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morbethgames · 4 months

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February 14th, 2024 Update!

Hey all, I'm gonna be trying to do this weekly now. So, quick update on things, first and foremost the book as that's what most of you come here for! I am 11k words in and about a little halfway done with the path that lets you participate in the next part with Lance and Alvarez. There is going to be quite a bit of variation in how a PC can choose to approach this scene; those Combat Stats exist for a reason!

As for things going on with Patreon, I have decided on a schedule!

Patreon content will release on Tuesdays and Thursdays!

I am going to attempt to stick to that schedule as consistently as possible, and I'm off to a good start on that! Part 1 of The Bureau Audiobook went up today and part 2 is going up on Thursday. Not to mention the small short story introducing the character Buck Marcellis went up last Thursday! The story is around 2.5k words long, if I remember correctly. An extra little thing going up today as well is the Poll to see what Interactive Fiction I will be reading as an audiobook next. That's right:

You will get to pick the next audiobook reading!

I've gotten a bunch of different author's consent to make audiobooks of their work, so anyone who is a subscriber to the Patreon, you will have a direct say in what Audiobook goes up alongside the one for The Bureau! Options include things like:

Kingdoms and Empires

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - An affair of the heart

When Life Gives You Lemons

Honor Amongst Thieves

The Operative: Fires of Revolution

Defiled Hearts: The Barbarian

Along with a couple of others that are on the list for possibilities!

Over the next few months, I will be more active for sure, and you can expect the update for The Bureau to come out before the end of March (I hope). Thank you all so much for sticking with me, and I hope to see you over on the Patreon, which, thanks to hyperlinks, you can conveniently find

RIGHT HERE! <-

The Forum Page for "The Bureau"

The demo for the game itself!

Thank you all so much for reading this update and for sticking with me and continuing to do so for the future! You are all awesome! Also big shoutouts to @when-life-gives-you-lemonssss, @kingdoms-and-empires, @theoperativeif, @leoneliterary, @doriana-gray-games, @defiledheartsblog for giving me permission to read their work on my silly little attempt at Patreon content; you guys are awesome!

Stay Brilliant,

-Vi

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alpaca-clouds · 5 months

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The DnD Lore Problem - Accessibility and Characters (and how BG3 might not help)

You know what? I am gonna talk about DnD Lore and the accessibility of that lore. I talked about this exessively before. But to summarize that long blog very shortly:

Wizards of the Coasts currently makes the mistake of putting basically most DnD Lore behind a paywall, rather than offering official ressources. This leads to a lot of tables actually playing with their original worlds, rather than Toril/Faerûn, which in turn also means, that they are not spending money on official products. While my anti-capitalist ass things that the lore should be accessible just so that people can enjoy it, I also think that this inaccessibility actually costs WotC A LOT OF MONEY.

Today I want to talk about another aspect of this inaccessibility, that is kinda linked to some of the stuff I talked about before, but also is linked to the things WotC is currently not doing in terms of both Honor Among Thieves and Baldur's Gate 3. A thing, that also might not quite work with BG3, though.

See, the core problem of this inaccessibility is, that a) there is no official place where you can just get base information about the world and the timeline, b) this world has grown organically for about half a century, which lead to clutter, but also to the fact that things are at times showing their age.

I might actually make a post on the gods and religion in the world at some other point - but for now let me talk about something else: Extended universes and access points.

The Problem with Extended Universes

Okay, let's talk about how a lot of the big franchises for the longest time have told their meta stories - including DnD - and how it kinda struggles to find its audience. The extended universe.

I am frankly not entirely sure what franchise has started this. I am assuming it was Star Trek? But that is just a guess. But at some point in the 60s oder 70s someone had the idea that: "Hey, we could totally give the fans more to chew on by making official tie-in comics and novels!"

And that was how it worked for very long. Like a lot of the big franchises had at times around 10 novels and comics (if not more) releasing per year that would just explore other parts of the universe and allow the very engaged fans to... well, learn more about the world. Now, I am not going to talk about all the drama connected to the Star Wars stuff, but if you know, you know.

DnD did this too. (As did a lot of the big TTRPG systems, like Shadowrun and WoD as well.) Having a lot of tie in stuff - in the case of DnD mostly novels - that told more stories on the world and also established like some big player characters within the world. Elminster Aumar is probably one of the best examples here.

Those established some characters that play a big role within the world and also told just more stories of those big world changing events. In the recent DnD history that would be stuff like the Time of Troubles, the Spellplague and the Second Sundering.

Now, here we have one big issue. And one issue where I am not entirely certain where it arose from. But the fact is: In recent years, people invest way less into those kind of books. This is just a fact.

It is the reason why those big universes went from publishing like ten novels a year to often not more than three. We saw that in the failure of the extended Universe Disney tried to pull off for Pirates of the Caribbean (though I will still maintain that another big problem was that they barely marketed that at all - hi, everyone, who did not know there were extended universe novels for PotC). We also saw that with League of Legends, who really, really tried to tell a lot more stories with short stories and then also some novels set in Runeterra, before finally giving up, because most people didn't care.

In terms of Dungeons & Dragons I can totally see that a lot of people will also say: "I do not care what some other people's characters do within the world." Buuuuuut...

Stories actually can help you understand the world. Which brings me to...

The Elminster Problem

Okay, I do not know how to put this, but... If you look at the novels coming out for DnD literally half of them focus on either Elminster Aumar or Drizzt Do'Urden. Characters that have pretty much been around since the very beginning and. Look, I don't know how to put it but... It shows.

I am currently reading some of the newer novels and the fact is, that they do not really feel like fantasy books from the 2010s and 2020s. Because Elminster and Drizzt are very clearly characters originating in a very different time when stories were told very differently.

I mean, just look at Elminster. He is a wanna-be Gandalf character. He is from the early, early days of fantasy and... Look, I personally just really am unable to identify with a character like this.

And while Drizzt is a bit better as a character, but even he... How to put this delicately? They are both very much characters written by white cishet men for white cishet men. There, I said it.

I am noticing this a lot with reading Salvatore's books currently. Like, female characters are not overly sexualized, which is a plus. But they also very much exist most of the time in service to a man or at least in relation to a man. There is not a lot of female characters running around that have their own agency.

Which kinda leads to another thing. I actually saw this one brought up by one of those very cliché nerdy Youtube channels talking on DnD, who recognized the problem as well: There are basically two large groups of DnD players who barely intersect. One is the cliché nerds, the other is a largely queer and largely diverse group. And the youtube guy, who was very in the white cishet nerd group, suspected that actually the later group makes up more of the player base by now.

Buuuut... that is also the group who really do not get catered to by the canon lore so far. That was until 2023 with DnD:HAT and BG3 - both catering actually a lot to those groups.

Honor Among Thieves and the undermarketed books

Okay, here is the thing: Honor Among Thieves had two novelizations (one for young readers, one for older readers) and two tie-in novels. One featuring Edgin, Holga, Forge and Simon before the stuff with Sofina went down. And the other featuring Simon and Doric taking place at the time while Ed and Holga are in prison.

I am honest: I really, really liked the Ed and Holga novel. It was super cute and charming and really gives a better understanding of the characters.

But of course once again there is the thing: The books - just like the Pirates of the Caribbean books - were super undermarketed. Like, most people I know off do not even know that there were books released. Heck, even within the actual active fandom there are again and again people who will be surprised that those books exist.

And... I actually also think that the books waste one big ass opportunity, by not at all tying into the broader lore. They are super self-contained.

And that is actually just a waste. Because the place were Edgin lived in? Yeah, that place was super affected by the Second Sundering. Heck, that might have had to do something with his troubles.

Why is that an issue? Well, because... there was not a lot going on there that was inviting you to further interact with the world and learn more abotu what is happening. For once, again, because I think it is a super fun and interesting world. But also, because... WotC wants to make money and is so bad at it, that it really boggles my mind.

See, here is the thing: They could've used those characters - that really are fun and sympathetic characters - to create an accesspoint into that world.

Alright, so what about Baldur's Gate 3?

Which brings me to Baldur's Gate 3 and the thing that a lot of people have noticed: The other Baldur's Gate games - as well as some of the other games releasing around 2000 - had their own tie-in novels going into the characters, their background, but also what they were doing in the future.

Something that so far BG3 has not done, which some fans have already critized. Because a lot of people have actually gotten really invested into those characters. A lot of the kind of people especially who so far are underserved by a lot of the tie-in stuff: Queer and generally diverse audiences.

Like, I think there would be a lot of people, who totally would read a novel, about...

Astarion getting drawn into some sort of political intrigue in Baldur's Gate while serving Cazador

Karlach's time in Avernus

Some Adventure Wyll got dragged into while being the Blade of the Frontier.

Shadowheart going onto a mission for Shar (maybe together with Nocturne)

Whatever Gale was doing during the Second Sundering

Lae'zel's youth among the Githyanki

The Dark Urge and Gortash starting up the entire conspiracy

... whatever Halsin had been up to in his long live

Heck, people would eat that stuff up. And you could not only use it to worldbuild but also once more create some access into the world and what happened there. And they are kinda wasting a lot of potential by not bringing out those novels.

Of course, there is one big problem: BG3 makes it kinda hard to write about anything happening after the ending. Because as it is right now, someone is gonna be pissed if a novel set after the game does not go with the decision for a character they go for. Like, Ascended Astarion fans are gonna be pissed, if they go with Spawn Astarion - and the other way around. Same goes with every other character where you have those big decisions happening.

This is something they will have to tackle eventually if they plan on doing something with the characters in the future (no matter if we are talking Larian or WotC), but it is definitely an issue that just arises from the structure of the game.

Bonus of course is, that you just cannot define a canonical Tav. But without a Tav, you also gotta act as if the story of the game happened without a Tav, which still is not ideal. I am honestly not sure with how they are gonna deal with this on the long run.

Access via Characters

Alright, but what is the actual issue here?

Well, basically there are two hurdles to overcome for the accessibility of the lore. The first is the physical accessibility - aka, what I talked about in the last long blog post. The second meanwhile is more related to making the lore engaging. And that happens through characters.

It is for me what happened last year. I actually tried to engage with the lore as the movie came out - but only when BG3, that tied a lot more into the actual lore was released I actually found proper access to the lore. Because I had concrete things I could now look for because the game hinted at so much both through characters and major story events happening.

Here is the thing: If you just have the lore on its own, it is about as engaging as reading a history book. Sure, as your local history nerd I find reading history books fun, but most people really do not want to read a history book to engage with a hobby.

People will however engage with stories and characters that interest them. Which is where we get back to the thing I talked about at the beginning: Right now most canonical novels and stories still cater to an audience that is male, cishet, white and also, let's be frank, definitely over 30 years old. Leaving behind a lot of potential fans that theoretically make up a big part of the player-base, but actually do not engage a lot with the lore for this exact reason.

Look. DnD right now is fairly close to being an actual mainstream hobby, due to the recent proliferation of formerly nerdy stuff. And yet WotC is bleeding money, especially in regards of DnD.

If you ask me, sure... DnD should go into public domain. But it doesn't. And given that there are so many creative, skilled people working on this - no matter how dumb Hasbro is and how shitty of an employer they are - I actually do want them to succeed. I have really become engaged with this world now. And I think it is a pity that they clearly do not know how to market this stuff.

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cyanspyder · 2 months

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Have just finished "Thick as Thieves", book five of Megan Whalen Turner's "Queen's Thief" series, and I'm frustrated I have no-one I can gush over this.

I've loved all five of the six books books in the series. Every one has had me on tenterhooks throughout, and with twists and turns that have frequently left me shocked and amazed, even when expecting to be tricked and bamboozled.

So if you want complex and clever storytelling, with well fleshed out and believable characters; telling a story of complex political intrigue set in a pseudo-Mediterranean fantasy world; then I thoroughly recommend this series

#queen's thief #megan whalen turner #thick as thieves #fantasy novels

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trashedinpluto-jpg · 1 year

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blue sargent; lover of stars, hater of boat shoes, a strange half-tree soul with ley line magic running through her

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adamnsey · 2 years

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adurna0-art · 1 year

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I simply think Szass Tam is pretty neat 🥀

#forgotten realms #dnd #dndhat #dnd movie #dnd honor among thieves #szass tam #my art #digital art #fan art #this man never fails to be straight up the funniest most congenial character in the novels in which he is very clearly the villain #he has to consciously try to be mean #local lich thwarted by stubbornly remaining traces of inherent goodness #also like? hair? in my thay? it’s more likely than you think #what is someone gonna tell szass tam that he can’t have hair? didn’t think so

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reneesbooks · 4 months

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make me write: the thieves of morbhard

from the raedoran cycle. y'all voted for the pining gay thieves lets do it.

taglist (ask to be added<3): @k–havok @theharpywrites @allianaavelinjackson @oh-no-another-idea

“I've got it,” Jack slurs, grabbing at his satchel. Arthur leans his head against the wall behind his bed and watches through half-lidded eyes as Jack produces a weathered scroll case. “Cost me a fuckin' forture, selfish cartograstographer.”

Arthur laughs, lazy and drunk and perfectly content.

Jack manages to open the case and dumps out the scroll inside. He tumbles out of his bed and kneels on the floor, weighting the corners of the map down with loose coins. Arthur slides to the floor with him, resting his cheek on Jack's shoulder. Jack's fingers brush his.

“Where do you want to go?” he murmurs. Arthur inhales a little shakily, trying to focus on the map and not the way Jack's hair tickles his nose.

“Hasal is too cold.” Jack hums with agreement. “Fierodia could be nice.”

Jack traces a finger over the spiky label for Horsa on the western coast. “They supersititious?”

Arthur frowns. “I don't know. Probably.” He peels his cheek off Jack's shoulder and leans over the map, squinting at the ink. “Titrodoreos?”

“Say that five times fast,” Jack laughs, hiccupping.

“Guildins don't have a problem with hollow children,” Arthur muses. “Could be something.”

“We'll get a desert villa on the Eastern Sea,” Jack declares, leaning over the map with a nub of charcoal from Arthur's bag. He makes a sloppy mark next to Titrodoreos. “Supposed to be the city of opportunity.”

“Maybe.” Arthur's vision swims a little. “Guildin laws are stricter than Raedoran ones. Could get our hands chops off.”

“Second choice?” Jack trails the charcoal down the map, slashing a line from the Eastern to the Southern Sea. “Are there really serpents down there?”

Arthur is getting too sleepy for this. “Probably not. Serpents aren't real.”

“That's what some people said about dragons,” Jack retorts, fumbling for the rum bottle. He pouts when he realizes it's empty and he tosses it aside with a sigh. Arthur tears his gaze away from his mouth. “I bet we'll see one on the way there.”

“Yeah, I bet.”

Jack lays down on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Arthur lays down next to him, turning his head to watch Jack's throat work for a minute. “Do you really think we'll actually pull it off? Steal the crown jewels?”

Arthur lets his gaze wander up the ceiling as well, pretends he can see the night sky past it. Stars swim in his vision, and he makes a stupid wish on one of them. “Yeah, I think we will.”

#that's my boys! dumbasses the both of them!!#jack and arthur: yeah falling asleep cuddled up next to each other is totally normal and platonic there's no way he feels Like That about m #everyone around them: we give up #writeblr #writers on tumblr #writeblr community #original fiction #fantasy novel #make me write #thieves #the raedoran cycle #jack #arthur #ask me about the map and i'll post it ;)#rb original

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