some say my furnace-wagon is too dangerous

SFF protagonist who's terrible at whatever complicated strategic board game the author's come up with

+ recently finished john m. ford's unfinished age-of-steam fantasy novel 'aspects' (he died suddenly midway through—you get the sense reading it that it was intended to be the first book of a sprawling series)...i don't know whether he was bisexual himself but his partner was and i was wondering throughout the book whether that contributed to the number of gay relationships in the main cast. the book itself felt a little like trek in that its main concern was lovingly rendering the character dynamics and occasionally going on a long "THE CHARACTERS PLAY AN ESOTERIC BOARD GAME" or "THE CHARACTERS ENGAGE IN RITUAL IMPROV" tangent

first part of the book was titled "nicholas the liar" and you know i love when there's a liar