Trapped Inside the VR Game
You’re a renowned game developer who’s latest creation, a VR role-playing game, unexpectedly traps players’ consciousness in the game world. As the creator, you must enter the game yourself, adopting the role of various characters to find and fix the bug, rescuing the trapped players.
Suggested length: A short story: 1,500 to 5,000 words, or flash fiction under 1,000
Start the clock
Pick a sprint, press start and keep going until it stops. Momentum beats polish on a first draft.
Make it yours
Three ways to take this prompt somewhere nobody else will.
- Tell it from the point of view of someone who thinks this world is perfectly normal.
- Shrink the stakes to one family, one street, one night.
- Choose one ordinary object and show how this world changed it.
Writing fantasy books
Magic is real, and it costs something.
Fantasy builds a world where the impossible works: dragons, spells, gods who answer back. It might be a whole invented continent or one enchanted door in an ordinary house. Either way, readers come for the wonder and stay for the people paying the price for it.
What readers expect
- Magic or the supernatural, with limits
- A world that feels lived in
- Quests, wars or a power worth fighting over
- Myths and history under the surface
A tip before you start
Give magic a cost. Readers believe in a power when they can see what it takes from the person using it.
More Role-Playing Game prompts
- The Game That Decides PolicyImagine a society where every major decision — from governmental policies to personal careers — is decided through elaborate role-playing games played…
- Re-Rolling DestinyIn a futuristic society, citizens are assigned roles and professions by the all-encompassing AI, "The Game Master." Your protagonist, who dreams of a…
- The Forgotten Game GodYour protagonist is a forgotten deity from a mythical realm that survives only when revered in role-playing games. As interest wanes, their existence…
- The Game in the AtticDevelop a story around an ancient tabletop role-playing game found in an attic. When played, the game becomes eerily realistic, and the creatures…
Fifteen minutes in? Keep going.
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