James C Gilliam

I am currently working on The Sword, the Song, and the Mage: Act 2, and I have reached 215 pages into the story. The heroes’ paths have finally come together from their separate paths. While I had role-played through this scene back in February, I loved finally getting to revisit the Immersive Storybuilding session and fully see all the character’s points of view; Getting to explore the reasons why each had their reservations about the other and the emotions coming out because of such reactions. It’s these emotional and trust-related issues that I have gotten the opportunity to fully explore in the story as they travel together. Timeline-wise, my characters are currently two years past this point in the story (Volume 2: Book 1), and the characters have grown and matured greatly together, as well as the others that have joined them along the way. I enjoyed the uncertainty in the beginning which is really never expressed when the player characters meet up for the first time. Most of such encounters are like, “Hey, how are you? I’m so-and-so and my back story is history-history-tragedy. Wanna go kill monsters?” “I’m so-and-so and Ok!” Afterwards, it is rare that the backstories are really explored and simply become nothing other than just a general attitude or brooding they have in certain instances. Instead, I got the opportunity to encounter something quite ‘real-feeling’ with the character interactions with each other (Courtesy of numerous hours of random dice tables) and through additional brainstorming, discovered new levels of interaction between the other characters as well. Some of the story elements made progress into the later books with great pay-offs in the interactions and story progression. I remember the initial worry my character faced when he chose one group of adventurers over the other, the genuine fear that he picked the wrong group (That would probably get him killed), the satisfaction when the adventurers finally begin to synchronize with each other, and then the group truly become an ever growing fellowship on a quest to save the world from ancient evils. I look forward to the time I get to share this and the rest of the stories with you all.

Until then…