I was never a big role-playing game player.  I dabbled a bit here and there, but I always had a hell of a time getting a reliable group.  It isn’t such a bad thing though as my RPG failures eventually led to my table top gaming passion.  It was after a D&D group fell apart that the remnants and I started playing Magic: The Gathering & Robo Rally.  And now, here I am:  A. Lee Martinez, world-famous novelologist and game-playing guru.

I was never much of a D&D player.  It always seemed too rules intensive to me, too controlling with a real lack of meaningful choices in character design.  And it always bugged me that wizards couldn’t pick up swords.  I’m not expecting them to slay a dragon with the thing, but you should be able to pick it up and swing the damn thing.  Although I was usually just a dwarf warrior because, push comes to shove, I’d rather just chop the bad guy with an ax than try to micromanage my spell catalogue.

It didn’t help too that I had plenty of bad experience with role-players in general.  All it takes is one bad apple to spoil the fun.  One guy who thinks it’s funny to kill every peasant he comes across.  One weirdo dude who wants to make a female character and then tries to seduce the other guys in the party.  One dumbass who finds potty humor and / or lack of teamwork amusing.

I did have some good times role-playing, but it wasn’t ever with D&D.

I liked Vampire in theory, but I could never get enough players.  And I wasn’t gothy enough.  I’d much rather stalk the night as an anti-hero vampire than deal with politics and angst.  I enjoyed the concept of Werewolf a whole hell of a lot.  The combination of magic and bloodthirsty werewolves was hard to resist.  But, again, no players.  Mage was a game of tremendous promise, but nobody I knew was interested.

FUN FACTS: I actually wrote 100 pages of a novel based on the World of Darkness.  I guess it was technically fan fiction, but I really did think it was great.  Unfortunately, after reading a few of the published White Wolf novels, I realized that I wasn’t the target audience.  Again, not gothy enough.

FUN FACT #2: My favorite Mage character was a mad scientist named Dr. Spectre, Man of Science!  He was a Doc Savage knockoff, and he was awesome.  Shame he never got a chance to see some action.

The game I probably played most reliably was Deadlands, the Weird West RPG.  The system was a bit clunky, but cowboys versus monsters is a pretty sweet setting.  After Deadlands, the gameI loved the most (and continue to love) is Feng Shui aka Shadowfist.  The game was built on Honk Kong action flick rules, and had a terrific, fun setting of kung fu killers and mutant demons from the future.  The thing I loved about Feng Shui was that, unlike most RPGs, you started the game as a badass.  You were a killer, a powerhouse, a whirlwind of death and destruction.  It also had a great, simple system and was one of the easiest RPGs to play or run I’ve ever run across.  Just absolute pure fun.

And now, the review:

It’s probably been about 15 years since I picked up a RPG.  So no one was as surprised as I was when I decided, on the spur of the moment, to pick up the Gamma World RPG.  From what I’ve read, Gamma World is a direct adaptation of the D&D,4th edition rules.  I am not familiar with those rules at all, though I know a bit about the controversy.  The new D&D is more of a sophisticated boardgame with some RPG elements.  And I can see why some might be annoyed by this.  When I role-played, I never liked using maps and figures.  It takes your attention and puts it on the board, makes everything seem technical and dull.  It seems to me, just based on this, that D&D is halfway between a board game and a RPG, and falls short on each.

But what about Gamma World?  Is it a good game?  Is it worth buying?

I don’t know, but I think it has promise.  Let’s start with the setting.  Gamma World is a truly unique game in that instead of playing elves and dwarves, fighters and clerics, everyone plays a mutant.  There’s some contrived explanation of multiple realities collapsing into a single world.  It’s really just an excuse to have mutants and monsters of any conceivable type interacting.  Heck, you can even use D&D creatures in the setting.  But why would you?  Who would want to fight a beholder when you can fight a mutant badger with a rifle or a giant, flying worm that can turn invisible?

Anything goes in Gamma World and nowhere is that more evident than in the character creation rules.  There are 20 possible origins for player characters, and everyone gets two.  The game recommends picking randomly, which is fine, but I don’t see anything wrong with choosing your origin.  I’ve never really understood random character generation as it can saddle a player with a character they don’t like and what good is that?

Gamma World has some basis for random character creation though.  In a world where anything is possible, it can be fun to stretch your imagination and play a telekinetic plant or a swarm of time-displacing hornets or a robotic felinoid.  Yes, these are entirely possible results of the creation system, and if that doesn’t thrill you, I don’t know what else to say.

ASIDE:  I get that a lot of “serious” RPers will turn their nose up at this absurdity, but isn’t all fantasy absurd?  Is a telepathic yeti any less believable than a wizard who can shoot fireballs or a warrior with a magic sword?  Maybe that’s just me though, as I love the idea of being able to play a humanoid bird with the power to manipulate gravity.

An interesting part of the game is the use of card decks that allow the players to access random mutations and technology.  In such an unstable reality, mutants can spontaneously develop and lose strange powers at the drop of a hat.  So in addition to your hawkoid’s ability to fly, you might also discover the ability to teleport or grow armor for a few hours.  None of these powers are very stable, and they don’t stick around for long.  Some might find that annoying, but again, I love this idea.  It keeps you guessing and is perfectly suited for the setting. 

There are even rules for creating your own custom deck for your character and this can be fun as it’s easy to create a solid theme.  You can create a deck of psychic power cards for your telepathic character or a deck of bug-like mutations for your mutant roach.  There’s a great variety of mutation cards and all are clearly worded and easy to understand.

There are also a deck of Omega Tech cards that represent cutting edge technology salvaged in the ruins.  These devices are completely unreliable, and that fits with the theme just fine.  Players can create custom decks for these too, representing pieces of technology in their possession that are powerful, but unpredictable.  And it’s a neat way of allowing characters to stumble across tech without having to consult tables and random roll charts.  Heck, there’s nothing stopping the GM from sticking a piece of Omega Tech on a group of random monsters to make them more challenging.

Random boosters of cards are available, and I’m sure these could add some fun.  But you don’t need them.  The Gamma World box comes with plenty.  So it’s a cool gimmick that doesn’t require extra investment.

Some might dislike the random card system, but there’s nothing saying they have to be random.  It’s a flexible system that works well and is easily adaptable to players’ needs.  And that’s true of the entire game.

 Aside from the character creation and a healthy selection of monsters to choose from, the book is a little light in the setting department.  I don’t know if that’s a negative though as Gamma World is such a flexible setting that players should have no problem coming up with adventures.  Want to live out The Seven Samurai but with hordes of cyborg dinosaurs on the attack?  No problem.  Like the idea of exploring an abandon robot factory in search of astounding technology?  Easy to do.  Road warriors?  Peacekeepers?  Marauding no-goodniks?  The rule system is easy to adapt, and even if you don’t use the monsters in the game, you can always invent your own pretty easily.

I don’t know if I’ll ever actually have a Gamma World RPG session.  It doesn’t seem likely.  But as a gonzo game full of possibilities, you could do a lot worse.  I could easily see playing the game with or without a map, depending on your preference.  And I can see it being a blast with the right group, players who are interested in just sitting down, creating some characters, and seeing where adventure takes them.

As a board game, I actually see a lot of potential here as well.  I’m considering creating index cards with various origins and dealing them out to players to create their characters and allowing those characters to duke it out.  Or you could even just have battles between monsters if so inclined.

Bottom line:  I like Gamma World.  I like it a lot.  It’s the kind of game I’d love to get together and role-play and it’s been a while since I’ve seen that.  And in a world where most RPGs take themselves far too seriously, this is a refreshing change of pace.  The game is a solid toolbox for any players looking for something different, and with supplemental material on the way, it could develop into something pretty damn cool.

Recommended from this humble novelologist and former, very casual role-player.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

The hullaballoo about the new Harlequin Horizons self-publishing imprint gave me an excuse to post some thoughts on self-publishing in general.  You read right, gang.  This isn’t a blog about Godzilla, board games, or the coolness of robots and cartoons.  Although I’m not promising that one or more of those topics might rear their head along the way.  They tend to do that in my internet postings, and I’ve just learned to live with that.  But onto the topic at hand.

Self-publishing (or vanity publishing or whatever the hell you want to call it) is a tricky proposition.  I’ll just go on record here and now and say that self-publishing is, in my own opinion, a lesser form of publishing.  There’s no rule that says a self-published book has to be bad, but this is true more often than not if we’re honest with ourselves.  But there’s also a hell of a lot of bad professionally published books out there too, so what does that really mean?

I’m not against self-publishing if you really, really, really want to get published.  But there’s a lot of pitfalls to self-publishing, a lot of mistakes made by aspiring writers who seek to self-publish.  We should lay those on the table right now.

If you want to publish so badly just to have a book in your hand that you can show people, maybe sell a few copies here and there, then self-publishing is fine. If, however, you think this will make you a “real” writer, think again.  Most self-published books have a hell of a time achieving any kind of market penetration.  No matter how good the sales pitch a self-publishing company will give you, a self-published book faces a variety of obstacles a professionally published novel won’t.  And considering how hard it is for a professional published book to make an impression on the market, that should tell you something.

Booksellers know the difference between a self-published and a traditionally published book.  And, whether you like it or not, they do hold it against you if your book is self-published.  Space is limited in a brick-and-mortar store.  If they can order ten more of the latest bestseller or one copy of your brilliant self-published book . . . well, do I really need to finish that sentence?

Vanity publishers will lie to you.  They will tell you that your book will have every advantage a traditionally published book does.  Do NOT believe them.  They might even be sincere, but no matter how successful a vanity press is, it is and will always be a vanity press.

Maybe you don’t care about brick-and-mortar stores.  Maybe you’re thinking I’ll sell on Amazon and the magical internet.  No competition for shelf space there, right?  Sorta true.  Except that the internet is a ginormous marketplace, and in that marketplace, most everything except a fortunate few exist in shadowy darkened corners.  Someone might discover your book about the history of Eskimos.  But odds are good that there are likely about a dozen Eskimo history books available on the internet right now and they’ll probably all pop up on a search engine before yours does.

Promotion is key, and while authors have more power to reach out to their audience than ever before, this hasn’t leveled the playing field.  Because EVERYONE gets to reach out to their audience now.  It’s like wordprocessing programs and electronic submissions via internet.  These have made the nuts and bolts of writing easier than ever before and creating more competition than ever before.  So it is with the internet.  A million voices are all shouting for attention, and between the porno ads and the snuggie pop ups, standing out ain’t all that easy.

Self-promotion is grueling, difficult, rarely rewarding work.  I know several self-published authors, and I have tremendous respect for the hard work they do.  I don’t work nearly as hard in that department, but I do outsell these folks.  One ad in a magazine (paid for by my publisher) or one interview on a popular site (arranged usually by my publisher) will reach more people than I could ever on my own.  Monster, my 6th novel, sold pretty well.  I’d like to say that this was all because of my talent and hard work, but there’s no doubt in my mind that it has more to do with the fact that this was my first book to be put up front in the store.  This was arranged entirely by my publisher influence.  Without a publisher, this wouldn’t have happened.

Let’s just lay something out on the table here.  Anyone can be a self-published writer.  ANYONE.  But if you’re writing a book, you don’t want to be just anyone.  you want to be more than that.  You want to stand out.  You want respect.  You want money.  You want to reach people.  And all those things are almost impossible to do as a self-published author.  Hard truth.  End of story.  No arguments from the peanut gallery, please.

At this point, I’m sure all the self-publishing advocates will mention the few people who have been successful via the self-publishing path.  Good for them.  You will not be one of those people.  Okay, you might be one of those people.  But you also might wake up tomorrow to find the world has been consumed in nuclear fire and that you are a god worshipped by the new race of mutant snailmen.  It might happen, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Every aspiring writer strives to be an anomaly.  Getting paid as a professional writer is a small miracle.  Getting self-published is just about writing a check.  Getting that check to turn into a writing career isn’t just a small miracle.  It’s parting the Red Sea level divine intervention.  Almost.

And here’s another ugly truth.  Vanity publishers might give you a big salespitch about how much they care about your book, how they believe in it, and how they’ll help you sell it.  But, really, most of them just want your money.  That’s the real difference between vanity press and professional publishing.  Both are in this business to make money.  One’s looking to make it from readers.  The other is looking to make it from aspiring writers.  Ask yourself before you self-publish.  Are you a writer?  Or a customer?

My agent has “The Gatekeeper” rule.  It’s a great metaphor for the situation.

Imagine there are two guards at a gate.  Both guards allow people into the city at their discretion.  Guard A gets no money for letting people in.  In fact, it costs Guard A $50 for every person he lets in.  Then he gets a percentage of their earned income for the next year.

Guard B gets no percentage.  He gets a flat $5 from everyone he lets into the city.

The metaphor is clumsy and obvious, but it illustrates the situation.  Guard A has to be discrimating.  Guard A probably is even willing to help everyone he lets in find a job because it’s in his best interests.  Guard B, on the other hand, benefits from letting everyone in and then just forgetting about them.  His best interest is just letling in as many people as possible.  Once there inside though, he couldn’t care less.  He might tell everyone how great the city is, how easy it is to make a living inside its walls, and how they’d be a sucker to pass up the opportunity for a mere $5.  He might even be right.  But that’s irrelevent to Guard B.  All he cares about is his $5.

Now, not every vanity press is like this.  I’m sure that there are honest, hard working self-publishing companies in existence, but I gotta figure that these companies are just as hard to find as a professional publishing house.  So you might as well go for the real deal.

This is running a little long.  I am not dead set against self-publishing, but I do think it is a decision that should not be taken lightly.  The only thing worse than a constant stream of rejection from editors and agents is to have a published book in the market that fades away into obscurity without a real shot.

In brief:

Vanity publishing will always have much harder time finding an audience.

Vanity publishing is rarely likely to make its writer any money.

Since these are the only two reasons I can imagine anyone wants to write a book, I think we should be up front about it.  Still want to self-publish?  That’s your call.  I wish you all the luck in the world.  Just don’t come cryin’ to me if it doesn’t work out.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee

Oh, I believe comic books (and superheroes) will be around for a while.  And, yes, I know that comic books aren’t strictly about superheroes, but let’s be honest, it’s what they’re most famous for at this point and it’s probably what they’ll stay famous for.  Road to Perdition and A History of Violence may have both been based on graphic novels, but neither seemed enthusiastic to advertise that.  No, to the general public, comic books are about superheroes, and there’s just no way around that.

Ironically, I’m not even sure how many comic book writers right now actually care about the superhero genre in the first place.  Most comic books I pick up are talky, dull affairs about people who just happen to have super powers.  It’s almost as if most the writers who grew up reading comics loved the medium but don’t really like superheroes.  But if you want to make a living writing comics, odds are good that you’ll be writing something with superheroes in it.

But I’m getting off topic.  (Funny how often that happens when I write about this stuff, isn’t it?)

The problem with comic books, the inescapable dilemma they’re facing, is how the hell do you write a comic book that appeals to fans and non-fans at the same time?  As of yet, nobody has really figured out how to do it.

I make no bones about it that fannish devotion to previous continuity in comic book universes is killing the comic book.  Most non-fans would have a hell of a time picking up any random comic book, even one featuring mainstream heroes, and knowing what the hell is going on.  And that’s just too bad because while the fans may love spending hours researching the backstory of 12,ooo characters to make sense of a story that takes two or three years (and several hundred issues and several hundred dollars) to unfold, your average reader probably isn’t willing to invest the same amount of effort.  And who can really blame them?

Yet the fans are the only thing keeping comic books afloat right now.  The die hards who read anything with Wolverine or Spider-Man in it are where most of the money is.  But these popular characters also come with a lot of baggage that most fans want to see exploited.  A straight-forward story where Batman tracks down some bankrobbers is just not going to appeal to them.  No, they want to see Night Wing and Robin and the Joker.  And they want Night Wing and Robin to have a clever exchange of dialogue that refers to something that happened “a few years ago” in comic book time, but is probably more like 15 years ago in reality time.  Leave those out, and they’re disatisfied.  And they’ll let you know.

The problem is that these devoted fans are strangling the life out of the very thing they love.

And yet, non-fans are not that interested in comic books because comic books are not a mainstream thing.  Comic book heroes may be mainstream, but comic books themselves are still a specialty product sold in special outlet stores that, while not always hostile to non-fans, are rarely very welcoming.  I still visit my comic book store and it’s not unusual to get a feeling like you’re an outsider.  Not because anyone treats you as such, but just because everyone seems to know so much more than you.  It’s like being a rocket scientist in a room full of anthropologists.  You may know you’re smart, but you also can’t help but feel like you’re missing out on a lot of the subtleties of the conversation.

DC’S BLACKEST NIGHT is the latest fan service event about an army of evil undead black lanterns who rise from their graves to do something evil.  I’m not going to lie to you.  It’s pretty terrible.  Fans will love it, of course.  Because the thing is filled with all these fan moments.  Also, I’m not so sure that many fans of comic books actually like superheroes either.  They’d much rather read a zombie book with superheroes pasted into it.  But that’s just me being grouchy, so ignore that.

But let’s take Blackest Night for what it is.  It’s a comic devoted to pleasing fans, and it probably does a good job of that.  While non-fans will find themselves confused by the long-winded conversation between Green Lantern and Flash about their complicated pasts and then utterly unimpressed by the appearance of Zombie Martian Manhunter, fans will eat this up.  When Zombie Elongated Man and Zombie Sue Dibney confront Hawkman and Hawkgirl, most fans’ eyes will glimmer with sinister glee and most non-fans will wonder who the hell any of these characters are.

Blackest Night #1 is all set up.  If you’re already invested in these characters and this universe, it’s not bad.  But what if you’re not?  This is the problem.  This is the gnawing catch-22 that is slowly eating comic books alive.

How the hell do you make a comic book that is full of in-references and beloved fan characters (both famous and obscure) that doesn’t alienate non-fans?  Or, vice versa, how do you write a comic book full of action, adventure, and accessibility that will keep hardcore fans interested?

Though I’ve always considered myself a comic book fan, I have discovered that, in truth, I’m not.  Because even though I get many of the references in Blackest Night, even though I understand much of the backstory and am familiar with the characters, I couldn’t give a damn.  I just don’t care.  I suppose I’m trapped in some strange twilight realm between fan and non-fan.  I know enough to follow what’s going on, but I’m not invested enough to give a crap.  I know that having Zombie Martian Manhunter coming after Green Lantern and Flash is supposed to be a crowning moment of cool.  But instead, it just comes off as fan service, as pandering.  Like World War Hulk (“Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if the Hulk beat up everybody!”) or Civil War (“Hey, wouldn’t it be neat if half the superheroes started fighting with the other half!”) I find the entire thing laughably ill-conceived.  But, hey, I’m not a fan.  I’m just some guy who likes comics.  And it turns out there’s a world of difference between the two.

Another interesting experiment from DC is WEDNESDAY COMICS.  This throwback to Sunday comic weeklies is a nifty idea.  And I’ll admit that so far it’s been endearing and fun.  But who is going to buy this?  Who is going to spend $4 to buy a weekly comic featuring continuing stories printed in a page-a-week format?  The art is great.  The nostalgia is nice.  The stories are developing quite nicely.  But is a non-fan going to pick this up?

And even if they did, what would they find?  Comics that are decidedly retro.  Characters that are in stories nothing like you’d actually read if you picked up a comic.  The Green Lantern strip doesn’t have a single zombie, swear word, or long, drawn out exchange of history referencing dialogue.  The Batman strip is a noirish crime thriller with nary a supporting cast member shown (outside of Commissioner Gordon so far).  The Kamandi strip is just awesome, a great tribute to Prince Valiant, but who is going to become a Kamandi fan from reading it?  And, even if they did, where the hell are they going to find a Kamandi comic book on the shelves?

Nowhere.  That’s where.

Wednesday Comics is intentionally old school.  There’s no blood, no gore.  No attempts at edginess.  Even the Batman strip, the most brooding and dark of the offerings, is surprisingly low-key and subtle.  Maybe somebody will get tortured to death by a power drill at some point, but for now, all its violence is implied, not painted in graphic reds and blacks across the panels.

And I still can’t really figure out who it’s for.  I really like it, but, as stated previously, I am not a fan.  Comic book writers long ago gave up on casual readers.

MARVEL DIVAS is a new series that is an attempt to reach out to a female audience.  Despite having “Divas” in the title (The Mighty Robot King has placed that term in his To Be Reviled Index), it’s not a bad book.  But, again, it’s filled with in-references and fan service.  The cover features our four heroines decked out in sexy superhero attire, but the interior hardly shows them in costume at all.  So if Marvel Divas isn’t really a superhero book (and as far as I can tell it isn’t, anymore than Blackest Night is a superhero book) then why not just admit this and put the ladies in non-superhero attire on the cover?  It’s not as if any of these characters are recognizable icons.  I know Hellcat.  Heck, I even like Hellcat.  But what casual reader is going to walk by a comic book shop, spot Hellcat in the window, and say, “Hey, I want that comic because clearly, it’s a comic about four women (with incidental superpowers) who sit around and talk about dating, fashion, and cancer!”

Quote Will Ferrell:  “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.”

So now I realize I’ve written a whole hell of a lot about a problem that is obvious to most comic book fans and completely irrelevant to everyone else.  And that just shows how big this problem is.  As much as I want to shake Marvel and DC and scream, “Stop with the gimmicks!  Just write a good, accessible story!” I also know that they’re doing the only thing they can think of.

Is it short-sighted?  I think so, but trying anything else is risky.  It’s hard to gamble when the long term gains may never come.

But, bringing this around to me, I have to say this is why I find myself reluctant to start a series.  Because this is the inevitable result.  Inevitably, you become a devoted servant of fan service and not storytelling.  Not to suggest that many series haven’t managed to do both at the same time, but it’s not easy.  And comic books lost that battle a long time ago.

Will they recover?  Hard to say.  I’d say no, but that’s just the cynic in me.  Plus, it’s pretty damned late, and I should’ve been in bed a while ago.  Why the hell do I start these blog entries just before bed time?

So I leave you with a long rant that observes a problem that many others before me have already observed, and I offer no solution.  Sorry to have wasted your time, gang.  Try not to hold it against me.

All I really know about comic books is that more stories should feature Blue Beetle and Squirrel Girl.  And if DC and Marvel ever feel like doing another inter-company crossover, I’d pay good money to write a Blue Beetle / Squirrel Girl one-shot.  That’s right!  I’d pay you, guys! 

Just putting that out there.

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

Lee