1/31/24

TTRPG publishing: Everybody Does It

 

   Lots of people have been very busy bees since what we might call The Great Open Gaming License Debacle of 2023.

   Paizo have been working on their ORC License and are trying to remove the OGL from Pathfinder entirely — no Drows and all. They call it the Remaster Project. It’s gotta be a tedious endeavor.

   Darrington Press aka Critical Role have already released a game, Candela Obscura, and they’re working on their own fantasy role-playing game system, Daggerheart, completely independent from D&D and without any flavor of OGL.

   Cephalofair Games aka Gloomhaven is also launching their own fantasy role-playing game system AND releasing a revamped superlegacy Gloomhaven 2e.

   Kobold Press have released a fantasy role-playing game system, Tales of the Valiant, again, with no OGL.

   MCDM is also preparing to launch their own role-playing game.


   And then you have Goodman Games, Arcane Library, Troll Lord Games and countless others.

   The sheer quantity of writing that took place since last January is astounding.

   And unless you work at Paizo or Darrington Press or Kobold Press, your work has a very slim chance of being seen or read at all. There’s so much material being made — it’s like a galaxy, and your book is just one Oumuamua floating around in it.


   For most creators, TTRPG work is not profitable; even when working 70-hour weeks you are not guaranteed to be able to pay your rent.



   It’s the indie paradigm and it’s here to stay, alas. You can make stuff, but it shall remain fan art, fan fiction and fan design.



   Remember, DriveThruRPG is the biggest storefront out there, and yet 72% of all tabletop role-playing game products on DriveThruRPG sell less than 50 copies. This whole thing is not a market but basically a lottery.


   Out of every one hundred indie publishers of tabletop role-playing games, seventy-two basically do that staggering amount of work for nothing: the long hours trying to wrestle columns into place, the endless tinkering with margins, fonts and elusive image anchor points, the eight and a half different versions of the cover, the six thorough editing passes, the entire weekend spent on a single black and white drawing, all in vain.

   That is something to ponder.

   The homeless man begging for change in front of your neighborhood subway station is a better entrepreneur because he makes $1 an hour at the very least…

   In my previous post I mentioned Acererak’s Guide to Lichdom, which has now disappeared from DriveThruRPG’s listings. It went Platinum — then it vanished.

   Is that the trick then? Write Drizzt’s Guide to the Underdark or Jim Darkmagic’s Book of Big Bads, sell a lot of copies, pull it as soon as you get a cease and desist, and keep the money?


   People become indie TTRPG publishers because the technology is available to make such games and because there are webstores that can sell such games. In 1985, the technology wasn’t there — layout, PDF files, etc — and even if it had been available, where would you have sold your finished product? On the street? In front of game stores? And in what format? Zine? Floppy disk?

   Ten years from now people will be making their own video games, because the technology will be there, accessible to almost anyone. A creative person alone in their apartment will be able to make an Assassin’s Creed type of game in about six months, all by themselves, without having to commission any art; and there shall be indie video game webstores to sell those products. Steam and itch are already on it.

   Most of the talent that you see in indie TTRPS these days will migrate to indie video games by 2030. It’s inevitable.

   So, what is the solution here?

   That’s the sad part. There isn’t one.

   It’s unsolvable, even if you roll a critical 01% in Occult.

   You can shelve your TTRPG project and start working on that big video game right away, to be ahead of the curve. Or you can keep making TTRPGs, keep hustling, and perhaps you’ll get lucky, who knows? Or you can give up marketing and hustling entirely and just make the stuff you want to make—




   The tidal wave of publications on DTRPG and itch is enough to make you think that there are way more worldbuilders than there are people who buy and actually play third-party adventures and games. It reminds me of something my dad said back in 1984. My best friend and I spent literally every Saturday working together on maps, cities, taverns, sewers, traps, puzzles, religions, lists of NPCs, magic items, rumors, legends, trade routes, types of vessels, types of armor, either at my place or at my friend’s. My dad understood what a role-playing game was because he had seen us play a few times, and he understood that those innumerable Saturdays were just prepping.

   One day that he was looking at our huge world map on the kitchen table, dad said to us: “When you boys finally decide to play, it’ll be absolutely amazing.”

   And he was right. It was amazing.

   In the early eighties, everybody I knew was worldbuilding, creating their own continents, empires, fauna, flora, deadly traps, and I even knew a guy who created a langage for his world, like Tolkien or Prof. Barker.

   We’re all still exactly like that. Nothing has changed.


   You put it up for sale and earn $5 or $10? Good for you!

   But we are still doing the exact same thing we were doing in 1984.



   It may not be the booming business you wanted it to be, but it still is a damn good time, trust me.

   I say, enjoy this effervescent scene while it lasts. You’re going to have such nice memories of this period when it’s gone.


11/4/23

The Lich Convention

 

   That’s right: I published an adventure on DriveThruRPG.

   It’s been a rollercoaster. A big one.

   The writing part was fun, but the art part and the layout and the legal stuff, that was quite an ordeal.

 


   I’m not going to talk about the adventure in and of itself here, but rather look at the process of creating something worthy of being put up for sale online. I might post about Lich Con III, the adventure proper, at a later time.

   So here we go.

   Like I said, getting the idea and writing a first draft — that is where most of the fun is. You write the whole thing down. Thirty-seven pages? Bravo, well done! Then you click Select All, and put it in two columns with a nice gutter down the middle. But nobody has made a word processing application that can handle columns. We’re getting ready to go to Mars but we’re still unable to fix columns; and I’m not the only one complaining about this: the Internet is full of articles and tutorials on how to make columns behave.



   Another headache is learning to put a different watermark on every page of your document. Not as simple as you might think. That is not a good memory for me. And page numbers, Christ; it completely scrambles the entire layout that you just spent seventeen hours creating.

   You also need to consider your PDF options right from the get-go, it’s crucial.

   If you’re only going to make $100 with the finished thing, why would you spend $100 up front for PDF software that you’re never gonna use again after that? Do it for free in Word 2007 or 2010 or LibreOffice. Why did the “publish as PDF” function disappear from Word? Isn’t that one of the main uses for a word processor? It’s like having a garage where they can fix your entire car — except for the breaks; to fix the breaks you need to go to the other place where they specialize in brakes and nothing else.

   It makes no sense.

   Cassi Mothwin said that she needed to add one page in her game, which she made in Affinity Designer if I remember correctly, and that the “new” page completely fucked the formatting of every page that came after that until the end of the document.

   The exact same thing happened to me… in Word 2007.

   My question to you is this. Why pay $69.99 for Affinity Designer if I’m just going to have the same annoying problems that I already have in a free, sixteen-year-old word processor?

   You want us to buy a design program? Make a design program that works.



   But let us move on to a different kind of ballache.

   Can you use proper names, or can’t you?

   Someone said that nobody can copyright the names of a Roman god (Orcus) or a Mesopotamian deity (Tiamat). This is great, but are you absolutely sure about it? Because everybody who says anything about trademarks or copyrights or fair use also says, “I am not a lawyer, by the way—”

   Getting a clear answer is very difficult indeed.

   Lawyers are not on social media. They don’t interact. They don’t share.


   Go fuck yourself with your nulla culpa, brother. You suck.

   It’s a sharing economy, but only for the poor and the middle class. Don’t expect the rich to share anything, ever.

   There is a game called Dark Places & Demogorgons, and a supplement (not for the same game) titled Acererak’s Guide to Lichdom


   So you CAN use proper names.

   Or maybe you can’t. Acererak’s Guide to Lichdom is nowhere to be found on DTRPG now. It’s been removed. What happened? Cease-and-desist? I don’t know.

   Perhaps it was taken off the site for reasons completely unrelated to the name Acererak.

   And then there is Sly Flourish. He uses the words “Dungeon Master.” Those words are forbidden, aren’t they?

   Again, never a clear answer.

   That’s what the lawyers want. Keep everything in constant flux, and keep the people guessing.

   That’s why I chose to use Orcus’ Greek name, Horkos, and Tiamat’s Akkadian name, Ti’amtu. I’m okay with that — more flavor, actually. Gandalf famously said that he was called by many names throughout Middle-earth. I’m pretty damn sure Tiamat and Orcus experience the same phenomenon on a whole other multiplanar level.

   Someone told me that WotC keep using the names Acererak and Bigby and Strahd to prevent them from falling into the public domain. How can a character (Acererak) fall into the public domain a mere 15 years after the death of its author? And how can Strahd become public domain when Tracy and Laura Hickman are still alive and kicking? And how come the name Boccob, which WotC hasn’t used since they bought TSR, hasn’t fallen into the public domain? It’s hard to separate the nonsense from the facts.

   This is another sneak peek from Lich Con III. It’s a cool handout.



   Now here’s something crazy. One indie game designer on Twitter said that they invest six hours of work per product they put up for sale on DriveThruRPG.

   To me, six hours is a blog post. Lich Con III is in the hundreds of hours of work, perhaps even a thousand. I didn’t count. I mean, it was at least fifty hours just grappling with those goddamn columns in Word and LibreOffice and WordPerfect X6 and watching YouTube tutorials on How To Make Columns Behave in Word.

   Six hours per product? This person is simply putting blog posts up on DTRPG, there is no other explanation. This week, two new monsters. Next week, three new adventure hooks. Next week, a new relic.

   It’s a paying blog.

   Good for them.

   Maybe we’re the dumb ones over here, blogging for free.

   The original OSR blogs were all free. I discovered them back in 2013 and that’s why I started to write my own — on Blogger, where most of the OSR blogs were hosted. I jumped on that bandwagon. I do not regret it. It was nice. I made new friends. I learned tons of stuff.

   When Covid hit, I knew I would not be able to run games for a long while, and so I decided to jump on an entirely new bandwagon. Indie TTRPG writing. That scene really blew up during the lockdown.


   Then they announced “One D&D” for 2024.

   Then Musk bought Twitter, and a sizable chunk of the TTRPG community went away.

   Then they announced a new OGL.

   It wasn’t ideal, and my timing appeared to be exceptionally bad — but what is done is done. I probably won’t be jumping on the next bandwagon, whatever that may be, but perhaps the next one after?

   So what now?

   I have more articles lined up for this blog, including another post about tabletop role-playing game publishing that’s coming. I also have a few new ideas for adventures, but I won’t invest too much time and energy into it; first, let’s see if Lich Con III can reach Copper best seller status, right?

   This means that for the first time in nine years, you, the reader of this blog, have a way to financially support it if you want. You’ve been reading for a long time and like this stuff? Consider “donating” $3.99 so I can keep rambling about old-school role-playing games for the foreseeable future.

   Even if you don’t intend to actually run Lich Con III at a table — you’d still have it in your PDF library and can read it sometime and have a good laugh.


   I got you, Sam.



6/25/23

Merlin, Jesus, Tékumel & the Public Domain

 

   Way back in ’95 we had Mr. Tuvok, a Black Vulcan — and I’m sure Gene Roddenberry would have had no problem with it.

   We had a Black Inspector Javert in BBC’s Les Miserables — and I’m sure Victor Hugo would have had no issue with it.

   We had dashing musketeer Cyrano de Bergerac played by Peter Dinklage — I’m sure Edmond Rostand would have agreed.

   Heroes and saints are remade, all the time, to fit changing tastes and sensibilities.

 


   When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, all of a sudden Jesus was depicted with short hair, no beard, and Roman clothes. Old-school Christians probably thought it was an outrage—

   “Jesus Wasn’t Roman!!!”

   I’m not going to pretend to be an authority on comparative religion, but the “How Dare You Depict [God / Demigod / Hero] Dressed In [Ethnic Group / Tribe] Garb!” thing must have happened thousands of times since the Stone Age.

   Why are there so many different versions of Merlin’s life? Sometimes he is the Lady of the Lake’s apprentice, and sometimes not. Sometimes he has a wife, and sometimes not. Sometimes the Lady of the Lake is named Viviane, and sometimes she is named Nyneve. Sometimes Nyneve is the equivalent of Morgan, and sometimes she isn’t…

   That’s because somebody, over a thousand years ago, did not stay true to the “source material” of Merlin — whatever that was. Believe it or not, one individual had to invent Merlin at some point, in spoken or written form, but the character really took a life of its own; then the original author / creator passed away, and other storytellers wrote about that increasingly popular character.


   But what is Merlin’s real backstory?

   Well… what is the Joker’s real backstory?

   Think about it. A thousand years from now they’ll ask, “Did the Joker become the Joker after falling into a chemical mixing vat, like Nicholson, or because of relentless mocking and bullying, like Phoenix?”

   Indeed, which is it?

   That character became enormously popular, and many authors wanted to tell stories about him. And they did. And so the character changed.

   Cesar Julio Romero Jr. is not Joaquin Phoenix.

   And this whole “respecting the source material” debate. Let’s talk about that.

   Name one thing that was adapted into another media without changing a single detail of the original story.

   The Lord of the Rings? — No.
   The Watchmen? — No.
   Batman v Superman? — No.
   American Gods? — No.
   Game of Thrones? — No.
   The Name of the Rose? — No.
   The Walking Dead? — No.
   Dune? — No.

   The Whisperer in Darkness (2011) is an excellent Cthulhu movie, but the whole ending — the part with the airplane — is made up, and not at all from Lovecraft’s story.


   “Canon” is an institutional hoax that comes straight from the Church Fathers. In A.D. 363, they had a whole bunch of texts about Jesus — and they all sat down together to decide which texts were true and which were false. It was basically guesswork.

   Which of James Bond’s countless missions are canon? All of them since 1953?

   Agent 007 must be at least 95 years old by now, right?

   And then there is something else.

   Sooner or later, cultural material fall into the public domain.

   This is the biggest thing, actually.

   ANYONE can write a Frankenstein story, a Merlin story, a Lancelot story, a Dorian Gray story, a Captain Ahab story or a Dr. Faust story. Anyone can take those characters (and countless others) and gender swap them at will, make them Philipino or Innu, and decide that they have an identical twin, evil or otherwise. You can even decide that Lancelot is Captain Ahab’s father, and that they’re both cyborgs from planet Yuggoth.

   We had a slew of Sherlock Holmes shows because the earlier works of Arthur Conan Doyle entered the public domain in 2010. Benedict Cumberbatch played a modern-day Sherlock, with text messages and all. Elementary had an Asian female Dr. Watson.

   One day that’ll happen to Gandalf and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and Harry Potter, too.


   Like it or not, Tolkien will enter the public domain in 2043. Anyone will be able to make a TV show, a graphic novel, a musical, a cooking show or whatever, and not follow the source material if they don’t want to.

   Chinese Gandalf will happen. Latina Galadriel will happen. Moroccan Han Solo will happen. It’s not a question of if, only a question of when. Turkish Han Solo and Chewbacca already happened, a very long time ago — but that’s a whole other story.



   Until 2043 the Tolkien estate will keep micromanaging J.R.R.’s writings, and it will lead to ludicrous situations.

   Get this. Someone develops a TV show about Moses and the Israelites escaping from Egypt, but they don’t have the rights to the Book of Exodus; all they can use is what Mark, Matthew, Luke and John said about Moses in their books.

   Absurd, isn’t it?

   You want to be mad?

   Be mad at the Tolkien estate ALSO.

   The Amazon show can’t touch what is in The Silmarillion — it has to invent a whole bunch of material. The Tolkien estate is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. They should just relinquish the whole thing — it’s going to happen in twenty-one years anyway. Might as well do it now. Pull the Band-Aid. There — done!

   But what about our money!!!

   Yes of course.

   I read on a forum that Amazon could have easily made a Second Age show set in the East / Rhûn, with the Haradrim (Black), the Easterling (Asian), the four Dwarven clans of the Red Mountains, and a few remaining Elves (Avari). That’s diverse.

   But there’s something much, much better—

   Take Professor M.A.R. Barker’s 5 Tékumel novels, and make a 5-season TV show about that.

   There are no White people on planet Tékumel. Zero.

   Perhaps you could add just one White Tsolyáni princess, or just one White Yán Koryáni archer… and… it’ll spark a loud, angry, nasty fan outrage.

   Chí, I say.

   By Lord Vimúhla, that’s a show I’d certainly watch.



12/24/22

Fall of the Dungeon Master

 

   So you’re a Dungeon Master? Okay, listen, I gazed into my crystal ball, and your future looks pretty grim. Let me tell you all about it. Free of charge.

   More and more now, Dungeon Masters find themselves standing between Wizards of the Coast and the millions of players who enjoy the world of Dungeons & Dragons. Those players want total, absolute freedom, and their Dungeon Masters are a “necessary evil” — or at least it’s starting to feel like it.


   The game’s marketing is directed towards players, not Dungeon Masters. If every D&D player buys a book, that is a lot of money, but if every Dungeon Master buys a book, the sales remain quite low. Players make up the bulk of the customer base, and that’s nothing new: it’s been that way since 1974. So, every six months, Wizards gives out “player candy” and introduces a new, overpowered subclass. The DMs have to adjust. Constantly.





   These days, it’s a perpetual tug-of-war between players and Dungeon Masters — and not just with official material, mind you. KibblesTasty published a fan-made artificer class that soon became a contentious issue. DMs didn’t want it. Players really wanted it. Some players even hoped Wizards would copy it and make the stuff official, so that DMs would have to accept it.


   But that’s only the beginning. Ha ha.

   Dungeon Masters are also being challenged by a drastic shift in the playstyle. You see, Dungeons & Dragons is a shared story. Dungeons & Dragons is a live, freeform experience. Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t need an all-powerful, dictatorial arbiter, and perhaps it doesn’t even need a written plot with predetermined encounters.




   No written adventure, no fixed story, just peers sitting together and riffing off of each other’s in-character improvisations. No spotlight hogs, either, as everyone gets the same amount of time to talk.

   Dungeon Masters have always been the worst kind of spotlight hogs, haven’t they? Wink wink.

   John only wants to tell the rest of the party about his Aasimar rhapsodist’s dark musings, and Jane only wants to be allowed to play her super optimized Tortle dragon tamer pirate ranger. You happen to be their DM. What do you do?

   Some want to quit.


   Some DMs really don’t like this ‘improv’ reframing of the game that is obviously being brought about by Critical Role.
 


   So, let’s recap:

   Storygamers don’t want a classic Dungeon Master who occupies way too much narrative real estate.

   Powergamers don’t want somebody who can decide if this feat or that subclass is legal at the table.

   DMs are being questioned on both sides of the role-playing spectrum.

   On the far left, they think a DM is just like any other player, no more, no less; they all tell their part of that shared story, and the DM’s own contribution isn’t bigger or more relevant than any other part.

   On the far right, tactical wargamers don’t really need DMs anymore, except maybe to roll for the monsters; but if they only need the DM to roll some dice, isn’t that the waste of a player? Let the monsters run themselves with an attack deck, Gloomhaven style, and get an extra player character in your party.



   Here we should take a timeout from discussing the Fall of the Dungeon Master, and look at the possibility, however remote or preposterous, of getting rid of other fundamental D&D components.






   There were folks who criticized the fact that most treasures are “questionably sourced” in Pathfinder and, by extension, D&D; I’ve broached that subject in a previous post (“Bad” Treasure, April 2021).

   Let’s recap again:

   No predetermined story or plot, no omnipotent referee, no dungeons, no monsters, no treasure, and no violence. The player characters sit in a tavern, drinking, talking, laughing.

   It’s a creative drama workshop.

   I get it, though. When I was 17 and 18, I too questioned everything. “Fuck The World” was my motto. You know: the golden age of punk. Society sucked, and I wanted none of it.

   Today, it’s the same phenomenon, expressed differently. Why should we pay rent? Why should we have student debt?

   What are monsters even for?

   What are spells even for? What is armor even for? What is experience even for?

   If we go the nihilist road, we’ll end up playing nothing and caring for nothing and doing nothing, like in Withnail & I.
 


   Everything D&D (apart from movies and board games) requires a Dungeon Master. It is an unpredictable situation that might make business-savvy investors nervous, and they have addressed it before — you can bet your entire game collection on it. “Do we have a contingency plan in case we experience a catastrophic drop in the number of individuals who are willing to enable this product without compensation?”

   Is Robert going to feel confident enough to take on the duties of Dungeon Master? Is Myriam going to have enough time to DM on top of studying for her master’s degree? Dan had a stroke last year; is he going to resume his campaign? Jenna did not do any DMing since before the pandemic — is she going to come back to it eventually? Case-by-case uncertainty.

   They’ve already had a few meetings about this. Trust me.



   Gary and Dave envisioned the Dungeon Master as a sort of deity, sometimes malevolent, sometimes benevolent, and sometimes completely indifferent. Many things have changed since those early days. Increasingly now, the DM is but a proxy for the mechanics and rules; they are more or less expected to run what Perkins, Winter or Crawford have written, as is.

   But DMs do not work for Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast. They never have.

   With the advent of One D&D, the Dungeon Master is about to be reduced to a simple role of software manager. Indeed, they won’t need a DM to describe the guttering candles and spooky cobwebs: it’s all been rendered in 3D; and they won’t even need a DM to track initiative: it’s all been programmed right into that VTT.

   The same isn’t happening in Call of Cthulhu, for instance, because that game still needs its DMs, a.k.a. Keepers. There are still innumerable locations to flesh out and describe, from creepy mansions in Poughkeepsie, NY, to abandoned mausoleums in Chepachet, RI, to haunted lighthouses off Pollock Rip, MA. Nobody in Call of Cthulhu is asking What Are Monsters Even For? (they’d lose 2d10 SAN if they did.) There’s a lot of storytelling left to be done in this genre.

   And what about little indie gems such as Nibiru or Moriah? For sure, they need a GM to work their awesome, heartbreaking magic.

   I chose the title “The Fall of the Dungeon Master” and not “The Fall of the Game Master” for a reason.

   If and when D&D doesn’t want you — or need you — anymore, don’t worry, there is a plethora of exciting worlds out there that await and value your energy and dedication to run amazing adventures.

10/10/22

The Differences Between Story and Game

 

   Imperial officers refrain from shooting down the escape pod, because “there’s no life forms” on board… AND because there would be no Star Wars at all if they’d actually destroyed it. There really is no other reason.

   Boba Fett falls into the Sarlacc’s gaping mouth because the trilogy draws to an end, and Fett just isn’t relevant anymore. There is no other reason.

   When you reach chapter 19, and your book has 21 chapters, start tying up loose ends; it is what the producers of Lost famously failed to understand.

   Eagles fly into Mordor and pick up Frodo and Sam because, again, the trilogy draws to an end, and two additional chapters with the Hobbits scrambling to get out and Gandalf and Aragorn desperately searching for them in and around Mount Doom would be both painful to write and painful to read. Sometimes you need shortcuts — mostly towards the end. Ask any writer.


   About Tomb of Horrors, someone said, “Use divination magic to find out where the treasure room is, then dig directly down until you hit it.” Nice shortcut, aye; but that’s a game, not a story. On one hand, you have the supra-genius intelligence of a millennia-old demilich, and on the other hand you have the down-to-earth cleverness of a garden-variety tomb robber. Don’t you think Acererak would have thought of that even before his servants began building his eternal resting place? My money is on the demilich.

   Don’t you think Sauron would have thought of the eagles flying over Mount Doom and dropping the One Ring straight into it? The guy is at least 50,000 years old; give him some credit.

   Someone else asked on Quora, “Why not give the Ring to Ungoliant? Ungoliant eats the ring, destroys it, and kills Sauron. Game over.”

   Well, we’re talking about a story, not a game.

   People nowadays are so accustomed to Pokémon cards, it literally never occurs to them that all the creatures and items of a legendarium don’t necessarily exist at the same time and in the same killer deck. With Tolkien, you just need a teeny-tiny bit more attention to detail.

   Ungoliant vanishes from Middle-earth at least two thousand years before the One Ring is even forged; it’s like asking, “Why not give the Maccabees an AR-15 to help them win the Battle of Elasa in 160 B.C.?”

   But if you gave the ring to Ungoliant and she devoured it — what then? No Lord of the Rings trilogy? It’s the Star Wars escape pod conundrum all over again; they shoot it down, Beru and Owen live, Luke stays home, Han never meets Leia, etc.

   Do you want writers to tell rich, compelling stories… or do you want to be fed daily puzzles to solve? Make up your mind already.



   Our computer-programmer hive mind is getting very good at solving practical, mechanical problems. So we take the stories that we used to love, and turn them into mechanical tidbits.

   “Where was Radagast the Brown during the War of the Ring?”

   “What were the Valar doing during The Lord of the Rings?”



   Expert puzzle solvers high on Red Bull.

   The thing is, it’s not a game, it’s a story, and you don’t need to min / max it.

   Radagast has never shown any interest in the affairs of Gondor, Rohan, or even Rivendell. It’s like asking, “Where was Gandhi during World War II?”

   The Valar are gods, and they left Middle-earth at the close of the First Age. Some of the Eldar elected to stay, but it was their choice. Don’t ask, “Where were Yahweh and Archangel Michael during World War II?”

   In a wargame, you’d be stupid not to use every single one of your assets. Don’t leave any wizard on the sidelines. Maximize your win percentage.

   Stories are a completely different animal.

   When you sit down to read a story — kill the switch; you’re not on your Xbox anymore.

   Still on the subject of the Tomb of Horrors, somebody else said, “This is the kind of dungeon that needs a respawn mechanic at the entrance just to be tolerable.”

   This one’s interesting. Tomb is indeed a game — but it also has a story. If you are an undead archmage who ruled for millennia over a kingdom of the living dead, and now you’re building a final resting place for your earthly remains, why in hell would you include a “respawn mechanic” at the entrance? It defeats the purpose.

   The person who writes such a comment chooses to ignore the Story aspect and focus solely on the Game side. Video gamer, for sure. They’ve seen hundreds, if not thousands of dungeons, and they’re all pretty much the same to them.

   But it is not the same.

   Expedition to the Barrier Peaks and Acererak’s tomb are both “dungeons,” yet they are two very, very different stories—

   I’m not a video gamer myself, but I saw my friends play lots of video games over the years, from World of Warcraft to L.A. Noire to Assassin's Creed, and one thing I keep witnessing is the player skipping over old letters lying on tables or desks, because it’s usually a whole page of text that would take them too long to read. They prefer moving on immediately to the next stage or dungeon level. And I guess the designers know this very well: they make it so that players can still finish the game even though they haven’t read all the clues and / or pieced together the whole puzzle / backstory. Except perhaps in something like Myst, where the puzzles really are the main thing.

   Games — all games, not just video games — had a pervasive effect on our collective consciousness: they made us dumber. On forums, you regularly come across questions like, “Why is Gandalf afraid of Sauron if they’re both Maiar?” Indeed, why is someone afraid of someone who is the same Thing / Class / Order? A level 9 wizard shouldn’t be afraid of a level 9 wizard, right? An Orange magic item should be more powerful than a Blue magic item, but it souldn’t be less powerful than any other Orange magic item, right?

   I’m letting you in on a big secret here: magic items don’t have colors, and wizards (or any other class for that matter) don’t have levels. Those are just game mechanics; even in the fictional world of the game, they are not “real.”

   Every single sword +1 has its own story, who created it, and why. Magic items aren’t created in batches and according to spec, so there’s no reason why they should be comparable or equivalent.


   Green lightsabers, blue lightsabers, red lightsabers, fuchsia lightsabers, darksabers: it doesn’t mean a thing. People were startled in ’83 when they realized Luke’s lightsaber had changed colors, but that decision simply came from the fact that blue wasn’t really popping out against the perfect blue skies of Buttercup Valley, California (where the Sarlacc scene was shot). That’s all there is to it. Green ain’t better than blue. Stop obsessing over the thing. It’s not a ranking system like red belt, blue belt, black belt. It’s just a color — like the color of your neighbor’s Honda Civic.

   Now, let’s replace the word Maia with the word Aristocrat. During the fifteenth Century, the Dukes of Burgundy were among the most powerful of all Aristocrats. But you could find a lowly Duke somewhere in the Italian backcountry who had almost no power or influence whatsoever… and yet he was still an Aristocrat. The lowly Duke of Gravina would piss his trentain trousers if he were ever summoned to Burgundy to appear at the court of Duke John the Fearless. But how can that be? How can a Duke be afraid of a Duke when they’re both the same Thing?

   It’s because life is much, much more complicated than a game.

   Ainur, Valar and Maiar — they’re not just plain categories like “Break” or “EX” or “Mega” or whatever. It’s a pantheon, not a kid’s game.

   One YouTuber complained that Ralph Bakshi’s Saruman wore a red robe. “What Part of Saruman the WHITE Didn’t They Understand?”

   Again with the damn colors.

   “The White” is a title, not a dress code. The Black Prince never wore black, and only wielded his black shield in battle — once or twice a year. Again, this thing is an entire pantheon, not a cards game.


   When Lucifer first rebelled, did God banish him from Heaven using a level 4 slot or a level 9 slot?

   See what I mean? It’s absurd.


   Well, I’d rather know whether Moses’ staff is a Staff of the Serpent or a Staff of the Magi, because it obviously can’t be both at the same time, right? That’d be BREAKING THE GAME, DUDE!!!!!


   It’s right there in the very name of the channel: Game Rant. As in, Game.

   A literary work ain’t a game.

   Every story ever told don’t need to be gamified.

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   Explaining everything all the time is exhausting, but some folks can’t help it. For instance, Steven Erikson’s books were inspired by years and years of tabletop role-playing — and it shows. Now, some readers feel the urge to “break down” the series’ magic system, and perhaps take it back to something gameable.


   So you play TTRPGs, write a book about it, the book gets published, one of your players also writes a book about that game, it gets published too, you go on and write nine more books in the series, it becomes very popular, and then someone turns the magic in those books into a RPG-like system… We’ve come full circle, haven’t we?

       GameStoryGame

   Now, explain The Laundry Files’ magic system. It’s definitely not your classic Chaosium stuff.

   And what about the magic in American Gods? And what about the magic in Ash: A Secret History? Try explaining that.

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   In a fantasy novel, you’ve got a story, but no game mechanics.

   In a video game or tabletop RPG, you’ve got both story and mechanics.

   In classic arcade games like Gauntlet or Gauntlet II, there is essentially no story, just rooms, monsters, treasure, more rooms, more monsters, more treasure, on and on and on.

   Don’t let it all become one single big messy entertainment goulash, and you might want to thank me later.

   A final note to aspiring fantasy authors: avoid building your intrigue around a tangible MacGuffin, because the relentless Red Bull gamer brains will unquestionably find a way to “solve” your great story without the need of your great story. Keep your MacGuffin vague, like Helen of Troy’s stunning beauty, like Adrian Veidt’s convoluted deceit — stuff that can’t be devoured by Ungoliant or dropped into Mount Doom.