There’s a specific appeal to rpg fiction that readers can’t
find in other genres: stories that are catered to a system readers enjoy (for
fantasy rpgs, this means recognizable character classes, areas, and even
recurring characters) and hitting a sweet spot of familiarity/nostalgia. The
honey of nostalgia is created through recreating the same kind of immersion you
get around a tabletop game with friends, and increasingly, remembering the fun
when revisiting video game franchises in fiction. Rpg fiction is also regarded
as highly commercial, with sales coming readers chasing down familiar characters
instead of vaunted “literary value.” However, even the stories that do live up
rpg fiction’s less-than-stellar literary reputation still offer readers a fun
adventure and lots of action, like the literary equivalent of an Indiana Jones
movie.
My own foray into rpg fiction began a little differently—I hadn’t
even played a tabletop game and I had played several video games, but none of
them would have held my interest enough to read a novel of their franchise. However,
the personal impact was immeasurable. My first brush was when I attended a
panel at Gen Con 2012 with Susan J. Morris about developing superbadassawesome
(emphasis my own) heroes and villains, and I was struck by how freaking cool
she was describing her adventures DMing and her appearance (great hair and a
giant tattoo of a bee adorning her collarbone). She mentioned her experience in
editing and her work on an anthology, and as soon as I got home, I found Realms of the Dead. This was where the
real fun began—the stories of various rpg authors taking themes of death and
life, with stunning locales like the City of the Dead in Waterdeep and the
Moonshae Sea, swept me away more than any of the “straight” fiction and fantasy
I had been reading.
Rpg fiction has led me down stranger roads since 2012, with
dabbling in Dragonlance and R.A. Salvatore, to “graduating” to the Pathfinder
Tales. Since then, I have been part of a handful of tabletop games and most
recently have started playing through Pathfinder’s Rise of the Runelords
campaign. During Gen Con last year, I attended a few panel that featured James
L. Sutter, and enjoyed them enough to pick up Death’s Heretic. I read it during my final semester of my
undergrad, on the heels of an early British fiction class. With the infusion of
critical theory, Death’s Heretic
surprised me by being as much fun to parse as the stories of Hereward the Wake.
A hero who starts out as reluctant with an interesting story who goes on a
planes-twisting adventure to find the cause behind a high profile murder—but it
was the telling that made it rife with interest from allusions to binary
oppositions. (One day, I plan on writing a full critical analysis and sending
it on to the author to see what he thinks.)
Since I finished Death’s
Heretic, things have been a little bumpy with my readings of rpg fiction. I
finished Stalking the Beast by Howard
Andrew Jones and felt a little…underwhelmed. Last week, I read what appears to
be long-time Forgotten Realms writer (and creator of the famed Elminster) Ed
Greenwood’s recent conversion to the Pathfinder Tales in The Wizard’s Mask. Immediately after that, as part of my fantasy
reading blitz before I move at the end of this month, I took on another
long-time Forgotten Realms writer Paul S. Kemp’s stories outside of the Realms,
The Hammer and the Blade. Both works
were good, but it was a lot of pulpy fun, so by the time this weekend rolled
around, I needed some writing books as a palate cleanser.
To follow the spirit of reading Realms of the Dead and Death’s
Heretic and my general “let’s be more critical than whether I liked or
disliked something”, I took a lot of notes to figure out what Greenwood and
Kemp were getting at, and where they succeeded and failed. I’ll tackle The Wizard’s Mask first. Of the two,
this story definitely followed the increased action to lesser story ratio, and
for the most part, it worked, with only a couple of exceptions.
I had read in previous anthologies, but this was my first
time reading one of his novels. Perhaps the slowest moment was at the
beginning, when the reader is first introduced to former slave and halfing Tantaerra.
After that, it’s a never ending chase as she eludes the guard of the town of
Molthune. We get all of Tantaerra’s story up front, and her voice is enjoyable.
However, there was juxtaposition between her age and her experience—psychologically,
I would have put her at late teenager, and she lacked any physical encumbrance
to convince me she wasn’t 16-19. Sometimes her younger mindset works in the
story’s favor, such as Tantaerra’s gap-mouthed wonder at the wizard’s temple in
Nirmathas.
The other protagonist was Tarram, known for the first half
of the book as “The Masked” (eventually, I jokingly changed the moniker to
Batman because it was less annoying). He was frustrating as a character because
the reader gained nothing in his personal story, and he had little to no
development. The reader eventually learns how he came to be “The Masked”, but
the explanation didn’t reflect the actions of an actual person. The lack of
fully realized characters made the story feel less like an immersive experience
and more like the blow-by-blow account of a combat encounter between players
and x (whether the variable is men,
monsters, or wizards).
When the story failed to show real character growth, there
came be an absurd logic to the plot that was reminiscent of Tim O’Brien’s The Things We Carried. Conflicts felt frequent
yet meaningless, and even at the resolution of the story, I felt little
attachment. For all that, the story wasn’t a difficult read and I could see how
it could be adapted to a campaign for a DM with an evocative imagination. I
finished it within a couple of days and will probably forget about it a year
from now, so perhaps it’s one of the lesser chapters in my rpg reading
adventure.
The
Hammer and the Blade picks up with a much different tone but a
surprisingly similar premise. Egil and Nix are adventuring buddies in the
tradition of Fafhrd and Gray Mouser, and the story begins with them raiding a
tomb. However, their treasure seeking is half-hearted and reluctant—for vague
reasons, Nix is determined to “go straight,” which to him means buying a
tavern/brothel (known with the hokey wink-wink name of the Slick Tunnel) and
becoming an upstanding business owner. For the first three quarters of the book
, I thought this was a plot device to initiate the story, but in the last chunk
of the book, this original premise is resolved (perhaps not to the best effect…but
at least things go better than expected). The characterization blossoms in this
story, though, with the sharp-tongued interactions between Egil and Nix and the
quiet moments where Nix reflects on his values and Egil prays to his dead god.
Even the villain is given expressive character details and strong motivation
(although this is arguably one of the flaws of the plot).
The most unsettling effect of The Hammer and the Blade is how the main plot becomes about saving
two sisters from sexual abuse that they’ve witnessed (and experienced?)
previously. While the sisters are accomplished mind mages, their mental
compulsion of Egil and Nix and further magical coercion at the hands of their
brother Rakon puts the entire story into question. Are Egil and Nix good men?
Did they have any agency for how the plot unfolded? I’m not a fan of psychic
magic, so maybe this is my own perception creating a bias. The fact that I’m
even asking these questions compromised my enjoyment of the book and even
brings up unreliable narration in the partial omniscient narrator. Kemp deals
with the question at the end of the book, but his answer isn’t necessarily
satisfactory.
Another reason why I think rpg fiction remains so resilient is
because of how the stories provide patterns of heroes for readers to recreate
in their games and stories. Sometimes it’s a literal copy (Drizzt, anyone?),
but often the characters provide inspiration. Even when the novels aren’t the
height of writing, the stories are still fun and memories to be savored. I read
them for the swashbuckling adventure and because rpg fiction can be a
surprising fount of literary themes with the best stories.
I’m returning to my more traditional grimdark reading in the
next couple of weeks, so I’m not sure how quickly another review will come. The Emperor’s Blades arriving interrupted
my reading of The Wizard’s Mask, but
Brian Staveley’s debut is like a wine to be savored and 20 pages here and there
are enough to feel sated. The Grim
Company by Luke Scull is an unknown for me—I love his tone, but Scull is
dealing with some off-putting dark themes. The last, Veil of the Deserters by Jeff Salyards is the second in the
Bloodsounder’s Arc, and my reaction to his first book was elation about his
protagonist and reservations about the rest of the book. It’ll be happy reading
over the next week!
No comments:
Post a Comment