Fantasy Books in Parents' Attics Update

Another find from the loft of my dad's house: a copy of The Silmarillion that I picked up at a library stock sale for what must have been less than a quid or so. I can only have been about 14 years old. It's never been read (I have a paperback copy) and is a beautifully constructed book; it is a First Edition, fourth impression, from 1977. Gaze on it in awe.

1977. When fantasy books didn't have pictures of people striking cool poses on the cover. 

1977. When fantasy books had beautiful maps actually within the text where you needed to look at them.

1977. When fantasy books had sub-headings. 

1977. When fantasy books had beautiful fold-out maps in the back.

Good Dragonlance Sentences: Introduction

A few days ago, I took a bet that I couldn't find any good sentences in the Dragonlance books. I don't welch on bets, so it's time to see what I can find.

My proposal is this: once a week I will read a chapter from a Dragonlance book and put up some examples of what might be "good" sentences in it. I will begin with the "Legends" trilogy, primarily because it's the only one I have to hand at the moment (I picked it up at a secondhand book shop a few months ago), but also because it's better than the "Chronicles" - let's face it. I will continue to do this until Zak agrees that there are good sentences.

We also need to define what a "good sentence" is, because undoubtedly Weis & Hickman are better writers than you or I. (If you disagree, then where's your novel?) The context in which the bet was made was in comparison to Michael Moorcock and HP Lovecraft, so we'll say that a good Dragonlance sentence is one which would also be deemed "good" if written by either of those two writers.

Here goes. From the Introduction to Time of the Twins:

[Describing Astinus, the historian who sees, knows, and records everything] "The historian's face might have been reckoned handsome in a timeless, ageless fashion. But none who saw his face ever remembered it. They simply remembered the eyes - dark, intent, aware, constantly moving, seeing everything. Those eyes could communicate vast worlds of impatience, reminding Bertrem that time was passing. Even as the two spoke, whole minutes of history were ticking by, unrecorded." 

[Describing the first time we see Raistlin] "All she could see before her were two golden eyes shining from the depths of darkness. The eyes were like a gilt mirror, flat, reflective, revealing nothing of the soul within. The pupils - Crysania stared at the dark pupils in rapt horror. The pupils within the golden eyes were the shape of hourglasses! And the face - drawn with suffering, marked with the pain of the tortured existence the young man had led for seven years, ever since the cruel Tests in the Tower of High Sorcery left his body shattered and his skin tinged gold. The mage's face was a metallic mask, impenetrable, unfeeling as the golden dragon's claw upon his staff."

Not great literature, no. But we're not judging them against Proust, remember. This will do for the Introduction.

People Are Self-Entitled Whinge-Bags

Whenever I get depressed about people in the RPG hobby whingeing and complaining about things (from edition warring to supposedly bad DMing to failure to provide orgasms to badwrongfun to rape culture to lack of political correctness) I remind myself that this is not so much a failure of RPG nerds as it is a failure of many human beings. People are self-entitled whinge-bags. They want things to be perfect for them, and when they're not they think they have been personally slighted. This is especially so when it comes to goings-on within their hobby or pastime.

I was reminded of this reading the comments to the "as it happened" stream on the BBC website for the coverage of England's latest cricketing disaster against Australia. Have a look at some of them:

From Sue and Keith, disgruntled in Sydney: Having paid a lot to come out to watch the Melbourne and Sydney tests, it was bad enough knowing that the Ashes were lost. But can we sue the ECB under the Trades Description Act as we haven't seen what could be described as a cricket match at either game. Pathetic.

From Iain: The most pathetic display by any sporting team leaving these shores to represent England. Only Broad and Stokes deserve the right to wear the Three Lions again. Pathetic.

Jack B: Cook should hand his resignation in within the next 24 hours. What an embarrassing, pathetic leader he has been.

Paul R: Make no mistake the English cricket team are a national disgrace. Gutless and clueless. Are they hurting? Not enough.

Lewis C: Not one to knock an England side, but the tour has been a shambles. Not even a victory for pride's sake. Given fans nothing. 

Matt Jones: Can I suggest that the whole pampered squad donate their first-class tickets home to the poor suffering fans that spent thousands on the trip down under. They're not fit to wear the shirt. A total and utter shambles. 

Mark: Awful. Simply awful from England. Resignations/changes please. Just not good enough aside from Stokes in the whole series.

See what I mean? THE ENGLAND TEAM HAVE GIVEN THE FANS NOTHING. We demand reprisals! Punishment! We want people to lose their jobs! Bring back hanging! We wanted the England team to win and they were so fucking inconsiderate they went and lost! PATHETIC.

It's not enough that the England cricket team went and tried their best and happened to get beaten by a better side. They didn't do what we, the fans, wanted, and therefore they are a disgrace. It's not enough that RPG designer Y created a game that wasn't perfect for every individual fan in the entire universe: the fact that he wasn't specifically tailoring it to my needs and outlook on the world is a bloody scandal.

People are self-entitled whinge-bags.

The Advantages of Being First

There are much better systems than D&D in the world. In fact, D&D is rather incoherent and riddled with irregularities, despite its charm. Yet from a certain perspective, D&D is the best game there is, simply because it is the first and most popular.

This is no circular argument: what I mean to say is, because D&D was the first role playing game and has hence secured the Top Dog space for itself and ruled the roost ever since (to mix my metaphors just slightly), there are vastly more people playing it and hence vastly more people creating things for it. To put it in fashionable terminology, the D&D brain trust is massive in comparison with that for any other RPG. The OSR blogosphere is only one small example of this. From house rules to new monsters to campaign settings to alternative classes to whatever else you can think of, there are dozens of times more people creating things for D&D than any other system, and thus there is a greater vat of accumulated knowledge from which any given D&D player can draw inspiration and edification than there is for game X, Y, or Z. Or even A, B or C.

But it doesn't stop there. I would suggest that D&D's pre-eminent position at the forefront of the hobby has a more profound and subtle impact on D&D players than just providing them with loads and loads of ideas, new rules, and customisations. The boon is far greater, if slightly more difficult to access: it comes in the idea that D&D is not a fixed thing but is ever changing. The fact that every month there is (was, once) a new Dragon magazine packed with different rules, that there are blogs and forums and websites out there dedicated solely to the creation of new material, that a never-ending sequence of splatbooks was being farted out by TSR at its height...all of this creates a self-perpetuating, virtuous cycle, in which any individual DM or player is being constantly reminded, almost as if he can't escape the notion, that D&D is ever evolving, ever-changing, ever-ready to be kitbashed and mangled and beaten into something new and different and better. This creates a special D&D mindset. The pressure to think about evolution. Other games may have a certain feeling that the rules and content can change, but D&D is impossible to imagine without the constant pressure of change, improvement, expansion. And this D&D mindset is a precious gift to the player of that particular game. It means that anybody playing D&D is always confronted with the question: what can be done to make this better?

Cthulhu Works With Everything

I've often thought that, if you wanted incontrovertible proof that the Cthulhu mythos is true, it's that you can put it into any setting and it will instantly improve it.

Way back at the start of this blog, in 2008 (it seems like only yesterday, but it is getting on for six bloody years ago), I was talking about OzCthulhu, my idea for a setting inspired by Aboriginal Australians with a heavy dose of the Cthulhu mythos on top. One of the commenters on that early entry postulated the idea of a setting mixing L. Frank Baum's Oz with the Cthulhu mythos, which works too. But other options will suggest themselves, because CTHULHU WORKS WITH EVERYTHING. Ancient Greece, but with added Cthulhu mythos. Icelandic sagas, but with added Cthulhu mythos. The Many Coloured-Land, but with added Cthulhu mythos. Star Wars, but with added Cthulhu mythos. The Incan Empire, but with added Cthulhu mythos. A Song of Ice and Fire, but with added Cthulhu mythos. Middle Earth, but with added Cthulhu mythos. The Nazis, but with added Cthulhu mythos. 1920s America, but with added C...no, hang on.

On Clearing Books Out of the Loft and Ramblings on Appendix N

This holiday I've spent clearing out my parents' old house. Part of this process has involved me appraising my old books (of which there are hundreds and hundreds) and trying to decide which can be thrown out and which can go to the local library or charity shop or whatever. I came across Leiber's Ill Met at Lankhmar, a collection from the early 2000s which brings together, I think, "Swords and Deviltry" and "Swords Against Death".

Re-reading these old stories, it occurs to me that you may as well not read any high fantasy series published in the last 30 years or so if you've read Leiber. I use the words "high fantasy" advisedly, because although the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories are more sword & sorcery than high fantasy, almost all high fantasy stuff that was published in the 80s, 90s and 00s was a footnote on what Leiber was writing in the 70s - from the back-story to both men (every main character in every epic fantasy series has a tragic origin story like Grey Mouser) to the sassy, just-as-good-as-you female leads who are just dim reflections of Vlana, to the innocent-girl-turned-unlikely-heroine female leads who are just dim reflections of Ivrian, to the strong themes of revenge, to the very un-Tolkienesque prevalence of magic (divided, as so often the case, into 'good magic' and 'bad magic')... It makes the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories seem like old hat, until you remember that no, it's just that most modern fantasy series were old hat before they were even conceived.

A while ago, because I felt like being controversial, I made the statement on some forum or other that I though that the Dragonlance books are probably just as good as most of the things in Appendix N. Although I said that with mischievous intentions, I also think it's true. The Dragonlance books are not great, but for a 13 year old boy they are good entertainment, and that is really the most you can say for most of the Michael Moorcock books, most of Lovecraft's fiction, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Phillip Jose Farmer, etc. People in the D&D blogosphere might not like to admit it, but the best you can say about a lot of the writings of a lot of those writers is that they pass the time and have some interesting ideas in. Admittedly there are a number books/authors on Appendix N that I've never read, but even if those works were all hidden masterpieces it would still place Weis & Hickman somewhere in the middle-to-lower rung. In a weird sort of a way, they probably deserve more credit; I know this doesn't apply universally, but I generally think of great books as being those which have moved me emotionally - and I have to confess that I was very moved emotionally as an adolescent reading about the death of Sturm or Caramon's efforts to stop his mad brother destroying the universe. Much more so, indeed, than I ever was reading about Elric's exploits, fun though they are.

Which fantasy books are really worth reading? Given that you have a finite amount of time in your life and there are so many other books out there? There's a novel by Jonathan Franzen called Strong Motion, which like all of Franzen's books is beautifully and sensitively written, if somewhat appalling at the same time; in it there is fairly extended section which describes the evolution of the music collection of one of the characters, Dr. Reneé Seitchek. She starts off with a large collection of punk music on old cassettes, but as time goes by and she gets older and older and more jaded her collection starts to dwindle and she starts just compiling mix tapes with some of her favourite tracks on...but as time goes by and she gets older still she starts to grow tired even of them, and she ends up just taking segments of single tracks that she likes and running them together, so that she finishes off compressing all of the music in the world that she likes into a single cassette or two. I sometimes feel like that about fantasy fiction. Give me a single 1000 page volume containing the distilled essence of Vance, Wolfe, and Tolkien and that may very well do me for the rest of my days.

What the Lazy Bastard Has Been Working On; Or, Yoon-Suin is On the Road to Completion, Honest

It's been a ridiculous November and December but I have managed to work a little bit on Yoon-Suin here and there. The content is entirely complete and I'm currently undergoing the laborious process of transferring everything from OneNote to Word (having given up on fancy schmancy layout programs after what seemed like aeons of aimless fiddling). This is about 5-10% finished.

Here are some mysterious screen grabs. No art as yet. That's the final hurdle.

Creative Constraint and Beekeeping

An intermittent theme on my blog down the years (see e.g. here) has been creative constraint: how providing strict boundaries in terms of what the DM and players can create (particularly during the setting up of a new campaign) can actually allow imaginations and inspiration to flourish.

Take beekeeping. The latest Econtalk podcast is all about the economics of beekeeping. While it is wide-ranging and covers everything from how to transport bees to CCD (which means Colony Collapse Disorder - don't you know anything?) to externalities to the almond-growing industry of California, the most interesting section by far in my mind is where the conversation moves onto the idea of migratory beekeepers. This may not be the case in other countries, but apparently in the US many beekeepers spend their working lives travelling around: based in the South, say, and moving to California for the early almond pollination season, then travelling up the West coast through Oregon and Washington for apples, berries, cherries and so on, and then pitching up in the Dakotas to allow the bees to spend summer gorging on sunflowers. Then it's back down South for winter. Similar migratory patterns go up and down the East coast from Florida to Maine and so on.

Saying that you are going to run a beekeeping campaign and you would be characterised as some sort of dangerous eccentric in most RPG circles; not because of the subject matter but because it seems so very limiting. The PCs really have to start off as beekeepers and nothing else? And all they're going to do is travel round with, and manage, bees?

But once the limits are set, the mind starts to whir with possibilities. How about, rather than just having honey bees, the world is full of many different kinds of bee, all with different characteristics, tastes, and vulnerabilities? And how about a d100 table of random bee pests and diseases that might strike at a given moment? What about all the possibilities for hexcrawling: where do you stop for the night with your hives? Where do you migrate to - do you follow the spring as it heads Northwards, or strike off on a different, less travelled path where there are fewer competitors? What kind of monsters and bandits lie in ambush on the well-journeyed routes? What kind of monsters does honey attract in general? There would need to be a set of tables for generating competitor beekeepers, their hives, and helpers, of course. Each would have their own agenda, their own rivalries and alliances, their hidden ancestral knowledge. The same goes for the farmers. There would need to be a system for determining costs based on the presence of competition, weather, crop type...and rudimentary rules for trade in general.

And of course, there would need to be complicated procedures for what happens when bees make honey from the nectar of poisonous plants, or whatever kind of weird fantasy flora you happen to come up with.

I'm not suggesting that the beekeeping campaign is the one we should all be running, you understand. The point is simply this: once constraints are set in place, creativity starts to flourish. Envisage human creativity like water: without barriers it floods endlessly in a very thin and ever-spreading sheen. With constraint it bursts upwards like a fountain. And I give you metaphors like that free of charge.

Three Other Realms from the Rules Cyclopedia

From the Rules Cyclopedia, page 176:

Elementals live in towns and cities on their own worlds. Both the worlds and the building materials are made entirely of pure elemental material, in solid, liquid, or gaseous form. In the universe of its own plane, each elemental race occupies thousands of worlds. The elemental races are far older than humankind, and more civilized in many ways. They have art forms for six senses. 

Entire universes comprised of one element. A never-ending mass of earth stretching in all directions - not just to all compass points, but up and down. A riddle of burrows created by denizens of the plane - a kind of infinite cave network inhabited by races of elemental being which those of us on the prime material plane do not even suspect to exist. Entire kingdoms carved from solid rock.

From page 177:

The faerie inhabit the air and clouds. Faeries are close relatives of the demihumans, with features of each race: They appear as halfling-sized humanoids with gossamer wings, dwarvish noses and beards, and elvish ears and eyes. Faeries' bodies are light and they fly with little effort. They build their homes of "clouds," and enjoy basking in the sun while storms rage below. They have their own great empire of the wind far above the earth, commonly known only to themselves and a few air creatures.

Like Gene Wolfe's 'Skai', the realm above Mythgarthr, inhabited by overcyns to which mankind owes fealty. A world that exists in the sky and yet also somehow above it, impossible to get to except for blessed individuals or those selected for some special mission - and those who try to reach it are doomed to fall, Icarus-like, into the sea while a boat sails calmly on.

From page 184:

Headsmen (also called "executioners") are NPC humans commonly employed by dominion rulers. They are trained in the business of killing criminals who have received the death penalty. Most headsmen are skilled in the proper use of bladed weapons, ropes, and poisons and are able to execute criminals quickly and neatly.  

All professional headsmen belong to their own guild, which is associated with the Thieves' Guild. Headsmen keep their true identities completely secret, wearing hoods or disguises when engaged in professional activities. Many own ordinary shops, and can seem to be perfectly ordinary townsfolk. Headsmen of 6 HD or more are 90% undetectable in their disguises, and study languages of all sorts to improve their masquerades. Headsmen of 10 HD or more can even use the secret languages of other alignments.  

Thugs: A secret organization exists within the Guild of Headsmen. These evil headsmen enjoy their work too much, and offer their services for open hire. Others call them Assassins or Thugs; they call themselves Pragmati ("the practical people").  

Unlike the Thieves' Guild, the Pragmati are not supported by adventurers or rulers. They are sometimes hired by other NPCs, especially evil ones. However, PCs do not normally contact these headsmen for any reason; their organization is dangerous as either an enemy or an ally. Thugs are treacherous and self-serving, known to extort money from their previous "clients" with threats of exposure, kidnapping, or even murder.

An entire secret realm existing behind and within human society: the Practical People. With its own rulers, its own codes of behaviour, its own rituals, religions and mores. Like the unseelie court - the dark conscience of the natural order of things. A conspiracy of hate and alienation which commits criminal acts at random, leaving those in 'real' society mystified. Yet sometimes, when a cart has just crushed the leg of an unfortunate child, or a hitherto placid horse has bitten the face of its groom, or a building has burned with everyone in it, somebody nearby recognises somebody they know - and yet doesn't Ned have green eyes, rather than blue?

People are Complex

If you had asked me 12 months ago what I knew about Orson Scott Card, I would probably have answered, "Isn't he that guy who wrote Ender's Game?" That was about the extent of my knowledge. It turns out that he's a devout Mormon and has, as some devout Mormons do, views about homosexuality that the mainstream might not share. This has apparently led to boycotts of the release of the new Ender's Game film in the States.

I don't intend to get into a rant about that issue in particular. Suffice to say that I don't agree with Orson Scott Card, but I disagree equally strongly with associating the political views of a writer or artist with their work - the work should stand on its own merits, and in Ender's Game it more than does. It is one of the most humane and brave novels for teenagers (who are nowadays called "Young Adults" for some reason) ever written. HP Lovecraft was a daft-as-a-brush racist, Wagner was a despicable anti-semite, L. Frank Baum thought that the native Americans ought to be wiped off the face of the earth...none of that should matter if their work is good and those views aren't in the work. I tend to think that boycotting the new Ender's Game film is rather dangerous, in that it subsumes art into a discussion about social values, and thus diminishes it.

Rather, what interests me about this issue is that, wherever you read discussion of the film on the internet, everybody feels bound to dismiss Orson Scott Card as nutty, insane, hateful, bigoted, appalling, and so forth. Even the sensible reviewers, who look at the film as a film, feel the need to preface their comments by saying "Of course, Orson Scott Card is a blithering idiot and a horrendous bigot to boot, but...." or words to that effect.

I think that's too easy. Of course I should preface these comments by saying that I don't agree with Orson Scott Card about homosexuality or gay marriage. Nonetheless, the only real encounter I have ever had with the man is this interview, in which he comes across as an overly-chatty but very nice, extremely warm-spirited and generous man with many interesting things to say about writing, about fantasy and SF, and about creativity. Which is to say, setting his views on homosexuality aside - if this interview was all you had to go on - he would appear as, generally speaking, a good egg.

People are complex, but we seem unduly keen to reduce them to what we hate about them. It's very easy, and tempting, to follow the equation that Card = homophobic = bad person. I think that's inherently dehumanising. For me, the far more interesting issue is: How can somebody who is broadly 'good' have views that are most certainly 'bad'? How can somebody write a book as empathetic as Ender's Game while apparently not having much empathy when it comes gay people who want to get married? Mr Card may be able to explain that, in fact.

It's something that you will inevitably encounter if you look into the political or social views, or the 'off screen' persona, of any creative person you admire. I think China Mieville is a brilliant writer and a really interesting and charming bloke in person too, but his political views in the abstract would probably make my hair stand on end. (Not that I'm comparing his views with those of Card - you understand my point.) Richard Dawkins is an astonishingly good science writer whose books communicate a love of knowledge and expression of wonder at the majesty of life, yet he's capable of sounding like a po-faced and mean-spirited bigot when the mood takes him, which is often. John Lennon wrote some beautiful songs, showing incredible insight into human emotions and how to express them, but he was capable of treating people in his personal life with appalling cruelty. You will be able to think of your own examples.

Part of being a person alive in the world is that you have to recognise that people often can't be pigeon-holed. Sometimes people hold views that you disagree with very strongly, and that doesn't necessarily make them a bad person. Sometimes people do 'bad' things while expressing beauty and empathy through their art. Trying to arrange the world in such a way that it's easy to divide the people you agree with and disagree with into separate camps labelled "hateful bigots" and "on the side of the angels" is extremely tempting, but foolish and mistaken. It's about expressing control over something - other people - that can't be controlled.