Crafting characters and stories

The current trend in indie roleplaying is to keep at least one eye on the authorial view of your character. I played in a recent game where a player used a retcon rule to ensure their character appeared in the right place in the nick of time to foil an NPC villain's master plan. Somebody on Twitter (or X if you're a member of the Musk family) was proposing that a player should get to write the monologue for the BBEG of the campaign. Even the rules of some indie RPGs are built around "satisfying character arcs" and other Hollywood-exec jargon.

It's not to my taste. I don't like retcons because they break immersion. Taking an authorial view of your PC doubly so. I prefer narratives that emerge in the moment; they're more exhilarating to play in and less trite to experience. I didn't even know what BBEG stood for till I Googled it. My campaigns rarely have anything as simplistic as a Big Bad (that's for kids' TV) and in any case they wouldn't waste time monologuing (has nobody out there seen The Incredibles?).

When Pelgrane Press got the Dying Earth licence, we talked about some Dying Earth gamebooks and I must admit I came up with an authorial approach. Paul Mason had to point out to me that the main effect of putting the player in the author's role would be to distance them emotionally from the events of the story. That might be why it's favoured in indie roleplaying, in fact; the ultimate safe space is when you don't have to commit to the character, the same way that Mystery Science Theater 3000 allowed nerds to ironically distance themselves from movies they'd be embarrassed to admit to liking.

But even if you don't play in authorial mode, it's handy to know about plotting and characterization. If you're refereeing the game you'll at least want to go in with a storyline in mind, even if it's just a safety net that you'll never use because the real story will be shaped spontaneously by the players' actions. And character-creation tips aren't only useful for designing NPCs. Players can benefit from starting with some traits and foibles, even if (as often happens) those drop away later as the character becomes more real to them.

Which is why I recommend Roz Morris's Nail Your Novel series. All right, yes, I am married to her. But I wouldn't let a little thing like that sway my opinion. I use Roz's advice when writing my own stories, both in book form and around the gaming table. You can try out her 100 tips for fascinating characters free. Let us know how you get on, and which style of roleplaying you prefer.

Pirates ahoy

There's a lot of talk about generative AI hallucinating, but what kind of hallucination has to happen in a human brain for them to think it's right to take someone else's work, slap their own name on it, and put it up for sale (aye, and here's the rub) at more than the price of the genuine article?

The question isn't purely rhetorical. While creating links for the Fabled Lands bookstores (US here, UK here) I came across some of my own gamebooks on sale on Apple Books under different titles. Well, nearly different -- whoever pirated them was dumb enough to leave "Critical IF" in the name, which is why they popped up on a Google search.

As you can see, one rip-off edition wasn't enough for them. And that time could have been so much better spent teaching themselves English. And, I dunno, ethics. Others have pointed out that they've also ripped off images owned by some big hitters, who might well come gunning for them with more than a rusty cannon. Happily, Apple's legal department has now deleted the books, though I suspect the same piratical individuals will just upload them again under new titles.

If you think all that is bad (and I hope you do) you should hear what happened to my wife. A company offering online courses ripped off the entire contents of her Nail Your Novel books and spent years selling "their" writing course for considerably more than the cost of the books. She only found out about it because the company had lazily cut-&-pasted everything from the books including a mention of her name, enabling one of their customers to track her down to ask if she'd be doing any more courses. (In fact she does have a bona fide online course, Become a Ghost-Writer.) She found a lawyer, but after months of effort all she got was a desultory payout -- a fraction of the money the company had made off the back of her work. Sadly, often crime does pay.

Anyway, on the principle that one has to rise above such knavery, I'll just point out that you can get the most up-to-date editions of the Critical IF books for less money from legitimate sources. Don't let the hornswogglers win!

Critical IF e-books are available on Amazon US and Amazon UK from $0.99 to $2.99.