In the deep darkness of the jungle night, bonfires burn. The stars are scattered exactly like gemstones across the impossibly beautiful heavens, and the shore is alive with music, dancing, and a dozen thickly accented voices raised in celebratory cries. At the center of this ecstatic group, decked out in full splendor, a couple stands with hands intertwined, newly married in the raucous troll tradition. Only one is unhappy here, watching from the trees with a scowl on his blue-skinned face. He stays for only a moment before vanishing into the shadows.

If you believed that that sounded like it might have been a scene from a fantasy story, you’d be close, but still not quite there. It came, in fact, from a role play. To the surprise of many who believe that the game of role-playing extends no further than the infamous Dungeons & Dragons franchise, it’s a shock to learn that the Internet has revolutionized the classic geek hobby into a viable creative outlet. Not only is it now possible to play alongside people from every corner of the continent without ever leaving the comfy chair, but the growing phenomena of online role play has gone beyond the game and straight into the realm of collaborative story building.

For those not quite up to speed, the original table top Dungeons & Dragons style of role play is the oldest form of the game, but not particularly helpful to an author looking for an inspirational romp. It is very much a game, after all, with a solidly established universe, tons of rules, and so many numbers in the form of calculated statistics that it becomes as magical as math class by the end. There is probably more potential in re-watching The Lord of the Rings a dozen or so times.

One must never underestimate the power of the artistic however, for it is always looking for an easier way to get work completed, and to see dreams become reality. The most glorious aspect of the original role playing experience was the focus on developing an original character with a history, goals, flaws, and motivations. It was the sort of thing that would make the dreamers and storytellers wish that they could just write a story with the people they played alongside.

With the advent of the Internet and instant messaging programs like AIM, this dream of doing away with the dice and the stat sheets became suddenly plausible. Since then, two forms of online role playing have emerged – text-based and game-based – and both have developed to be potentially fantastic tools for writers of any genre.

The most popular role-playing medium is also the one that took longest to perfect. Video games such as the classic Final Fantasy series and, more recently, massively multiplayer games such as Guild Wars, Star Wars Galaxies, or World of Warcraft were made to cater to translate the table top role playing experience to the screen as literally as possible. Over all they are still games, but recent developments have given players the option of exactly how much of a game they want, and how much of a story. Not only that, but they are finally beginning to break out of the fantasy genre that had once dominated the role-playing medium. From modern day New York to historical Camelot to the far-flung future to alternate universes where superheroes are more common than the average Joe, there is a game for almost anyone’s tastes.

The best example of a video game that promotes both game play and the potential for story development is still a fantasy title, however: World of Warcraft. There are three formats that players can choose from once they have installed the game: Player versus Player, which caters to those who are more interested in competition than story, Player versus Environment for those who simply want a game to waste time on without having to worry about competition or story, and finally Role Play, which is designed to cater to the more creative minds. There are still bosses to be defeated and quests to be discovered, but on these game servers it is encouraged that you develop your own character with your own history and personality before you interact with others. Levels and gear do not matter in the interactions here. It’s all about how entertaining a tale you can weave with your fellow heroes and villains.

For example, take The Shadowspear Saga, a tale being actively woven by over a dozen players on the Role Playing server named Earthen Ring. The opening scene of this article is just one example of events that have taken place between the players in this story: people from all across North America with two things in common: brilliant imaginations and a love for the history and culture of Warcraft’s trolls. Mark Kephart, the original creator of the tale who played King Zzey for many months, has long since vanished from the game. For story purposes, his character is considered missing and presumed dead, but the legend lives on without him. Liam Taylor, an industrious storyteller, plays as Zandru, the successor to Zzey’s abandoned throne. He has single-handedly taken command of events, working with all of the players to orchestrate events towards the creation of an original novel, loosely based on all that has occurred in the game universe, but set twenty years after the current tale. With all hope, what this band of gamers builds through their interactions will someday see publication.

In the past year, the story has come a long ways. Where it was once the tale of Taqua Kulda’s search for her lost family, it is now the quest of Zandru Kan and his cousin Taqua Shadowspear, Zzey’s widow, to achieve Zzey’s dream of reuniting the long lost troll empire under the banner of the Orcish Horde. A separate thread has also developed: the story of Darmuk and Bajingu, who also aim to reunite the troll empire, but for their own selfish ends. These two threads will not collide until the novel itself, but the Shadowspear Saga team is developing both simultaneously.

For all of its creative potential, however, role-playing through a video game still poses many challenges. As with any role-play, there is the complication of keeping everyone’s stories straight and keeping everyone working towards the same goal. “A lot of it is up to the role player actually,” he explains. “It’s all done on the fly but usually what we’ll do beforehand is we’ll sit and talk and go ‘Okay, here’s what I plan to have my character do. It’s up to you to react to it. Here are the basics, here are the ground rules, here are things that I would like not to happen or to happen.’ Then we sit there and plan it out.” Much of the story is adlibbed, but working to build a tale with so many minds behind it requires quite a bit of cooperation from all sides.

As well, when Liam’s decision was made to preserve this story, he had to make careful decisions about when and where his actual novel would take place and when it would be written. “The main thing I’ve done is make sure I didn't start writing the story until after we’d established everything that happened now.” He explains that the most he can do is take notes on current events, but this approach has a rhyme and reason to it. “What happens between what we’re doing now to establish the story and what happens twenty years later is very flexible. We’re not actually going to be doing any of [the novel] in game, so I can pretty much do whatever I want when I write.”

Finally, there is the biggest limitation of all: the very fact that World of Warcraft is a video game, with a set-in-stone look to the world and a pre-established history. Players must suit their stories to the landscape rather than being able to build a whole new world as they see fit. For Liam, the fact that he can draw on a pre-established universe is something that makes it easier for him to dive right into the story and worry about changing details to turn it into something original and publishable later on, but for others, it’s just not as much fun as the pure imagination behind text-based role playing. “To me, a series of dialogue and interactions in words leaves the imagery entirely up to the reader,” says Corey Cannon, a long time fan of role-playing in pure text. “Actually having to type out that my character was on a rooftop and then imagining it for myself is a lot more powerful than making my character actually go stand on a roof in a game that was pre-designed, and leaving the imagery that is on the screen to imprint into my head as it is.”

Like Liam, Corey is currently developing an original novel based on her group’s collectively conceived story, but unlike Liam, she is working along to develop hers without the aid of visuals and without the limitations of a video game’s established world. The role play she was involved in did indeed begin within an already existing universe – that of Final Fantasy VII – but it very quickly broke off from its roots to become an original monster of their own devising, taking her story with it.

“It was self-gratification in its purest form.” she says, laughing. “We had far more fun throwing the characters into situations and then sitting back and watching what happened.” It wasn’t so much the chaotic story that grabbed her attention, as the Shadowspear story grabbed Liam’s. Instead it was the way her character Adrian formed inside of that universe that drove her to want to continue his tale.

“There was just something about his personality that clicked almost instantly after I started playing him. I even wound up absently doodling a picture of him that night. I can't say that I knew at that moment that I'd be writing about him, but the idea slowly took form, and now here I am.”

She approaches writing as a far more solitary process than Liam does – very few of her fellow role players even know that Adrian has become a part of something potentially publishable – but group storytelling has always been a great source of ideas for her. “In any other instance, the characters weren't so much born in the role play as they were much earlier in my mind and then integrated in some way or another. But even having characters interact in situations that they would never be involved in otherwise helps add to their personality.”

As with the crew in World of Warcraft, she is not alone. Another of her companions has begun a venture similar to Liam’s. “I don't think she'll ever have it published, but she switched all the genders of the characters and focused on a part of the story and went with it. It's been entertaining to watch grow, as it sticks very close to the original role play.”

There are so many opportunities in this medium since it’s evolution from the tabletop to the computer screen. Whether you prefer to see your world before you and have a game to go with the story, or whether it’s pure freedom for your imagination that sends your muse to cloud nine, online role playing provides a wealth of inspiration for the creative spirit. It’s fun, you can meet a variety of wonderfully interesting people, and you never know what worlds you’ll discover together that may have gone unseen by your own eyes alone.