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I spent a few hours the other day reading Transformers fan fiction.

I know some of you are shaking your heads and thinking, "I always knew he would come to this point... but I hoped he wouldn't." And for the rest of you, yes: I am talking about fan-written fiction based on the world of the Reagan-era transforming Robots In Disguise--Optimus Prime, Megatron, and the whole crew. But I'd like to think aloud a bit about this topic, because I have a dark confession to make: fan fiction, whether it's about Voltron or G.I. Joe or the X-Files, fascinates me.

It doesn't fascinate me in the sense that I particularly love reading it, although I've read some pieces of fan fiction that were enjoyable. Some fan fiction is, of course, quite wretched, for various reasons; much of it is badly written, and some of it exposes you to sanity-shattering ideas and images that will remain seared into your psyche until the merciful hand of Death finally ends the horror. (You know what I'm talking about; and if you don't... cherish your innocence while it lasts. It is, alas, too late for me.)

But I don't want to talk about the really bad stuff. The sort of fan fiction that interests me is the serious kind: the reasonably well-written, often lengthy, often surprisingly entertaining stories that people write in an earnest effort to explore and add depth to the characters and places of imaginary worlds not their own.

The question that always springs to my mind upon coming across fan art--whether it's a story, a piece of artwork, or a song--is: Why didn't this obviously talented person put their skills to use creating art that is their own?

Why are they pouring time and energy into writing stories set in, say, the Star Wars universe, when they have no real ownership of (and certainly no legal right to) that universe? Why spend hours sketching elaborate pictures of He-Man characters, when you could be drawing up fantastic images of your own creation? Why write long, introspective essays about the effects of war on the Decepticon Soundwave's relationship with his family, when the same story with the names changed would be a perfectly respectable novella that isn't tied to a cheesy (and copyrighted) '80s cartoon universe? (Wait--Transformers can have children? But how do they *EMERGENCY BRAIN SHUTDOWN*)

My usual reaction--and I think the standard reaction--to fan fiction (and art, and music, etc.) is to see it as the result of stunted or broken creativity. These fans have trapped their own considerable creative potential in a box built by somebody else. They lack "true" creativity that would inspire them to create their own characters and worlds, and so they squander what artistic vision they have on other people's work. This is an especially frustrating observation because some of the fan fiction/art out there is really, genuinely, good. A lot of it is written or drawn by people who, judging by the quality of their fan art, really could make a go of it in "real" art or literature, if they would only try. (Somehow, I don't picture most fan fiction authors also writing a lot of original material at the same time, although this could be a false impression.)

But I find this reaction unsatisfying (and unduly harsh). For one thing, it's fairly strict and demanding in its definition of "true creativity." Over the years, I've come to suspect that there are different kinds of creativity out there, and that some people are extremely creative but would simply rather put that creativity to use refining others' works, rather than "reinventing the wheel." This creative eye spots (or invents) depth and nuance in characters and places that the rest of us casually dismiss. I don't know why somebody would look at Soundwave (the Decepticon who transforms into a cassette player--admit it, you remember it well) and think "I'd really love to explore the emotional havoc the Transformers war is wreaking on his family life." But hey, the end result is a story that's strangely interesting and certainly adds depth to a cartoon character otherwise saddled with a completely one-dimensional personality. That might be a bit weird, but it's not a bad thing, and if it's either Soundwave fan fiction or no creative output at all from this amateur writer, I'll take the fan fiction.

One of the reasons I've come to appreciate the odd creative value of fan fiction is that I see a lot of this type of creativity in myself, specifically as it's evidenced in the way I play roleplaying games. I love to run roleplaying games, and as any gamer will tell you, it takes at least a modicum of creativity and storytelling ability to run a successful roleplaying game. But I have the hardest time in the world coming up with my own game and adventure ideas from scratch--I almost just can't do it. After 15ish years of gaming, if I were given a blank notebook and instructions to write a cool game adventure, I would probably just stare blankly at the pages for a while before finally producing a stale and unoriginal variation of something I'd seen or read before.

But give me a pre-written adventure--where somebody else has sketched out an outline of the adventure and its characters--and I'm golden. I love taking adventures others have written and reworking them to fit my preferences and the interests of the friends with whom I'll be gaming. I'll often wind up practically rewriting the entire adventure--changing characters, locations, plotlines, dialogue, and everything else to fit my interests. Why, if I can competently rewrite and run somebody else's adventure, don't I just write my own from scratch? Because for some reason, I need a creative groundwork laid out for me before I can unleash my own creativity.

That's why I'm hesitant to look down on fan art of any sort: it's genuine creativity at work, and just because it's using non-original ideas as a launching pad doesn't lessen the value of the work put into it. It may be that this is an incomplete or underdeveloped creativity, but I suspect it's more likely just a different creativity. It's creativity that works best when the initial groundwork has been done, leaving the artist free to sketch out their own vision atop that foundation.

Let's face it: your meticulously-written epic about the romantic tension between Storm Shadow and the Baroness isn't going to launch you into the halls of literary fame, but if it's the story your Muse demands of you... well, get out there and get writing.

This week I had the distinct privilege of watching Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God on DVD. Dragon God is the second recent movie to be based on the rules and setting of everybody's favorite dice-rolling, kobold-slaughtering pastime. The culturally-oblivious among you may have missed the box-office sensation that was the first D&D movie, the cinematic wretchedness of which did not prevent me from finding it rather entertaining. Let's just say I had no illusions about what I was getting into with Wrath of the Dragon God, and that I was curiously excited to find out what was in store.

So then, Wrath of the Dragon God. What can I say? I liked it, I'll just go ahead and admit it. It's a good, old-fashioned, low-budget, made-for-TV, brimming-with-enthusiasm fantasy adventure flick--the sort of film that's trying so earnestly and cheerfully that you can't really find it in your heart to get too worked up about its flaws. If, with its spotty CGI, one-dimensional characters, and mediocre storytelling, it never really gets within range of, say, Lord of the Rings, at least it manages to stay several notches ahead of, say, this.

But what really makes the film fun viewing for D&D players is the faithfulness with which it sticks to D&D canon, and the number of D&D Easter eggs scattered throughout. Unlike the first D&D film, which didn't have very much to do with the actual D&D game, Dragon God goes out of its way to use characters, spells, locations, and magic items straight from the Player's Handbook. References to classic D&D modules (Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, Shrine of the Kuo-toa, the Sunless Citadel, Nightfang Spire--to name just a few) abound; the main characters hew strictly to their class stereotypes (fighters, mage, barbarian, etc.); monsters, spells, and magic items are easily recognizable and faithfully portrayed (at one point, we even get a lecture about the difference between Divine and Arcane magic). Even the melodramatic plot and set-piece scenes look like they've been copied straight from a typical pass-the-Cheetos-and-Mountain-Dew dungeon-crawl. Faithfully basing your script on a game of dungeon exploration does not make for a great film, but it does make for a fun one.

The extra features on the DVD are in some cases more entertaining than the movie itself. There's an interview with D&D creator Gary Gygax, and a "making of" video that shows the lengths to which the screenwriter (who seems to be an even bigger D&D geek than I am) went to faithfully reflect the game. (The DVD even comes with a PDF dungeon-crawl adventure based on one of the sequences in the movie. How geeky is that?) I had to grin at the enthusiasm with which the actors--mostly unknowns, as far as I can tell--got into the details of the game. The video shows many shots of film actors poring over copies of the Player's Handbook and Dungeon Masters Guide, reading up on the game rules behind the spells and items their in-film characters are using. The film commentary--by three Wizards of the Coast staff members, playing the roles of iconic D&D characters--is not quite the Mystery Science Theater it wants to be, but is highly entertaining; if you're interested in the film but don't have the stomach for 1.5 hours of cheesy dialogue about dragon orbs, try watching the film with the commentary switched on.

But there's one more important thing I realized while watching the D&D movie. To those of you who were in my high school gaming group, know that I love you dearly and cherish your friendship. But if the gaming scene in my high school had looked a bit more like this:

...and a little less like this:

...well, high school would've been a lot less awkward. (Or maybe it would've been even more awkward... but we'll never know now, will we?)

So then, the D&D movie. You should watch it--you probably won't enjoy it as much as I did, but you might find it entertaining.

[Extra credit: match those yearbook pictures with the corresponding links in my blogroll!]

I think I've found the greatest Top Secret RPG campaign ever. (It beats my own experience with that game quite handily.) If this quote doesn't sum up Top Secret, I don't know what does:

Finally, a wino picked off the agents one by one. Not because he was after them, but because they kept going down into his corner of the sewers alone and messing with him.... the final confrontation with the wino was a really cool fight. By this point, the wino had given up on trying to be peaceful and instead ambushed the guy with the gun he'd gotten from killing the professional assassin.

Ah, the good old days of roleplaying.

Well, the tactical situation in that last post was starting to get pretty complex, so I decided to break out the miniatures and recreate the scene to be sure that we're all on the same page. Click for the larger version, and let me know what details I'm missing.

You are a low-level minion hired by the Evil Mastermind to perform some important task--kidnap somebody, steal an artifact and deliver it to the Mastermind, or something along those lines. You accomplish your task, return triumphant to the Evil Mastermind, and demand the payment that the Mastermind promised you.

The Evil Mastermind gives you a long, appraising look, smiles oddly, and says: "Why, of course. Don't worry--I intend to see that you get exactly what is coming to you. Oh, yes, you're going to get exactly what you deserve." While the Evil Mastermind goes on chuckling to himself and exchanging Knowing Looks with all the other minions in the room, you:

a) Whoa, exactly what I deserve?!? Wow, what a deal!
b) Sneer at all of those other guys who told you that working for the Evil Mastermind was a poor career choice.
c) Now you have the Evil Mastermind exactly where you want him! You decide to get tricky and demand double payment for your action--that always works.
d) Run.

How do you answer? Solution follows:
(There is no correct answer. And you're standing on the trapdoor to the Rancor pit.)

Reading this sordid tale of violence and depravity (in an RPG) brought back more than a few memories. Specifically, of TSR's old Top Secret roleplaying game. Top Secret was a spy/espionage game in which players created secret agents and sent them on missions of dubious morality.

I did not own this game, but my friend Bill did, and he often loaned it to me since I generally filled the role of gamemaster in our little gaming group. I pored over the TS rulebook, reading through it again and again while I planned out missions and scenarios. The individual tables, charts, and illustrations in that book are burned permanently into my memory.

After reading the above-linked post, I hauled out the ol' copy of Top Secret and flipped through it. (Bill, somehow it's ended up in my possession. Should you desire its return, let me know.) Wow... the memories. And wow, does this game scream "I come from the 1980s!" For one thing, the book is absolutely jam-packed with charts and tables covering all manner of situations. There is actually a Random Execution Table you can use to determine how your spy meets his fate in the unfortunate event that he's captured by the Bad Guys. I credit TS's massive weapons charts for giving me my first basic education in firearms and ammunition types. I could've sworn there was a Torture Chart as well, but I didn't spot it in my brief skim through the book.

For all the fun we had flipping through that magical book, I only remember playing it once. It was actually one of my earliest attempts at roleplaying. Let me regale you with the tale:

I was the gamemaster. My friend Jason created a secret agent. I designed a mission for his character to undertake--something that would evoke the adventure and excitement of James Bond and Indiana Jones. The mission: break into a house (just a normal house) and steal some top secret documents from it. That was the entirety of the mission. The house was the best-defended house you could ever possibly imagine encountering in the suburbs: all sorts of redundant alarm systems, codes needed for getting through the front door, etc. So I got out my meticulous maps of the house, set up the GM screen, and we got to playing.

The adventure went like this: Jason's character arrived at the house and managed to break in after snooping around for a bit. While breaking in, he unknowingly tripped one of the approximately 15,000 different invisible alarm systems I had installed in the house. The police showed up almost immediately. Jason decided to escape by jumping through a large window onto the lawn outside. Dice were rolled, charts were consulted... and the next thing we knew, Jason's character was lying unconscious on the lawn, rapidly bleeding to death from massive wounds incurred while jumping through the glass window.

That was it. After months of daydreaming about high-speed chases, beautiful female spies, and nail-baitingly suspenseful action scenes, our first adventure had ended with the protagonist bleeding to death on somebody's front lawn after jumping through a window.

Not the stuff of legend, you might say. But we had fun. And the next thing we knew, we had upgraded to the vastly superior Top Secret S.I., a "second edition" of sorts that took TS and turned it into a game that could actually emulate the spy-genre antics it was trying to portray. We loved it. We never really went back to the original TS, but played Top Secret S.I. for many many years.

I still look at the original TS with a funny sort of admiration and respect. It wasn't my first exposure to RPGs, but it was one of the first, and even though it didn't play out the way I imagined... well, I had done an awful lot of imagining in the course of reading and re-reading it, and that was something to be thankful for.

Top Secret, you rock. Random Execution Table and all.

Gencon last month saw, among many other things, the release of a hardcover roleplaying game book that I had the privilege of editing. The book is Legends of the Samurai, and it's the biggest single project that I've edited to date.

Editors and proofreaders generally only get mentioned in reviews of RPG books when they've screwed up. So it was with some nervousness that I read the first review of the book. I cannot describe the sense of relief that washed over me as I read these six blessed words: "I saw no major editorial gaffes." Mr. Reviewer, you are an angel from heaven.

I'm actually afraid to look through the book myself; I know, I know with cold, absolute certainty that I'll spot an overlooked typo on the very first page to which I turn. No--far better to leave the book closed and unread. And if you read the book and find a typo... please leave me in blessed ignorance.

This afternoon, I finished running a Warhammer RPG scenario for Michele. (This is the game mentioned in the previous post.) We played the "introductory adventure" from the back of the main rulebook, and both had a great deal of fun with it. Here are some quick impressions of the adventure and the game itself:

• The setting is gritty and depressing--an interesting twist on the "heroic swords-and-sorcery" genre. The game picks up in the aftermath of a massive, Empire-shaking war that has left much of the world in a shambles. From the characters' perspective at least, the world is falling apart around them, and there's no good news on the horizon.

  This added a fun sense of desperation and urgency to the whole affair, I thought.

• The characters seem really "grounded" in the game world. They have believable jobs and roles in the setting. Michele made three characters--a Dwarf mercenary, an Elf apprentice wizard, and (most entertaining of all) a human peasant charcoal-burner (yes, a person who burns charcoal for a living). All had definite careers and motivations in the Warhammer world, instead of just belonging to that rather nebulous "wandering adventurer" career.

• Combat is deadly; no matter how tough you are, you're only one or two blows away from getting maimed or killed. All it takes is one solid hit. This makes combat feel a lot riskier, as well as more tense and exciting. In a lot of games, you have ample warning (i.e. dropping hit points) that a fight is not going your way; in Warhammer, you could pretty easily go from perfect health to death in a single round. Also, the game has some impressively gruesome critical hit tables (reminiscent of, but not as detailed as, the ones in Rolemaster).

  The first thing Michele did after her first combat encounter was buy all the armor her characters could afford. Two of her three characters were severely wounded, and this from a rather "routine" encounter with some mutants.

• There's a definite undercurrent of gloom and horror in Warhammer. The game features "insanity points" which characters gain when they view horrifying or sanity-shattering sights; this gives it a fun Call of Cthulhu vibe (although Warhammer's insanity points aren't as central to the game as they are in CoC).

• The adventure we played ("Through the Drakwald," included in the main rulebook) was quite good. It was unexpectedly heavy on mood and roleplaying opportunities. Michele's characters ran into one big combat encounter, and spent the rest of the time trying to figure out the adventure's central mystery as it unfolded around them.

  The adventure also involved several meaningful but difficult moral choices.

• At two separate points in the adventure, the events taking place made me feel really sad. As in, emotionally sad. Fantasy RPGs do not usually trigger emotional responses in me, but this one did. Maybe it's the humidity.
  

Those are my immediate reactions. In summary: Warhammer is an excellent game. I'm hoping to continue playing it with Michele (and anyone else who wants to join). If you're looking for a game that takes traditional fantasy tropes and gives them a grim and unusual spin, it's definitely worth checking out.

OK, time for a little geeky RPG humor. Earlier this week I came across a humorous little essay written by a gamer who blames his favorite character's descent into madness and addiction on the cruelty of the adventure's author (some profanity, you've been warned). It's a bit long, but worth getting to the final page, where we are treated to this cautionary tale:

And finally, just to put the icing on the cake, we encountered a drug dealer in a pub, and in a mad moment I sampled the goods. Which were good. Which were *very* good. When I took some I felt like I was on top of the world, that I could do anything, that no-one could stop me. These drugs worked, and I said yes!

One dose gave you +10%/+1 to EVERY single attribute bar attacks. My weapons skill was up by 10% (i.e. 58% instead of 48%). My ballistic skill was up by 10%. My toughness was up by 1. My initiative was up by 10%. My intelligence was up by 10%. My leadership, my cool, my everything, etc. etc....

It was great. Time after time I'd roll the dice and say: "I made it... because of the drugs!" Time and time again they saved my skin, and I wasn't going to let the 50 gold crowns a week cost get me down. And who cared if every time I took a dose, General Tangent (the GM) rolled some dice behind his screen.

Great. Now I'm going to have to resist the urge to shout "I made it... because of the drugs!" every time I roll dice during a game.

Oh, and the cruel author of said adventure published a response. All very amusing stuff.

I read an interesting roleplaying book a while back, and for some time I've been meaning to talk about it here.

The book is Gehenna, the final sourcebook published for the Vampire: The Masquerade game line. Gehenna is the end of the road for Vampire and its elaborate setting; after many years of publishing Vampire books, White Wolf (the publisher) decided to end the game line and setting by publishing an end-of-the-world sourcebook which would detail ways to roleplay the End Times in a manner fitting Vampire's themes.

Gehenna is that book; it includes four different scenarios for ending the world (as well as some general advice on tailoring Vampire's End Times to fit your game). One of those four scenarios, titled “Wormwood,” struck me as particularly interesting, so I'll discuss it briefly.

[Warning: major spoilers follow.]

First, a quick primer for those not familiar with Vampire: in it, you create and take on the role of a modern-day vampire. As a vampire, you are an inheritor of God's curse on the Biblical character Cain. You are part of a hidden (from mortals) society of undead who are constantly scheming and trying to acquire power over both their fellow vampires and the mortal world. Most games involve backbiting politics as the characters try to survive and thrive in this predatory world of vampire politics. There is a strong apocalyptic tone to the game; in the Vampire world, the signs of the End are everywhere, and when it finally comes, legend holds that a handful of ancient vampire gods will rise from their slumber and destroy everything. That's the abbreviated version, at least.

“Wormwood” proceeds something like this: one day, God sends a killing cloud that envelops the world and simply kills off every vampire on the planet in a matter of hours or days. The only survivors are a handful of vampires (including, of course, the players' characters), who are specifically spared by God in a “Noah's Ark” sort of situation. These vampires are placed in a church that they cannot leave (because of the killing cloud outside), and have a short period of time in which to prove themselves worthy of being spared from God's wrath. For several days, the vampires are subjected to a series of difficult moral tests and choices; at the end of their allotted time, the surviving vampires are judged by God and either destroyed (if they succumb to their bestial nature) or spared and restored to mortality (if they demonstrate that they can overcome their predatory nature).

That's the story in a nutshell. This scenario really appeals to be on a narrative basis for several different reasons.

For one, I think it's the perfect horrific ending to inflict on a society of arrogant, uber-powerful undead predators: in the end, vampires just... die, and are forgotten. The vampires have spent dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of years seeking power and pulling the strings of their human puppets from the shadows, secure in their supernatural superiority to mortal man; and in the end, they're just wiped away almost nonchalantly, in a matter of days. For all their raging against God and all their arrogance, for all the supernatural power they have accrued over the centuries, they don't even get to go out in a blaze of glory; nobody even knows they ever existed. What a thematically fitting end—tossed aside by God, reduced to utter insignificance. That's a good horror story, in my opinion, and Vampire purports to be a game of horror.

The second reason this tale interests me is the way it depicts God. In “Wormwood,” the true nature of God is finally revealed, and it stands in stark contrast to what we've been led to believe about Him. Vampires, descendants of the Biblical character Cain, have long attributed cruelty and arbitrary vindictiveness to God, seeing Him as the source of their vampiric curse and portraying Cain's sin as a praiseworthy act, rather than a vile one. In “Wormwood,” however, God turns out to be loving, kind, and patient—nothing at all like the vicious and uncaring deity so hated by the vampire community. God is shown to be a merciful God who has waited for millenia for vampires to repent and accept grace and forgiveness. It is the vampires' own pride, not God's malice, which has kept them from divine grace; all this time, all they needed to do was humble themselves and repent. In “Wormwood,” time has finally run out, but even then, God gives a chosen few the chance to be spared the richly-deserved judgment that lays waste to the vampire world.

Why is this so interesting to me? Well, for one, it's practically bursting with substantive Christian themes and ideas. It's not quite a truly Christian message—in the end, the chosen vampires are saved because of their own good deeds—but it's far, far closer to a genuine Christian roleplaying scenario then most other games I've read (including, I'm afraid, most specifically Christian roleplaying games). I'm not saying that one needs to completely “Christianize” the scenario in order to fully appreciate it, but for those looking for such things, it features a lot of opportunities to explore, in the roleplaying medium, topics like sin and grace.

Unlike just about every other religious-minded roleplaying game ever written, "Wormwood" portrays an actual, no-strings-attached, loving God. When a Judeo-Christian-esque God is portrayed in roleplaying games, He is almost always portrayed as having what you could call a “lawful jerk” personality: He's usually good and righteous, but in a callous might-makes-right fashion. He smites evil in a scorched-earth manner, with no room for genuine grace or mercy. This is true even in games that attempt to portray God in a somewhat positive light; even most “Christian RPGs” seem to think that “onward Christian soldier” is the only Biblical model for behavior.

And so, I find it fascinating that (of all things) a Vampire scenario hits so much closer to the target than do decades' worth of other religion-focused games. It's not perfect, and I'm not saying it's a “Christian game,” whatever that is. But the God of “Wormwood” bears more than a passing resemblance to the Christian God of the Bible, and I, for one, am happy to see it.