But to chime in, in a serious way, on these subjects, I'll describe the Bad Habits Watch. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of fantasy novels where, as the industry saying goes, "You can hear the dice bounce." It is a derogatory term. It means that the context of the novelists' work is based upon their experience as tabletop gamers, not as novelists. It means, put bluntly, that the writer developed bad habits from their gaming, and the writer probably doesn't even realize it. The absolute WORST for this was the Dragonlance books. In-industry, they were a lot like Ed Wood's films. You could read them and tell "Well, this is where somebody rolled a 1 in that combat," and "And here, somebody got a natural 20." The fights were never coordinated for storytelling, they were just transcripts of tabletop games we all never attended. Remember, they came from the Marketing Department at TSR, not any sort of book division. And you could hear the dice bounce as they pushed the products. Steve Brust is a guy who terrifically put that tabletop-transcript stuff on its ear by saying, with his Jhereg/Vlad Taltos books, "Yep, this all came from tabletop tropes, and here's what a real world like that would be like with all of that." The lead character uses fresh gear on every assasination and destroys it all afterwards, because he knows spells can work by Law of Contagion. He has contracts arranged for recovery of his body and Resurrection spells pre-paid with what amounts to an underworld insurance company, and so forth. And being an assassin, as the flipside, means you're someone who kills off big figures just to make delays for their agendas, because THEY all have resurrection contracts just like you do. And so forth. Now, I have to pay my bills as a novelist so I am constantly on guard against bad habits. They creep in easily, because they are easy. When I joined Gold's game, I explained to him, "I play like a novelist," and then explained, that means I'll VERY likely do things that don't make a lot of sense in terms of a dice-bouncing tabletop game. Here's the reason why, in as short as I can sum it up. WE know it's a game, but the character doesn't. To us, it's a headset, and an online map, and we know that it's a way to spend five or six hours a week with some great people around the world. But inside that world, a character lives every minute of a life surrounded by the sights, scents, smells, chatter and atmosphere of that world. The character lives through things that there are no stats for, and there are no charts for. The character knows itself as a person. A mortal person. If you've ever watched a movie and wondered---or screamed---"WHY the FUCK would that person DO that?!" you've experienced what I'm talking about. What a character does must always come from that character's reactions and motives, not the requirements of a script---or a game. For me, playing a roleplaying game as a guy moving around a counter can make me into a bad writer. Playing a roleplaying game as a guy acting someone who can fall in love, wants to help others when there's no XP or GP in it, who's afraid of swamps and monsters and wants to avoid them, can make me a better writer. In context of a game on a grid with hit tables, you'll see me do things that are genuinely bad in a game sometimes, but are realistic as a person trying to stay alive and prosper, and have a life with meaning. The character never knows they're in a protected state because they're
low level in a game campaign; they're always at risk of death in their
world, a world where things like dragons, kraken and hordes of orcs play
for keeps. That last game, when Horukh was hidden against the cypress tree, still shuddering from the vision when the attack happened... and then leapt from cover to give some healing to Airen the Bullywug... within striking range of the troll... that was one of Horukh's most heroic moments of his life. He knowingly risked death, having seen just how hard those things could hit, certain he would be a drowned corpse in the swamp if one backhanded him, but that Bullywug he admired so much NEEDED him. Or, you can look at it as "The low-HP 4th level priest slapped a 1d8 heal on a teammate after doing a team buff with faerie fire on some 3HD trolls." Both are true, but one sure makes me feel better. :)
