A friend-of-a-friend sent me something to read. It wasn't unsolicited. I've been flogging Sian left and right in hopes of growing readership, if only for ego purposes. Yeah, I'm writing for myself, but at the same time, it's a little disheartening to see how short the ripples go when I post stuff. Oh, well. If it's going to only hit a few screens, may as well write SoC and make it easy, take it easy.

Anyhow, this one nameless friend (friend-of-a-friend is a friend-in-the-making) sent me a the first parts of a story. I tried to be gentle, tried to couch my comments in the relative nature of asking a single person to review a story seed.

Like me, he started out with role-playing games, but his were a different format, not the table-top variety that I know. His medium is something I'm not sure I understand. It's online, but not the not World of Warcraft variety. Best way to describe it is interactive storytelling on a webforum.

I've not participated in that format, but the few times I read them, they didn't do anything for me. The format colours the game and how players interact with the game-world and other players.

MMORPGs, from what I've read, start the player very low-powered, to the point that even the ambient fauna (e.g. rats) could be a serious danger. At some point, players have grown facile with the options the game-world offers and have invested significant time in raising their characters from being rat-bait.

Table-top can start at any level. MMORPGs keep the player levels low because they have so many to deal with. Table-top games are individual, so each game-master can create a story or setting well-matched to the players' characters.

Forum role-playing, I'm not so sure about. There doesn't seem to be an obvious game-master or any central design or control. The players enter and try to meet and contribute to the ongoing storyline. I suppose those whose characters are unbalancing or otherwise disruptive get ignored.

That said, I'm still not sure about it. I think the story quality on forum role-playing may be approximately the same as that of table-top, which isn't very high. I know my table-top role-playing was full of cliches and obvious derivative work, such as basing stuff on movies.

The difference is that table-top games exist only in the minds of the players. The story is told, evaporates and is done with. Players enjoy it and perhaps may write it up in character diaries or campaign chronicles.

Even those can be heavy-handed. I know mine were, at least at the beginning. Probably toward the end of my table-top role-playing days, they may have lightened up a bit, but I know the ones I can remember (and cringe when I do so) were full of bombast and adjective/adverb abuse.

Maybe it's self-righteousness. I don't know know. All I know is that reading forum role-play writing is still not to my taste. The hardest part: how to say so in a way that is honest, but not crushing. Neophyte writers are a sensitive bunch, and I want to neither swing one to defensiveness or dejection.