It may be forty years ago, but I still remember with clarity the first time I met my husband. It was in the early 1980s, and I wanted to figure out what this ‘roleplaying’ and Dungeons and Dragons was all about. This was a long time before it became well known and it was very much a niche. I had heard that there was a group at a local university, and I wandered along to see what it was all about.

My first impression was that it was all male. I was the only female in the room, surrounded by men in their late teens and early twenties and, looking back, they were at the stage of peak hormones and awkwardness. It could have been mortifyingly difficult, but they were lovely, and it felt like a safe place with good people. I joined a game which was based around the stories of HP Lovecraft – Call of Cthulu – and asked for explanations, finding myself next to the man that I didn’t realise that I was going to marry, and I was instantly hooked.

There’s something about table-top roleplaying games. They free the imagination in wonderful ways and are amazing training for authors. I suppose it’s like acting in a way as you can become so many different characters without any physical constraints. The setting is based around the game, the dungeon master or games master and your own imagination. You can be anything!

I hadn’t got a clue what I was doing, of course and my darling husband-to-be (that I didn’t realise yet) patiently talked me through how to create a character and the rules of the game. He took all the time he needed, and I blossomed under it. Over the next year I became a demon fighter, an elf with a chest wig, a male thief with appalling taste in pipe tobacco and a 1930s socialite with a knack for finding adventure and an embarrassing lack of virtue. It was immense fun.

Using roleplaying to explore characters, settings and stories is wonderful training for any author and I heartily recommend it. I’ve played so many different characters in so many different ways and now I find that I have a wonderful portfolio of characters to draw on when I sit down to write. Not only that, but over forty years of roleplaying, I’ve trained in a flexibility of imagination that is so useful when sitting down to create a world. I didn’t even realise how much I was learning as I played – I just had fun!

And it wasn’t a bad way to start off a marriage, either. As broke newlyweds, having a hobby that needed only a few dice, paper and pencil and an industrious imagination was incredibly cost effective as well as a wonderful way to lose ourselves in strange worlds together. We’ve had such a blast over the years, and it is still one of my favourite ways of spending time with my darling.

When I found out that my old sparring partner, Finn Cullen, had created an RPG based on Malory Towers, I was thrilled. As Finn was responsible, I know that it’s going to be fun, and it’s based on Malory Towers! I discovered the Malory Towers books back in the 1970s, and as a broke kid in an industrial town, it seemed as foreign a world as Narnia or Sherlock Holmes. I adored those books, and now that they’re combined with my favourite couple’s hobby, I’m in heaven. I can make up a character that not only can enjoy the novelty of entering a post-war boarding school and dealing with the social complexities but also uncover secrets and solve cosy mysteries (in between cheering on or captaining the lacrosse team) while spending time with my favourite human. I can’t wait. I plan to perhaps dig out some old-fashioned lemonade to have as we play, along with some iced buns or I could make some spicy gingerbread for us as we settle in for the long, autumn evenings.

If Malory Towers is a fond memory and you’re interested in roleplaying, you can find Finn’s game here – Blaydon Grange. If you do investigate, I’d love to know what you think about it, or about roleplaying in general. I always love to hear from you.