The Bumblebee Budget

You approach the campfire with caution. Who would be out here in the middle of the forest? Your hand tightens on the grip of your longsword, and you sense, rather than hear, your friend string her bow. A voice calls from the firelight, “You’re late. We have much to discuss and night grows thin.”

That’s the scene of many roleplaying games: the players meet someone unexpected on the road and receive a new quest or learn important information about their current mission. And because it’s a game, sometimes subtlety must give way to expedience. It’s a trade-off certainly, but because RPGs are a shared storytelling experience, scenes like the one above act as a trailhead rather than a destination. As game masters we need to introduce doubt, leave clues and often a healthy dose of red herrings, and give the players material to work with. 

This strategy is on my mind right now because I have written a one-shot (i.e small game module meant to be played fully in one session), and it’s not quite hitting the mark. It has a mystery element, and I can’t find the balance of clues to action. The last thing I want is to plop an NPC down in the middle of the adventure to overload the players with information. “The old man tells you that his family once owned the mansion, and his little brother died in the basement....” 

I’d be hard pressed to leave such a scene in a novel, so I want to avoid it in this story, too. However, I don’t want the players to reach the end of the game having no idea what they just experienced. Was it a haunted house or was it all an illusion? They should know the answer by the end, and in fact, they should suspect it by the middle. 

This is also on my mind right now because in the game that I run, I’m creating a side quest about a mysterious artifact the players found. It was just random loot, generated from a loot table, but they have kept it close at hand, imaginatively speculating about its significance, and now it deserves a story. 

How to “tell” that story without telling the story? Different writers have their own methods, but for me, I often need to write it all out so that I can know and internalize the tale. Part one complete.

Now I have to figure out how to break it into pieces and how to present the pieces to my players in an organic, measured way. Mysteries are only fun if they are mysterious - deliciously cryptic or even frustratingly obscure - but solvable.

A scrap of paper with strange markings, a few pages of a journal, a name dropped casually in an unexpected place…. These are the clues that can help the players move toward the solution. Will they find them, understand them, interpret them correctly? If I’ve done my job, the answer will be yes. And if not, well, fortunately a good campaign keeps going. There’s always the next session to try to get it just right.

On the other hand, the solution I steer them toward is really only one possible conclusion, conceived by a single mind. One of the pure joys of tabletop role-playing comes from the inevitable narrative twists that emerge when a group of players takes the reins collectively and brings forth a story I could not have foreseen.

When the players are engaged with the world and the story we’ve built together, when they are making decisions that move that story forward while deepening their characters’ contextual identities, here is where magic, and the beautiful, unsolvable mystery of the origin of ideas and art’s creation truly begin.

Pathfinders of GameLit series #3

Through laughter, Drew Hayes makes us care

Though he doesn’t know it, author and game master Drew Hayes and I have been spending quite a lot of time together lately.

Drew’s official author photo.

What started off as a glancing one-shot dalliance has blossomed into full-fledged (one-sided) ardor. I thought I might give his amusing 2014 role-reversal story NPCs an afternoon’s attention, and soon found myself down a weird and wonderful rabbit hole brimming with fun and sympathetic characters, surprising storylines, and long, enjoyable narratives in genres ranging from superhero science fiction to humor, from urban fantasy satire to GameLit/LitRPG.

Given our affinity for characters who find themselves navigating a predefined game world and knowing that Drew is an author on the vanguard of the modern LitRPG trend, I first sought out NPCs thinking it would be a lighthearted tale of adventure for four hapless background citizens who find themselves thrust into the spotlight by unexpected circumstances. To be sure, this story does deliver on that promise, but as I discovered with all of the work by Hayes that I’ve encountered, it offers much more in terms of the emotional and daily lives and histories of those NPCs. In other words, here is a LitRPG story that promises a fun romp and then sneaks up on the reader with its depth and narrative sustainability. 

NPCs is the first volume in the Spells, Swords, & Stealth series.

Early in the book, one of the player characters dismisses any fate that befalls the town’s tavern keepers, guards, farmers, bards, dignitaries, etc. by noting they are “just NPCs,” so who cares? A few chapters in, one realizes that they may in fact care much more about those background citizens than they do the players themselves. As a player who struggles with the indiscriminate killing and looting of sentient game world characters, I have always found it easier to aim my arrows at aliens, zombies, and Nazis, so this concept resonates strongly with me on a personal level. Additionally, it serves to truly develop the setting into an immersive experience. These characters are not two-dimensional props positioned solely for the players’ amusement.

Admittedly, Hayes likely did not set out to write a manifesto for the rights of non-player characters, and it is a testament to his writing skill that the book works so well to offer the reader what she seeks from the story. Fun, simple fantasy with a twist? NPCs provides it. Enduring and sympathetic inner worlds of supposedly minor figures? Check. Parallel development of contrasting plots and character arcs between human players and NPCs? It’s all here.

Digging deeper into Drew Hayes’ career and backlist, we quickly find that he is an author’s author, dedicated to sharing information and highlights from a journey that has taken him from indie geek enthusiast writing the superhero stories he wanted to read to beloved established writer with a strong and diverse fanbase. The folks at the noteworthy On the Shoulders of Dwarves podcast recently featured Drew as a guest, where he took listener questions and spoke at length about his career, the business and artistic decisions he has made, and some of the writing techniques he has developed over the years. He has also appeared on the Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast, where his comments about mistakes he sees writers make (like skipping over the small moments!) still ring true and give a hint as to how he achieves believable and enduring characters, even in light-hearted novels.

Drew Hayes shares his marketing strategies.

He also offers frequent personal insights on his website’s blog, and serves up premium Patreon content for supporters on a regular basis. All of his public efforts demonstrate a genuine regard for fellow writers and gamers and fans, and he takes a refreshing and welcoming community-minded approach that helps to boost the success of all the genres in which he moves.

"A D&D Podcast From People Who Should Never Be Allowed to Play D&D."

Part of that community-building is the wildly successful actual-play podcast Authors & Dragons, a hilarious Pathfinder adventure that Drew has been producing with fellow writers since 2015. Together with Robert Bevan, Joseph Brassey, Rick Gualtieri, John Hartness, Steve Wetherell, and previously Rob Kroese, they’ve put out nearly 100 episodes plus several side quests so far and have developed such a dedicated group of listeners that they have organized a full-fledged A&D Convention in Las Vegas in September. The podcast stands out in the crowded field for several reasons, mainly the storytelling chops of the players, the fast pace of the sessions, and the undeniable humor in their roleplaying. It is immediately apparent that this group enjoys each other’s company, which adds to the spirit of the show, and yet they never forget that they have an audience. It’s a playthrough podcast that allows listeners to feel like participants in the story, a feat not easily accomplished.

And so, in the matter of a few weeks, I confess to having progressed from passing acquaintance with Drew Hayes’ work to enthusiastic reader and supporter of his many contributions to our community. He provides a wonderful example of an artist who has found his way to living a creative life by crafting fun and emotionally-rich stories and paying it forward to help others succeed in the industry he loves. I hope he continues to blaze these trails for a long, long time.

Hop on.

The alluring title refers to an excellent anthology by editor Hope Nicholson as well as describing our own daily lives. (Maybe it should be the “Not So Secret Loves…..”) Like the contributors to this 2016 Dark Horse release, Debbie and I love games, comics, SciFi shows like The Expanse and Star Trek, novels with swords, sorcery, and spaceships, and 20-sided dice.

(Guilty as charged.)

We’re proud to have been one of the 3,640 Kickstarter backers to this anthology. The book covers heartbreak, secret crushes, obsessions, and the ways that the world of geekdom can comfort us in dark times. The book has a good balance of text stories and comics and a nice range of voices: older women, women of color, LGBTQIA, and several emerging writers and illustrators.

The book offers a stunning breadth of work from the likes of Margaret Atwood, Sam Maggs, Roberta Gregory, Soraya Roberts, and Meags Fitzgerald (plus an additional dozen or so magnificent contributors) all in one slick volume.

The stories that resonated with me were the ones about growing up geeky. Like Cherelle Higgins, I first read Lord of the Rings in middle school, but I was lucky enough to keep my copy of the book intact. I also felt right at home in Laura Neubert’s comic about Jane Eyre. But there are many more pieces to the collection, covering a range of topics, including game criticism, essays on romance programming in games like Mass Effect, and one about finding mentors by Soraya Roberts that is all too familiar to too many women.

Collections like this one help to break the stereotype that women don’t play games, devour fantasy and science fiction novels, and read/write/draw/celebrate the wonderful, wild world of geekdom. We have always been out there - out here - playing Gears of War and D&D and Arkham Horror. Reading and writing GameLit, FanFiction, Steampunk, and SciFi. Creating comics like The Underfoot and Nimona. Making albums, podcasts, zines, art installations, ARGs, and interactive fiction that all say “Geek girls unite!” -Beth

Pathfinders of GameLit Series #2:

Navigating the Quagmire in Andre Norton’s Quag Keep

Andre Norton was already a long-established scifi and fantasy author by the time Gary Gygax invited her to play his new game Dungeons & Dragons in 1976. Born Alice Mary Norton in 1912, she published her first book in 1934 and continued to churn out a trove of books and stories in genres ranging from fantasy to hard scifi to what we would now call young adult. 

She is beloved by a legion of readers who continue to offer heartfelt tributes to the writer and her work, even though she passed away over a decade ago, in 2005. In further testament to her enduring legacy, the list of contemporary authors who list her as a major influence include such luminaries as Greg Bear, Lois McMaster Bujold, C. J. Cherryh, Mercedes Lackey, and Charles de Lint. Clearly, she has had a major impact on the field of fantasy, speculative, and science fiction.

Any talk of GameLit or LitRPG that does not mention Norton’s 1978 novel Quag Keep is either uninformed or negligent of the field’s rich history. Her firsthand experience and access to the origins of D&D and tabletop roleplaying games allowed her to plant a flag for the novelization of collaborative storytelling adventures from the onset. Indeed, Quag Keep sets the standards early for a genre in which players find themselves as characters within the game itself. Her party consists of a swordsman, a wereboar berserker, an Amazonian “battlemaiden,” a bard, an elf ranger, a cleric, and a lizardman warrior.

Such a motley grouping would be unlikely if adventurers were left to find comrades and collaborators on their own, but it certainly mimics the odd assortments we often see around a game table. To her credit, Norton does not shy away from the subject of racial (or speciesist) prejudice amongst these characters, especially concerning Naile the berserker’s immediate and vocal hatred of Gulth, the lizardman, based solely on his origins and scaled skin. Though the other party members do not share Naile’s blanket hatred for Gulth, Norton does show us a passive “othering” of him in some of their internal thoughts. A modern reader will easily pick up their unconscious biases and even their micro-aggressions toward him, even though such terms were not a staple of literary criticism when the book first appeared. It’s a compelling endeavor to follow how this tension plays out through the group's travails.

As we now expect from a story depicting a diverse team, Quag Keep is explicit in laying out the individual contributions each member of the party makes toward their collective goal. They don’t know each other when we first meet them. They are disoriented and fearful of their circumstances, and wary of the strangers who appear to share their situation, based on the mysterious bracelet of oddly-shaped dice bound to their wrists. They come to understand that a geas, or a magically binding conscription, has been placed upon them to venture together in hopes of solving the mystery and winning back their autonomy. They grudgingly set forth on a confusing mission beset by deadly enemies and a hostile environment. (In fact, over a mere 220 pages, they travel from frozen mountains to dust-choking desert to fetid swamp, ensuring every member of the team is severely hampered at some point in the journey.)

Some readers are surprised when they learn that Andre Norton was a woman, given her pen name. (She actually used several traditionally male names, including Andrew North and Allen Weston. In 1934, she legally changed her name from Alice to Andre.) According to her 2005 obituary in the Los Angeles Times, “publishers told her that a masculine-sounding name would help sell her books to boys, who constituted the target audience. ‘There were about five women writing fantasy, and all of them used male names,’ she told Associated Press in 1999. ‘We had no choice.’” Fortunately, publishers and marketers have since discovered the army of female and nonbinary fantasy, scifi, and gaming fans and the writers and artists who have always been here.

It’s often risky to read a literary older work with a contemporary sensibility, but since gender stereotypes and the depiction of women in fantasy literature continues to provide (sometimes controversial) fodder for serious discussion, it’s nearly impossible not to pay attention to how this female writer who assumed a male name approaches female characters in the first novel based on the world of D&D. (For the record, 1978 wasn’t that long ago - fewer than 50 years - but as they say, we like to think “we’ve come a long way, baby,” (at least in some respects.) So, how does Quag Keep stack up? Other than a shapeshifting witch we meet briefly near the end, the populous book presents a single female character: Yevele, the Amazonian battlemaiden.

Yevele is a serious badass who can take on multiple foes simultaneously and emerge victorious. She is a thoughtful fighter and reliable comrade, treating every other party member with respect and grace. Perhaps as a result of her status as a minority member herself, she is the character who speaks out in support of Gulth the lizardman, and also the one to tend to his near-death wounds. She tends to nearly everyone else in the party, and is sometimes ordered to so. The men (and often the writer herself) frequently refer to Yevele as the “girl.” In further contemporary interpretation of this story, we see that Yevele is expected by the rest of the party to carry out the emotional labor of the campaign, to be the “office mom.” Here’s one example, a scene in which Yevele dispatches her own foes and then plays the role of nurse when Milo the swordsman and Naile the berserker leave the battle poisoned by creatures known as urghaunts. (We’ll overlook the sensualistic language, as it is not representative of Norton’s portrayal of this character throughout the book:)

"Yevele leaned down, raised his arm, held it firm while she sucked along the slash and spat, her smeared lips shaping no distaste for what she did..."

(Naile brings over some leeches he has caught)

"With no outward sign of aversion, she plucked out of the berserker's hold a wriggling yellow thing, hardly thicker than a bow cord."

(After a few minutes)

"’Enough, girl. Those draw-mouths are a-plenty to do the work...Ah’ -- Naile sat back on his heels. ‘See you that now?’ he demanded of Yevele..."

(Two leeches fill up with poison and drop off.)

“Naile watched and then gave an order. ‘Use your snaplight, comrade. They would suck a man dry were they left. But their brethren have taken the poison. The wound is clean.’

Yevele brought from her belt pouch a small metal rod and snapped down a lever on its side. The small spark of flame which answered touched the suckers one by one. They loosed, fell, and shriveled…Three followed the example of the drinkers of Milo's poison and fell away. At the berserker's orders, the battlemaid disposed of the rest."

It’s difficult to untangle how much of the depiction of Yevele (as well as that of Gulth) portray the attitudes prevalent in the quasi-medieval D&D land of Greyhawk or those of the second-wave feminism shaking the late 1970s world in which Norton wrote this book. For her part, Yevele seems to ignore or rise above any seeming misogyny doled out by fellow adventurers (and perhaps by her creator.) We are left to wonder, would this character do that now, without comment or complaint?

How might Norton imagine Quag Keep if she started writing it today? Would she stick to the framework she herself established for all the GameLit novels that would follow? Much of what she did with this story has proven an enduring and solid approach, one that has withstood real-world advances in social justice and has allowed the resulting genre to depict game worlds and their inhabitants with ever increasing variety. A democratization of publishing has also led to avenues in which writers of all stripes are able to reach their audience, without the gatekeeping Norton encountered. Given her status as a pathfinder and prolific leader in the field, it’s likely that she would continue to create strong female and other marginalized characters, and she might have them acknowledge and even voice their reaction to their status in the depicted game world. In fact, it’s not hard to imagine that if writing today, Andre Norton might just ask us to call her Alice.

Histoires Prodigieuses; the Monster of Cracow.

Game monsters have been plaguing me since 1982. That was the year I first played Dungeons and Dragons with my high school friends. We fought skeletons and bandits and gained a lot of loot, including a very memorable cursed sword.

Peruvian harpy, Ednauis et Rapilly, [1700-1799].

Those early monsters had low armor numbers and high hit points, thanks to THAC0 (aka using probability tables to determine combat outcomes), but the loot was good, so who can complain? The summer we started playing, gas cost about 85 cents a gallon, guys were wearing topsiders, and girls were wearing ruffled shirts and blouses with huge bows. But around the table, our world was Greyhawk, and no one was thinking about “high” gas prices or Cabbage Patch dolls. (More likely, we groused about the price of healing potions and a better sword.)

Someone else's collection.

In college it was hard to find a D&D group, so I hijacked my friend Mike’s computer to play Zork. Trolls, grues, and that @#%$ vampire bat…  I got to know them too well. Later I matched wits with the Vogons on an Apple ii playing as Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A few years later Debbie bought an NES so that we could explore Mario’s world, the creepy nooks and crannies of Castlevania, and the kingdom of Hyrule…. and we never looked back. Since then we’ve battled big bads on a Commodore 128, a Sega Genesis, myriad standup arcade cabinets, handheld thumb smashers, and a host of evolving living room consoles.

The next time I had a real D&D group, we were playing Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition, and oh man, the monsters! We fought a leviathan that almost dragged our elf rogue (Debbie’s character, alas!) down to the briny deep forevermore. We had a total party wipe fighting a hydra. It was so brutal our DM decided that it had all been a really bad dream. (Thanks again, Michelle!)

In our current D&D campaign, we lost a party member (RIP Arthur) to a young black dragon. We’ve fought ice giants, elf mages, corrupt kings, ghosts, and Duergar. We’re still battling digital monsters, too. Debbie is back in Cyrodiil playing Oblivion, which has inspired me to return to Skyrim on the 360 when I’m not battling Advent aliens in Xcom 2. 

True headlines.

I am convinced that facing down ghouls and deathclaws and harpies throughout the years has helped me hone my skills in strategy and group dynamics, and has taught me about sacrifice and choosing sometimes between honor and profit. Sharing the unfolding of these stories in real time with others has fostered confidence and empathy during stressful narrative moments. These characteristics I find helpful in the real world, too, which presents its own parade of monsters in headlines and occasionally closer to home. Gaming has certainly taught me how to assess the situation at hand, collaborate with like-minded teammates, and stand ready to take on a challenge. -Beth

In late summer of 2015 we were watching Geek & Sundry’s show TableTop. Host Wil Wheaton and his family were going to play a role-playing game-style board game called Mice and Mystics, about a group of mice who battle evil. We only watched about 20 minutes and then turned it off, because we knew we HAD to get a copy of the game for ourselves, and we didn’t want story spoilers.

One of the benefits of an RPG board game is that it makes it easy for novices to try out the genre in a relatively low investment/low effort way. The game contains all the rules, maps, figures, and story content that you need, and the characters come pre-generated! No choosing ability statistics, no pouring over spell lists, no clunky rulebook, no math, no pencils! If you are looking for a gateway to entice your friends and family into RPGs, could there be a better way than ADORABLE, spell-casting, sword-wielding mice?

Although the world of Mice and Mystics is a universe away from the Pacific Northwest, (Or is it? We have a lot of mysterious forests...) what unites all RPGs are their characters, lore, and setting. The framework for magic, commerce, and even government informs the story world in large and small ways. Is magic rare or common? Are the yeomen prospering or suffering? Is the mayor giving the group a quest, or maybe a bishop rules the area? Or a wise woman?

It’s not farfetched to consider a different setting that offers the same abundant array of options. These good and courageous mice could be panning for gold in the mountains of Oregon, braving the Straits of Juan de Fuca, or riding with Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce as he tried to relocate his people to Canada, pursued by 2,000 US cavalrymen…. But those are stories for another time, another place, another M&M expansion!

Plaid Hat Games released Mice and Mystics in 2012, and it’s still in print. The core game, for 1-4 players (some chapters can accommodate up to 6), has an extensive storybook offering 11 chapters of gameplay. Each chapter takes about 60 minutes to play, so you have many hours of fun crammed into one small, beautifully illustrated box. The quality of the art and components are top-notch. Players can choose campaign mode that spans across multiple sessions and character development, or a group can dip in and play a particular chapter instead.

"Mice & Mystics" by Plaid Hat Games.

When it comes to enduring role playing games, having interesting characters to portray is key. Even in the first chapter, players gradually become acquainted with the personality and strategy options available for each mouse, which lends some replay-ability even after the story has been revealed. (Will Tilda the healer buff the party’s defenses or lend aid after they are wounded? Which one new treasured item will Maginos the Mystic decide to bring to the next chapter?)

Pathfinders of GameLit Series #1:

Joel Rosenberg’s The Sleeping Dragon

At the time of its publication in 1983, The Sleeping Dragon emerged into a world where several real-world factions stood ready to oppose it. The early eighties was a time of protracted censorship attempts and fear-mongering campaigns among various religious groups, self-described “concerned” parents, and politicians seeking to capitalize on public confusion. Tabletop games, live action role-playing sessions, and stories involving fantasy elements all came under fire and scrutiny in a wider phenomenon that came to be known as the “satanic panic.” (This collective hysteria saw the devil in all sorts of popular pastimes, from music to movies to just about any form of media that might influence young and impressionable minds.)

One of the most direct accusations that games like Dungeons and Dragons contribute to moral decay came from Jack Chick’s religious tract Dark Dungeons, in which young Debbie, the group’s level 8 cleric, is introduced to the “real power” of witchcraft. When her friend’s character dies in game and she subsequently hangs herself in despair, Debbie somehow feels responsible. The spiritual battle for Debbie’s soul ensues: will she turn from the dark world of gaming forever and destroy her player’s handbook and minis? 

“Dark Dungeons by Jack Chick.

Booklets like this one, in addition to sensationalist novels like the 1981 Mazes and Monsters by Rona Jaffe (which speculates about the relationship between fantasy rpgs and a young man’s suicide), a much-discussed 60 Minutes episode questioning whether D&D is evil (see below), and Famed anti-D&D crusader Patricia Pulling’s group BADD (Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons) all lent a heavy hand in prejudicing the world against roleplaying games and stories of speculative worlds filled with magic, fantastical creatures, and heroic quests. 

Into this pearl-clutching zeitgeist Joel Rosenberg released The Sleeping Dragon, a slender novel depicting a group of college students who play a regular weekly game in the student commons, led by middle aged professor Dr. Arthur Deighton. We join them for a regular session, learn a bit about the players (one jock, one ingenue with a secret, one brilliant schemer in a wheelchair, a hapless dilettante who never seems to get the girl, the young woman he coerces to play for the first time, a class clown wiseacre bro, and a skinny, uninspired engineering major in his 9th semester at the school.) 

Rosenberg draws a deft example of the typical start of an evening of gaming, gives us an idea of the character each player embodies, as well as their feelings about their current campaign. The players believe that they will be picking up where they left off last session - in the middle of a dark dungeon, with most of them having taken damage or having used all their spell slots, natch - but Professor Deighton has other plans for them. He introduces a new scenario, assigns a few players different roles, and begins reading the opening lines of the setup: “You find yourselves on a hilltop, overlooking a vast walled city...”

The Sleeping Dragon, Joel Rosenberg, 1983.

Suddenly, our heroes find themselves waking up, having been transported to this new land described by their teacher. Alas, he’s nowhere to be seen. Even more disorienting, they have shifted to become their characters in the flesh, with the stats, bodies, and personalities of those characters. It’s a fun premise we’ve seen many times since then in other books, but in this early example we can already see the appeal of the burgeoning genre as the players not only wake up immersed in the game world, but have a chance to experience their characters fully, flaws and all. 

The story moves quickly as they discover what happened and why, find out what they need to do next, and then move through a series of challenges towards their goal. For a lighthearted gaming story, some of the situations quickly turn somber and mature in a way that makes sense for the book’s setting, but still surprise a reader who looks at the cover and thinks Terry Pratchett rather than George R.R. Martin. In fact, The Sleeping Dragon sneaks up with a serious story disguised as a romp. 

The writing is adequate, though keeping track of all those players AND their characters is difficult. (At any given time, there are 14 characters in play, plus the NPCs.) Since the point of view often shifts into omniscient internal monologue, it’s sometimes hard to determine who is doing the thinking. At one point, Rosenberg actually splits the page as one character battles internally between his human self and his game-world barbarian self, running separate columns down the page for each train of thought. Fortunately, that gimmick doesn’t go on long and he begins to trust the reader to understand the internal conflict. 

As a product of the 80s, the book does give modern readers some cringe-worthy moments, like its references to James Michael, the boy in the wheelchair, as a “cripple” or the author’s own bio casually mentioning the work he did "caring for the institutionalized retarded." There are the familiar ogling and objectification of the women characters, but these women don’t really put up with it for long. Rosenberg’s attempts at deepening his characters with a frustrating would-be love triangle and a surprisingly heavy-handed idealistic mission near the end of the book work against the promise of a fun gaming adventure in some ways, but also serve to elevate this story above a silly series of fetch-it quests undertaken by one-dimensional stereotypes. 

For gamers reading this book, it’s fun to see how the player knowledge and the character knowledge aid the story’s trajectory, and move the group further toward the conclusion. As the barbarian awkwardly proclaims near the end, “we’ve all grown...” While a character shouldn’t have to spell that out for his reader, and it’s likely that no one is going to fall in love with any of the people in this book, Rosenberg does work to make them believable and fairly sympathetic. 

His efforts seem to have paid off, because his novel rose above the warning clamor of “satanic panic” to find a receptive audience. He went on to create nine more successful books set in this world, known collectively as the Guardians of the Flame series. Joel Rosenberg was also the subject of a thriving fan community, which poured over the Guardian books and their characters in a forum and chat room called Slovotsky’s Laws until 2007. (The forum lovingly named after Walter Slovotsky, one of the original characters in The Sleeping Dragon.) Mr. Rosenberg died on June 2, 2011 at the age of 57, leaving us with a firm bedrock of GameLit tropes and ideas from which to grow this genre and community of fans, gamers, writers, and yes, probably even a witch or two.

Introducing our new Series

Prologue: Why look to the past?

"Dragon Che Abbate Un Leo," by Leonardo da Vinci.

In recent years we’ve seen a flurry of discussion and even some infighting among the community of authors and readers who enjoy gaming and portal literature, their arguments usually related to the coining or claiming of the term LitRPG, the original establishment of the sub-genre (and all its own sub-genres), and even the right to refer to one’s work as belonging a particular category.

The community has endured controversial trademark grabs, wholesale forum bannings, and attempts to police which works might be allowed to share space on these shelves. The ensuing enmity has given rise to several splinter groups and communities, all looking for a haven away from exclusionary personality cults and restrictions on critical discussion of the work. 

For our part, we believe there is room for everyone here, and indeed, our mission is to help uncover the unsung writers and stories that incorporate the elements of GameLit and LitRPG in new and interesting ways. We know that art and literature continue to evolve to reflect the needs and desires of the society that gave them life, and we want to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to participate. We also know that long before brilliant Russian authors began to put their characters into game worlds and show us their heroes’ progressive stats as they leveled, and long before internet forums entertained the spirited discussion over whether “harem” novels were worthwhile and/or necessary, there were writers giving us the same vicarious thrills, the same “stranger in a strange land” tales, the same gaming mechanics we love in our modern versions. While they may not have listed ability scores and achievement tables, these authors did lay the groundwork for what was to come.

We consider these early authors the progenitors of the genre, and we want to honor the path they forged for all of us to either follow or stray from in our own stories, at our own discretion. In the coming weeks, we’ll be highlighting these early works in our Pathfinders of GameLit series, starting with Joel Rosenberg’s The Sleeping Dragon from 1983. We hope you’ll join us, and we welcome suggestions! Any recommendations that YOU consider GameLit are welcome.

The fantasy subgenre known as GameLit has many sub-subgenres. In fact it has so many flavors that it’s hard to categorize them all. In the same way that the term “game” can mean board game, video game, tabletop RPG, freeze tag, marbles, cribbage, chess, hopscotch, and double dutch jump rope, GameLit stories can encompass high fantasy, urban fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, steampunk, and romance (to name a few).

For someone new to the subgenre, it can be confusing to know what the terms mean and hard to figure out what sort of story will grab your attention. We’re happy to add our perspective on the worlds of GameLit.

At its core, GameLit is any story that incorporates game mechanics into the narrative. This can be as light as having quests and combat, like Andre Norton’s 1979 novel Quag Keep:

Quag Keep, first edition, Andre Norton, 1979.

Or, it can be a contemporary story packed with statistics and skills like Threadbare by Andrew Seiple:

Threadbare Vol I, Stuff & Nonsense, Andrew Seiple, 2017.

And... anything in between! If you enjoy games and books, chances are there is a GameLit novel or story for you. Even with its long, diverse history, this field and its nomenclature continue to evolve. For now, here’s a basic list:

Dungeon - stories that involve the creation and/or maintenance of dungeons

Dungeon Core - similar to Dungeon but with the focus on the dungeon AI as the main character

Historica - stories that incorporate history and historical elements in the plot, characters, or setting

Isekai/Portal - stories where the main character is transported to another world, often a virtual world or MMO setting

Mythos - similar to Historica, these stories use mythology as a background, framework, or setting, and gods & goddess as characters

Post Apocalyptic - stories with themes that can include zombies, pandemics, or post-global conflicts as disruptors of civilization

Space/Sci-Fi - includes stories that are heavier on science, technology, and space exploration

Steampunk - stories that bring in elements of steampunk technology, culture, fashion, and settings

Superheroes - stories that involve the complex worlds of superheroes and villains

World Building - similar to Dungeon but with larger elements of the game world and the minds behind it

Wuxia - describes stories that focus completely on Chinese Martial Arts

Xianxia/Cultivation - these stories focus on the main character cultivating their powers, discovering, nurturing, strengthening whatever special abilities have awakened within them

An Interesting Game, Frederick Arthur Bridgman, 1881.

Games are important to our company. Not only do we write and publish stories that incorporate games and game mechanics, we play games, lots of games. And over the years we’ve created a lot of house rules. Some of them help us simplify our play, like our own special “on the couch” version of Trivial Pursuit and our two-handed American style Mahjong. Other rules we’ve created to help us navigate or streamline games like Risk, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, or Arkham Horror in order to fit their long session length into a busy schedule. Some days it feels like our house rules outnumber the official rules.

That idea got me to thinking about the way that games - board games especially - have changed over the years. Take the “Checkered Game of Life” created by none other than Milton Bradley in 1860. It looked like a Checkers board and had squares that said things like “Politics” or “Idleness” or “Matrimony.”

Checkered Game of Life, Milton Bradley, 1860.

Land on “Idleness,” for example, and it sends you half a board back to “Disgrace.” As if that wasn’t enough of a downer, there are also squares for “Poverty,” “Ruin,” and “Suicide.” Compare those events to the current “Game of Life” with troubles like “Law Suit” and virtues like “Recycling.”

The original game took you from infancy to 50 years of age. (That square says “Happy Old Age.” To which I say, No Comment.) The object of the game was to amass 100 points, and the final square does give you 50 points, so there is something to be said for surviving to such a ripe age.

While the Game of Life saw updates based on the changing tastes and interests of the public, Scrabble’s rules have been updated to reflect how players actually play the game. 

The rules have been updated at least 4 times, and some of those updates have evolved to bring common house rules into the official canon.

The game was invented in the 30s, and the rules were simplified in the 40s, but it wasn’t until the early 50s that Scrabble became a household staple. Within a year or two of this sudden surge of players, they had to update the instructions, both to clarify some rules and add others.

Games bring us together, and arguing over the rules (while an invigorating pastime in itself) can drive us apart. I suspect that in many houses, house rules are an evolutionary upgrade that ensures we keep playing.

-Beth

“Where do you get your ideas?” It’s a common question for writers, and while not every novelist is a historical fiction writer, history is full of fascinating stories aching to be retold. And there’s always a story, isn’t there? In everyday life and in history, there’s what happened before, during, and after the event. You got someone else’s coffee order at the drive-thru; the wallet you thought you lost turned up three months later. What happened to your wallet for three months? Who got your coffee?

Alamogordo New Mexico, 1945. Groves & Oppenheimer examine remains of a tower destroyed in a test.

History is filled with small questions – what did Robert Oppenheimer do the day after he tested the first atomic bomb? Who sold all those covered wagons to the Oregon Trail hopefuls? What was their story?

Scholarship can help answer some of these questions. You might ask, what was it like to be a farmer in Kentucky during the American Civil War and have a battle brewing in your back 40 acres?

Troops marching on a road in the rain, Green River, Kentucky, 1861.

Luckily 155 years is still pretty recent history, and historians can use primary sources like letters and diaries to help piece-together that story. Going back almost 250 years to the American Revolution is a bit tougher. There are fewer surviving sources, especially of everyday people like farmers and merchants. Literacy was less common, and materials like ink and paper were harder to come by.

On top of that, history can be a slippery creature. What you learn is colored by who is telling the tale and what they bring to it – consciously or unconsciously - but that gray area is just what storytellers need. It’s a crack in the veneer of fixed, unchanging history.

Our Flumgudgeon, the literary journal, takes its name from the first newspaper published west of the Rockies: The Flumgudgeon Gazette and Bumble Bee Budget. Based in Oregon City, Oregon, the newspaper appeared 3 times a week, with handwritten copies posted around the city.

That was August of 1845. The year before, a group of Oregon City men had formed a newspaper committee and ordered a printing press, but it would take two years for the press to make the journey from the east coast to the west. In the meantime, politics were heating up in the Oregon Territory, and Charles E. Pickett, the mind behind The Flumgudgeon Gazette and an early traveler on the famous trail from the east, had some ideas he wanted to discuss.