I have been circling this idea for years: some of my best campaign material does not start as maps or stat blocks, it starts as short fiction. A two-page scene. A letter. A witness account. Sometimes it grows from my own campaign notebook. Sometimes it comes from games I ran once and never got to finish. Sometimes it comes from games I designed but never delivered.
That pile of unfinished notes used to feel like failure. I now think of it as source material.
Why I Keep Writing Short Fiction Beside Campaign Notes
When I am planning a fantasy or science fiction campaign, I nearly always write one or two short pieces first. They are not polished stories in the literary sense. They are tone tests.
If I cannot write a one-thousand-word scene in that world, I probably do not understand the world well enough to run it yet.
These short pieces help me answer practical GM questions quickly:
- What does an ordinary day look like in this setting?
- What kind of danger feels normal here?
- What does power look like from the street, not from the throne room?
- What do people fear, and what do they call hope?
That gives me better Session Zero material, better NPC voices, and stronger opening scenes.
Self-Publishing as a Low-Risk Workshop
I also like self-publishing short pieces because it creates a healthy deadline. A short story does not need to become a novel to be useful. It can stand on its own and still feed future game prep.
For me, self-publishing short fiction (this space, previously zines, or small digital journals) is or a been:
- a way to test whether a setting voice lands with readers
- a way to archive campaign lore in a form players can actually read
- a way to rescue ideas from “abandoned campaign” folders
If a story works, I can build a campaign from it. If it does not, I have still learnt something about tone and pacing before I ask players to invest in a long run of sessions.
Using Short Stories as Campaign Introductions
One of my favourite patterns is to share a short story before Session Zero, then use it as a reference text during character creation. It gives players a shared mood without forcing a rigid lore lecture.
I usually frame it as one of these:
- Observations of a possible NPC or Legendary character
- A snipit from a moment of adventure in the campaign world
- A journal page, an explorers diary or the comments of an academic
- A transcript from a corporate or guild event
In fantasy games this might be a temple archivist describing a border fortress after the watch failed. In science fiction it might be a maintenance engineer logging impossible faults on a remote station. Both create immediate questions players can answer with their characters.
Examples from Public Domain and Published Game Material
I do not only use my own writing. I also read short fiction connected to game systems, and public domain fiction that clearly informs campaign tone.
- The Call of Cthulhu and The Colour Out of Space (H. P. Lovecraft) are public domain in many regions and remain useful tonal primers for investigative horror campaigns and Call of Cthulhu tables.
- Sherlock Holmes stories are in the public domain and can be useful structure models for clue pacing in mystery-led RPG sessions. I’ve written whole games around the happenings of Sherlock Holmes cases.
- Shadowrun books are full of in-world fiction snippets and “street-level” voice, which is useful when writing mission brief intros.
- Vampire: the Masquerade sourcebooks often use in-character fiction to establish tone before rules text, which works well as a model for pre-session handouts.
I treat these as craft references rather than canon obligations: I borrow structure, voice, and framing techniques, then rewrite for my own table.
Background to Foreground, Then Back Again
Justin Alexander’s article on moving campaign material from background to foreground and back again is a useful lens here: fiction is not just flavour text, it is a delivery mechanism for actionable game information when used at the right moment.
A short story can move background lore into player focus before play starts, and then return to the background as lived context once the campaign is moving.
A New Label for Future Story Posts
I am introducing a new blog label for this type of article: short-story-notes.
I will use it for:
- my own short fiction written from campaign notes
- commentary on public domain stories I use as campaign scaffolding
- commentary on short fiction embedded in published game systems
If you see that tag on future posts, expect drafts, hooks, and setting fragments that are meant to be played with, not just read once and shelved.