Marie Brennan's Blog, page 206

because ordering from Japan is expensive

I don't suppose anybody has any clever tips for how to find kimono and obi (and I do mean kimono, not yukata) for non-obscene prices? I'm looking either for stores in the Bay Area or for websites, but between the exchange rate and shipping costs, ordering from Japan tends to make prices obscene pretty quickly -- I'd prefer something more, er, local.

This query has been brought to you by eBay's utter failure to contain what I want, and Rakuten's tendency to make my eyes bleed with machine-translated Japanese.

Help Us/LJ Support Planned Parenthood

Originally posted by matociquala at Help Us/LJ Support Planned ParenthoodOriginally posted by stillsostrange at Help Us/LJ Support Planned ParenthoodOriginally posted by dreamsformortar at Help Us/LJ Support Planned ParenthoodOriginally posted by starlite_gone at Help Us/LJ Support Planned ParenthoodOriginally posted by remuslives23 at Ode to Planned Parenthood...Originally posted by myprettycabinet at Ode to Planned Parenthood...Originally posted by theljstaff at Help Us Support Planned Parenthood



Join us in standing up for reproductive health and education. Planned Parenthood, the organization that delivers reproductive health care, sex education and information to millions of people worldwide, has come under fire in the U.S. lately, with many politicians on both state and federal level seeking to end funding (and in a few cases succeeding).

During the month of May, you can send a specially designed Planned Parenthood vgift to your friends to help support this cause. (And if you need someone to send it to, frank is always happy to receive gifts!) There are three variations ($1, $5 and $10) for you to choose from, but they'd all look good on your profile when your friends know that you stand by something so important.

                    
Thank you all for your help in our support for Planned Parenthood. This promotion ends June 1, 2012; LiveJournal is not affiliated with Parent Parenthood. For more information about Planned Parenthood, please visit: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/

-The LiveJournal Team

(If you'd like to help spread the word that we're raising funds for Planned Parenthood, you can crosspost this entry in your own journal or community by using the repost button below!)

~~~

SF in SF!

If you're going to be in the San Francisco Bay Area on May 19th, come join me at SF in SF! I'll be reading with Ysabeau Wilce and Erin Hoffman at 7 p.m. (the doors open at 6).

. . . no idea what I'll be reading; I need to find out how much time I'll have, and ponder options. But I promise to pick something cool. :-)

Dear NPT Writer

General stuff first: My Phantom request notwithstanding, I tend to be fond of fics that are an extension or fleshing-out of canon, rather than a revision. This means that if you like the source well enough to offer it, you probably like a lot of the same things I do about it -- so when in doubt, if it seems like it fits with canon, you can be pretty sure I'll enjoy it. :-)

My requests here aren't very shippy, either in the fluff or PWP sense, though I don't mind relationships entering the story where appropriate. I adore plotty fics, but since that can be a lot of work, I would also be happy with something that really digs into the characters. Humour is great so long as it's more on the witty end of things; humiliation or characters being too stupid to breathe makes me cringe. (Which is not the same thing as their flaws leading them to make bad decisions. That, I'm fine with.) Violence is also fine -- in fact, at least one of my suggestions below has the potential to get really twisted -- but I'm not very keen on seeing women get victimized, given how widespread it is in other media.

If you need more data on what I like, you can check out my fics; feel free skip past the fairy-tale retellings, which are actually original works (so to speak) that I posted to the AO3, and not very representative of me in the context of fanfic. Or you can look under the fanfiction tag; skip past the stuff about the Aurors exchange, and you'll find my thoughts on various ficcy things.

And now, the actual requests!

Fandom: Phantom of the Opera
Character: Christine Daae

Let me say up front that I know optional details are optional, and that goes extra double true for a crossover request, since it involves a fandom you didn't offer and might not even know. But I've had luck with this before, so I figure I might as well try; if the crossover does not float your boat, then skip the next bit.

The idea comes from watching Repo! The Genetic Opera and noticing that Blind Mag -- a singer -- is played by Sarah Brightman. Who also, of course, originated the role of Christine (likewise a singer, duh) in Phantom. So I got this cracked-out notion: what if Blind Mag was Christine? You'd need some way to explain how the heck she got from the past to the dystopian future; I figure it involves the GraveRobber digging her up and finding she isn't dead/somehow reanimating her/whatever, but beyond that, who knows. I would adore a story that invents a connection between those two.

If you don't know that movie and don't want to watch it, or have watched it and don't like it, or whatever, then that's okay! I am also fine with a vanilla Phantom story. In this case, I'd love something set post-musical, and it doesn't even have to be about Christine. See, on the whole I wasn't a fan of the recent movie version (mostly because I think the show is designed to be seen at a distance, and when you put the camera right up in people's faces the melodrama gets to be too much), but I very much liked the moments where it showed details a stage production can't really convey. Particularly, I liked the exchange of glances between Madame Giry and Raoul (I think that's who was there) during the auction at the beginning: the sense that they're the only two people present who understand what all that stuff really means. It suggests a whole wealth of character baggage; you have to figure that anybody who was there for the Phantom's antics will remember them for decades afterward. Pick a character who interests you (including people not nominated; I don't care) and tell me about that aftermath.


Fandom: Good Omens
Characters: Hastur and Agnes Nutter

When nominations were underway, I was browsing people's comments on LJ/DW about what they'd put in, and saw boundbooks' characters included Hastur and Agnes Nutter. As I said at the time, my brain automatically tries to imagine what kind of story the person might be thinking of, that leads them to choose those characters; and I kind of sprained something on that pair. Our subsequent joke turned into something I'd really love to see: "The Temptation of Agnes Nutter, Witch." The epic tale of how Hastur was sent to distract Agnes Nutter from writing her prophecies, and Failed Utterly. :-D

That's the main idea, but I love this book so much, I'd eat up pretty much anything else you wanted to write.


Fandom: Dragon Age
Characters: any

Okay, I have a secret to confess: sometimes -- especially in DA2 -- I run through zones I don't have to (like going from the Hanged Man through Lowtown and Hightown to get to the Viscount's Keep), and choose my party based on what combinations I haven't used much, just to hear my companions talk to each other. I find them utterly hilarious. The companions are, in my opinion, one of the great strengths of Bioware's games; they are awesome people, and richly enough characterized that I want to know more about them.

I picked "any" because all of these requests are individual to various companions, and while there are some I'm more interested in than others, I didn't want to pick such a random assortment that nobody would match with me. (And besides, there are more than four I'd be interested in.) Mostly I want backstory for them, tales of what happened before they wound up with the Warden or Hawke -- but because they're such different people, "backstory" covers a whole range of story types, so you're welcome to run with whatever comes alive for you.

(I should mention that I'm much less interested in stories that include the Warden or Hawke, mostly because everybody's vision of those characters is very different. But you can include any other canonical characters suit your story, and of course make up your own as needed.)

Alistair -- I adore Alistair. He is like Joscelin (from Jacqueline Carey's first Kushiel trilogy), with a much better sense of humour. I'm apparently a sucker for the semi-fallen religious warrior? I would love a story about Alistair in his Templar-and-Chantry days. He doesn't show terribly strong faith in the game -- not like Leliana -- was he more religious before, and lost it somehow, or did the Maker never mean much to him? Or does he have his own personal take on those things, that he doesn't talk about much? (This makes it sound like I want a deep meditation on faith. I'm not averse to that, but I tend to assume any story about Alistair would be light-hearted along with its depth.) Hijinks and/or the events that led to him becoming a Grey Warden; both would be awesome, separately or together.

Fenris -- I adore Fenris, too, in a totally different way. (Much of it centering on the voice. <siiiiiigh>) He's angsty without being a dick to Hawke, which is a balancing act few writers manage. This, then, is the Very Dark Option: tell me a story about his time under his master's thumb. What kinds of things did Danarius and Hadriana do to him, and what did they make him do? Feel free to get as twisted as you like. (Not purely sexual, though. That can be a component if you want, but I'm not looking for smut.)

Anders -- Here, I must admit, my adoration is segmented. I love DA:A Anders, but for DA2, I have to invent a headcanon in which dealing with Justice has completely rewritten his personality. (And even then, I have to ignore things he says about the Wardens, because they don't remotely fit the story of my game.) I'd be interested in a story about one or more of his escape attempts from the Circle pre-DA:A, but I'd prefer more of the lighthearted DA:A tone than the angry DA2 one -- though if you want to hint at darkness, i.e. the abuses Anders talks about in the second game, that's fine.

Merrill -- oh, Merrill. Most adorable little blood mage ever. (Seriously, it's the accent. And the lines they give her.) I'd like the story of Merrill's deal with the demon, in between the two games: how the heck did that end up happening?

Flemeth -- pretty much anything about Flemeth. :-) I'm pretty convinced her appearance in DA2 is mostly to explain how she survives DA:O/remind players she exists, because Bioware has something big in mind for her later. Either way, she is clearly a hell of a lot more than just the Witch of the Wilds. If you have ideas for what that "more" is, then share!

Those are the ones for which I have a particularly strong yen, but I'd also be cool with Isabela (pirate ship adventures!), Morrigan (growing up with Flemeth, or what she does after DA:O/Witch Hunt), Shale (becoming a golem -- that one could be really twisted, too -- or silliness about hunting pigeons), Sigrun (love on Sigrun; she's just so cheerful!), Varric (sexiest dwarf EVER -- again, it's the voice), etc. Companions FTW.


Hopefully something in there sparked a plotbunny or two for you. Have fun, and I look foward to seeing the result!

Books read, April 2012

The trend of reading fiction by women instead of men continues. Partly this is because half of the titles I finished this month were YA (and three-quarters of those were by Suzanne Collins), but still. I had this odd feeling of, I dunno, backwards activism or something when I sat down with Saladin's book -- like I was virtuously promoting diversity in my reading by picking up something by a man. <g>

The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins. Read this a couple of days after seeing the movie, and it should tell you something that I still felt very compelled to go on reading, even though I knew what was going to happen. As others have pointed out, the worldbuilding is made of Swiss cheese, but whatever -- the story was engaging enough that I was willing to accept the silliness of the world as part of my initial buy-in.

Throne of the Crescent Moon, Saladin Ahmed. Epic fantasy (of the slender sort, page-wise) drawing on Middle Eastern sources. It's original in more ways than that: the main protagonist, Adoulla, is a fat old man, which is not exactly common in this genre. (The early parts with him made me feel like Iroh had a long-lost Arab cousin.) I was put off by the very first bit, wherein the villain is torturing some unknown character -- a scene that returns sporadically throughout the book -- but I don't consider it to be very representative of the book as a whole, so if that kind of thing is not your cup of tea, don't let it deter you from the rest. As for the rest, I had some quibbles on the character front, but it's still a fun read. (And it has several active female characters, most of whom get point of view, which is definitely a point in its favor where I'm concerned.)

Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins. Not as strong as the first book, but not bad. It falters the worst near the end, when it sinks too fully into a rehash of tropes from the first book; not just the Hunger Games themselves, but a certain character-level gambit that is much less well-justified the second time around. But I liked the earlier parts, where it both showed us things we hadn't seen before, and showed us old things in a new way.

Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins. Weakest of the three, as many people before me have said. What I found interesting was the way some of its weakness seemed to come from its realism. True, Katniss spends quite a lot of the book not really able to affect the plot -- but that's because logic dictates that she wouldn't be, in that situation. And while Collins might have been able to engineer a situation in which Katniss was in control, doing that without it being cheesy and unrealistic would have been a lot more difficult. I was actually enjoying the book a decent bit until the last quarter or so, where it kind of fell down into a confusing mess. Too many things there felt too sudden, too arbitrary, or built on too shallow of a foundation. (Some of which, I think, is a consequence of the pov structure. Keeping us solely in Katniss' head really limits what we're able to see -- a point on which I think the movies have the advantage, for all they lose in emotional immediacy.)

Cold Magic, Kate Elliott. This one ate a lot of the month, as I went from the easy-to-devour Hunger Games trilogy to something that required much more chewing. The worldbuilding here is much, much denser, and I spent a fair chunk of the early pages trying to sort out just how everything fit together, before I hit the exposition that made it all clear -- and even then I don't understand it all, and expect I will have to keep reading to find out. But that isn't exactly a hardship. (Afro-Celtic alternate-history, um, icepunk? Was that the word people were using when I mentioned this one on Twitter? Anyway, fascinating.)

Black Heart, Holly Black. Conclusion of the Curse Workers trilogy, and I have to wonder whether Holly spent some time debating title color schemes before deciding that screw it, she'd just go ahead and use her last name. :-) Anyway, this one felt a bit more scattershot, in that some of the side plots weren't as closely integrated as I might have liked. And I was not entirely sold on the last bit of denoument -- but that might be because I am fundamentally a very different person from Cassel, and what makes him happy is not my cup of tea. Having said all that, I did enjoy the book, and definitely recommend the series.

A Handbook on Asante Culture, Osei Kwadwo. Nonfiction! The (Ghanaian) author is not a native English speaker and, um, really could have used a copy-editor who is. Yeah. But if you can get past that issue, this is a very useful "here's what we do" kind of anthropology book; it talks about topics ranging from education, puberty rites, marriage, and divorce, to how Asantes swear oaths, administer justice, run their farms, and more. It is purely descriptive, not analytical: it will not tell you the symbolic significance of eggs in Asante society, only how they get used in various contexts. But sometimes descriptiveness is what you want. If the author has a fault, it's a tendency to speak a bit too glowingly of the "olden days," when there was less theft and people were polite to one another and no able-bodied people ever couldn't support themselves; I somehow doubt earlier Asante society was that perfect. I very much like, though, the way Kwadwo slides from describing how things used to be done to how they're done now because of the passage of such-and-such law in the thirties or whenever; it helps erase the tendency in any discussion of traditional whatever to see the past as some kind of timeless void, disconnected from the present moment.

The Ancient Asante King, A.A. Anti. This book, on the other hand . . . okay, it was written in the seventies (Kwadwo's is from 2002), and explicitly concerns itself with Asante kingship in the nineteenth century, prior to 1874. But I do not take issue with its historical focus, nor with the author's apparent (and very old-school) belief that it's really really important to understand the lives of Great Men in order to understand the society they rule. What I take issue with is the utter failure here to make me understand the lives of the Asante kings. The descriptions Anti provides would lead you to believe their lives consisted of nothing but eating, watching jesters perform, having sex with their many beautiful wives (and getting rid of the ones who stop being beautiful), ordering people to be horrifically tortured, and going to war. That last bit is the sole point on which you can discern anything resembling an actual effort at governance or statecraft on the part of the ostensible ruler. Since I doubt the Asantehene was solely a figurehead, puppeted about by the real political leaders, I find this gravely disappointing -- and pretty offensive to boot, since the descriptions here make the Asantehene sound like a horrible person and total waste of space. (Despite the multi-page digression partway through, where Anti points out to you all the horrible bloody things other societies have done in their pasts. Yes, okay -- but I would like more evidence, sir, that you have not swallowed wholesale historical accounts that need a good questioning, and also anything resembling an attempt to analyze these practices and think about why they existed in the first place.)

(And Anti is Ghanaian, too. So it isn't a matter of foreign bias. Internalized racism? I have no idea. But yeeks. Read the two pages about the downfall of Kofi Karikari in 1874 and the problems Osei Mensah Bonsu faced after him -- the one place in here it stops being general maunderings about "the king" and starts being about specific kings -- and chuck the rest.)

Side note: if anybody can recommend something I can read to get a sense of what the Queenmother's role is in Asante society, I'd be much obliged. Neither Kwadwo nor Anti addresses it directly, though at least the former makes up for it by talking a lot about women more generally in Asante society.

Now We Are Sick, ed. Neil Gaiman and Stephen Jones. Collection of poems, that I acquired because I was being completist about Diana Wynne Jones' work. Very little of the collection is memorable: it's an assortment of verse on various gross subjects, the best of which make you chuckle for a moment before you move on.

The Wheel of Time Roleplaying Game

To fill the time between now and the final spate of WOT analysis (which is currently scheduled to begin in September, but that's assuming the January pub date for A Memory of Light stays put), I bring you: the Wheel of Time Roleplaying Game!

(Core book only. I did not pick up Prophecies of the Dragon, the sole expansion published before they dropped the line, though I have read a summary of it. The material in it is considered non-canonical anyway.)

Ground info first: this is a d20 game, published in 2001 (between Winter's Heart and Crossroads of Twilight) meaning it dates back to the brief heyday of third edition D&D -- third edition, not 3.5. Since WOTRPG has its own world-specific set of classes, the revisions made to the class system between editions don't much matter, but the skill system is the old mess, lacking not only the simplifications introduced by Pathfinder, but even the improvements of 3.5. ("Intuit Direction" is a skill!)

Before I dig into the grotty details of the system, though, I should talk about the presentation of the book itself. As is usually the case with merchandising of this sort, it doesn't appear to be entirely certain whether it's trying to market itself to fans of the books -- who already know the world, and are itching to imagine themselves as the Dragon Reborn or whatever -- or to lure in outsiders who might then become enamored of the world and go pick up the series. Frankly, I'm always dubious of the latter approach: did anybody really say "oh look, another generic-looking d20 epic fantasy supplement!" and rush to play it? Everybody I know who bought or played it (which isn't very many people) was already a fan -- the sort of people for whom the "fast-track character creation" makes sense, because they already know what an "Aes Sedai Accepted" or "Runaway from the Stedding" is, or for whom it's interesting to see Rand et al. get statted. And yet, there are little one-page potted descriptions of the Aiel and so on, and a worldbuilding section that explains all the countries of Randland, rehashing information fans already know.

Those are the same people for whom the art is going to be infuriating. Instead of the familiar map, we get a less sophisticated redraw -- I guess they weren't able to license the rights to the old one? -- featuring place names like "Tamen Head." Um, yeah. And the character images . . . well, let me just show you the Wise One apprentice:



Don't you love her dark skirt, white blouse, and dark shawl? Or how about the Cairhienin noblewoman, with her striped skirt?



I know this is probably stock art purchased on a budget, but sheesh.

Actually, the art is a good lead-in to my main point, which is that d20 is an abysmal system for running a WOT game. It is, in fact, the stock art of the gaming world: cheap and easy to get, but bearing at best a vague resemblance to what it's supposed to describe.


You can see the difficulty on full display in WOTRPG. This may ostensibly be a 3rd ed.-style d20 game, but it has a bunch of new mechanics grafted onto the top, in an attempt to make the system cover the the content. Take character creation: in addition to the classes (algai'd'siswai, armsman, initiate, noble, wanderer, wilder, woodsman), there are backgrounds: Aiel, Atha'an Miere, Borderlander, Cairhienin, Domani, Ebou Dari, Illianer, Midlander, Tairen, Tar Valoner, Taraboner, and Ogier. These alter character creation and advancement in a number of ways. They allow you to select from a new list of "background feats;" for example, "Bullheaded," which is a background feat for Aiel and Midlanders, gives a +1 to Will saves and a +2 to Intimidate. (But for every 2 ranks in Knowledge: Local, you can select feats from another background of your choice.) They also provide "background skills," which are class skills for you even if they don't belong to your class, and gives you extra ranks for one skill chosen at char-gen. You get a starting equipment package based on your background (in addition to the starting money from your character class), but may also face restrictions or requirements; Sea Folk have to buy Profession: Sailor (and keep buying it as they level up), while Aiel can't buy Ride at character creation, and receive no XP for any encounter in which they use a sword.

Weirdest of all is the way the system handles languages. There aren't many in the Wheel of Time, of course: aside from the language that everybody speaks, there's Trolloc, Ogier, the Old Tongue, and Aiel hand-talk. The latter two are class-specific (to nobles and algai'd'siswai, respectively), but both hand-talk and Common get divided up into dialects. For every point of Intelligence modifier you have, you can learn another dialect of a language you already speak; or you can allocate two points to learn a new language entirely. Why do dialects matter? You incur a penalty on Diplomacy, Gather Information, Innuendo, and Read Lips if you don't speak the same dialect as your target.

. . . whut? This is not an attempt to make the system fit something that happens in the novels. Aside from occasional complaints about how the Seanchan are difficult to understand because they slur their words (after more than a thousand years apart; in Jordan's world, linguistic drift moves slower than glaciers), dialects never operate as anything more than narrative color. Nor is it a standard part of d20 furniture. I have no idea why this is in here.

This is the problem with d20, from my perspective: it has to mechanize everything. You can't just say, Borderlanders are all about the Blight, and then stat your characters appropriately; you have to make Knowledge: Blight a class skill for all characters with the Borderlander background, because if you don't then some of them will only get a half-rank for every skill point they spend in it. You can't trust GMs and players to respect the Aiel taboo against swords; you have to say they get no XP for using them. (And that means you can never really have an Aiel Aram, who decides to forswear his entire culture and pick up a sword. I may hate Aram as a character, but I hate even more the rules being a straitjacket on the story.)

Here, too, we have extra mechanics glued into place, to try and make the spell-slot system of D&D fit a type of magic that is fundamentally not about spell slots at all. For example, Affinities: these are the Five Elements, and are used as descriptors for weaves. Channelers (whether initiates, i.e. those trained in formal systems like the Aes Sedai or Wise Ones; or wilders) get one Affinity at character creation, and can buy more later with the Extra Affinity feat. Women, of course, must choose from Spirit, Air, or Water, while men choose from Spirit, Air, or Earth. (If you already have all three for your gender, you can start in on the other two.) Weaves for which you have at least one relevant Affinity use the usual spell slot. Weaves for which you have all the Affinities use a spell slot one level lower. Weaves for which you have no Affinities use one spell slot higher. Good so far?

Then there's overchanneling, i.e. doing more than you're really capable of. You can make a Concentration check to cast a low-level weave (0 through 2) when you're completely out of slots, or to cast a weave one, two, or three levels higher than your highest remaining slot -- including weaves ordinarily too high-level for you to cast at all. (You can learn weaves above your pay grade by watching somebody else and making a Weavesight check, that being a new skill specific to WOTRPG.) After you overchannel, you have to make a Fortitude save -- DC based on what you did -- and if you fail, the margin by which you failed determines what happens to you afterward, up to and including permanent burnout.

Oh, and did I mention Talents? These aren't actually the Talents you know from the series, like Foretelling -- that would make too much sense. Talents are, instead, types of weave: for example, "Cloud Dancing" includes "Foretell Weather," "Harness the Wind," "Lighting," "Raise Fog," and "Warmth." You can't learn weaves above level 0 that don't fall within your Talent. And how do you gain more Talents? With the Extra Talent feat, of course -- feats being the d20 answer to everything.

(I should mention, btw, that you can learn things like Foretelling. With feats! But if you want that, or to be a Dreamer or a sniffer or to have the Old Blood pop up in you or anything else woogy, you have to take the relevant "Latent" feat first, and then the feat that lets you actually do the thing.)

But wait! We're not done! Some weaves also have the descriptor of "Lost" or "Rare." Rare weaves are only known by a few people, and can only be learned by observing somebody else casting them; wilders can't just "figure them out." (One example of this? "Use Portal Stone." Yep, good thing Rand had somebody around to show him that one; otherwise he wouldn't have been able to just fling the One Power at the Stone and have it turn on.) Lost weaves are . . . exactly the same thing, except that the "few people" are limited to the Forsaken and the Dragon Reborn. (And the example here is "Compulsion," which of course nobody in the series ever figured out for herself. Certainly not Liandrin and a bazillion other wilders, before they came to the Tower.)

All of this additional stuff can't hide the fact that the base spellcasting mechanic just. doesn't. fit. Channelers are not D&D sorcerers. But the mechanics mean that their ability to cast high-level weaves is based on class level and ability score: Intelligence for initiates, and Wisdom for wilders. This means the strongest channelers are also the smartest and wisest (HAH -- I WISH), and it totally ignores the series' common trope of novice channelers with enormous strength.

Nynaeve, as statted in these books, IS TOO WEAK TO CAST BALEFIRE.

(Midlander Woodsman 1/Wilder 14. She can only cast one seventh-level weave per day, and would have to overchannel by two levels to achieve balefire, because it's ninth -- which would utterly flatten her, since she'd have to make a DC 34 Fortitude save afterward, and her modifier is only a +10. On average, she'd hit the part of the table that leaves her unable to channel for the next 24 hours. And don't get me started on the irony of Nynaeve, of all people, having a Wisdom score of 20. She ties with Egwene for the highest in the book. And Mat has a 10, because we all know he sucks at Listen and Spot checks, right?)

It isn't that this system can't work. (Though I find it awkward and unnatural -- very obviously a system rather than anything remotely plausible as a magical tradition.) It's that it is an utter and resounding failure as a method of systematizing the story. And isn't that what a game adaptation is supposed to do? Sure, characters like Nynaeve are exceptional -- but players want exceptional characters. Not all of them, but the gamers who are content to play an average Aes Sedai or noble with no special Talents or great power or whatever are going to be outnumbered by the ones who want to be Nynaeve, or Egwene, or Min, or hell, even Juilin Sandar. (Two feats before you get to be a sniffer. Third level, at a minimum, before you can do that.) But d20, as a system, won't let you make trades: you can't sacrifice all your skill points in order to be the strongest channeler seen in hundreds of years. Strength is pegged to level, period, the end.

Game systems in general have this problem, of course. If you were to go with my half-baked notion of using New World of Darkness Mage, you'd still have to address the question of the repurposed Gnosis stat; it's damned expensive to buy up, so it's still very hard to be Nynaeve as a new character. But if your GM is willing to work with you, there are ways to arrange it. With d20 . . . not so much.

(Ironically, Jordan's introduction brags about how when he DM'd for his son and other kids, he made them stick to the rules: "No creating invincible characters out of thin air [...] a basic character that had to be built up with experience." While that's a perfectly legitimate and laudable thing for gaming in general, it doesn't really describe the world of Jordan's own story.)

. . . no, not really. They kill two more Trollocs (having fought five or so already this adventure, along with three human thugs), and Fain escapes. The end. The PCs either succeed at a couple of checks to get back to Caemlyn, or fail and have other adventures (which the book doesn't seem interested in) before popping out somewhere else in the world. Woo.

In other words, the entire thing is a pointless macguffin plot that really has nothing whatsoever to do with the PCs (except that one of them owns some family heirloom that was made with the Power and is therefore non-magical but nicer than usual). It exists in the shadow of the series' actual heroes; Fain is trying to get at Rand, Whitecloaks question the PCs because they're looking for Perrin, etc. Prophecies of the Dragon continues this trend: the mini-adventures are random, trivial little scenarios, and the main adventure tags along behind the real events, with everything revolving around Rand.

I think it would have been far better to focus on how one might tell stories in the world of the Wheel of Time: spend some time discussing how one might structure a campaign around Aes Sedai plots or the Great Game in Cairhien or the Borderlands' struggle against the Blight or a war between Tear and Illian, and then set the adventure in the time of a false Dragon. Do something that allows the PCs to become important people. Because there's no room for them in the actual series: the best the game can do is have them scurry around the edges, taking care of things that don't get explained in canon (like how Mazrim Taim escaped Aes Sedai custody). And I think that's a terrible, terrible way to structure a campaign.

Ultimately, the only thing of value I really see in the WOTRPG is the weave stats, and that solely because I could use them as a guideline for designing my own house rules (which Elements are involved, how hard is this supposed to be, etc). I don't think it's a great introduction to the world for a player who isn't already familiar with it, though I might toss the setting info their way if for some reason we couldn't get hold of a copy of The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time (the companion book). It's a complete failure as a foundation for a campaign. And I think it's a terrible system for the story: you would be better off grabbing your favorite generic fantasy mechanics and winging the specifics. d20 has its uses -- as I've said before, I would probably use it for Dragon Age -- but this, my friends, is not one of them.

The pity is, a better effort could have been pretty cool. This is a big world, with lots of room in it for cool adventures; sadly, the game is too rigid to let you go explore.

If a picture is worth a thousand words . . . .

. . . then we're nearing a novel's worth of argument here.

A while back, jimhines posted shots of himself posing like women on the covers of books. ocelott followed up with a compare-and-contrast of men's poses vs. women's, again with attempted reproduction.

Well, now Jim has done the other side of the equation, posing like some male cover models (from romance as well as fantasy). As he points out, not only are the poses less uncomfortable, their mode of objectification conveys power rather than sexualization. And those are really, really not the same thing.

And, for an encore, there's Emily Asher-Perrin's article on Tor.com, "Hey, Everyone — Stop Taking This Picture! (No, I Mean It.)" And, um, yeah. Quit it with the butt shots already.

If you can look at those things and still not think there's a problematic pattern . . . oof. I think the kindest interpretation I can put on that is "willful stupidity."

The DWJ Project: index post

Since it's annoying to have to page back through archives in search of something, here's an index post for all of my entries in the Diana Wynne Jones Project, alphabetized by title.

Book posts
Archer's Goon
Believing Is Seeing: Seven Stories
Black Maria
Cart and Cwidder
Castle in the Air
Changeover
Charmed Life
Conrad's Fate
The Crown of Dalemark
Dark Lord of Derkholm
Deep Secret
Dogsbody
Drowned Ammet
Earwig and the Witch
Eight Days of Luke
Enchanted Glass
Fire and Hemlock
The Game
Hexwood
The Homeward Bounders
House of Many Ways
Howl's Moving Castle
The Lives of Christopher Chant
The Magicians of Caprona
The Merlin Conspiracy
Minor Arcana
Mixed Magics
The Ogre Downstairs
The Pinhoe Egg
Power of Three
Puss in Boots
"A Slice of Life"
The Spellcoats
Stopping for a Spell
A Sudden Wild Magic
A Tale of Time City
The Time of the Ghost
Tough Guide to Fantasyland
Unexpected Magic
Warlock at the Wheel
Wild Robert
Wilkin's Tooth (aka Witch's Business)
Witch Week
Year of the Griffin
Yes, Dear
Scattered short stories and The Skiver's Guide


Other posts
The Diana Wynne Jones Project
A Seed of Hemlock

Open Book Thread: With Fate Conspire

While rooting around in my archives looking for something else, I discovered I never put up an open book thread for With Fate Conspire!

So consider this an invitation to make any comments or ask any questions you might have about that book. (Needless to say, this will result in spoilers. Read the thread at your own risk.) I, er, can't promise I'll be able to answer everything with perfect clarity; at this point my head is full of Isabella instead of the Onyx Court, so I may be a tad fuzzy on some of the details. But I'll do my best!

And if you have a question about a previous novel, the other open book threads are still open. Though I don't have one for the doppelganger series, now that I think about it. Well, if you have a question about one of those, let me know; I can make a new thread if there's need.

Happy International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day!

I've had friends in town for the past several days, and sightseeing with them almost made me forget what today was. Thankfully, several posts on my friends-list reminded me: it's International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day!

I've been celebrating this holiday since it started in 2007. (You can see the relevant posts, including some history, under the tag.) A little earlier this year, a reader informed me that the changes over at Abyss & Apex meant my story "Letter Found in a Chest Belonging to the Marquis de Montseraille Following the Death of That Worthy Individual" was no longer available for free in the archive; I have therefore chosen that as this year's contribution. And if you want more, you can always browse the free fiction on my site!

And now, I go collapse. Who knew sightseeing was so tiring?