entries for my own universe.

[BobGreenwade]

I've completed a script for a graphic novel, in the form of a faux twelve-issue "company-wide crossover event," featuring every Champions PC I could remember my wife or myself ever playing, plus a handful of others. If I could find someone to draw it, I'd happily sell it at lulu.com....

[Susano]

Our group tends to get pretty creative when it comes to blue-booking in our campaigns. In many cases, the "blue-book" entries are pretty much stories in their own right.

A lot of my work has shown up in Susano's site in the World Book section (Kazei 5, Shadows Angelus I and II).

Just curious. Any reason for asking?

And since I was in those games, I have done the same. We also did a lot of blue-booking for the Sengoku game years and years ago.

[Doctor Agenda]

I know this is necro-threading, but I just read Sparrow's Flight and was blown away by how good it was. I wish I had bought it new, QuerySphinx deserves more royalties, IMHO.

[Martin2]

Anyone done any Champions stories based on set Champions scenarios?

It has been done for D&D where a scenario is turned into a novel.

Most published scenarios have a lot of information in them and with back weave from players backgrounds could be made into a short novel that at least some champions players would read :).

Obviously it would have to be approved by HERO and royalties etc

[Laundry Knight]

Actually, I have been doing the opposite. I have series of unpublished (and mostly unfinished) short stories that I have written and have been trying to convert into Champions. So far, I have not had any new characters spring up by playing with character creation, but by putting some of my characters into Champions format, I have come up with plot elements that helped fill some story holes I have been struggling. As an example, I have a team of street level supers called the Regulators made up mostly of sidekick potentialists and wannabes, but I have been struggling with their origin. Then I decided to write one of the characters named Asinine, wears a donkey mask and has a large red number 9 on his chest. He is my resident jerk and wise-acre. When I was trying to figure out what his PS would be, the only thing that came to mind was circus jerk. The world is written as modern with an older feel; so, traveling circuses didn't make sense, but then, I was thinking about something I read about Circus de Soleil and realized that many of the Regulators had backgrounds that would work in that kind of setting; so, I decided that my resident city had a Circus de Soleil style attraction called the Carnival Spectacular and the founding regulators were circus performers doing good deeds. That also helped spur a name change for my city, Freedom City which I didn't like. My chief hero is Captain Spectacular and with the circus name, I wanted spectacular worked into the name or nickname somewhere, and after a few iterations, I have Freedomsburg, the Spectacular City.

[sinanju]

I've written and sold a number of stories about some of my Champions characters. None of the stories are based on actual campaign events--just the characters themselves. (And that's just as well, since a number of them are pure erotica or erotic romance.)

Iron Maiden, Black Knight, Black Mask, Legion, and others have been published in short stories or short novels. And there will be more. I like writing them, and there's a market for that kind of stuff amongst all the other paranormal erotica. Descriptions of the stories, cover art, and links to them can be seen at my website (http://gelasticpress.com), if anyone cares. That's not all that I've written or sold, but character-based stories are definitely a big part of it.

[FrankL]

I used JAGS to make characters for my stories. The published ones are linked in my sig. More are ready to roll, with two accepted in a book as followups to the Shylocke Averyson story, "Sunset Over Gunther."

[Orion]

I subscribe to the theory that the game is only an abstraction of the real world - it does not define the world. If I can see the game rules in the story, it automatically falls into the low-grade fiction category. As an example, most of the D&D and Battletech stuff is this way for me. Because of this, I never try to writeup any game session, nor do I game out any scenarios that I am writing. If it is interesting and plausible, then it happens. I can decide who is hit, where they are hit, and how much damage they take just as easily as dice. I'm not against write-ups of game events, I just consider that as something very different than a short story or novel.

World building is my thing, and I've done a lot of that recently. 39k words of the history of a Battletech merc company, and 34k words of my Harn fanon project, but no real fiction stories as such. I've got a handful of 1-2 page superhero stories that cover a single scene, and were mostly intended to highlight a personality trait or ability, but nothing longer. Next up on my evolution as a writer is to try an actual story. For Battletech I'm going to do it as a series of transcripts on battle reports, house liaison reports, etc. For the Harn characters, it'll be traditional fiction, but the ratio will be biased away from conversation and internal thoughts - descriptions of what they are feeling and thinking and going through is about the best I can do now.

[Ghost Archer]

Over the years, playing on a virtual desktop with dozens players, I have collected something like 20000 pages of actual superhero gaming chatlog. It is a long slow process but I have been editing it and have about 450 pages of story condensed down. This does not include sections still in the original 'chat' form and I am very far from finished. This isn't my only project either. I also have hundreds of pages of Urban Fantasy 'chat' that I have only begun as well as a third storyline that began as a game but has since become something outside. New character stories are my weakness, I love writing them, but as I no longer game, and am no longer fettered with a finite group of characters, I've created far more characters then I need. Doesn't stop me though. As I write this I am mulling over an entirely new set of characters that I need for a single scene in another character's background. I'll end up writing a background for each of probably 10 characters just to put that one background into perspective. And this is just so I get things right in my own head. Some of my junk ended up in my blogs on this sight, more on Wattpad.

[Querysphinx]

I know this is necro-threading, but I just read Sparrow's Flight and was blown away by how good it was. I wish I had bought it new, QuerySphinx deserves more royalties, IMHO.

I'm glad you liked it. FWIW Cockatrice: Carpe Demon should be out in e-format later this year. And it's eight years of writing practice better than Sparrow!

And if you really want to send me money Sparrow's Flight (http://www.amazon.com/Sparrows-Flight-ebook/dp/B00122ZIS4/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332221238&sr=1-2) is available on Kindle. :p