Most of my character ideas for probably a decade came from RPGs that never really started. Because it’s been eons since I’ve played, my inspirations are wandering off in all sorts of other directions.

Oh, and I also learned to write over the Dragon Dice object on the little online game of DragonsfireMOO.

And now that I’m freelance and live in the middle of nowhere, I’m even further out of the habit (online RPing never did it for me). But what I learnt during those years was invaluable, and I think it’s no accident that my most successful series, while not directly inspired by RPGs, has a large crossover audience with roleplayers. So there must be something subconscious in there…

Our game is very RP heavy — we’re all a bunch of writers, artists, and actors (and one engineer — not sure where he came from) and so there’s always lots of dialog in our game. Nothing develops your dialog ear like improvising out loud. Sure, yes, we all talk in real life, but in the game setting, everyone is more focused on listening, and the dialog is more focused on developing the plot or character than our usual every-day discussions.

And when you take on gamemaster duties — that could be its own separate discussion. All the worldbuilding of a book, only with people actively interrogating you about it every step of the way. Talk about not being able to put off decisions! But the players come up with the same questions readers will, and that forces me to flesh out ideas I might have glossed over.

It directly translated into being able to write more effective essays and to be able to actually complete some short stories.

The online role playing has some, but not all, of the elements of RPGs–what it doesn’t have is the built in randomization of the game. I never had the opportunity to play formal RPGs, but I think I would probably really enjoy them.