The Deed of Paksenarrion

I received an Amazon gift card and spent it on a trilogy some of you may recognize, and all of you should read: The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon.

How I missed it in my heyday of reading, I don't know.  They are read, now, and I am better for it!

Cover art from the used versions I picked up.

Book One - Sheepfarmer's Daughter - saw me power through from 8pm to 4am; an excellent book that reminded me a bit of Cook's Black Company and a bit of several military science fiction pieces I had read in the past.  Mostly mundane, with hints of magic that gave way to larger amounts near the end.

Book Two - Divided Allegiance - I made time to sleep, and frankly, am still recovering from all-nighting the first book.  This one includes several sections that read like D&D adventures, which I particularly enjoy.  Truly, it was others' comparisons to these books and D&D that led me to reading them.  Anyhow, I was not expecting the cliffhangerish ending, so of course, I picked up book three almost immediately.

Book Three - Oath of Gold - this took several days because of real life.  Stupid responsibilities.  The first part of the book is Paksenarrion's truly becoming a Paladin in the D&D sense: creating light, healing wounds, detecting evil, resisting fear, and even a magical mount appearing.  By midway, I could see the ending, but not how it would end, so I read on, and it ended quite well.

Overall, I am glad I finally took the time to read this trilogy, and I reckon by next week, my sleep schedule will be more back to normal.

If you are looking to run a paladin in a DnDish game, give these books a read to see a way it could be done and treated.  furthermore, the books provide a fairly cohesive world and demonstrate one way how a world with numerous active deities might function.  

The standard fantasy races of Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, and Orcs are included, but made distinct through speech patterns and nonhuman cultures.

Go forth and read!

That Wasn't Supposed to Happen!

There is an adage in fiction writing, about how every solution should be the start (or aggravation) of one or more other problems for the protagonist.

This is also a key takeaway from the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck - every solution is another beginning of a new problem for regular folks like you and I.

Or a challenge, depending on how optimistic or pessimistic you might be. 

Now, some folks may be worried that this isn't realistic, or that it is somehow unfair for the PCs to be able to rest on their laurels and reap the rewards of their heroics (or homicidal tendencies or both).

Given that DnD, and other RPGs, are all about pretending to be other people with more ... interesting ... lives, this adage works for these games as well.  After all, challenges and misfortunes propel adventurers into additional adventures, which is what defines their job descriptions, so it works.

Nobody wants to roleplay this game.  Will McLean, AD&D DMG, 1979.

There are several ways to approach or address this method of DMing, highlighted here:

Embrace the pillar of improv known as 'yes, and...' and adding this phrase to your DMing toolkit will serve well in demonstrating how player choices impact the world.

Monkeypawing (from here) wishes is perhaps the most commonly seen form of this advice, and as such, is often ridiculed as being 'adversarial DMing.'  Yet it isn't, or shouldn't be - unless the wish comes from some sort of fiendish or other ill-natured source, and then the PC (and player!) should know better.

My wife's favorite idiom, 'The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions' applies to the do-gooding PCs out saving the world, rescuing the helpless, and generally making life better for those less fortunate.  Don't let this stop you (or PCs) from doing Good and Right things, just be aware that the next rule will rear its head, more often than not.

The Law of Unintended Consequences is an economic theory that also applies to everything else that humans (and the other races/species commonly encountered in RPGs) do, to include doing nothing, but especially actions committed and words spoken in the heat of the moment.

I first learned the acronym TANSTAAFL from Robert A. Heinlein's Notebooks of Lazarus Long (a character that is not exactly an immortal, just quite long-lived).  It turns out that this is another economics theory (based around opportunity costs) that pertains to all other human (and other) activities.  

Will McLean, AD&D DMG 1979

All this talk of economics has me thinking of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand and how it might rival the various Bigby's Hand spells, given how it impacts the local economies.

Then again, instead of a spell, perhaps the Invisible Hand might be better as a monster of some sort.

Just not the kind of Invisible Hand that fudges dice rolls.

What is your favorite game-related unintended consequence?