Joshua Unruh's Blog, page 6

Saga of the Myth Reaver is LIVE!

Downfall, the first of two volumes in the Neo Noir/Norse mash-up Saga of the Myth Reaver, is available for purchase RIGHT NOW! And for one thin greenback! (That's a single dollar for the terminally unhip). Thrill to Nordic myths, gods, and monsters! Chill as a tragic hero does his best to make his way in the Nine Worlds! Cringe at the violence that's convinced my wife I need therapy!

All hyperbole aside, I'm really pleased with how this book turned out. It's exciting and unflinchingly violent and reasonably accurate with both Noir storytelling and Norse mythology. It's tantalizingly full of Norse myths yet explains everything you need to know about the subject to enjoy the story within the story. Please check it out and, if you enjoy it, throw me a little review love.

From Tabletop to Paperback – Chargen Part 1

Character generation. Almost all RPG rulebooks start with this, and it only makes sense. You can't really play the game without your character. But in addition to simple utilitarianism, what kind of character you can and do make will tell you a lot about what kind of game it is you're playing. Whether I say Dashing Swordsman, Scruffy Spacer, Zealous Inquisitor, or Helpful Wizard, I'm beginning to tell you things about the game and what it'll be about. Essentially, Characters can be the easiest gateway to Plot and Setting (but more on those later).

The Bare Bones

I have a pre-writing package. It's sort of a road map that I use to plan out a novel before I even start the actual writing of it. It's absolutely invaluable and I do not recommend starting a novel without it. For those of you keeping score, pre-writing is not cheating on National Novel Writing Month. In fact, it's encouraged! You can't get to where you're going if you don't have a route planned.

The pre-writing package was created by my coach and publisher, Aaron Pogue. You'll hear a lot about it as we go and, if we ever get around to reworking it for public consumption, we'll probably even make it available. It isn't a state secret, it's just a tool we use to get the story together before we get the story together.

There are all kinds of great sections in the pre-writing package like the Mock Table of Contents, the Scene List, the Story Question Worksheet. There's even a section for Characters. For main characters, Aaron suggests 300 words to describe them before the Big Event (that's the thing that kicks off the novel). That's not so bad if you've only got two main characters (the Hero and the Villain), but what if you're doing a Tolkien-esque traditional adventuring party with four, five, six, or even seven characters? At 300 words apiece, that can add up pretty fast for the novice writer.

As for secondary characters, Aaron suggests a hundred words apiece. That's enough to flesh them out and keep them from being flat and single dimensional. But what constitutes a secondary character? Depending on how liberally you define it, that could be dozens of characters, each one needing their own century of words.

Ligaments: Connecting the Bare Bones

You may be asking why it takes so many words to flesh out your characters. There are all kinds of reasons, but they all boil down to this: The more you know about your characters, both primary and secondary, the more smoothly you can integrate them into your story in a compelling way.

It isn't enough that each character has a distinct voice or interesting mannerisms (although they won't if you don't do the pre-writing). They can be menacing, clever, funny, or frightening, but if they're only a cog in your Story Engine with just enough teeth to move your plot ahead, then they aren't good characters. Flat characters might as well be just a rushing flood or an inspiring ray of sunshine.

Now, I'm not saying we need to know that the traffic cop your hero whizzes past in a high speed chase always wanted to own a boat and his favorite song is Barry Manilowe's "Mandy". That would be ridiculous because he's not a character, he's scenery. I don't need to know who laid the concrete in the street or which dog used the fire hydrant either. But your characters, the people who are going to impact your story in some way, they have to be fleshed out.

Think about guys like Sgt. Powell, the cop who talks to McClane all through Die Hard. Or Commissioner Gordon in Batman. Or even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Hamlet. That duo were bit players yet so well fleshed out they could be plugged into a totally different story where they were the protagonists! Those are strong characters!

Secondary characters like that are the work of master storytellers. If you hang with me, I'm going to demonstrate how you probably already unconsciously do this for your games.

But in the meantime, you're left with this: Your bare minimum word count just to flesh out your characters is anywhere from several hundred to several thousand words. Better oil up that keyboard.

Single Cell Characters

If it sounds like I'm being pessimistic about the character work, it's only because Aaron tends to be a bit pessimistic about it and he's rubbed off on me. I lack traditional classroom training in writing fiction, but Aaron recently finished his Master's in it. From what he tells me, a lot of people struggle to hit the hundred word mark on even their major characters with barely a line of text for secondary characters.

That boggles my mind. I can't imagine how anybody is able to take these blank slates and make any kind of story about them, let alone incorporate them in a smooth way. If you don't know what your main characters are like before the Big Event, how can you even be sure the Big Event will have an effect on them?

One answer is that they don't write a story where the Big Event effects the main characters. They write amoeba characters who only react to the Big Event. Why do I call them amoeba characters? Because amoebas are uninteresting single cells who never take an active role in their environment. They can only react.

If you put something nourishing near them, they'll move to eat it. But they'll never go hunting. If you put something threatening into the mix, the amoeba will fight or escape. But it won't take proactive measures to guard against danger.

The amoeba character is like this. It floats along the plot river reacting to whatever comes near enough to help or threaten it. But the amoeba character isn't interesting enough, it isn't "multi-cellular" enough, to take an active role. It eats the McGuffin and flees from the danger, then waits for the next plot morsel to come along.

That's Plot, guys, and it's important, but if you don't plug a fully realized person into it, it's just stuff that happens. It might become a series of interesting anecdotes, but it isn't a story.

No, I'm afraid you're stuck doing the hard work of figuring out who each of these people are and what they want. And (nearly) the only way to do that is to write about them. You keep adding words until they add up to a character.

My Scandalous Confession

I have to come clean with all of you right quick. Get ready, I'm about to bare my writer soul.

I never do the Character part of the pre-writing package.

Oh, I did when Aaron started coaching me. He assigned it, I wanted help with my writing, and I did the assignment to prove I was serious about improving. But the Character section was always the most tedious part. I hated doing it because I already knew all of these fictional people just as well as if I'd gone to high school with them. Half the time I could tell you a ridiculous factoid like her favorite color. Not because this was something I'd already written down or because it would be important to the story. No, it was because I could answer seven or eight questions about the character that would naturally lead to her wearing a lot of green.

The reason I'm able to do this without writing all those words is because I've been making fully realized characters at a breakneck pace pretty much since I was eleven years old. I used to do it with dice and rules, with pencils and character sheets. But I did it for so long and so often that those two dimensional numbers and words turned into character holograms in my head, three dimensional and in living color.

Because of my background as a gamer, I walk around with a cast of thousands in my head. And I keep adding to it as I go. In fact, at this point, it's probably a cast of tens of thousands. I make Eve and her three faces look like an underachiever. I just scroll through them until I find the one I need, like ties on one of those motorized tie racks.

Heck, at this point, I've got enough "spare parts" laying around that, if you tell me a little bit about your story or campaign idea, I can build a good character for you from scratch. Usually within a few minutes (depending on the rules). It's entirely second nature to me. And I bet it will be for you, too. Just like me, you've all spent years creating interesting characters for your various games. With a little focus and fine tuning, that instinct can become an endless array of living, breathing, fictional people just ready to appear in your novels. Come back Tuesday and I'll show you how.

From Tabletop to Paperback – Gamers Who Want To Be Writers

I've written a few posts on the subject of how being a gamer and gamemaster (that is, a lover of tabletop roleplaying games) has influenced my writing. In almost every single case, it's been a good influence, although I've often had to refocus the usual writing advice lens to make it so. The skills I use as a player and a gamemaster are, at times, so similar to the skills I employ as a writer that the places where they don't overlap can actually make the places where they do all the more confusing. Here's the beginning of a series of essays where I try to make the most sense out of this.

What is a Roleplaying Game?

A pen and paper role-playing game is a form of interactive story telling equipped with a rules system to resolve conflict. A role playing game is played by a group of players and a Game Master (GM). If you are a player, you create and control a character called a player character (PCs). If you are a Game Master, you create and control the plot and setting. The plot is the scenario that the GM presents to the players and...

Did you make it that far? I hope so, because I'm just kidding about that. If you're reading this, the odds are you already know what a roleplaying game is because you've already spent hundreds if not thousands of hours playing them. I just always hated the "What is an RPG?" section of every single rulebook I ever bought and wanted to have a little fun with you. Now for the real stuff.

The Pep Talk

If you're reading this, the odds are very good that you're part of a regular gaming group. This probably means that you meet weekly or bi-weekly to spend 3-6 hours living in a fantasy world you've co-created with a group of friends.

If this is the case, and you're used to regularly playing (that is, running your own, single player character) in a roleplaying game, and take the hobby somewhat seriously, then I have good news for you. The same amount of work, focused in a different direction, is all you need to write a novel.

If you're used to running a regular roleplaying game (that is, acting as the gamemaster for your particular group) and you take that role somewhat seriously, then I have great news for you. Writing a novel is likely less work than you're doing to get your regular game together.

But here's the first place that writing and gaming diverge. A lot of players and GMs, me included, don't prep all week between game sessions. If I'm diligent, I might do my prep a day or two in advance so it has time to settle in my head, I can look for weak spots, and generally tweak it so it has a more finished feel. But a lot of gamers don't think about the game until the afternoon before. Sadly, that's not really going to cut it as a novelist.

Every. Damn. Day.

You have to write every day. Yes, every single day.

I can already hear the whines. "Every day? Who has the time?" You do...if you're going to be a writer.

Okay, that said, here's confession time. I don't write every day. I write damn near every day, and the days I don't write usually have a pretty spectacular reason why I didn't. The beauty is, now that it's a habit, it doesn't even phase me to sit down and write something on a daily basis.

Let me head off the next whine before it even gets started. "But you're a professional writer, of course you have time to write every day."

Listen, I wasn't born a professional writer. Heck, I wasn't even born a very good one. The only reason I started out as even halfway decent is because I am an avid and voracious reader. (By the way, you also have to read a lot to be a good writer. If you aren't putting good stuff in, then good stuff isn't going to come out. Good writers are almost always good readers. More on that later.) I've had a few jobs where I got to write professionally. I've had a lot more jobs where I didn't. But when I decided to be serious about my writing, I had to set aside time every single day and write.

It's like anything else. If you practice that often, you cannot help but get better.

One more whine I expect to hear. "But if I have to do it everyday, then it isn't fun anymore. It'll be like my job."

You're damn right it will be. I once read that being a writer is like giving yourself homework every night for the rest of your life. It is exactly like that. And if you get published, it's like having homework that anywhere from dozens to hundreds of thousands of perfect strangers get to grade.

But don't worry! Not only will you get better, but if you get into the habit of writing every day, you also cannot help but finish writing the novel. And make no mistake, the first sign of a serious writer is finishing things.

Now, none of that means that this hypothetical, finished novel will be particularly readable. But that's where the good news for you as a writer comes in. Nobody, and I don't care if we're talking Stephen King, William Shakespeare, or the creepy guy down the block writing anti-government manifestos in his basement, nobody writes a perfect first draft. So don't worry about whether it's any good or not. Don't worry about that gaping plot hole in Act Two. Don't worry that the dialogue isn't snappy enough. You'll rewrite it and it'll get better.

The second sign of a serious writer is rewriting. Fixing troubled manuscripts is what we do.

Little Pebbles Start The Avalanche

Okay, back to writing every day. If you write a frankly tiny number of words, say two hundred a day, then you've got a novel-length manuscript in a year. If you write around 1,600 words a day, you've got a novel-length manuscript in a month. I know this because I've done it several times, usually in November during National Novel Writing Month.

As an aside, I can't recommend NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.org) enough. Knowing that a host of other people, maybe even your friends and family, are joining you in the same massive, possibly quixotic endeavor has huge psychological value. If you don't think so, ask marathon runners. All those other people can't finish the race for them, but it sure helps knowing they're all there.

Okay, so that's all the tough stuff. You have to write every day, first drafts always suck, you have to finish things. But there was some good news in there also, like how few daily words it takes to make that novel happen. But wait, there's more!

The Best News I Have For Gamers Who Want To Write Fiction

If you've been gaming for a while, especially if you're a regular gamemaster, you're already good at most of the things fiction writers need to be good at.

Stop and think about that. You already have the skills necessary to write good fiction. I know this because I consistently shocked my writing coach, bestselling fantasy author Aaron Pogue (who also maintains a blog dedicated to helping new writers) with my grasp of Character, Plot, and Setting. When he started to ask how I understood these things when I obviously lacked formal training, my repeated answer mystified him.

"Oh that?" I'd say. "I do that at the table every week. Have dice, will travel, you know?"

You guys are the same way and I'm going to prove it with my next few posts on Character, Plot, and Setting. In fact, the odds are good that you're amazing at one or two of them. Rare gems might be especially talented at all three, but one or two strong suits is more likely.

If you need a boost, treat this like a Choose Your Own Adventure and skip to the one you're best at. When you've read that and see how instinctively you manage that aspect of fiction writing, then hopefully you'll be convinced that you've got a leg up on the others as well, even if they aren't your main strength.

Just because it's one of my favorites, I'm going to start with Character on Thursday. See you then!

31 Cookies!

Not long before August started, Courtney tweeted about a crazy plan to blog every day in August. I knew my August was already going to be insane, but something about this mad plan dug its way deep into my brain and got its hooks in. I asked her questions about structure. She had no answers. I asked her questions about topics. She had no answers. I asked her why I should even attempt this madness? For this, she had an answer.

"I'll bake you a cookie for every day you blog."

Thirty.

One.

Cookies.

Suckas.

Now, over on Courtney's blog she spent some time actually looking at her Google Analytics to see how blogging every day affected them. That is a really good idea and I wish I'd thought of it before now. Or that the woman who led me down this primrose path of pandemonium had, oh, I don't know, shared the one idea for a post I guarantee she had before we even started!

Truth is, I barely know how to use Google Analytics because I blog for me and if anybody else comes to look, I consider that a bonus. Also, I'm super lazy and it looks like a lot of information to sift through. Still, I'll get around to it at some point and see what, if anything, this month can teach me.

If nothing else, though, this month reminded me how much I actually enjoy blogging. Somehow, even though I "had to do it" everyday, this only felt like work a couple of times. I'm not going to promise a constant stream of daily posts, but I am going to promise more content much more often. Even if I have almost no idea what it'll be.

I say almost because I can tell you that a sample chapter of my Noir Viking Fantasy novel, Saga of the Myth Reaver: Downfall, will be available soon. Then the whole book ought to be available middle of next week. I also have a whole series of posts in mind that will help tabletop roleplayers apply those skills to writing fiction should they so desire. And hopefully those Analytics will tell me a tale of what it is the readership prefers via pageviews and traffic.

But all that is for September and beyond. Tonight, my friends, I thank you for taking notice of Blog Everyday in August and for joining me on this madcap adventure of other people's poetry, my own embarrassing stories, sample chapters, anecdotes, and my discomfort as I wrestled with the joys of human endeavor and the pains of human folly.

Hey! That sounded pretty good, if I do say so myself! I should be a writer or something...

Ladies and Gentlemen, Epic Recording Artists…REO Speedwagon!

Confession moment. Only I'm not remotely ashamed so I'm not sure it counts as any kind of confession. Regardless, here it is.

I pretty much love REO Speedwagon.

Now, I'll immediately insist that I prefer the early stuff to the ballad years. And, honestly, by the time Wheels Are Turnin' comes around, I've stopped caring. But, thanks to my dad, this band has put an indelible imprint on my brain.

The first concert I went to was REO. Cheap Trick and Foghat opened for them. I was in, like, 10th grade.

I still have the t-shirt. I wore it the other day. My chiropractor and I bonded over it. It was pretty great. And it led to me breaking out the REO tracks today to share with my boy. I was playing Take It On The Run for him that I remembered a tale from my youth.

You may recall this particular lyric from that song. (And if you don't then you have no soul.)

You're thinking of your white lies

You're putting on your bedroom eyes

You say you're coming home but you won't say when

When I was about ten or eleven years old, I realized I had no idea what bedroom eyes were. So, not realizing this might be a sensitive subject, I went to my mom, mostly because she was handy, and I asked her.

Her only response was a pregnant pause and a pointed look before she finally said, "Ask your father."

I'm going to be honest with you. As a concept, this did not excite me. I still wasn't sure what the deal was, but whenever I was told to "ask your father," I was probably going to be more confused than anything else once the explanation was over. Let me illustrate with a different story.

When I was around six, I asked where babies came from. My mom gave me the same pregnant pause and the same pointed look before she finally said, "Ask your father." So I went to ask my dad. I'm not sure what exactly happened or how long it took, but he answered my tiny, six-year-old question as though I were a college student. I'm pretty sure it took at least a half hour. I definitely remember the word ovum. My head swam.

So, you see, being told to ask my dad to explain an idiom was not an immediately encouraging suggestion. But, ever the dutiful son, I went.

"Pop, what are bedroom eyes?" I asked.

Similar pointed look and pregnant pause. "Why?"

"I was listening to REO and they said it. Mom told me to come ask you."

Look and pause are repeated. "Ask me when you're older."

And that was the last I heard on the subject. Well, Pop, I know you read the blog occasionally. I'm older now. Will you finally tell me?

Color Blind & Cock Sure

Back in May I read a blog post by John Scalzi called Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. It was short, to the point, and it rang true to me. Being a straight, white male doesn't mean I get it all handed to me on a platter, but it does mean things are just easier. Add in the fact that I'm a straight, white, middle class male and, honestly, there's a part of me that feels like I'm barely playing at all.

Now I have had some very difficult years in my adult life. The Senior Partner and I were not well off when we first married. Our parents are wonderful people who helped us out when we needed it and we are eternally grateful because we might not have made it otherwise. But 50% of our parents are playing on the lowest difficulty setting also and grew up in times when it was even lower in many ways. That didn't make those times less difficult, but it did make them less difficult to get through.

I hope that makes any sense.

Anyway, I read that post, agreed with it, then it sorta faded into my background thoughts. Then, over the weekend, Courtney linked to another article, Fear of a Black President. It's by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who I've read and enjoyed before. It forced me over the edge to finally read his autobiography. The main thing this article did was make me think things I hadn't thought before. It made me think things I hadn't had the occasion to think before. Mostly because I'm white.

I would never consider myself a racist. My best friend in the world is Korean and I maintain relationships with many colors and creeds. I barely even think of them in terms of their color. But there are a host of things I don't have to even think about just because I'm white. I don't have to think about what it would be like to see so few people who look like me representing me in entertainment. Or, worse, in government. I don't have to worry about voting laws restricting me. I don't have to worry about whether or not people will buy a "white author." It never occurred to me that I might be somebody's "white friend."

In short, I don't have to worry about the world stacking itself against me.

So the fact that I don't have to think about race actually sorta makes me racist. It's not a racism I chose, it's certainly a more attractive racism than the one that ends with dirty names or burnt crosses. But nevertheless, here I am...racist.

That was brought home to me by another white friend of mine I linked the article to. He basically said reading it made him bored. He said that skin pigment is such a monumentally stupid thing for people to hate about other people that he couldn't be bothered to get excited about it.

Now, I don't want to be too hard on this friend. It's very difficult to care about every damn thing all the time. If I tried, I could convince myself that this pretty great life I have is somehow a pretty terrible one, all doom and gloom and world ending. But this attitude opened my eyes to my own inherent racism.

White Americans are the only people in the whole damn nation who can choose to not care about racism. For everybody else, it's a daily life requirement. But me? I can just opt out.

Now that's bad enough, but then I ran into another article that showed me how even good intentions can go horribly awry in these kinds of areas. Rap's Long History of 'Conscious' Condescension to Women is obviously more concerned with sexism than racism (although since we're talking about hip hop, that line can get very blurry). But the point of that article is Lupe Fiasco, an artist I enjoy and who puts his thoughts and beliefs about the world on the line in his music, thoughts and beliefs I can generally count as similar to my own, failed women miserably while trying to help them. And he did it by wildly misunderstanding the issues.

And in this case, he is me.

Even with a great deal of talent, an unending well of good intentions, and a broad platform from which to speak, I could utterly misrepresent an entire swathe of people I want to help but to whom I don't belong.

I have a wife, a sister, and many close female friends I love dearly. I have friends of color. I want to be an advocate for them, I want my eyes opened to what's going on in this world for them that isn't going on for me. I want to speak on their behalf because defending your friends against spurious attacks is the right thing to do.

And yet...

And yet, I could do the right thing in such a wrong way that I actually circle back around and become part of the problem.

If I were a little less stubborn, that could freeze me into inaction. But I won't let it. I can't let it. To borrow a Baptist phrase, I'm now "under conviction." I have to do something, which would be hard enough. But now I also understand I have to do something in the right way. From where I'm sitting, that looks infinitely harder.

I still can't wait to get started, though.

Anyway…

A reminder that even Mother Teresa felt needed hanging on the wall is a reminder I can probably use. You guys are just along for the ride. (Special thanks to Frank Viola for bringing it to my attention.)

ANYWAY

People are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered.

Love them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.

Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.

Be good anyway.

Honesty and frankness will make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

People need help but will attack you if you help them.

Help them anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.

It was never between you and them anyway.

~ Kent Keith, made famous by Mother Teresa*

* Kent Keith originated this poem in 1968, and Mother Teresa placed it on her children’s home in Calcutta in a slightly different version. As a result, many have attributed it to her.

Ain’t That a Kick In The Head

We signed the boy up for soccer because this is apparently a thing parents do to their children. Honestly, I don't understand why soccer. I mean, I think football is really stupid, too, but at least people play football in Oklahoma. Anyway, we signed him up, he was excited, the Senior Partner was excited, and I was tentatively excited since the last time we tried soccer was basically an anger management exercise for me as the boy jackassed around the field not really listening to anybody

A week or so ago, the Senior Partner got an email from the guy that would be Elijah's coach. Practice would be at Hudson Elementary School on the evening of August 27. We started prepping the boy for fun a week in advance. The fateful evening arrived today and, at 6, the boy and his mother headed out.

At about 6:40, I got a call requesting I Google up an address for another school.

"What happened?" I asked as I typed.

"I don't know, they had to move practice or something. The guy's phone was breaking up pretty bad. You find the new place yet?"

I had and I gave her directions to Ridgecrest Elementary. She told me she saw the school and they proceeded to go practice. Or so I thought. About 6:50, I get another call.

"Screw this, we're coming home."

"What's the problem this time?" I ask gingerly. The SP did not sound happy and I could hear vague whining from the backseat over the phone.

"I can't find the guy and it doesn't even look like there are any kids practicing soccer at this field tonight."

"Do you think he told you the wrong school?"

"No, I distinctly heard him say Ridgecrest. I'll email him when I get home."

And so she did. I bathed the boy while she emailed the coach. We read some The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and then turned the lights out. By the time we'd extricated ourselves from the bedroom, SP's phone was ringing.

"Ugh. It's the coach. Here," she said, handing me the phone, "I don't have the energy to talk to any more people today."

I took the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hey, this is Brian, the soccer coach."

"Hey Brian. This is Josh, I think you've been talking to my wife. We must have had a mix up tonight."

"Yeah, let me check my notes. You're name is Unruh, is that right?"

"Yep."

"And your son's name is Kade?"

"Ummm, no. It's Elijah."

"Kade?"

"No, Elijah."

Pause. "Where do you guys live?" I gave him a rough idea with highways and street names. "And you signed up through Hudson?"

"No, we signed up through the city."

"That's weird because I'm only responsible for Hudson kids. You know, Hudson an hour north of Wichita?" Pause. "Wait a minute..." Pause. "I think I got an email address wrong here..."

You guessed it. We had been contacted by a soccer coach a mere week after signing up for soccer and being told we'd be contacted via email by our coaches. The coach had gone on to name not one but TWO different elementary schools that are near enough to us to be schools where practice would be held. Except the schools he was talking about are about four hours north of us.

He and I had a good laugh, apologized, and hung up. I turned to explain this to the Senior Partner while she looked at me with wide eye. She then burst into uncontrollable laughter, actually doubling over in our kitchen. And I knew exactly why.

Because this kind of crap happens to us all the time.

Well, noot exactly this crap, but definitely the kind of weird coincidences that would have a coach of the right sport contact us at the right time and rattle off two nearby elementary schools for practices while thinking he's talking to parents of a child who live four hours up an interstate from us.

I can't wait to see what kind of bizarre scheduling cock ups happen when the boy gets old enough to sign up for his own activities. At this rate, he may be the first soccer player on Mars even though he signed up for field hockey down the street.

O Holy Knight 4 – Controversial Statement

I have one more paladin thought. It's kind of a lame blog post, but it's a thing I feel needs to be said. There may be argument. I welcome it. I will bury you if you try and argue against this. But you should still totally try if you want to. It's just a fair warning.

Paladins are good guys, therefore Jedi cannot be paladins because they are just as evil as Sith...maybe worse because they lie about it. To themselves and the galaxy at large.

That is all. More, non-paladin related things tomorrow. G'night.

O Holy Knight 3 – Cleric v. Paladin

This is a little off topic of why I love paladins. That's partly because I'm not sure I can explain my appreciation for them in a more satisfying way than "their clarity of purpose and ability to actually hurt evil with a gun or sword rather than just perpetuating evil with their gun or sword" just by throwing more words at it. I can clarify my position, but I can't really justify it better than that.

Secondly, my insistence that traditional Dungeons & Dragons paladins don't actually make any sense merely underscores the fact the the clerics don't make any sense either. And if you're going to have two religious character classes that make no sense, you need to figure out what the relationship between them is internally because the fiction fails utterly to suggest anything.

Thirdly, this concept was new to me in that I didn't realize other people were confused about it. That's not a slam, it's just one of those things you instinctively understand and then get confused about when other people ask you why water is wet. Discovering an entire thread on Story Games that tried to parse the difference between a cleric and a paladin was like when I loaned comics to people and they insisted they couldn't figure out what order to read the balloons in.

Guys...it's obvious. Right up until you meet somebody for whom it isn't.

So I read that thread with much interest even though I discovered it mostly after it was over. I can say that, functionally, as in mechanically and by the rules, I have no idea how paladins and clerics are supposed to be different. I think that would depend wildly on the rules secondarily and primarily on whether one agrees with my delineation of their roles. All of which, by the way, are in-fiction.

Clerics

When the night is dark and dreadful. When you have an unshakeable disease or a wound that refuses to heal. When you're having a crisis of faith. When you need comfort. When you need to know which rule you broke that brought judgment down on you. When you need inspiration. When you need a marriage/blessing/christening/funeral/other sacred rite or ritual, you get a cleric.

There is a system, god-given or man-made, that codifies the rules of the deities into what you need to do on a daily basis. These rules can shift and change over time, but this is rarely seismic. There is a comfort in the cleric's presence because he or she represents these rules, the foundation upon which society rests.

Sure, they have weapons and armor, but that's because the (typical fantasy) world is a dangerous place. Clerics are often themselves rich or part of rich orders and kidnapping/ransom is a problem even in civilized places. The itinerant priest is on the edges of civilization where his status will not protect him because "decent folks" are few and far between.

But when he or she shows up, the village feels instantly better. The fortified city knows that deities are on its side. Clerics, on a metaphysical level, a warm blanket. They heal, they cure, they inspire, they are, above all, comfortable.

Paladins are...well, they aren't any of these things.

Paladins

When a vampire has fangs sunk into your neck. When demons threaten your village. When infidels stand ready to invade your nation. When someone requires divine judgment. When Evil threatens. When the situation is so dire that you would gladly get burned in order to fight the fire with fire, you get a paladin.

Clerics work within a system by learning the system. They're egalitarian in a way. After all, anyone who studies can become a cleric. Paladins operate outside and sometimes even in opposition to the system. Clerics discern the will of deities through the lens of their traditions. Paladins hear the voice of their deity directly. And for the paladin, that voice never says "comfort" or "evangelize" or "protect." It only says "kill."

Oh sure, they might be killing to protect, but that isn't the real issue at hand for a paladin. They are there to kill Evil Things, and if by killing Evil Things, Good Things are allowed to thrive, that's wonderful. If the Good Things have to be purged in order to kill the Evil Things, that's equally preferable.

Paladins don't just carry weapons, they are weapons. They never get sick, they rarely get tired, they can heal, but it's usually just to keep fighting. When a paladin shows up, the village feels instant relief. But that only lasts until the threat, whatever it is, has been beaten. Then they fear who will come under judgment next...and secretly know they are as likely to feel the edge of the paladin's blade as whatever Evil Thing was just vanquished.

Comparisons

Clerics are shields, Paladins are swords.

Clerics are antibiotics, Paladins are chemotherapy.

Clerics are blankets, Paladins are armor.

Do a thought experiment for me. Imagine the average priest. Kindly, careworn face, smile lines around mouth and eyes. They're handing you food or giving you medicine. They are probably at least a middle aged man with time-tested values. They may pray for you, beseeching the Lord to protect and comfort you even as they are doing.

No imagine Jeanne D'Arc. She's a teenager, and a woman. She wears men's clothes and armor. She has a sword. She only ever either looks angry or has a faraway look. And you're way more worried about that faraway look because it probably means God is talking to her...or she thinks He is. And if He's talking to her, He's telling her to kill. Do you have a secret sin? Of course you do, everyone does. Do you think she might judge you if God spoke to her of your secret sin? Of course she would. And she's only got one sentence...death.

At this point, I don't even care if the Cleric and Paladin are functionally the same in the rules. They are going to be wildly different in the fiction. And as a gamemaster, I can work with that. I can create situations where the Cleric is the brains and the Paladin is the muscle. I can cast the Cleric as the loremaster and knowledge keeper, the one who knows how best to hit the monster, while the Paladin is the attack dog.

Does that make life easier or harder for the characters? I have no idea, but I know it'll make it more interesting.

PS: Modern D&D, whatever that means, appears to disagree with me. Looking at images and such, I honestly can't tell the difference between Clerics and Paladins. That feels like a mighty fail. D&D players who read this blog, speak up on this. What's the official line on differences?