Last week, I was lucky enough to co-host a session on editing tabletop role-playing games at the annual conference of the UK’s Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading.
The organisation put together a fantastic agenda for us all with three days of focused learning on all things editorial. Subjects ranged from practical sessions on worldbuilding in fiction (shout-out to Andrew Hodges of the Narrative Craft), point of view, book coaching, and developmental editing, to discussions around the impact of AI on writers and editors, and embracing our changing language. And that’s just for starters. I could only attend a fraction of the sessions on offer but plan to catch up with all the recordings in the coming weeks. Even as an Advanced Professional member of the organisation, there’s always more to learn!
We editors are a diverse bunch and work in all kinds of areas of publishing – fiction, non-fiction, academia, business, governments and NGOs, healthcare, history, crime, romance, cookbooks. The one thing I have in common with all of these colleagues is that we’re generally self-employed, and spend most of our working life sat in our offices alone.
So, when we do get together, we like to make the most of it! And there were plenty of opportunities to socialise and have fun too – with a games room, guided walk, gala dinner, and our very own quiz night.
But the best part of the conference for me, by far, was the opportunity to host a session on editing games with the brilliant Kath Kirk of Gecko Edit. Kath and I had met plenty of times online over the years, but had never managed to meet in real life. Still, when I thought about pitching a session on games, I couldn’t imagine doing it with anyone else!
Here’s a picture of Kath and me looking very proud (and slightly bleary-eyed, since it was morning after the gala dinner!) just before our session started.
We wanted to show our colleagues that they likely have many of the skills they need to edit games already, whether they’re gamers or not. Fiction editors are used to working with prose and thinking about things like narrative, character development, and what makes a satisfying twist or successful antagonist. And non-fiction editors are used to working with structurally complex material, composed (as TTRPGs often are!) of running text, tables, lists, graphics, and cross-references.
After talking through all of these elements, we then shared a short game we’d created ourselves specifically for the occasion, and had the room split into smaller groups to take a stab at finding all the errors we’d introduced into it. The game was based on a scenario where the celebrity guest speaker for the conference’s gala dinner has gone missing, and it’s up to the players (a group of intrepid editors) to find out what happened to them.
The attendees (both in person and online) asked excellent questions, and Kath and I got to sit and talk about one of our favourite subjects for the best part of an hour and half. All of us had a great time!
Hopefully, it will encourage more editors to think about applying their skills to tabletop games, and perhaps even spark some to join a gaming group too…
Here’s to new adventurers meeting in taverns, armed with red pens!
Leave a Reply