Ramifications

Greetings, Dandy Silverstone!

They’ve probably changed the rules by now, but way back in the dark ages (mid-1980s) when I started playing AD&D, a human fighter, beginning level, was (according to some table I no longer have access to) assumed to be something like sixteen to eighteen years old.  A half-elf with the same basic abilities was assumed to be quite a bit older, like in their eighties.

This niggled at me until one day the solution came to me: It simply takes elves a long time to learn anything.  They aren’t stupid. (After all, elves are known to be brilliant.)  However, maybe as a result of their very long lives, they have no incentive to learn anything, so they don’t bother.

From this, I came up with one of the most restful characters I’ve ever played: Kymbree Silverstone.  The surname was taken from a then popular alternative to Teflon coating, and Teflon, as you may recall, was famous for being a surface that everything slid off of.

Kymbree was unable to worry.  She lived in the moment.  She sang a lot, and usually remembered to swing her sword when something came after her.  That particular game was a short one, but I still remember Kymbree fondly, both for herself, and because of how she was the solution to a problem of ramifications.

Ramifications are something that, as a writer of SF/F, I think about a lot.  Every story starts as a blank slate, but once you have an element, you’re stuck with all that goes with it.  Kymbree’s shiny steel sword implies that someone, somewhere, is making steel.  Steel takes iron (so someone is mining, or maybe there are meteor tracking groups).   Making steel takes heat, so someone is polluting the air by burning wood or coal or whatever.  (Or maybe they have really big magnifying glasses and focus the sun’s heat.)

Forging the sword means that somewhere there are stinky forges, burly people wielding big hammers.  (Or maybe they’re made by earth elementals who have no sense of smell and smooth out the steel by touch.)

But whatever the answer, you’ve created not just a sword, but all that goes into making a sword.

Or maybe swords drop out of the sky…  But who is dropping them?  Where did they come from?

Ramifications.  They’re part of the writing game, especially the SF/F writing game.  At least they are for me.