Quote from: David Johansen;1025003I think a return to shorter novels might help.  Fantasy got really bloated in the last twenty years.  A Conan or Dumarst yarn wasn't so self indulgent or long winded as stuff like The Wheel of Time or Recluse.  Like science fiction fantasy got too full of itself and too busy trying to be a valid adult form of entertainment and forgot that the entertainment part.

Hmmm. Interesting point. I'm at 128,000 words in my book, and expecting to go to 300,000; we had a lot of adventures. A question for those of you who have read the thing, so far: Entertaining? Boring? Too long?

Quote from: Horu hiFa'asu;1025076Isn't pretty much any system fairly lethal for new characters - especially the older systems?  I remember Basic D&D - if they were lucky a fighter or a dwarf would probably survive a single hit from a monster - but any other character would be dropped by a single sword blow.  The poor first level cleric didn't even get a single spell - so no healing for anyway either!

I wonder if the increased complexity in games - which translates to increased time to build a character is a factor. In the really simple games the hardest and longest part of character creation was usually choosing a name!  

Dying sucks - not always because it means that you 'lost' - but because often times this means you aren't doing anything for several hours - maybe more.  It's not so bad if there is an NPC or henchmen you can take over, but that's not always the case.  There isn't always a feasible way to 'drop in' a new character - especially if the old one is likely to be raised (or returned from some otherwise indisposed state) in the near future.  

In general though - no guts, no glory - the toughest fights are always the ones you remember - where you somehow managed to survive despite all odds.  

I wonder if many players have more of a 'video game' view - they are so used to being able to save and reload, that *not* advancing the story with the same protagonist is alien to them.  The rise in popularity of video games (especially RPG ones) has definitely influenced game design - the entire 3rd edition of D&D seems to be geared towards making rules that worked well for video games.   With a 'fixed' set of challenges - building a character around how to best exploit the system becomes part of the game.  That doesn't hold true for 'live' game playing - but the mindset continues.  Hence why forums are full of people posting ridiculous builds that no one would ever want to role play - but that get some crazy multiplicative bonus due to rules exploits.

I have no data on your first point; EPT was hard on D & D players, but we played a very conservative game and survived. The 5e campaign that I'm in may be an outlier; the GM is using the D20 Blackmoor publications for his games, and doing the stat translations right from the books. My impression is that these are not beginning PC adventures, and may have been intended for more advanced PCs. Either way, the PCs are getting slaughtered left and right, and Lord Chirine's sorcerers are getting in a lot of overtime bringing them back to life.

Agreed about the down time; when one new player started, it took her two hours by the clock during the game session to get her PC ready - and this was with a lot of computer assistance - and then she got killed fifteen minutes later. I really felt sorry for her, as she really wanted to play, so I used a little GM  influence with the GM to allow the cavalry to arrive in the nick of time to rescue the party - I made a really good roll to do it, so I felt that the gods were on my side...

Agreed about the 'software' aspect of what I saw with 3e; it seemed like they had done all of the logic trees, and then couldn't get the software developed so they just printed it as an RPG. I'd really, really like to be wrong about that.

Quote from: Hermes Serpent;1025027Following up on David's post and Chirine's response to my original post I think that despite the reissue of older material - I  have a collected set of all Clark Ashton Smith's prose works for example - the fact that these older works, and Lovecraft as well, use convoluted sentences and antique but apposite English words and phrases that aren't taught or aren't in common usage. It's rare that students except at undergraduate level or more likely graduate level ever read Shakespear in the original Elizabethan English. I know I read Chaucer in a version that had both the original text and a modern translation side by side. It's like the Bible being altered from the King James version with it's Jacobean prose that is a wonder of the English language being reduced to a Good News Bible using modern phrasing so as to appeal to semi-literate modern people.

Rant over.

Agreed. I was told that I needed to write my book in the exact same style as CAS, and I don't speak in that voice. I've even had trouble with people not knowing what I'm saying when I used my normal vocabulary, as it seems to be a lot bigger and more nuanced that what most people have for theirs these days.

Quote from: Shemek hiTankolel;1025078This exactly! I also remember reading Shakespeare in Elizabethan English in High School, and Lovecraft, CAS, REH, Manly Wade Wellman, and a host of other authors whose prose was "convoluted," and cumbersome, and archaic, but so evocative. I have used many elements from these author's works in my games over the years.  The last current fantasy that I read was George RR Martin's stuff, which was so repetitive and hackneyed that I had to struggle in order to finish it. I know that MAR Barker's novels have been criticised  as being written in a prose that is too scholarly, and dry, but I much prefer his works to 99% of current the mainstream fantasy and SF books out today, and AFAIC his stuff was better written than Martin's .  

My two cents worth.

Shemek.

Agreed. Phil may be dry, but at least he's readable. I do not like GoT, either in the book or television versions; maybe because I already know the story - it's the Wars of the Roses, really - and because I feel it's a bunch of really unsympathetic characters doing really unpleasant things to each other 'just because'. Cersi's 'Walk of Atonement', is, for example, what actually happened to poor Jane Shore. I don't need that kind of thing in my gaming or entertainment; give me something like "John Carter" or the 'Bahubaali' series, any time.

Sorry about the randomness of my replies; it's late, and I need to get some sleep. Have I gotten all caught up?

For myself, I got my fill of George RR Martin in four or five volumes of Wildcards and simply have no desire to read Game of Thrones.  I've seen his schtick, and everything I've heard about GoT makes it sound like more of the same.  Torture and misery porn aren't all that interesting to me.  And unlikable characters?  I couldn't even stomach Seinfeld.  Just a wimp that way I guess.

Quote from: David Johansen;1025227For myself, I got my fill of George RR Martin in four or five volumes of Wildcards and simply have no desire to read Game of Thrones.  I've seen his schtick, and everything I've heard about GoT makes it sound like more of the same.  Torture and misery porn aren't all that interesting to me.  And unlikable characters?  I couldn't even stomach Seinfeld.  Just a wimp that way I guess.

Agreed. In our adventures with Phil, some of the NPCs had some pretty nasty things happen to them - but there was always an underlying cause or reason why it was happening. Ditto with the few times the PCs got into dire political trouble; there was a reason / cause, and there was always retribution for any nastiness when the rest of the party showed up - like the time the other group had Vrisa arrested for treason. We got her out of it, and fixed their wagons but good.

With GoT, my perception is that a lot of the misery and nastiness is there to sell books and videos.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1025231With GoT, my perception is that a lot of the misery and nastiness is there to sell books and videos.

No, the soft-core porn is what sells it although I hear that there is less nudity in the material after the first series or two.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1025221Hmmm. Interesting point. I'm at 128,000 words in my book, and expecting to go to 300,000; we had a lot of adventures. A question for those of you who have read the thing, so far: Entertaining? Boring? Too long?

Entertaining.
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Quote from: chirine ba kal;1025231With GoT, my perception is that a lot of the misery and nastiness is there to sell books and videos.

Good news doesn't sell. It seems most people want to see others in misery. Must make them feel better about their own lives.
Sadly, often it seems that even in games where they can do whatever they want, they bring it with them.
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Quote from: chirine ba kal;1025221Hmmm. Interesting point. I'm at 128,000 words in my book, and expecting to go to 300,000; we had a lot of adventures. A question for those of you who have read the thing, so far: Entertaining? Boring? Too long?

Not an issue for me. You have clearly defined books. Plus, not much published Tekumel fiction. Plus plus, I like your style...Can't wait to get my paws on it. Most entertaining!!!

H;0)

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1025221Hmmm. Interesting point. I'm at 128,000 words in my book, and expecting to go to 300,000; we had a lot of adventures. A question for those of you who have read the thing, so far: Entertaining? Boring? Too long?

Entertaining.

As for length, going by word count may be a bad measuring stick. How many words are there in all the Howard Conan stories? Doesn't matter, they are all in nice sized chunks of various sizes. Like you said, you had lots of adventures. It was not one big long slog. I love Lord of the Rings but it seems that most writers are slaves to the Big Quest plot that it had. No one seems to to write the short "one off" style adventures, whether short works or stand alone novel from the old days anymore and I miss them. I enjoy seeing if Frodo can get to Mount Doom, but I also enjoy seeing what hijinks the Grey Mouser is getting into today or what far off place Conan has washed up on. Your book titles capture that spirit immediately.

Certainly not too long. But as someone else looking forward to it, probably not long enough! More adventures! More Tekumel!

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1025221Hmmm. Interesting point. I'm at 128,000 words in my book, and expecting to go to 300,000; we had a lot of adventures. A question for those of you who have read the thing, so far: Entertaining? Boring? Too long?

Entertaining, but I might be somewhat biased.:rolleyes:

Quote from: chirine ba kal;1025221Hmmm. Interesting point. I'm at 128,000 words in my book, and expecting to go to 300,000; we had a lot of adventures. A question for those of you who have read the thing, so far: Entertaining? Boring? Too long?

Where might a lowly individual, such as myself, read this work in progress?

Blaise

Quote from: bconsidine;1025283Where might a lowly individual, such as myself, read this work in progress?

Blaise

E-mail me with an e-mail address I can sent the work-in-progress to. I really enjoy getting feedback and input from people, as it really helps me write; like this thread, I work best in 'storyteller mode', answering questions from the crows in the market place. What you'll get is the very raw text, with no edits done s of yet. (My e-mail is on my blog.)