Category Archives: fiction

Every Old Hero Is New Again

Posted by under fiction, writing

Robin Laws has just posted the full cover for The New Hero vol.2 anthology, due from Stoneskin Press in February 2013. It’s a gorgeous piece by Gene Ha, featuring every protagonist from every story in the book, in the style of a classic Japanese woodcut.

I have a story in TNH2, and my character can be seen standing on the bridge on the left-hand side. He’s the tall fellow in medieval clothes, with a pudding-bowl haircut. I can’t tell you his name because he doesn’t have one, but I can tell you that the silver dots on his leather cloak are pilgrim’s badges. If you remember that I’ve written about a fantasy hero with no name and a religious angle before, please be reassured that this guy is very, very different. I think you’ll like him.

Please help me choose my next book

Posted by under fiction, game design, writing

It feels like time to write another book, and I’ve got a question for you. I’ve got three projects that I could usefully and quite easily turn into books, and I’m torn between which one to pursue, so I’d like your advice. Which of these would you be interested in reading? Which of these might you pay for? If more than one, which first?

COME ON PILGRIM
In the summer of 2006 I researched and walked the route of the original Pilgrim’s Way, 146 miles between Winchester and Canterbury. Some of it was along established footpaths, some was along major roads, and parts involved trespassing through farms, woods and gardens, as well as working out how to cross major rivers where there haven’t been fords or ferries for hundreds of years. And since the medieval pilgrims didn’t have maps of the route, I didn’t either.

At the time I wrote a blog of the whole thing, which with some editing and about 10,000 new words could be turned into a witty chronicle of a journey that was more physical and emotional than spiritual—though along the way I would try to finally answer the question of why an atheist like me would go on a medieval pilgrimage. Also there aren’t many recent books about the Pilgrim’s Way and its actual course, and it’s a subject that covers the history of Britain and its evolution into the country it is now, so there’s plenty of tasty meat. This would be much, much more than a chronicle of a ramble.

VIDEOGAMESMANSHIP
I gave a talk at GameCamp about ‘Videogamesmanship, or how to win games without being any good at them’. It was based on Stephen Potter’s splendid 1947 book Gamesmanship, which is better known as the basis for the Terry Thomas movie School for Scoundrels.

Gamesmanship involves using psychological cues to put your opponent at a disadvantage, unsettling them, breaking their concentration and convincing them that you are the better player, or at least the one who ought to win. Potter applies it mostly to games like golf and tennis, where you have face-to-face contact with the other player, and there’s a sense of sportsmanship and fair play that the good gamesman can exploit to their advantage.

Gamesmanship is a delightful and very funny read, but it’s completely out of date—and in fact is long out of print in the UK. In an era of online games, where twelve-year-olds will teabag your twitching corpse while yelling about how they’ll shag your mum, is there still a place for methods of elegantly outplaying your adversaries?

I think there is. And I think I can get 30,000 cracking words out of it.

Videogamesmanship would cover the art and science of gamesmanship in online and offline play, realtime games like FPSes and RTSes and asynchronous games like Words With Friends, as well as MMOs, social games and mobile games, board-games, card-games and RPGs. Plus  the correct use of forums, possibly Twittermanship and  Angrybirdsmanship, and of course gameswomanship. If successful it may devolve into a second volume: Internetmanship, or how to win any argument on the internet despite being wrong.

ALAS VEGAS
Alas Vegas is the first tabletop RPG I’ve designed since The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen. I did a lot of work on it about eighteen months ago and then put it to one side when real work intervened, and never went back to it. Nevertheless I think it’s good stuff, unlike any other RPG I’ve ever played or read about.

Alas Vegas begins with the player-characters digging themselves out of a shallow grave in the desert outside a large casino city. It is midnight. They are naked. They have no idea who they are or how they got there. The game involves exploring the city, rediscovering their identities and learning what path led them to their sandy graves. At the same time they must work out what this place is, how it works, and how they can escape its clutches.

The game uses a semi-conventional GM-and-players structure, and plays to conclusion in four sessions. The main story has a pre-determined plot—it’s not a railroad but there are key NPCs, events and encounters. However the second story, the PCs’ identities and relationships and stories, is dynamically and collaboratively created by the players themselves as the game develops. At the end the two come together in a stunning climax of revelation and realisation, in an encounter with the shadowy figures who run the place… and just possibly a way out.

Alas Vegas is driven by a cut-down version of the never-before-published narrative system I originally developed in the 1990s to power the Bugtown RPG. The core mechanic is a version of Blackjack played with Tarot cards. The game is short. This is not a conventional RPG: it’s setting and system in a single pack, with no room for supplements or expansions. It is what it is and when it’s done it’s over.

To say more would spoil it, but this isn’t an RPG version of Tim Powers’ Last Call. It’s much weirder than that.

* * *

Okay. I want to write all three of these books, but it’s a question of prioritising one over the others. I could do Come On Pilgrim quite quickly but the other two require an investment of time and resources, so I’d probably have to run a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign to fund them. Would you back either? Both? Which one would you prefer?

There’s space for comments below and I look forward to hearing what you think.

Marks of Chaos: the missing pages of the lexicon

Posted by under fiction

I’ve got two stories for you.

Here’s the first one: about ten years ago I wrote two novels for the Black Library, Mark of Damnation and Mark of Heresy, set in the world of Warhammer. Mark of Damnation was conceived as a single-volume story, but once it was finished my editor convinced me that it could be expanded into a quartet. I wrote Mark of Heresy, decided there wasn’t a quartet there after all, and that was that.

The cover of Marks of ChaosA couple of years ago Black Library reissued the two books in a single volume, Marks of Chaos, which I urge the Warhammer fans among you to buy because I get royalties on it, which is nice. I’ve not actually seen a copy of Marks of Chaos because it’s a print-on-demand title and therefore not in bookshops or eligible for author’s copies or something. So when I read that the Black Library had included a couple of my short stories in the volume I assumed that someone there was familiar with the work I’d done on Warhammer FRP and had been a bit clever.

Marks of Chaos is the story of Karl Hoche, a man dragged from a successful career in the Empire’s army, first into the shadowy world of a secret division of the Reiksguard, and from there into the darker and nastier world of cults and mutation. Karl has a mentor, Gottfried Braubach, who has been around a lot longer than Karl. Specifically he’s eight years older, having first appeared in 1995, in the preface and afterword I’d written for the Warhammer FRP supplement Apocrypha Now, published through my old company Hogshead.

So I assumed the Black Library had unearthed and reprinted the two short, linked stories that introduced Braubach and his world, and I gave them a mental pat on the back for it. It wasn’t until Stuart Kerrigan reviewed Marks of Chaos last month that I learned I was wrong. Instead of the Apocrypha Now stories they’d included my two Palisades stories—which are superficially similar, but while the Marks books were inspired by the dark, labyrinthine espionage stories of John Le Carre and Len Deighton, the Palisades shorts were an ill-fated attempt to recreate a light-hearted 70s-style Brian Clements action-adventure TV series in the Warhammer world. It was initially entertaining but after two shorts the schtick had worn thin: I didn’t write any more of them, and nobody has ever asked me why I stopped.

I contacted the Black Library to let them know they owned the copyright on two short stories that haven’t been in print since 2002. To date the Black Library have not replied.

So that’s the first of the stories I promised you. Here’s the second:

Written to open and close an anthology of RPG articles, ‘Fire and Earth’ is a crumb that will barely touch the appetite of those who still hunger for the two unwritten books of the Marks of Chaos quartet. But it fills in some of the background to the series and introduces two characters who appear in the first book. And it may be seventeen years old but it’s held up pretty well.

Seventeen years. Time goes so fast. I should write more stories.

Cold Open

Posted by under fiction, narrative

My wife looked up over breakfast this morning and asked if I knew about NaNoWriMo, the annual National Novel Writing Month, a month during which—as the name suggests—you write a novel. Yes, yes, I said, I do. Then she said she’s going to take part, and would I like to as well? Which may have been phrased as a question, but wasn’t one.

For those who know my book output, speed-writing is not something I’m new to. Four of my books were each produced in under a month, five if you count the 2009 test-run of the Paige Turner project (my high-speed system that allows five writers to create a 100,000-word novel from first concept to a manuscript that’s ready for print in ten days, and if I told you which writers were involved in the test you might drown in your salivation to read it. Man, that was a fun time). But I’m out of practice with fiction right now, the only piece of conventional narrative I’ve done in the last year is a short for The New Hero anthology that Robin Laws is editing for Stone Skin Press. And it’d be good to get back into the groove.

And a challenge is a challenge. So yes, I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year. I’m going to do it cold. I’ll sit down tomorrow (it starts tomorrow) with no idea of what I’m going to write: no outline, no structure, no characters, no setting, not even a genre. I’ll have my usual pile of inspiration-generators to hand (Once Upon a Time, Rory’s Story Cubes, Oblique Strategies, a Tarot deck, BBC4, my four-year-old’s imagination) but other than that I’ll be in freefall.

Well, sort of. I have two things in place. One: my wife at my back. Two: a title. Whatever it turns out to be, it’ll be called ‘Cold Open’.

Updates to follow.

n00b World Reorder, part 2

Posted by under fiction, game design, geophysics, mmorpg, Uncategorized, world of warcraft

(This is a continuation of the essay started here and synopsised on video here.)

I note that my previous post has sparked some academic debate in certain circles relating to the validity of my research techniques and data. Therefore before we embark into a new area of discussion, I must address some of the comments addressed to my previous data. Specifically these relate to two areas: (1) is Azeroth, the World of Warcraft, spherical or flat? And (2) if it’s spherical, how can we accurately gauge how large a sphere it is?

To address point (2) first: there are two existing illustrations of Azeroth as a sphere: the globes that can be seen at various locations in the World of Warcraft, including in Dire Maul and Moonglade:

and the view of a planet assumed to be Azeroth that can be seen from Shadowmoon Valley in Outland:

...or is it?

Both give an equivalent view of Azeroth-as-sphere: the known continents occupy a roughly 180-degree arc of the surface, with the remaining area (in the Moonglade globe) filled with ocean and occasional small islands. That is the premise that underlay my initial observations and measurements.

But all this is moot. Other empirical evidence demonstrates clearly that the world of Azeroth is flat, the maps and globes are wrong, and the view from Shadowmoon Valley is an optical illusion. To illustrate this, here is a picture of a troll standing on a thin pathway that divides the Great Sea from the edge of the world. If the existing maps of the World of Warcraft are to be believed, this should be somewhere off the eastern coast of Dustswallow Marsh, between Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, and well south of the Maelstrom.

Since no sphere can have an edge with an apparently bottomless drop, this means the World of Warcraft is fucking flat, all right?

The pathway at the edge of the world shown above does not run around the entire perimeter of the world or even around Kalimdor, or we could have used the walking-measure described in part 1 to work out the size of the rectangle around the continent. But from visual observation, we have to report that Azeroth seems to exist on the end of a very tall pillar; possibly two or even three very tall pillars, one for each continent. In other words, please disregard pretty much everything I wrote in Part 1 because it’s balls.

We can make no firm statements about the length or breadth of the World of Warcraft, or its density, which leaves too many variables unknown to calculate the height of these pillars. We are not sure why the sea doesn’t fall through the side of the pillar, since it does not seem to be solid. We are also not sure what the bottom of the pillar is resting on, but it may well be a turtle. This is all so improbable that you should ignore the last three sentences of this paragraph, including this one.

However, we still have to accept that Azeroth (a) is flat, (b) is quite small, and (c) does not rotate relative to the stars around it. Point (d) is that its sun and moon behave in a manner that makes no gravitational sense. Azeroth has a single sun that rises in the north-west and sets some hours later, also in the north-west. Shadows cast by it point persistently south-east, though this does not seem to affect vegetation that grows in this perpetual shade. Azeroth also has a single moon, which also rises in the north-west and sets in the north-west. If it has phases and eclipses then none have been reported.

It is hard to explain this movement of Azeroth’s celestial bodies unless we assume that they are acting under the influence of gravity itself—rising above the horizon, reaching a zenith, and falling back below the horizon, where something reverses their momentum and propels them back upwards, once every day. Our personal theory is that beneath the level of the horizon is a very large giant juggling very slowly, but we have no hard evidence to support this.

(The cosmic physicist Doctor Myles Corcoran suggests that Azeroth could be an Alderson Disk, a large or infinite plane with holes of sufficient size through which the sun and moon oscillate back and forth endlessly. This implies two things: that at some point the plane of Azeroth, if such it is, loses its atmosphere and becomes frictionless vacuum; and the deity, intelligent designer(s), Old Gods, Titans or whatever other beings may have been involved in the creation of Azeroth are massive SF geeks. Frankly we prefer our theory with the giant.)

Despite the comparatively low surface gravity, it is clear that the atmosphere of Azeroth is much thicker than Earth’s. Without this density of gas the various giant insects and spiders would not be able to breathe, and the dragons, wyverns, hippogriffs, other large flying creatures and surprisingly small zeppelins would never get airborne, let alone carry large passengers. The ratio of gases in the atmosphere is unclear: the same flame that can set a massive stone creature or water elemental ablaze in an instant is unable to make the slightest impact on a tree, wooden building or field of dry grass. Ordinary fires will also burn underwater, which implies something very interesting but I’m not sure what.

The apparent density of the atmosphere also explains one of Azeroth’s more puzzling features: the fact that it is difficult to see clearly for more than a few hundred metres in any direction. While visibility over short distances is clear, large objects such as buildings and geographical features are either indistinct or completely invisible at distances of more than a few hundred metres. At closer range objects, mostly other living beings, come into sharper relief as the viewer approaches in a manner that suggests that either every inhabitant of Azeroth is strongly myopic, or there is something in the air that causes this effect. I will return to this subject in the third part of this paper, on the ecology of Azeroth.

Meanwhile my esteemed colleague Professor Sulka Haro of the University of Habbo has observed that the majority of the zones of Azeroth have no wind. In fact only one zone experiences wind, the desert region Tanaris, and that only sporadically, which may be due to factors other than climate. This must indicate, he hypothesises, that there is absolute thermic entropy in Azeroth. This is supported by the fact the lava one sees coming out of the volcanoes is so that characters can could safely walk on it (though this may be an artefact of the frictionless pads on their feet—see above). It may also go some way to explain how zones of intense volcanic activity can sit a few hundred metres from zones of perpetual snow without the former turning the latter to slush.

(Prof. Haro expands his thesis to cover insect life—”I haven’t seen any pollinators around, yet people are able to farm. The Azerothians crop must hence all be self-pollinating. But how is this, with no wind? Most baffling”—and the small animal life—“I’ve also come to the conclusion that the Azerothian rabbits are either herbivores that reproduce by seeds, or are parasites” but here we begin to impinge on the subject of the third part of this paper, the ecology of Azeroth, and we should hold back to let your minds digest the meat of this instalment, in much the way that the stomachs of WoW’s wildlife don’t.)

I am disappointed at the small number of essays I have received so far. More application and less fieldwork, class!

(Part 3 of the ‘n00b World Reorder’ series is now online here.)

Mundus Vult Decipi

Posted by under fiction, mmorpg

Spurred by a note from Gareth Hanrahan, I’ve been thinking about tracking down all the James Branch Cabell novels I’m missing.

Cabell, for the uninitiated, is one of the greatest fantasy writers of the twentieth century. While Lovecraft and Howard were hanging out with Howard and Lovecraft, Cabell was hobnobbing with Mark Twain, Sinclair Lewis and H L Mencken. His prose glistens with originality and knowing verve. His books are mythic and relevant today in the way that myths should be—Manuel, his epic hero who may be a strategic genius or may be a dullard with good fortune, has the motto Mundus Vult Decipi: The World Wishes to Be Deceived, and that’s more relevant today than it’s ever been. Read them today and every fantasy novel you’ve read in the last twenty years appears pale, hollow and derivative in comparison.

And yet he wasn’t alone. Go back before Tolkien and not only have you got Howard and Cabell but the likes of Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison, T. H. White and others, all ploughing their own fantastic furrows but all doing it with a shared sensibility. And before that was William Morris, and before him Swift, Spenser, Mallory and all the rest.

Post-Tolkien, we seem to have hit a Moore’s Law of fantasy literature: that each time the genre eats its forebears and spits out their remnants, chewed up and homogenised, it takes half as long as the previous time. So if we say that Tolkien was 1955, and his forebears were about 1920 (Cabell’s Jurgen was 1919; Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros was 1922), we would be looking to about 1975 for the next wave and lo, there’s Dungeons & Dragons. D&D was and is a hotch-potch of influences with no discernable flavour of its own, which has in a bizarre way become its own genre of knights and clerics, elves and dwarves, orcs, vampires and dragons, good, evil, law and chaos, all nicked from elsewhere but thrown into a melting-pot with no real thought as to why these things should work together.

But they do work together. For most of the 1990s TSR wasn’t only the publisher of the most successful RPG in history, it was also the largest publisher of fantasy novels in the world.

Then we hit Games Workshop, which took D&D’s chaotic melange of stuff and dropped it into Europe in the dying days of the Holy Roman Empire and the birth of the Renaissance and called it Warhammer, and blow me if the thing doesn’t work again. Fantasy archetypes are amazingly resilient and morphable. (Disclaimer: I’ve written three novels for Games Workshop set in this background, and used to publish an RPG using the same world, so I am a tad biased).

And GW’s look-and-feel gets picked up by Blizzard, given a coat of pixels and turned into the look-and-feel for Warcraft—yeah, yeah, I know this is arguable, but nobody had done greenskin orcs before GW, and when Warcraft 3 introduced dwarves flying autogyros, a completely distinctive and original piece of GW’s Warhammer IP, they were hit with a C&D and had to take them out, and are you really going to argue with a straight face that Starcraft isn’t Warhammer 40K without the flavour?

The dominant fantasy IP in the world right now—perhaps not the biggest but definitely the most influential is World of Warcraft. So logically right about now we should be looking for post-WoW fantasy: the distinctive tropes of the game but thrown together by someone who doesn’t really understand how and why they worked together in the last iteration but reasons that hey, it worked for them, it ought to work for us.

I’m under an NDA but yeah, a large company is putting a good deal of money into exactly that.

Mundus Vult Decipi, indeed.