Storium

I've been a gamer once. It wasn't even that long ago. I loved playing video games. In fact, I still do! I recall the joy of playing Mass Effect, Walking Dead, Legends of Grimrock and many more. My digital game library sports more than a hundred games. I once (for two years) created a complex RPG called Misfortune (It still exists and you can check it out here: http://www.loadingames.com/).

However, something terrible happened. I joined Storium's Beta.

For those of you who don't know what Storium is (and I assume it's most of you since it hasn't launched yet), it's basically an online platform for creating shared stories. One player (or writer, however you want to call it) takes the role of the narrator, the other players each create a character in the story. The narrator writes the basic framework for the story, laying challenges for the players, who write how their characters react to this challenge.

I'm doing a ghastly job at explaining this, but I really don't want to dive into the details. You can check it out here: https://storium.com/ and if you want a well written explanation, you can get it here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/05/09/storium-pen-and-paper-rpg-pc/

You might notice that the last link is for rock paper shotgun which is a fantastic website for PC gamers, which I no longer read. And it's all their fault. Because they published this article and I followed their link and joined up.

I'm a parent for three small children, I work as a programmer, and write novels at night, I need to run at least three times a week because my cholesterol is up, and I have two dogs which I take out twice daily. This means I don't have a lot of leisure time. So once I joined Storium, and began having the time of my life, something had to pay.

That something was gaming. I think that, all in all, I played about 10 hours of video games since May. Before Storium I used to play about an hour every day.

There was nothing missing in my life. I had no idea that something like Storium existed, and had no need for it. But once I discovered it, I realized that, in fact I needed to play it. Constantly. I carved a place for it in my life. I've been a criminal called Sara Breadknife, and a medium whose guiding spirit was his dead ex-wife, and a heartbroken lost nerd called Peter Ross (My favorite), and a rich bitch called Charisma Chase and... so many more.

I was recuperating from my last publishing experience, and Storium reminded me how much I love to write. In all likelihood, without Storium this blog wouldn't have existed and I wouldn't have been writing every night, trying to self publish all the novels in my head

So thanks, Storium, for changing my life. And I hope that someday I'll play a video game once more.

This is part of my Storium dashboard. Each banner is a story I partake in