Crafting an rpg into a readable story got trickier when Casey joined up with other Player Characters (which she’ll be doing this week and for most of the rest of the series). The other PCs all have their own voices, their own thoughts and motivations, but for the Tuesday Tales series all their moves had to be rewritten from Casey’s point of view.

As a writer, I’m deeply uncomfortable with the idea of reworking other players’ carefully crafted posts, but in this case the story flow and POV continuity made it necessary. So I sent out a message to my old Austin After Dark partners-in-crime, explaining the situation and requesting permission to rewrite the letter (but not the spirit) of their original game moves. The general response was that as long as the dialogue remained unaltered, and as long as each char’s intent and actions were consistent with the original posts, I was free to rewrite their moves to smooth out the narration and maintain POV continuity.

This week’s chapter will introduce every single Player Character that was in the game at that time, plus a handful of important NPCs. Aron, our GM, wanted to bring everyone together to compare notes, share information and form a battle plan. In a way this is wonderful, because you the Reader will now get to meet all the main characters at once. In another way it’s not so wonderful, because OH my sweet flying Frith, it was freaking bedlam.

This scene brought together nine PCs and five NPCs, many of whom were strangers to one another, and everyone had their own subplots and personal dramas influencing their priorities and their interactions. There was bickering, there was chest-thumping, I think there was almost a phallus-measuring contest at one point. I have edited out big chunks of extraneous content and it’s still the longest, talkiest scene in the entire story.

It did serve its intended purpose, though. The characters got together, discussed, debated, squabbled, rearranged and formed new partnerships based on their individual preferences, abilities and compatibilities. And then they went forth and had the very finest of adventures. And blew stuff up. And it was Good.

It just took them a little while to get there.

And on that note, we now return you to your regularly-scheduled program.