2019 Book Resolution: Reaper Man, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Three Hearts and Three Lions

[tablesaw]

[This post has been living in my saved draft for a year, so I'm going to finish it up mostly as is.]

At the beginning of February [of 2019], one of our two cats passed away after struggling with suspected lymphoma. It was a sad and stressful time, and I decided that I was going to need to take a sharp turn away from the horror stories I'd been reading. I never put any restrictions on what kind of books to read, so in February I reread one book (Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett), read a nonfiction book (the core rulebook for Dungeon Crawl Classics, a role-playing game from Goodman Games), and read a new-to-me novel (Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson).

Reaper Man

Terry Pratchett is comfort reading for me, and I knew I wanted something with Death, since it was on my mind. Pratchett's character of Death is particularly comforting, and it made sense to read the book where he's the star. Death gets laid off, and spends his remaining time as a farmhand, learning what it means to be alive, and the importance of dying well.

Of course, as I'd forgotten, Death isn't quite the star, a large portion of the book is dedicated to an undead wizard and his undead friends fighting against the embodied concept of shopping malls. I started skipping these segments entirely pretty quickly.

Dungeon Crawl Classics

I've head about Dungeon Crawl Classics for a while, but had a hard time figuring out what it was all about. It wasn't until a kickstarter last year that I really started investigating what was going on, when it laid out a specific tier for newcomers to the system. Those books are still on their way, but I snagged a PDF of the core rulebook to read because I'd gotten impatient.

DCC has a goal of recreating the original feel of Dungeons and Dragons by working from the same sources that Gygax et al. were inspired by, particularly those in a recommended reading list included in the original game in Appendix N. There's an emphasis on making adventures strange and fantastic and individualized, rather trying to establish a consistent world with balanced power dynamics. Magic has wildly unpredictable side effects (lovingly detailed in extensive tables).

One thing that came across surprisingly clear in the writing is that there is a focus on the ingenuity of the player, rather than the abilities of the character. There's a lot of randomness, but the conceit of the idea is that being able to survive strange and dangerous adventures isn't because of the inherent abilities you may have (like strength or intelligence points), but in the experience you bring to the situation (having been in some real tough fights makes you better and lasting through tough fights.

And when starting, players need to rely on their own ingenuity rather than the balance of the character. It takes a while for a character to take a hit, and players are expected to play cautiously and craftily, and the game rewards play. [2020 Addition: I've since gotten to play a game of DCC, and had a really great time. A traditional beginning play starts with a player controlling 4 characters, most of whom do not survive, and playing with somewhat disposable characters is a great way to learn where the limits of the system are.]

Three Hearts and Three Lions

Which leads nicely into Three Hearts and Three Lions. And by design, I picked this because it was a book from Appendix N that I happened to already have purchased in a Humble Bundle. Three Hearts is the story from an engineer from World War II who finds himself transported into a fantasy world. What I found most interesting was the way it played on very specific Medieval stories, like the Matter of France. In the same way that

The most fascinating thing about it was that it introduced a binary of Chaos and Law that seems to have been very influential on the traditional D&D system of Chaotic and Lawful alignments. But in the context of Medieval literature these have very clear meanings, because Lawful refers to the Law of Christendom ruled by Charlemagne, and Chaos refers to the "pagan" creatures and traditions that live on the outskirts of it.

The story of the novel weaves the hero acting traditionally heroically (as his body remembers how to ride and fight) with him acting analytically, applying 20th Century knowledge and reasoning to the quest-y challenges he faces. It cast an interesting perspective on DCC and early D&D about how reasonable it would be for a player to have to face challenges aimed at the character and the player both.

Comments

[jadelennox]

I don't think about sitting down and reading core rulebooks like a book, but that's interesting!

[tablesaw]

There's obviously a lot of skipping around (DCC has some very long tables), but, yeah, lots of core rulebooks benefit from a more-or-less straight read-through, particularly with regards to tone, structure, and play advice.