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Friday 2 June 2023

Verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways

John Whitbourn, like his Binscombe Tales character Mr Disvan, seems somehow to know just about everything that's going on. Out of the blue he sent me a clipping from the 2023 Salute show guide. 

It was gratifying to see a nod to Dragon Warriors from esteemed author Sarwat Chadda, and all the more so because it sounds as if DW helped to teach him the right lesson about both writing novels and running roleplaying campaigns, namely that "character is king" and it's the player-characters and not the plot that should drive the flow of the narrative.

We've talked long and often about the importance of going with the flow, how games best create stories, narrative emergence from character, and embracing chaos as the way to drive the story forward. It's the key to how Stan Lee swept Marvel to success in the 1960s, as Reed Tucker explains in his book Slugfest:

I was always concerned that the scenarios in the original Dragon Warriors books mustn't give first-time GMs the impression that adventures should be planned out like that. To me the prepared adventure is the safety net, the characters are the trapeze artists, and ideally the net doesn't need to be used -- or at most is the MacGuffin that gives the characters an ostensible reason to interact.

That's even more the underlying ethic of Jewelspider, my second look at the lands of Legend through a more folkloric lens. The Jewelspider book is being illustrated by Inigo Hartas (Leo's son) and you can see from his blog that it's in safe hands. The Patreon page pays for the art and maps, and as well as the prototype versions of Jewelspider you get regular articles and adventure seeds, access to various things I've worked on over the years, and rough cuts of upcoming work such as the endlessly-deferred Tetsubo. Tempted to quit the well-travelled path and strike out into faerie woods? Then join us.

10 comments:

  1. Hello Dave, sorry to be off topic, but, do you currently have any ETA on Vulcanverse book 5? Waiting for it to "restart" my adventure and do everything in one go.
    Thank you.

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    1. Hi Primus -- I'm way behind schedule on that book, and Jamie has been distracted by personal issues so hasn't had any opportunity to help out. I'm still hoping to get it out by the autumn. I will post updates here. Btw it will be the ideal book in the series to start in imo.

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    2. Oh good to know, I'll consider starting there then. Thank you for the reply. Also, I don't know about logistics, but, I'm based in JP, and I buy the books on Amazon JP print-on-demand, so, hopefully, there won't be a big delay from the original release, to the availability in the POD system of Amazon. Thanks again.

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    3. Amazon POD usually gets books to all markets pretty quickly. (In theory you should also be able to order through bookstores too, but that's patchy and I don't know if a bookstore in Japan would be able to get it.)

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  2. Hello Dave!
    What's your take on running roleplaying games online? I try to keep the rules systems as light as possible and I use a minimal dose of digital tools. Otherwise the game will be cumbersome and/or turn into a computer game. Do you find it easier or harder with immersion, or is it a different experience altogether?

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    1. Interesting questions, Joakim, that probably deserve a complete blog post. Jamie dropped out of online games early on in the pandemic, concluding that they weren't immersive enough. I soldiered on for a while, but found that some groups got distracted more easily. At first I favoured Discord with audio only -- the perfect "radio theatre",you'd think, but some players put up images and GIFs to ironically comment on the action, and I hate that. Nowadays I play in one fortnightly game on Zoom and that's it -- and I'm thinking of dropping out of that as I've come round to Jamie's point of view. The useful takeaway of the online gaming experiment for me has been an increasing preference for rules-light systems, but I find I only really enjoy the games face to face.

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  3. That's great news re Inigo, Dave. I'm not familiar with his work but I'm sure he's be a great asset to Jewelspider having taken a quick peak at your link. Who knows, then onto Mirabilis perhaps?!

    I finally got around to reading Tales of the Dying Earth, by the way (the four novels collected). You were right, they're fantastic. Better than Vance late 80s/90s, which were good, but not great. The Eyes of the Overworld was the best of them, in my opinion.

    Funnily enough, the only other book I took on holiday with Vance's tales were of the Binscombe variety. As an aside, did I detect a retrospective hint of Vance in Mr Whitbourn's Downs Lord series do you think? I had to leave Stephen King behind due to a stingy baggage allowance.

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    1. It was John Whitbourn who put me onto the works of Jack Vance, Andy, so I'm sure the influence is there, and to my mind it's clearest in the Downs Lord series. Glad you liked the Dying Earth books. They're on my desert island reading list for sure.

      I hadn't thought of getting Inigo to finish Mirabilis with me, but you're right. It's the perfect solution. I remember years ago him asking me what was going to happen in the comics and I gave him the whole story outline. Little did we know then that -- who knows, maybe -- we might one day work on it together.

      Still, I shouldn't presume. Once the wider world sees his work he'll be much in demand. Also, I keep telling him he should present history podcasts and/or TV shows. I think he's in for a busy few decades...

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    2. Better sign him up now then Dave, whilst you can get him on the relative cheap! It would be nice if you could both get it finished, after Jewelspider of course.

      I brought the Amy-Faith books for the work friend who loved Binscombe/Altered Englands, by the way. She mentioned them in the same breath as Pratchett. I would give the books to one of the few remaining people who goes to Waterstones each month with a carrier bag rather than order them on Amazon to be able to then leave a review!

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    3. I reckon the Amy-Faith books could have been instant classics if a big publisher had got hold of them, Andy. The trouble is the way publishing works. John's agent is an SF expert, so he won't have many contacts among children's and young adult editors.

      And on top of that publishers always chase trends, so if a book isn't similar to the latest smash hit they're not interested. That's why Oliver hasn't found a publisher for his absolutely brilliant fantasy series The Knight of the Fields. "Too '90s in style," wittered one editor, oblivious of the fact that two other fantasy book series that are quite '90s in style are The Witcher and A Song of Ice & Fire. Oh, I mustn't get started on this. My blood pressure won't take it...

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