The Plot Hole


Tales

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subtitled: let's have a thread to talk about writing and game fiction!

I always wanted to have a tavern called "The Plot Hole" where bards and poets and miscellaneous fantasy creative sorts got together (because they could plot in the [basement/cellar] hole and also discuss plot holes! lol get it, it's like a double meaning!!), but let's be real, I'm never going to write a bard. So I'll use the name for this thread instead.

I don't really have an agenda here, I just kind of want to kick around thoughts and see if anything interesting shakes out. Also, while this probably didn't need to be said, everything here is Just My Opinion (Today) and I very much hope people will disagree and quibble and otherwise make for interesting discussions, because otherwise it's going to be Today Me arguing with Tomorrow Me and both versions of me get bored with that pretty quickly.

So! Let's talk about some stuff.

As a general warning, there are probably going to be some SPOILERY SPOILER SPOILERS in this thread because you can't really talk about fiction without, you know, talking about fiction, so there's that. I'll try to spoiler tag anything that's in a PTales novel, but beyond that, eh. If a work has been out for years and/or is a fixture of pop culture then I think it's fair game.

Silver Crusade

*gets drinks and popcorn*

Where do you want to start?

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Good question!

HERE IS A TOPIC ABOUT WHICH I HAVE THOUGHTS

(I did not promise they were good ones)

(also there are no spoilers in this post)

Monsters in Tie-In Fiction

One of the special considerations when you're working in game fiction (either as a GM or as a writer of narrative fiction) is that there's an explicit set of rules that governs the fictive universe, and most of your readers know what those rules are and expect the story to adhere to them. This frequently leads to a tension between showing enough of the mechanics to make it clear that you're following the rules, but hiding them enough for the story to flow naturally as a story.

One of the places where this tension comes into play most often -- for me, at least -- is monsters.

The fact that most monsters have statted Bestiary entries is both freeing and constraining. Freeing, because you don't have to spend a lot of time working out what the monster can do and what its special weaknesses are and all that stuff. Somebody else has already done that work. Moreover, thinking about the game-world implications of a monster's special abilities or weaknesses or diet can lead to interesting story ideas generated from those stats.

Seriously, it's fantastic. Here's what I mean:


  • Practice exercise: make up a story about an ooze. The ooze has 0 Intelligence, which means that its goals, motivations, and personality are all totally blank. Its stats are exactly as laid out in the Bestiary. You can put the ooze in any setting, and you can pick any standard ooze, but you can't change its properties or pick a variant version; above all, you cannot pick a sentient ooze. 1500 words. GO.

    If you can come up with an interesting idea for a literally brainless ooze, you can come up with an interesting idea for any monster in the Bestiary. Pick any random page, generate a story around that monster. Do it again. Do it again. One more time. Congratulations, now you have a project.


Having Bestiary entries for your monsters is also constraining, though, because it means that as soon as your readers identify what the monster is, then they have a pretty good idea of what it can do, which makes it harder to generate suspense and surprise. Not impossible, but harder.

There are a few ways around this. One is to invent either an entirely new monster or a variant on an old one, which I do pretty often because it's fun and lets me tailor the creature to whatever I need for any given story. That's kinda cheating, though, so I'll just note it as an option and then set it aside for this discussion.

Better option: Treat it as a challenge. Make your writing strong enough to evoke an emotion from a well-known, familiar creature.


  • Another practice exercise: You have a vampire. Average height, average build, formerly human, no major disfigurements, dressed like an Ordinary Townsperson(tm). In other words, you can't use an imposing build or dramatic scars or costume cues as crutches.

    In two sentences, make that vampire terrifying. Then, in two different sentences, make that exact same vampire alluring. In both cases, the reasons that the vampire provokes that response must be directly tied to its monstrous nature.


Can you present the familiar, bog-standard, regular ol' vampire in a way that either frightens or entrances? Both of those emotions rely on a dash of mystery for maximum effect, which is why they're good practice exercises for well-worn monsters. Two sentences forces an economy of words, which is also a useful habit to develop, because this is a familiar monster and your audience is likely to get impatient with three paragraphs of description for a bog-standard regular ol' vampire.

Another consideration is that if you're using a standard monster, game-savvy readers will be able to identify that monster as soon as you give them enough clues to figure out what it is. Even though this is inevitable, it's both better writing and more fun to make them work for it by describing the monster rather than just relying on its label straight out of the box. However, at some point, you have to stop hiding the ball and bring it out to play -- and that is the point where, if it's a sufficiently common/iconic monster, the readers have at least a general sense of what it is and what it does.

My view is that this is a feature rather than a bug. You can't (or shouldn't) count on being able to surprise or shock the reader with a standard monster's capabilities. What you can do is use that known quantity (the monster) to develop your characters by comparison. How does the character see that monster? What does her reaction tell us about that character's background, prior experiences, and attitude toward the world? Switch focus from the monster to the character's response to that monster and suddenly the Bestiary stats are working for your story, not against it.


  • Practice exercise the third: Write a paragraph describing a ghoul from the perspective of a 1st-level character who's never previously encountered one. Then write a paragraph (if it even warrants a paragraph) describing that same ghoul from the perspective of a 15th-level paladin who's spent the last two years stomping undead. Then write it from the perspective of a middle-aged necromancer who's going through career ennui and second-guessing some life decisions (feel free to make heavy use of the ghouls as a walking metaphor for heartless consumer capitalism and/or the tedium of modern life, because yeah, we're totally doing lit fic with cannibal undead today).

    What if your 1st-level character is from Geb? What if s/he's from Irrisen? Andoran? How does the background change the reaction?

Same monster, totally different view, (hopefully) interesting characterization.

...and that more or less concludes my thoughts about monsters in game fiction. FOR NOW.

What do you all think? What works when you read fictive depictions of game monsters? What doesn't?

Silver Crusade

Whew, that's a lot to take in (especially those exercises) so I'll start off small while I think on the the two sentence vampire.

I'm fine with a creature being represented as unheard of and explained to the reader through the lens of a character if the character has never met one and knows nothing of them (or even better if the character has just heard about the creature from myths and legends :3). Having a ghoul explained to us by the what the pov character is feeling upon seeing it rather than have the character anatomically break it down in their head is usally more satisfying to read. I say usually because this obviously doesn't apply if anatomically breaking down something unknown to them would be in character for said character.

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Oh, I'm absolutely not expecting anyone to actually DO the exercises, and certainy not in this thread.

It's more just like: here's a thing that might be worth trying if you want to do this stuff, either as a GM for home games or for PbP or whatever else. Just in your own time, for fun. :)

Silver Crusade

... But I wanna!

*goes to sit in corner to pout*

:3

But yes while fun I actually do see these exercises as being quite useful, will definetly implement them the next time I write or DM, thankies ^w^

Speaking of creatures how did

Nightblade Spoiler:
The Beast come about? I'm really fond of harvesting creatures that incorporate the slain into themselves.


Well I find when reading game tie in novels I tend to put on my Player hat and try forget what I know. Also I don't try to get tied up in the mechanics behind the scenes if you will. I consider playing a RPG and reading a book to be two different kinds of media...so I look for different things. Though I do love it when I do see it.

As a GM I do a couple of things to try make the same monster that my players have seen a hundred time before stick out and make them scary.

1) Is I definitely give them strong personalities...backgrounds...motives. And they always act true to them. Even if the PCs never learn them...they are there.

2) Give monsters class levels.

3) Describe in detail how each of them look...I mean a orc raising party should not all look the same...unless there is a Deepspawn running around (sorry FR monster reference). This makes them seem more individual like. And players assume if you take the time to do this...it must be important.

4) Just changing the terrain where you encounter the monster can change a familiar monster into a horror.

5) I also cheat a lot...new monsters, new spells...new whatever.

Though I have a question...how much 'cheating' does Pazio lets it writers get away with?

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re: the Beast

That's a pretty good example of inventing a new monster where no then-existing monster was quite right for the situation. Or, if you prefer, "cheating." ;)

Nightblade:
For the Beast in the Backar Forest, I needed a mindless, self-repairing undead creature of sufficient power to challenge the characters as a group.

The Skull Ripper was close to perfect, but wasn't quite powerful enough to stand up against that party. So I modified it a bit and put in an upgraded version with some additional special abilities that worked for the scenario.

I hope some other contributors will chime in with their thoughts on how they chose monsters for particular works of fiction, and whether they find it easier to invent new ones or use Bestiary standards -- and why.

Silver Crusade

I thought there was a similar creature but I couldn't recall off the top of my head, still the final product was marvelous and disturbing.

Nightblade:
I also like how you incorporated a bit of physics into the fight with regards to the mines being set off early due to being disturbed due to the weight of the creature. Awesome way to set up an entrance for the Beast before it was actually shown. And that's after all the other stories and theories leading up to it.

That and telefragging :3


The Beast was a terrifying creature...that was a great job of writing.

Scarab Sages

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Just finished Nightblade, and would like to say that at no point did it feel like the monsters were just stat blocks. The

Spoiler:
Qlippoths
were absolutely terrifying, and didn't feel constrained by any kind of logic whatsoever.

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Thanks, I'm really happy to hear that! :)

I had a lot of fun with the monsters in that book.

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Character Death

Originally the reason I started this thread was because I wanted to kick around some thoughts regarding character deaths, so here's some rambling about that.

Basically my feeling is that in heroic fantasy, at some point, you've got to kill off some of your characters to demonstrate that this world is a dangerous place and bad things happen to good people. While there are tons of ways to raise stakes and increase tension, killing off sympathetic characters is one of the most fundamental methods of showing that the antagonists in a story are playing for keeps. Simplest way to show that your Big Bad's got teeth is to show those teeth sinking bloodily into people we like.

But! killing a bunch of faceless mooks doesn't generally do much (with some caveats, which I may or may not write another whole big thing about later). For their deaths to matter, the characters have to matter.

The other main thought that I have regarding character deaths is that generally they're most effectively used to show something about the surviving characters. Opinions vary on this, but I tend to take the view that character deaths don't create drama -- they just accentuate it. For maximum impact, there needs to be some emotional reverberation across the surviving characters in the story. Something significant needs to change with that death -- otherwise, my feeling is that what should be a big moment is not being used to its fullest effect.

Chris Jackson does this really, really well in Pirate's Promise:

Pirate's Promise:
The whole sequence where Vreva learns that Captain Templeton's been betrayed, frantically tries to warn him, gets the warning through, and then he still gets himself captured and killed (in suitably nasty fashion) because he fails to take the threat as seriously as he should have -- all of that is a textbook example of how to maximize the tension and impact of a character's death.

Vreva's reaction shows her moral strength, resourcefulness, and skill. Her failure also shows that Team Evil is very much playing for keeps, and that very bad things happen to those who cross them. At the end of the sequence, we've seen that Vreva is a heroic figure, and we've also seen that despite her skills, she's in real danger -- danger that might be more than she can face. Yet instead of discouraging her, Templeton's death only makes her more determined. So we see the impact of one character's death on a surviving protagonist, and everything in the sequence builds Vreva up very effectively as a character who's earned the reader's loyalties.

Saffron's death is the other major death that I want to talk about in this story, and it's also brilliantly structured. First, it hits hard because for most of us, there's a default assumption that children and animals don't die in these stories. Adults are generally understood to be fair game in heroic fantasy, but you don't often see kids or pets kick the bucket, so when they do, that death packs more punch.

But if that were the only thing going on here, it might just come off as a cheap shock. It doesn't.

The reason that it doesn't is that it's an earned death, and it really hurts Vreva. That's a devastating loss for her. We've spent almost the entire story seeing just how important Saffron is to her -- the one friend she can truly trust and confide in -- and then BAM!, Saffron gets brutally killed before her eyes in the worst possible way, and it happens as a direct result of her own actions.

That's a death with major, well-earned emotional impact. It's worth studying as a how-to on making a secondary character's death hurt as much or more than a primary protagonist's. And it's an excellent example of why character deaths matter the most when they have lasting consequences for the surviving characters. If Vreva had died instead of Saffron in that scene, the effect wouldn't have been nearly as traumatic, because there would be no major character left to mourn her -- certainly no one who would mourn her as much as she did Saffron. The effect is more powerful when the character who cares the most is left alive, because that keeps the consequences on screen.

Thoughts?


Re: Character's Deaths.
You really hit the nail on the head. Especially with the Chris Jackson's Pirate's novels. Though there is just a thing as doing it too often. One it lessens the impact of death. And two it can just frustrate the readers to see their favorite character go through emotional ringers constantly. There is point of reading about a character dealing with the death of a beloved companion...and you just have to roll your eyes. Also death is kind of stagnate and limited in character growth potential.

Which is why...

Pirate's Promise:
I really want Zarina to be alive. Because Saffron's death all ready did everything to have a changing effect on Vreva...adding Zarina's death just seems to be...cruel. And I think having a relationship with Zarina would also lead to other ways to show the character to grow.

Another important consideration...the death as to feel...right. This is very tough to explain but...I'll give a example from a old FR novel..

In the last book with the Spellfire Trilogy...the main character pretty much commits suicide (while pregnant at that) because the bad guy said he'll never stop coming after her. I am kind of glad I was spoiled so I did not have to read it.

This was probably the worst death ever as it did nothing.


I love this thread. Go on...

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Liane Merciel wrote:

Character Death

Chris Jackson does this really, really well in Pirate's Promise:

** spoiler omitted **...

I really thought I would take some heat for that, Liane. There are *rules* that you don't break, right... I'm glad it worked for you. Now, I'm looking for more rules to break!

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On Character death: Who among you have read "Wool"? I gotta say, after the third major POV character died, I stopped caring about the POV characters! The trick, I think, is to threaten the POV character with worse than death events...


Chris A Jackson wrote:
Liane Merciel wrote:

Character Death

Chris Jackson does this really, really well in Pirate's Promise:

** spoiler omitted **...

I really thought I would take some heat for that, Liane. There are *rules* that you don't break, right... I'm glad it worked for you. Now, I'm looking for more rules to break!

Are they not more like guidelines anyway?

Scarab Sages

Chris A Jackson wrote:
On Character death: Who among you have read "Wool"? I gotta say, after the third major POV character died, I stopped caring about the POV characters! The trick, I think, is to threaten the POV character with worse than death events...

Wool was pretty damn brutal. I suspect it worked better in serial form, but that is still a lot of death to take just to get the story started.

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Chris A Jackson wrote:
Liane Merciel wrote:

Character Death

Chris Jackson does this really, really well in Pirate's Promise:

** spoiler omitted **...

I really thought I would take some heat for that, Liane. There are *rules* that you don't break, right... I'm glad it worked for you. Now, I'm looking for more rules to break!

Wait, which "rule" (and why)? Because I thought it was pretty much perfectly built all the way through.

I do think there are some rules that actually can't be broken (which might itself be a post for another day), but nothing you did there would come close. IMO, at least.

Contributor

I'm sure you've heard creative writing instructors tell their students about "the rules"...

The Rules:
Thou shalt not kill pets. Thou shalt not kill children. Etc... And the most important: You can break the rules if you do it right.

Contributor

Chris A Jackson wrote:
I'm sure you've heard creative writing instructors tell their students about "the rules"...

Pssh, I know nothing about what instructors say. I took my last creative writing class when I was 16. Learned my lesson about writing spec fic in classes geared to future lit-fic MFAs, never looked back. ;)

Anyway, I do want to think about the "rules" a little more deeply, but I'll have to come back to that later. For now, I've got another wall of text to spam up this thread.

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Character deaths, part two

Continued thoughts on character death -- the uses and misuses of bit-part character deaths.

Broadly speaking, I think there are two main purposes to killing off minor characters: (1) to illustrate something about a major character (this overlaps considerably with what I talked about last time, except the emphasis is more on the POV/protagonist and less on the victim); and/or (2) to underscore the external dangers that Our Heroes are facing.

I already kinda talked about using death to drive POV changes in the previous post, so I'll skip over that here, except to note that you can achieve a slightly softer version of the same effect with a mook -- and if emotional exhaustion is a consideration, it might be better to take that route.

Where faceless mook deaths are really great, though, is when you want to establish a more significant character's basic personality, rather than illustrating a change in that character. This technique is most commonly used with villains (how many thrillers open with the antagonist murdering some hapless no-name?), but it can also be used effectively for more sympathetic characters, as shown in The Redemption Engine:

The Redemption Engine:
The first chapter opens with Salim getting mugged by a trio of no-name robbers, and showing the progressive limits of his restraint in dealing with them. He's willing to hand over his purse, but not his sword. He opens with non-lethal tactics, but eventually loses his patience and kills the robbers when they won't take the hint from the first round of beatings. Nothing personal, he's just got places to be.

The antagonists don't have to be all that developed (although they are, because Sutter's too good a writer to skip that entirely). What's important about this scene is what it shows us about Salim. He's tolerant, but not that tolerant. He's patient, but not that patient. We learn a lot about Salim in the course of this fight: his ability to read people and cities, his priorities, his combat skills, how his moral compass works, and just what kind of priest he is (or isn't). There's a whole lot of characterization woven tightly into the action, and it's an extremely effective introduction to the guy we'll be following for the next few hundred pages.

It would actually be counterproductive to use heavily developed secondary characters here. The focus is, and should be, squarely on Salim. What's important is not who's attacking him, but how he responds. So this is a great example of a situation where the story is better served by putting faceless mooks in the antagonist role.

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And one more: using minor character deaths to build up the dangers of the story world.

Intuitively it seems like this should be pretty simple -- you introduce a threat, you introduce a minor character, the threat reduces the minor character to a fine pink mist, the story goes on -- but I've read a bunch of stories where the effect falls flat (and have probably written more than my fair share of them, for that matter), so clearly it's not as simple as it seems.

I think the key thing here is that horror -- and this is fundamentally a horror effect -- depends on an illusion of plausibility. It's a mistake to assume that the death itself is going to carry the weight. In order for the effect to work, it needs to be grounded in a credible past and to reach into a credible future. The whys and hows of the death are the important bit, because it's those same whys and hows that are going to threaten Our Heroes.

Here's what I mean:

It usually isn't all that effective, intimidation-wise, to have a scene wherein Evil Warlord chops the head off Incompetent Underling for failing to capture Our Heroes. This tends to fall flat for a number of reasons: (1) it's not grounded on credible character development (really? dude just chops his own mook's head off right there in the throne room? holy anger management problems, Batman!); (2) it tends to cast the antagonists as bumbling rather than scary (like, presumably you threw your best available underling at the problem, right? and now you chopped his head off? so you're down a guy, and your next-best guy is probably worse at the job or you'd have assigned him to the task in the first place, aaand... welp... seems a bit self-sabotaging, dunnit?); and (3) it doesn't actually do anything to increase the danger to Our Heroes, unless they decide to apply for the new Incompetent Underling position that just opened up on Team Evil.

But let's say you really really want to do some variation on that scene, because you are just bound and determined to rehabilitate the cliche.

So, okay. First consideration: have to make it credible. Why did the Incompetent Underling fail? Just because he's incompetent? No good. Because Our Heroes are so awesome that they curbstomped him when he tried? Better, but still not great -- if they won that easily, then Team Evil's not looking like much of a threat.

What if the Incompetent Underling intentionally failed? What if Our Heroes won his sympathies and convinced him to shift allegiances a bit? What if he's acting to protect someone? What if he's seen a vision of what happens when Team Evil wins and that scares him even more than his boss does? Now we have more credible motivations, the Incompetent Underling's picking up more sympathetic shades, and the scene starts to have more punch.

Now let's flip to our Evil Warlord. He needs more credible motivations too ("because I'm in a bad mood and you suck at your job" isn't terrible, but we can do better), and -- more importantly -- his action needs to ratchet up the danger for Our Heroes.

The obvious solution is that the Evil Warlord's motivation in killing his underling is to use that underling's death to fuel something even scarier. Maybe he needs one last corpse to finish up the Frankengolem he's been building in the basement. Maybe his ultimate sword o' doom needs a drink of blood to awaken the demon within. Whatever. The point is, if the death creates or enhances a threat that is pointed directly at Our Heroes, as opposed to removing one, then suddenly it matters a whole lot more.

There's a really good example of this in City of the Fallen Sky:

City of the Fallen Sky:
The wizard Ernst is not exactly a "minor" character in this story, but he's definitely secondary to the main trio of protagonists. However, he's consistently portrayed as competent, capable, and possibly more powerful than the other three. Furthermore, up until this point, Kormak -- the Kellid barbarian who's the primary antagonist trying to hunt down Our Heroes -- has straddled the line between being terrifying and slightly comical.

Thus, the scene where Kormak kills Ernst -- and does so effortlessly, obliterating the wizard's head instantly even as Ernst thinks he's gloating over Kormak's body -- shifts the dramatic balance quickly and hard. Suddenly the protagonists are stripped of a friend and powerful ally. Suddenly that Numerian technology we've been hearing about all story long has been demonstrated as terrible and deadly, just as Alaeron had tried to warn everyone from the start. Suddenly Kormak's no longer borderline comic relief: he's full-on Kellid Terminator from that point forward, and given how easily he took out their strongest ally, it's clear that the surviving protagonists are going to be hard-pressed to stop him.

Scarab Sages

Pratt has a deft hand with villains, and Kormak was no exception. That is a great moment, but Alaeron and Skiver need Kormak to be a near unstoppable force of destruction in order to shine as protagonists - otherwise they are revealed as the morally grey opportunists that they are. Something Pratt played to great advantage in Reign of Stars.

Silver Crusade

I'd say Alaeron erred more towards NG in City of the Fallen Sky but was full blown NE by Reign of Stars, Skiver on the other hand I would say would be LE/NE in the first book and then in the second book... slightly less LE/NE.

Contributor

Belabras wrote:
Alaeron and Skiver need Kormak to be a near unstoppable force of destruction in order to shine as protagonists - otherwise they are revealed as the morally grey opportunists that they are.

That's a really interesting thought. Would you mind expanding on it? How do you think the story or our perception of the protagonists might have changed if they hadn't been up against someone so unstoppable?

(Also, fwiw, I've always pegged Alaeron as N/CN and Skiver as more or less the same. Skiver's not nearly as bad as he claims to be [or at least we're never shown him being that bad on the page] and Alaeron's just... well, he has unorthodox priorities.)

Silver Crusade

Extremely unorthodox priorities.

Scarab Sages

Liane Merciel wrote:
Belabras wrote:
Alaeron and Skiver need Kormak to be a near unstoppable force of destruction in order to shine as protagonists - otherwise they are revealed as the morally grey opportunists that they are.

That's a really interesting thought. Would you mind expanding on it? How do you think the story or our perception of the protagonists might have changed if they hadn't been up against someone so unstoppable?

(Also, fwiw, I've always pegged Alaeron as N/CN and Skiver as more or less the same. Skiver's not nearly as bad as he claims to be [or at least we're never shown him being that bad on the page] and Alaeron's just... well, he has unorthodox priorities.)

Just my impression as a reader, but here goes:

It seems like you can have three kinds of protagonist for a high adventure story - a heroic or at least reluctantly heroic protagonist (seen everywhere), the anti-hero (Elric, Strahd, etc) who need a villain that is very bad indeed if they are going to win reader's sympathies, and the 'no better than they ought to be' hero (Fafhrd and Grey Mouser, Ocean's Eleven, the mercs in Predator) who are just hustlers and blades for hire. This third group still needs some real despicable black hats or they just come off like mercenaries and thieves.

Pratt seems to favor the last group in the Alaeron stories and Liar's Blade, and in both cases we get some real nasty foils. Rodrick and Hrym are not good folk, but the crowd they fall in with provides that crucial opportunity for them to either step up or fall. Alaeron and Skiver have that in Reign of Stars as well, but in City of the Fallen Sky they remain nothing more than mercenaries throughout. So, without a moment of redemption they've got to be constantly one step from danger or as a reader we don't have a lot of reason to care. I mean, they did hire on to do the work. So in order to be emotionally invested in their struggle it's really got to be a struggle, against epic odds.

Otherwise the only difference between them and the bandits from the beginning of Redemption Engine is that the story is from their point of view.

Contributor

Thanks -- that's a really good post, lots of things to think about there. :)

I keep meaning to come back and talk about some of them, but then my thoughts just balloon into this huge wall of text and I go "agh! not again!" and back out of it.

One question I'd like to pose, though: does it seem like maybe heroic fiction, despite its name, is defined more by the villains than the heroes?

Clearly there's room for many different kinds of heroes, from the archetypal knight in shining armor to the "no better than they ought to be" (love that phrase!) rogues and scoundrels. But they always have straight-up, capital-E Evil villains. And I wonder if that isn't, to some extent, because it is hard to build a heroic adventure story with a non-EVIL!! villain (or at least I can't think of one off the bat, although I would welcome examples if anybody has any. Heroism with an actually [not just on-paper] N or G villain: does it exist?).

Scarab Sages

Hmm... Jean Valjean and Police Inspector Javert (CG vs LN) perhaps? Or, for a more contemporary example, Miko Miyazaki and the Order of the Stick? Probably some Thieves World stories too, (some of C. J. Cherryh's Ischade stories maybe?) I'd say Joe Abercrombie, but it's hard to think of one of his characters that can be said to be very good.

I think that's a much tougher story to tell, especially in a sword and sorcery tale. The genre tends towards stories without as many shades of grey. That said, it is certainly something I'd read.


Glen Cook's Black Company books maybe? The protagonists are mercenaries and the antagonists often too. Though there are villains too.

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Ha, I thought about Miko too. She's gotta be top ten on all-time characters you (or at least I) love to hate.

But she isn't really the villain. The actual villain is Xykon (who is unquestionably my favorite, and when I grow up I want to be Xykon). Which I guess is pretty representative of the pattern (and I think Glen Cook does this too, although I haven't read all his work): secondary villains can be N or (nominally) G, but the Big Bad is always baaaaad.

(I also considered the antagonists in The Redemption Engine, obv., but

Spoiler:
they're more Informed Attribute LG than Actually Demonstrated LG. The mystery structure makes this a little more complicated, but everything we actually see them do fits squarely into "villains are villainous.")

To the extent that heroic fantasy is about cheering as boots are liberally applied to the backside of evil, I suspect that introducing ambiguity on that front makes it harder to cheer. Watching a sympathetic antagonist go down hard isn't something a lot of people view as anything other than tragic.

So maybe that's an actual Rule That Cannot Be Broken: heroic fantasy, if heavy on the heroism, requires truly black-hatted villains in order for Our Heroes to shine.

y/n?

Contributor

Liane Merciel wrote:
And I wonder if that isn't, to some extent, because it is hard to build a heroic adventure story with a non-EVIL!! villain (or at least I can't think of one off the bat, although I would welcome examples if anybody has any. Heroism with an actually [not just on-paper] N or G villain: does it exist?).

I'd have to vote no.

I would like to send you a book and see what you think, Liane. I wrote "A Soul for Tsing" a very long time ago, and it has one very different element: there is no villain. It is a very "heroic fantasy" but no villain. I'll send you a review copy if you're interested. The key is to create an element that is challenging to the hero, but not character based. Think of disaster movies as an example.

Contributor

Sure, I'd love to read it. Always good to see unexpected approaches. :)

On reflection, I suppose you could use natural disasters and (mostly) unthinking monsters (Alien/Aliens), so that would be one way to skirt the job requirement: evil issue.


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Great book that one Chris. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And you're right no real villain but lots of shades of grey. Comes easier with an urban setting I believe. Good vs Evil can be easier changed to Chaos vs. Law there...

I need to get my hands on more of your self published stuff. How intertwined are those books btw? Are they all set in the same world?

Scarab Sages

High fantasy Man vs Nature eh? For some reason all I can think of now is "To Build A Fire... Elemental Summoning Circle"

On a more serious note, I do think the sympathetic antagonist can (and often is) be used to up the threat level for the really bad antagonist. Either the black hat takes out the grey hat to show how bad they are, or the grey hat realizes the true evil of the black hat and makes a heroe's sacrifice.

Scarab Sages

Without spoilers, I agree on Redemption Engine. Sutter seems to be framing the Salim books around philosophical quandaries- for Death's Heretic the quandary is Salim, but for Redemption Engine it would seem to be "when is the ultimate act of good wrong?" Or "how to make forgiveness selfish"


Slightly OT: Liane btw, do you have LGG's Dark Druids? It seems to add a lot to the Nidalese Uskwood Druids...

Contributor

Thanael wrote:
Slightly OT: Liane btw, do you have LGG's Dark Druids? It seems to add a lot to the Nidalese Uskwood Druids...

I do not! I actually don't have any 3pp materials. I'm always a little cautious about potentially confusing my understanding of Paizo canon and getting something wrong in a future story, so I haven't gotten into any 3pp stuff largely for that reason. But that looks like a fun one. :)

re: Redemption Engine, I totally agree, and that's one of the things I most love about those books. I think it's a lot of fun to poke at some of the implications and underpinnings of the game setting in fiction, and thus I tend to light up when I see a work that really puts some thought into those questions.

Anyway, I've been trying to figure out what makes "heroic fantasy" tick because I don't think I've ever actually written it in the past. All my prior books have been more or less fantasy-horror, and they don't really do (or even attempt) a lot of the things I'm trying to figure out now.


Chris A Jackson wrote:
Liane Merciel wrote:
And I wonder if that isn't, to some extent, because it is hard to build a heroic adventure story with a non-EVIL!! villain (or at least I can't think of one off the bat, although I would welcome examples if anybody has any. Heroism with an actually [not just on-paper] N or G villain: does it exist?).

I'd have to vote no.

I would like to send you a book and see what you think, Liane. I wrote "A Soul for Tsing" a very long time ago, and it has one very different element: there is no villain. It is a very "heroic fantasy" but no villain. I'll send you a review copy if you're interested. The key is to create an element that is challenging to the hero, but not character based. Think of disaster movies as an example.

I was going to bring up 'A Soul for Tsing'...but of course the author ninja it.

I will also point out...it could be said that Zarina was the main villain in Pirate's Promise. Who I would say was not evil, very sympathetic, and redeemed herself at the end of the novel. Though again it is hard to point a finger any specific person as the Main Villain. It might be that the Institute of Slavery was the Main Villain. (Chris seems very good at that by the way...not having a Big Bad Guy).

And I kind of disagree...Sympathetic Villain are seen a lot in heroic fantasy and I personally tend to like them better than EVIL villains. I just finished Chris Jackson's Cornerstone trilogy and at the end I felt sympathy for one of the main villains...who was thoroughly evil...but the environment she was raised in when you found out the back story. Ah maybe I am just too soft hearted.

Scarab Sages

Liane Merciel wrote:


Anyway, I've been trying to figure out what makes "heroic fantasy" tick because I don't think I've ever actually written it in the past. All my prior books have been more or less fantasy-horror, and they don't really do (or even attempt) a lot of the things I'm trying to figure out now.

Well, I'd argue that Nightglass, while it contained horror elements (not the least of which were the Joyful Things!) was more an origin/redemption story than a tale of horror.

But, more importantly, I don't think there is any need to worry about conforming to genre norms. Death's Heretic, Redemption Engine, and Prince of Wolves are at their core mysteries/whodoneits. Worldwound Gambit is a crime caper. Blood of the City is a revenge story. Crusader Road is a settler narrative. I think there is room for whatever story you want to tell under the fantasy tent.

Contributor

My concern isn't so much conforming with them as just understanding them. How do they work? When do they fail? Why? What happens when you change variable X? What happens when you don't include trope Y?

No value judgments attach to any of it, any more than value judgments should attach to the different colors on a painter's palette. It's just that if you're going to make a nice picture, best understand how to blend those colors before you start slapping 'em on the canvas. ;)

Scarab Sages

On re-read I worry I was a bit man-splainy there. So, in a less needlessly explaining manner - I very much enjoyed Nightglass and Nightblade and hope that Liane doesn't change her writing style in future Tales.

On a more general note - I think there are good and bad things in about the fantasy genre. What I like is the ability of the genre to accept a wide variety of story styles and topics. That said, there are tropes, and some are more weary than others. It would take very good writing indeed to breath new life into the 'child of destiny must defeat evil spellcaster' storyline, but it could probably be done. Heck, turn that on it's head and you have some Uruk-Hai making a desperate attempt to take out Gandalf so his people don't get walked on by humans and elves so much.


Liane Merciel wrote:
Thanael wrote:
Slightly OT: Liane btw, do you have LGG's Dark Druids? It seems to add a lot to the Nidalese Uskwood Druids...

I do not! I actually don't have any 3pp materials. I'm always a little cautious about potentially confusing my understanding of Paizo canon and getting something wrong in a future story, so I haven't gotten into any 3pp stuff largely for that reason. But that looks like a fun one. :)

Apparently Clinton Boomer did a lot of development for Nidal, Zon Kuthon, Druids of Uskwood and dark stuff in general. Just browse his Tumbler. He has published it in several 3pp supplements, which might be worth a look for inspiration...

/End Tangent


One series I enjoyed which played around with the concept of a sympathetic antagonist was Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders Trillogy. I read it quite a few years ago, so the details are a little fuzzy, but I recall that she wrote quite a bit of POV sections from the primary antagonist, a Pirate named Kennit.
Through his sections, you learn not only about his ambitions, but also about his...

Spoiler:
background, which includes a history of being sexually abused when he was young. The story at one point builds the tension between him and the primary heroine, culminating at her rejection of him. He then has a choice... In his anger does he exert himself and rape her as he was once abused, or can he break the cycle of abuse?

I remember the culminating scene being very powerful, as you get a great sense of the knife edge on which Kennit walked, where one side led to redemption, and the other to pure evil and damnation.

Also, A Song of Ice and Fire has some of the best antagonists ever, and none of them are the cliche maniacal wizard types. Just like IRL, the best way to sympathize with a person is to humanize their choices. Jaime early on is set up as a heartless monster, but by the third book you get a glimpse into why he made the decisions that led him to be known as an honorless Kingslayer. Once you see the burden he bore, and continues to bear due to pride, his role as antagonist flips. Heck, even Cercei can gain a little pity when viewed as a mother trying to protect her children. A heartless, evil mother to that little s..., but you kind of get it...

Contributor

Thanael wrote:

Great book that one Chris. I thoroughly enjoyed it. And you're right no real villain but lots of shades of grey. Comes easier with an urban setting I believe. Good vs Evil can be easier changed to Chaos vs. Law there...

I need to get my hands on more of your self published stuff. How intertwined are those books btw? Are they all set in the same world?

Glad you enjoyed it, Thanael!

Actually, all of my non-game related books are set in my own world, and there are some crossovers. Deathmask happens long before all the others, and the Cornerstones Trilogy takes place in the northlands, far from the southern empire of Tsing in Soul for Tsing. The Scimitar Seas books happen in the Tsing empire, and the Weapon of Flesh novels cross over somewhat with Soul for Tsing...but no spoilers!

Enjoy!

Scarab Sages

Anyone have thoughts on the difference between High Fantasy (Worldwound Gambit, Queen of Thorns, etc) vs 'on the ground' Fantasy (Blood of the City, Crusader Road)?

I tend to enjoy the tighter focus of 'on the ground' work, which tends to really develop a small setting and the conflicts are more personal than world changing. That said, Redemption Engine straddled the line between the two for me in an interesting way.

Contributor

Belabras wrote:

Anyone have thoughts on the difference between High Fantasy (Worldwound Gambit, Queen of Thorns, etc) vs 'on the ground' Fantasy (Blood of the City, Crusader Road)?

I tend to enjoy the tighter focus of 'on the ground' work, which tends to really develop a small setting and the conflicts are more personal than world changing. That said, Redemption Engine straddled the line between the two for me in an interesting way.

In general, none of the PFT novels are really "world changing" in scope, though some come very close. Unless Sutter and the developers plan some world altering event, like a new war or cataclysmic event, authors are going to be focusing on smaller issues. We get to play, but can't break the toys. Just like we won't be writing stories about the iconic characters. (other than cameo appearances)

You are definitely right that some stories are wider in focus, while others are narrower. Personally, I like to read and write the tighter focus "on the ground" personal stories, but that doesn't mean that, if asked to do something utterly crazy, like sink an island or blast a city to rubble, I won't take on the challenge. *evil laugh*

Contributor

I guess overall my preference gravitates toward slightly smaller stories because I like to spend time really getting to know the characters, and the bigger-scale stories often have so much flash and bang that it seems harder to get the moments of quiet interiority that I like best. This isn't a comment on the PTales line so much as my tastes in general -- I was definitely one of those readers who preferred the "glimpses of life at Baker Street" bits at the beginnings of Sherlock Holmes stories to the actual mysteries.

A factor to consider that is specific to the line is that PTales novels are standalone books of about 100K words each, which makes it pretty nearly impossible to develop a story of the size and scope you'd need to do justice to an epic saga. It's possible to write a single-book saga -- they don't all have to be ASOIAF -- but you look at the size of something like Gone With the Wind or Shogun and it's apparent that even a tight, efficient writer needs a big canvas to develop that cast of thousands and immersive setting. Trying to condense that size of story into fewer words runs the risk of making it feel superficial. It's incredibly difficult to do well; certainly it's difficult enough that I'd never try. Smaller stories fit much more easily into the page count that we have.

I agree that Redemption Engine did a really good job of pulling off both those tricks, though -- grand plane-hopping adventure but also a fair amount of in-depth character development. That's not an easy thing to do, and you have to admire it when it's done well.

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