No Thank You, Evil!

I consider the age suggestions on the sides of game boxes to be total lies. Boss Monster (13+) is one of my 9-year-olds' favorite games to play on their own. My 6-year-old daughter kills at Love Letter (10+). One of my sons, when faced with an inevitable loss at Star Wars Risk (10+), blew up his own planet so the rebels would either have to call the game or spend another hour of gameplay going around the long way. He wasn't pouting. It was a carefully thought-out tactic.

He was 7 at the time.

So of course I try to get these kids into role-playing. Unfortunately, most RPGs have a lot of rules which, although my kids are capable of learning them, make playing the game kinda like wrangling velociraptors.

"You can't cast fireball. You don't have any material components or enough 3rd-level slots to.... Fine, you cast the spell."

Numenera's story-focused rules are great for kids, but the Ninth World is kinda creepy, and homebrews, although fun, are a lot to keep track of.

So when Monte Cook Games announced they were doing a kid-focused RPG, based on the rules of Numenera, I knew I was in. No Thank You, Evil! is the perfect game for our family.

Part of that, admittedly, is that my kids are ridiculously amusing to GM. They're fearless to the point of idiocy (requiring me to come up with clever ways in which to not kill them). They have no in-game morals, so persuading, lying, and attacking are all perfectly valid options (and usually all suggested simultaneously). And most of all they're deviously clever.

Two days ago they were trying to convince a guard they were innocent and should be set free from prison. The guard said it wasn't his job to determine innocence, and that if they were in prison it was obviously because they were bad (the guard was aptly named "Justin Justice").

Later on, a mostly successful escape attempt resulted in the PCs being outside while Justin was trapped inside. "I told you you were criminals!" Justin shouted through the door.

"But you're the one in prison," said Joel. "That means you're bad."

As the GM, I didn't know what to say to that. I didn't say anything for several minutes because I was laughing. Justin eventually tried to argue, but Joel had a point. Justin is still trapped in that prison trying to work it out.

But as amusing as my kids are to GM, it works mainly because No Thank You, Evil! enables their creativity. The game's got rules -- even advanced rules for kids who grow beyond the simple version -- but it encourages players to try crazy things. For example, of the six characters my kids created, only two use corebook character classes, none of them have corebook weapons, and at least three try to use their self-defined abilities to slide past the rules at every opportunity.

Sometimes I even let them, because it's funny.

The thing is NTYE doesn't break when you do this. Everything players try to do boils down to one simple rule: roll a d6 to attempt it. They all get it (a little too well, actually -- I have to keep telling them their rolls don't count until I've told them the difficulty), and they all feel free to try anything at any time, knowing that something fun will happen no matter what.

There are some things I questioned about the game. I thought it was weird to ask my players to describe a character I just introduced, and sometimes I feel like the world is too whimsical for my boys who want quests and villains. But (1) I don't have to do any of that stuff -- I mean, I could make the world all Forgotten Realms if I wanted to -- and (2) it turns out my kids like this stuff.

Like, the whimsy keeps everything light, even though one of my boys threatens everybody he meets (and another doesn't waste his time with threats; he just goes straight to zapping them). The moment I described above with the prison guard occurred after they had befriended, and then betrayed, him to get out. Justin liked them, and they turned on him. It's a dark, almost villainous turn, but Joel found humor in it.

And it works perfectly well within that world.

My daughter hit Justin in the face with a sandwich. It did 1 damage, but he also lost his next turn because, honestly, the sandwich was pretty delicious.

As for asking them to describe people, what a time-saver! I'm starting to think I should do this with grownups, too. I didn't have time to detail a full adventure for our most recent session, so I asked them to describe the main villain and name several characters (hence the name Justin Justice). They love it, and it's less work for me!

When I GM adults, I feel like there's a lot of pressure to either have everything prepared or to think quick on my feet. I no longer have time for the former, and I'm terrible at the latter. But my kids don't care! If I stumble on a plot point, they start yelling out ideas. Sometimes I even run with them because they're so crazy I just want to see what happens. It's true collaborative storytelling -- the best part about role-playing.

So, hey, if you're a gaming parent who's been looking for a family-focused RPG, maybe check out No Thank You, Evil. You might be surprised what comes out of your kids' heads.

Read the entirety of "The Patch Man"

My Pathfinder story, "The Patch Man," has now been published in its entirety. If you're like me, and you don't like reading something that you can't finish, well you can finish it now: chapter one, chapter two, chapter three, and chapter four.

(And if you're better than me, and read things the moment you can read any part of it, know that today you can be complete.)

And oh my gosh, I just realized I never told you how this came to be!

It probably never occurred to you. I mean, I'm the Design Lead of a computer RPG, a thematic successor to a Dungeons and Dragons game, of which Pathfinder itself is a successor. The creator of Numenera (from which we get Torment: Tides of Numenera) wrote a Pathfinder story of his own. Obviously, then this work for hire came about because of my RPG connections.

Except it didn't. It actually came through my dear friend Authoress, who was chatting with me one day and asked if I had any interest writing a story for a game world (which, um, YEAH). Cuz she was chatting with this editor of an anthology that she was published in alongside Paizo's managing editor. And he had said . . .

Yeah, I can't track it all either. The point is I am apparently only capable of finding the most circuitous routes to publishing available. (Like, you know, quitting Black Isle, moving to Thailand, and then getting a game design job through Facebook).

But what do you care? You get to reap the streamlined benefits in fiction form. For free! Go, reap your benefits, find out what happens to Blit!

The Patch Man is up at Paizo.com

My latest short story, "The Patch Man," is up at paizo.com (at least the first chapter is -- the rest will come soon). It takes place in the world of the Pathfinder RPG which, if you're not familiar with it, is very similar to D&D, but with a lot of its own twists. "The Patch Man" is about a half-fiend named Blit who makes a living cleaning up evidence for the less-reputable guilds in Pathfinder's largest city, until he starts getting in over his head.

This marks the second short story I've sold in *mumbles* years of writing. At this rate, you can expect a published novel from me by 2040. Oh well. In the meantime, I'll just get back to work on the most anticipated RPG of 2015.

Rough, right?

Anyway, enjoy the story. Did I mention it's free?

My Boys' First RPG

I've been wanting to try my boys out on an RPG for a while now, but I wasn't really sure how. I'd given away a lot of my sourcebooks, so all I had left was the d20 SRD which, while great, wasn't quite what I wanted.

Then I got this fancy schmancy Numenera corebook in the mail. This system is what I wanted: simple, flexible, and with a heck of a lot of leeway for a GM who wasn't sure how well his players would get things. But the Ninth World can be kinda . . . creepy, at least for 6- and 7-year-olds. I wanted something they could be excited about.

"Why don't you just make something up?" said my wife, ever supportive of even my geekliest dilemmas.

"Are you kidding?" I said. "Do you know how much work that would take? Even if I adapted what I have, I'd still have to make up a bunch of equipment and powers. Though the types would be pretty easy to adapt, I guess. Most of the esoteries are basically Force powers anyway. And the descriptors work okay. . ."

And then I couldn't stop thinking about it.

I MAY have accidentally spent yesterday adapting @MonteJCook's Numenera to the Star Wars universe...
— Adam Heine (@adamheine) October 21, 2013

The next couple of days looked like this:

Sam, Nathan, and Isaac are busy drawing and writing stories for their Star Wars characters. I'm so proud.
— Adam Heine (@adamheine) October 21, 2013

Nathan's Numenera/Star Wars character is a Clever Ewok Hot Shot who Controls Gravity.
— Adam Heine (@adamheine) October 21, 2013

This campaign I started with my boys is not going to be Star Wars canon. Just throwing that out there right now.
— Adam Heine (@adamheine) October 21, 2013

When asked, all five boys independently said they wanted a lightsaber as their weapon. #shouldhaveseenthatcoming #StarWarsRPG
— Adam Heine (@adamheine) October 21, 2013

"Master Luke says you need to take a 2-day journey to a sacred pool. What do you do?" Nathan: "I fight all the Jedi." #SWRPGfirstday
— Adam Heine (@adamheine) October 22, 2013

Isaac: "I want to jump up a tree and throw my knife at the Drakken." "You can try. Roll to see--" *Isaac rolls two 20's* #SWRPGfirstday
— Adam Heine (@adamheine) October 22, 2013

"No, you already recovered. You can't recover more points until after the fight is over." Sam: "Oh. Can I be done now?" #SWRPGfirstday
— Adam Heine (@adamheine) October 22, 2013

Now all I have to do is figure out the rules for lightsabers before they earn theirs. . .

You Know That Fantasy Novel is Really the Author's D&D Game When...

(Remix)

1. It starts in a tavern.
2. There is one protagonist and his 3 or 4 friends, who are different from him in every way.
3. The protagonist is awesome, because every other character tells us so. He also seems the only one capable of making decisions.
4. Dark-skinned elves are always evil, and always dual-wielding.
5. The only limitation on magic is that wizards must sleep before they can cast more spells.
6. Character names contain apostrophes in unneces'sary and inexplicab'le pl'aces.

7. The villain is immensely more powerful than the main characters, but despite their obvious bent on stopping him, he doesn't face them until they are strong enough to defeat him.
8. The main characters are referred to as a "party."
9. The "party" consists of a fighter, a thief, a cleric, and a wizard (alternatively: warrior/rogue/healer/mage, barbarian/burglar/priest/sorcerer, etc).
10. They take on a quest to either save the world or aid the village, for no other reason than that it's right.
11. Despite the fact that there are many characters more powerful than the protagonists, no one else is willing or able to take on the quest.
12. Anyone, anywhere, uses "adventure" as a verb.

Got more?

D&D vs. Fiction

One of my first novel attempts--which crapped out at 20,000 words and which you will never read--was a Dungeons & Dragons novel. I've been playing D&D and other games like it since 1989, and writing a novel was a natural extension of the worlds and characters I'd been making up all along.

But D&D does not necessarily make good fiction. It's sort of a running gag in the fantasy genre that you can tell which novels were really D&D games. This post is about why that is.

In D&D, there is no protagonist. D&D is not about one character, but about the party. They share the story and tell it together. This can work in fiction, but it usually doesn't.
In fiction, even if there are many major characters, the story is still about only one of them. THE LORD OF THE RINGS was always about Frodo, even though every party member had their adventures.

In D&D, the story and world revolve entirely around the party. Because D&D is half shared storytelling and half strategy game, it has to revolve around the players, otherwise they get bored. So when the mysterious stranger approaches the party with a quest, nobody asks, "Why us?"
In fiction, there needs to be a good reason the world can only be saved by the protagonist (especially in YA, where there are often more skilled and more experienced characters about). Anything else feels like it's happening because the plot needs it to. It feels fake.

In D&D, a character is defined by what they can DO. They're defined by their classes, skills, and statistics. Their character arc is the levels they gain and the equipment they pick up.
In fiction, a character is defined by what they WANT and what they CHOOSE. Their character arc is internal--what does the character learn about themselves and how does that change them? In fiction, a half-elf fighter is just a stereotype, but a half-elf fighter who wants to be a wizard, but whose human father wouldn't let him because he hates magic, is interesting.

In D&D, every world is essentially the same. Oh, the kingdoms and politics are different, and some DMs will come up with unique deities and monsters. But the races, classes, and rules are the same. They have to be so the players know what to expect from game to game, and can feel secure that the rules are balanced. Translated to fiction, this results in a feeling of sameness to the worlds. Everyone is a fighter, thief, cleric, or wizard. Primary cultures are medieval-European in flavor. Magic is just something certain people do (but only a limited number of times per day).

There's nothing inherently wrong with this. Some people want this when they read fantasy, and certainly there are DMs who get uber-creative with worlds and rules. But if you're not careful, this sameness is what will happen.

D&D revolves around the players, outside the game. They're the ones making the decisions and steering the story. You might think, then, that fiction revolves around the reader, but it doesn't. The reader is like a spectator to a D&D game, which is not terribly interesting. They have no decisions to make, but they want to root for someone who does. That's why fiction revolves around the characters.

Have you ever transitioned from D&D to writing? Or have you read a novel that felt like it did? Tell me in the comments.

You Know That Fantasy Novel is Really the Author's D&D Game When...

1. It starts in a tavern.
2. There are four main characters, and it's unclear which one is the protagonist.
3. There is one protagonist and his three friends, who are different from him in every way.
4. The main characters are all human. Secondary characters are elves and dwarves.
5. The only limitation on magic is that, after a certain number of spells, magic users must sleep before they can cast more.
6. The villain is a human wizard.
7. The villain is immensely more powerful than the main characters, but despite their obvious bent on stopping him, he doesn't face them until they are strong enough to defeat him.
8. The main characters are referred to as a "party."
9. The party consists of a fighter, a thief, a cleric, and a wizard (alternatively: warrior, rogue, healer, and mage; also barbarian, burglar, priest, and sorcerer).
10. They take on a quest to either save the world or aid the village, for no other reason than that it's right.
11. Despite the fact that there are many characters more powerful than the protagonists, no one else is willing or able to take on the quest.
    
12. Anyone, anywhere, uses "adventure" as a verb.

Got more?