Books you never read: Chronicles of an Age of Darkness

It feels a bit hubristic to call these entries "Books you never read", but I did (and do) read a lot of books so its no surprise that many of them never made it to mainstream popularity. And most of these were published a long time ago so they may never be seen again.

Chronicles of an Age of Darkness was 10 book series that is fairly unusual in that it made it to 10 books without the author dying or having an editor dick around with the format. I see that Wikipedia says it was meant to be a 20 book series, but at 10 books, it felt complete.

I can see why it never took off - if I hadn't been working in a bookstore and consuming every generic fantasy product of the day, I probably wouldn't have picked up the second book. The first book - The Wizards and the Warriors was good, but not spectacular. It had your standard Fantasy Adventurer Protagonists and a quest to save the world, etc. It did have a certain gritty style about it that I liked, but aside from that it was nothing special.

The second book, The Wordsmiths and the Warguild, was hilarious. The opening passage describing Sung had me laughing hysterically, and the characters had changed from standard swordsmen and wizards to gormless idiots flailing around trying somehow to survive. It was a complete surprise, and I'll bet a lot of people who read the Wizards never went on to Wordsmiths.

And then I hated The Women and the Warlords. I can't really remember what it was about now, or why I disliked it - I've been meaning to give it another try now that I'm older. The memory of Wordsmiths stayed with me though, and I bought The Walrus and the Warwolf (Have you noticed the style of the titles yet?) Walrus was much like the first book, allright but nothing like the Wordsmiths.

I kept with the series despite its spotty nature. It seemed like each new book was probably going to be allright, maybe really bad, maybe really good. I liked those odds. With the next two books, The Wicked and the Witless and The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers I lucked out. Even funnier than Wordsmiths! Hints at forgotten technology! Death, mayhem and excitement! They were so great. But who was going to read them?

The rest of the series never managed to hit the heights of those two books, at least as far as I was concerned. But he never hit any lows either. Each book, with a few exceptions, had completely different characters, but the story seemed somehow to lurch along each individual story somehow connecting into a greater narrative. With the final book telling the story of Guest Gulkan, a background character in every book so far, you had a sense that at last this anarchic storyline was going to conclude. And so it did, not with a bang or a whimper, but somewhere in between.

45 Master Characters

Having just read '45 Master Characters' I feel the need to post what I think about it. The book is a tool for writers, classifying personality types into 45 archetypes. By trying to fit in your half-fleshed out character into one of these archetypes, you can make the characterisation more believable by fitting him into one of the classic types.

The first question that comes to mind is "Is it correct?" Has she correctly classified all the myriad personalities of the world into 45 types? I don't believe that she has. Or that it can be done - I think that humans have a tendency to classify things, and to then see the world in terms of those classifications. The real world is woolier than that, and when you look closely at any classification system you see flaws. Take our species classification system - different species aren't supposed to be able to mate, but we have mules, and ligors.

Even the most basic classification - the 0s and 1s of digital computers - breaks down when you look at it closely.  Zero turns out to be 0 to 0.5, and occasionally something that should be a zero shows up as a 0.51 and you get an error.

Despite this computers still manage to work most of the time. Correct isn't as important as useful. So is the book useful? I think so. I'm finding that the artificial constraint of the archetypes is giving my characters more life than they would otherwise have. And the structure of the journey that it talks about is giving me something to do with them - even when I disagree with the structure.

So thus far, it seems worth the price. If I become a world famous author, I'll be sure to mention it as an influence.

Books you've never read: The True Game

It took me a while to realise that most people haven't read The True Game. I read it  when I was quite young, so it had quite an effect on my thinking about fantasy, becoming part of my background understanding of how fantasy worked, much like Tolkien did for a lot of people (including me) So it was quite a shock to realise that other people didn't share it.

Because I was very young (12?) I missed a lot of what was going on. I had taken it for a standard fantasy epic. You know the one, the one with the young boy hero who is born with a special power, who goes on a journey to change the world and defeat the Evil King. All of which is in the book, but there was so much more. Like the homosexual relationship between Mandor and the underaged hero, Peter.

And so much more. Tepper's style, and Peters voice (the novel is in the first person) is so... nice, that it masks the fact that the Lands of the True Game are horrible places to live. You might think that George R Martin's Westeros has scant regard for human life, but at least there, people only kill for fun and profit. In the Land of the True game peasants are killed by the dozens for the scant advantage that sucking the heat from their bodies gives. The society in which Peter lives and the ethos with which he grew up with completely lacks compassion and morality. Peter grows up without parents, not because they are dead, but because they know that if anyone knew of his parentage they would use him to get at them. Its a wonder that Peter is as nice as he is.

Not that he is a saint. One of the features of this world is the Schools where people of Peters class are raised, kept safe from the horrors of the world outside. Peter grew up being taught in class how, when, and where to kill. It lends an interesting twist to the naive hero who somehow manages to survive all the dangers to reach his destiny. Peter is naive, and is always finding himself in dangerous situations, but when he stops to think about, he has all the mental tools available to outwit, ambush or otherwise overpower his adversaries.

If you've read Tepper's other works, you may start to see her oft used theme here of "People are horrible", but you will have to read the rest of the series (The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped and the Jinian Trilogy, two trilogies often grouped to together as two books) before the full nature of the situation unfolds, and the real message behind the books becomes clear.

Games I Play: Pendragon

Pendragon is fabulously flawed. Its a game that only does one thing, and it does it badly. But its great fun to play.

The first thing you need to know about Pendragon is that you are going to play a knight. None of the varied roles that are normal for a roleplaying game are available. There is magic, but you are not going to play a wizard. Its too early for duellist-types, mercenaries and archers are beneath notice. You are going to play a knight, you are going to hit things with swords (and lances when you ride a horse) and you are going to wear the heaviest (and therefore best) armour. That is all.

You may have some hobbies: hunting, singing, poetry, etc. which may distinguish you from the crowd, but really: everyone start out bad at those skills and gets better as they go along. You have lands and rank, but again, there's a simple progression from less to more as you play.

This might sound a little boring, and to be honest, Pendragon doesn't have the staying power of other games. Once you've played a knight a few times, you start looking for other things to do. Which means other games, because there's nothing else to do in Pendragon.

Its a great game though, for those few times. Why? Because even though its a poor roleplaying game, its a great way to really feel like you're fighting with King Arthur. Those old legends didn't feature modern fantasy's list of archetypal characters. The dragons weren't ancient and wise beings, full of advice for the plucky young bakers apprentice. The trolls weren't unionised - they stayed under the bridges where they belonged. Pendragon is a return to twelfth century fantasy.

Admittedly, the combat system is simplistic, with only a few tactical options (each more brutal than the last) and the skill system is easy to break. Characters with a high enough Constitution can live underwater. Lancelot has enough skill to critically succeed on every hit. But there is one area where Pendragon shines, and that is Personality Traits.

Whereas DnD had its Lawful/Chaotic, Good/Evil scales, Pendragon has 14 matched traits, like Chaste/Lustful or Energetic/Lazy. Each is graded on a scale of 1 to 20, and gets modified in play according to your actions. Character development is literally a development of your character. And its not just for fun - having high virtues has a game effect, with a Chivalric bonus for having high scores in the virtues considered chivalric and religious bonuses for both Pagan and Christian virtues. Not to mention the advantages of having a high Valourous trait when its time to fight a dragon.

Having this complex virtue system makes it possible for adventures to be like the old stories. A knight stands vigil overnight, but does not make his Energetic roll and fails the test. You can be tempted by all the evils of the world, and if your stats are high and you roll well, you can find the Grail. Pendragon is the only game I've seen which both encourages and rewards virtue. Its something that a lot of games could do with.

Pendragon is  a classic game, one you'll keep coming back to every 5 years or so. Its also a game where I'd recommend the published adventures. Normally I like to tell my own stories, but all the best stories for Pendragon were written 600 years ago.