Some Musings
Since there's no Mail this Monday ep.1
I haven’t gotten a question this week, so I’ll pose one at the end of this post. Since I want to post something on Monday I’ll do a little report. Which may become a Sunday I’ve fallen down a few rabbit holes over the past months and while I don’t think they are a good fit for a worldbuild wednesday and I don’t think there is is enough to do a full article. So I’ve put them here as a collection of musings. If you want to see any of them expanded let me know, and should I do a weekly musings? It would be a short think piece generally with a question or on a question.
LitRPG
I find the concept of a literary RPG to be a hypocritical one. For the RPG stands for Role Playing Game. Game; that thing where there are players. Reading a book, doesn’t have the interaction for the reader to be called a player. However I understand the desire to put a connection to the RPG background into the genre title. The title of Lit Let’s-Play which would fit the theme better as the audience isn’t participating but rather watching someone progress is likely lost due to bureaucratic people old enough to be my grandparent.
Gripes aside it is an interesting concept and one that often reflects the type of RPG the writer knows. Which means there should be sub-genres for the Table Top, Massively Multiplayer Online, Japanese, and so on styles of RPG. Yet the genre generally is compressed into a singular stroke: Vaguely high fantasy, likely a computer game with roots in Dungeons and Dragons. With some venturing into the more skill heavy Japanese iteration of the computer RPG. Yet all of these are missing that there are more RPGs out there. If we stick to the computer games, since they are much more commonly known, there are two big ones with angles that should be filling this genre; Fallout and Mass Effect.
Fallout should be more well known now that there is an Amazon show, yet a summary for those under rocks. In the 50s the nuclear future that atompunk wanted to see happens happens. Then the nuclear power turns into nuclear popcorn when the US and China get into a war over Alaska. The player is generally someone from one of the Vaults which are half doomsday bunker half long term human experiment of dubious morality. This is famously not the case in Fallout: New Vegas where you are “the mail man”. Regardless the idea of a post apocalyptic RPG is seemingly under served in the LitRPG genre.
Mass Effect you are Commander Sheppard who becomes the first human SPECTRE and then goes about saving the galaxy. Faster than light travel revolves around gateways the Mass Effect gates, there is a large established inter stellar government, and enough aliens to hold a few space operas. That’s not to mention that there are shadowy organizations, an extragalactic threat, and a precursor civilization to uncover. For the life of me why LitRPGs haven’t made it into the stars is also beyond my comprehension.
Those questions aside I often see LitRPG stories seem to ignore the fact that most RPGs quietly ignore the game aspects for their world, because it’s a game, and work their stories around that fact. A good example in the video game space would be the ‘urgent mission’. The ‘urgent mission’ is a fact that video games are video games and between here and the next story location there may be a few shops, a side quest or seven, a unknown number of random encounters and whatever else could be put in the way. Meaning unless the plot beat flows without any gaps there is little to no way for the game to keep things on pace. In a book well there isn’t a desire to go side questing, or to level up this item, get that skill maxed out before the fight. Since the urgency will be there for the characters. Which may or may not help with the flow of the story.
Regardless, I have pondered writing a LitRPG. However I don’t know when I’d fit it in. Likewise building up the world for it would be another project and I have too many as is.
Humans are Space Orcs
Sometimes called HFY this is is group of stories where humans generally are seen as, well space orcs. There are various styles of the stories, but the theme is: Humans are warlike, brutish and will often use said brute force to save the day; or human biology is completely alien to the aliens. The former generally revolves around an alien either specifically or as a species does something for humanity. Examples span from saving a child, to giving humanity their first break on the galactic stage. Alien gets in trouble, and sends out a SOS. Humanity pays back it’s debts, arriving with an expedience of violent action; saving the day. Often confusing the aliens with ‘human math’ for example: one of you saves a human child, we save your species from extinction. You know, as we do. The latter spans from, humans have evolved ballistic computers as a hunting strategy, to there’s no point playing with a human child; you will die before they get tired.
These stories often paint Earth as a “death world”, often citing violent weather, the fact most species will try and kill most others, and often calming that Earth has “deadly high gravity”. Sometimes Australia gets a specific mention, and depending on the author it will up Earth’s “deadliness” a point or two. This gives the shared traits of humanity: resilience, physical strength, and an intimate understanding of violence. Then the human characters are well, characters. Most flawed in some way and almost always in over their heads. At best it will be simple inter-species romance, at worst its galactic politics.
If we want to be technical Circuchron is meant to be in this section of story telling, although I didn’t really get far enough to show off much of the standard human traits. Although having a view point character who spent too much time running rifle drills should be a give away.
All in all I like the fact humans in these stories have something the other species don’t have that is quantifiable, and impactful to the story. Rather than assuming we are the base line and aliens will be better and use their better to impact the story. Although I would prefer if more writers didn’t transcribe historical events so often.
World Jumping
While I do enjoy stories where the primary character isn’t from the world the story takes place. The two styles to this trope, the one way valve and the bridge. They are fairly self explanatory, in the bridge characters can go forward and backward between the ‘primary’ world and the ‘secondary’ world either at a known rate or at will; where as the one way valve the character has no way back.
To echo from above Circuchron falls into this bucket of stories as well as the previously discussed bucket. Which type I’ll leave to your decision in case I come back to the project. Yet even with the bit that is written (I’ll embed it below if you’re interested), I’ve done something more interesting than the majority, I built a different Earth for my characters to come from. Sure there are stories where a secondary jumper came from a different version of Earth. Yet almost always the primary view point character is from our Earth, or one close enough to not make a difference.
Bryan and Anja both don’t hail from our Earth. Bryan’s consists of a more ‘traditionalist’ world. Where traditions are held in higher regards globally. Meaning for an American like him, being a well trained minute man is all but a requirement of any man let alone one of collage age. Anja has fairy tail creatures everywhere, except they are all Germanic fairy tail creatures. The most deadly of the fairy tail creatures, leading to a rather different world view than what we’d find here. While I didn’t do much with these traits they are more character and more impactful than if either or both were from our Earth.
Regardless I do like the idea of having people from different Earths go to different worlds, generally with a one way trip. Are they copied to the new world? Were they pulled though a portal? Is it something else? While I will likely never admit to which one of these possibilities I am using since the mystery being solved or not will be one of the starting hooks that, depending on character, may end up getting resolved as a case of “I no longer care".
I would like to see some more stories with this vein, it is the panicle in exploration stories in a way. There is now a whole new world, if not a new universe to explore. There could be magic where there was none, new tech, new laws of physics, since it’s another world. There is the problem of having to build two worlds. Yet the worldbuilder in me finds that more exciting to write about.
Question for you
Well two questions.
Firstly do you want to see more of these musings? I have many thoughts that may or may not end up being larger articles, some due to time, some due to perceived audience interest. I know not everyone will be interested in every thing, yet I’m unsure if posting what could be filed under “organized shower thoughts” is worth turning into a weekly or bi-weekly addition to the gazette.
Secondly what is the one thing you like to see in a story’s setting? Let me know in the comments below.
Circuchron for those who are interested.
Grathew
