"Exceptional Fluff" - the bane of RPGs (ranty)

[Sir Brennen]

I agree, my friend. If you are going to write in an RPG setting then stay true to that setting. Raise dead is a fact of life in this world, anyone with money will of course try it.

Staying true to the setting can be different than staying true to the game rules.

In realistically depicting a setting, Raise Dead is not going to simply be a service one can buy with enough cash. Even if one finds a cleric willing to take the money, will his god grant him the spell for just anyone? Will the deceased individual be willing and/or able to return from the other side? 4E introduces the idea that destiny/fate unfulfilled plays into resurrection magic as well.

When writing fiction, one has to examine the logical and narrative implications of the game rules. This can lead to story assumptions and outcomes which are quite different than the way things happen in actual play.

As for exceptional, "rule-breaking" characters in the fiction... sometimes this can lead to further inspiration for the introduction of new ideas into the game itself.

 

[Fenes]

Staying true to the setting can be different than staying true to the game rules.

In realistically depicting a setting, Raise Dead is not going to simply be a service one can buy with enough cash. Even if one finds a cleric willing to take the money, will his god grant him the spell for just anyone? Will the deceased individual be willing and/or able to return from the other side? 4E introduces the idea that destiny/fate unfulfilled plays into resurrection magic as well.

When writing fiction, one has to examine the logical and narrative implications of the game rules. This can lead to story assumptions and outcomes which are quite different than the way things happen in actual play.

As for exceptional, "rule-breaking" characters in the fiction... sometimes this can lead to further inspiration for the introduction of new ideas into the game itself.

Realistically, Raise Dead is available for cash. Sourcebooks and rules say so - especially in one of the biggest, richest metropolis of Faerun. It's quite unrealistic that this would not be the case.

If Raise Dead is not available for cash, then that should be mentioned in the novel. If there are complications they should be mentioned. Simply ignoring it is wrong, and lessens the novel.

Anything else is like a novel about the second world war which completely ignores air support or artillery without any explanation (like weather, or ammo shortage, or no radio communication) even if the main characters would call for support.

 

[Crothian]

I think the problems is most RPGs and RPG rules would make for really boring and bad novels.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think the problems is most RPGs and RPG rules would make for really boring and bad novels.

Don't totally agree, I think that rpg rules make for bad fight scenes. In a novel one just wants the highlights of the fight, other stuff that the rpg rules deals with a couple of dice rolls though can make dramatic narrative, particularly skill checks.

 

[nightwyrm]

One reason novels based on game setting are bad is because most game settings have rules that doesn't consider their impact on the way the setting's world would operate. In order for the story to be believeable, authors often would have to deviate from the setting's rules.

Most game worlds are simply pseudo-medieval settings with magic thrown in without thinking about their impact. Imagine the impact on war, commerce, politics etc. if magical effects like teleport, invisibility, detect thoughts, bags of holding etc. are commonly available.

As for character abilities beyond what is described by their class...well, that's because a class system is extremely unrealistic, and following it religiously in a novel would break the believeability of that story. It is ludicrious to think that everyone in the world can be easily classified into a finite number of "classes" that perfectly describe their toughness, combat ability, non-combat ability, special skills etc. Classes are used in a game because it allows for easy character generation, not because it's realistic.

And main characters being much more powerful than would otherwise be in a game setting....well, what do you want? The farmboy hero wannabe protagonist gets killed by the orcs and the story is taken up by the lv 20 wizard who might actually stand a chance against the evil god?

 

[Irda Ranger]

To a limited extent I agree with the OP. There are some really bad RPG-novels out there. I think the award goes to Prism Pentad, not just for completely breaking the setting but for doing it in the very first series of novels. They didn't even let the setting run for a couple years before wiping it out.

I do have some sympathy for the writers though. Writing is hard, and doing it on salary under budget and committee-approval restraints doesn't make it any easier. Especially when much of the "exceptional fluff" is part of the job description handed to the author.

So really it's the committee that write the work requests that are uncreative idiots. But calling a committee "uncreative" and "prone to stupid" is redundant.

When writing fiction, one has to examine the logical and narrative implications of the game rules. This can lead to story assumptions and outcomes which are quite different than the way things happen in actual play.

Er, no. When writing fiction in an already established world one has to respect the precedents that have been established. These guys aren't writing on a blank slate. If it's already been established that Raise Dead can be purchased at any largish temple for a certain fee then no fancy "logic" is needed. It's right there on the menu of options available to anyone that can pay.

As for exceptional, "rule-breaking" characters in the fiction... sometimes this can lead to further inspiration for the introduction of new ideas into the game itself.

Right, because what D&D is lacking is the Batman Class that contains all the benefits of two or more other classes and no downsides.

In one of the Pools of Radiance novels (I do not remember which one) there was a fighter that did not wear armor and relied on his speed and reflexes to keep himself out of harm's way. For AD&D that was innovative for "the game itself." Often novels can expose some of the silly restrictions imposed on the various class builds, like Wizards not be able to learn how to use a sword or what have you even if they take the time to train with it. The rules should support this "reasonable" flexibility (and thankfully in recent edition they now do).

But what the OP is complaining about is something else entirely. There's a trend among some authors to just create characters that are "more super excellent" than any PC could ever be. It's sort of the opposite problem that The Wheel of Time RPG had, where the designers had to figure out how to make a balanced RPG in a world with both Tam al'Thor and Rand al'Thor. Sure, one of them is the (retired) Captain of the Hundred Companions, Heron-marked blademaster and veteran of a dozen wars, but the other is frakkin' Rand al'Thor. Having a character like Rand in a novel that's only supposed to be read is fine, but introducing a Rand-like character to an RPG setting novel creates an unfortunate situation where the game's players cannot "be like Rand" without completely breaking the game.

Then there's the "lets just ignore the established campaign setting" problem. I recall one Dragonlance novel that had a half-orc protagonist. WTF? There are no orcs (and thus no half-orcs) on Krynn! Wasn't anyone at TSR paying attention? Why couldn't he be a human, minotaur or even a hobgoblin? All those races exist. Even a draconian protagonist would have made an interesting novel, but the author chose to just completely ignore (or worse, was completely ignorant of) the established races living on Krynn.

In another novel the author appeared totally unaware of the fact that Krynn has three moons and kept saying "the moon was low in the sky" or "the moon passed behind the clouds." No mention of which moon, or where the other moons were. Yee-argh!

And then of course there's the whole problem with "World Shaking Events", but I blame those on TSR/Wizards, not the authors, for the reasons mentioned above. They are disruptive though and rarely make for good stories in and of themselves anyway. The best stories are always about people. Sometimes the authors manage to fit a good story within the "World Shaking Event" narrative that's been handed to them, but equally often they don't.

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Bottom line: Novels based in shared campaign settings cannot be as freely innovative as your average fantasy novel. You can still tell great stories (because all the best stories are about people, not classes and feats), but you have to obey certain restrictions.

 

[Sigdel]

This is an interesting topic.

But as an answer to the raise dead issue is that it makes for a poor story and poor game. If the good king Jarrod entertaines his dinner guests by reading off his latest slew of death threats, knowing full well that he will just get raised at the local church again, that their is no reason for the heroes to even stop the assassination attempt. Hell, the king isnt even bothered by it, he just seems more miffed.

But hey, the dinner guests seem to enjoy the humor.

 

[Fenes]

This is an interesting topic.

But as an answer to the raise dead issue is that it makes for a poor story and poor game. If the good king Jarrod entertaines his dinner guests by reading off his latest slew of death threats, knowing full well that he will just get raised at the local church again, that their is no reason for the heroes to even stop the assassination attempt. Hell, the king isnt even bothered by it, he just seems more miffed.

But hey, the dinner guests seem to enjoy the humor.

There are several ways to kill someone for good, and they are not that difficult to pull them off. If the writers don't use them they are simply lazy or ignorant.

 

[MarkAHart]

But neither should you ask yourself "Why doesn't he/she simply do X?!" If you have a cleric in your novel, then you need to explain why the cleric can't heal a dieing friend, or raise a dead friend.

Oh, I agree -- if something is an assumed element within the setting, the books based on that setting should not ignore that element. Raise Dead et al. is a good example of this (and one that makes novels of game settings somewhat problematic).

 

[Derren]

There are exceptions. The Year of the Rogue Dragon books from Richard Lee Byers are rather close to the 3.5E rules and you can clearly see what prestige classes and templates the characters have and what spells they use.
It dies have a rather strange cast (main character is a half golem for example) but its all backed up by the rules.

Just raise dead doesn't get used. But I have never seen this spell being used in any D&D novel.