Earlier this summer my game group experienced an interruption due to unexpected extended out of state job responsibilities of one of our group. The newest member of our group, Weston, proposed an interesting idea to keep the spirit of play and camaraderie alive during our break. The Idea was simple. We would all take turns writing a story one chapter at a time.

I was intrigued because I had always wanted to author a story, but I never saw myself as a writer. In fact, I find it difficult to document my role-playing campaign on a regular basis. So the Idea of writing and editing a whole novel is overwhelming.

We all sat down prior to Dave leaving town and discussed the basic rules of this new venture. We agreed that a week was sufficient time for each person to write a chapter. A chapter had to be at least a page and you couldn't edit anyone else’s chapter.

With that auspicious start all that was left was to determine the order of the story telling. I suggested we use the last number of our driver’s licenses to determine the order. Weston had the honor and burden of starting us all off.

After we dispersed for the evening and in the weeks that followed I started to consider how much like role-playing this experiment was. The nice exception is that we can share the creative fruits of our labor with people outside of our group.

Shane set about putting together a Wiki page the night of our first meeting. In the weeks that followed it had grown and developed and a good sized following of readers have subscribed to the RSS feed. The fruits of this effort will be revealed here in the fiction section.

Well, if you are curious how the experiment turned out I am making the chapters available in the Fiction section of the Worlds page. As expected the effort was a great deal of fun and resulted in an interesting story. There are currently 16 chapters and 137 pages of text. I will add a chapter each week until the final chapter is revealed. At this time there is no conclusion to the story. Perhaps with a little luck, blood,sweat, and tears it will continue to it climax. If you are interested in contributing to the story please submit your chapter once the original sixteen have been posted.

Link - Lowlander - A story by gamers for gamers