by Dave Higgins
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Simon’s Afterword
I didn’t play many tabletop games as a teen. The trouble was always that I ended up being the DM and wanted to just be a player. Being a DM is such a lot of work that I gave up, despite the friends I played with asking for more.
I found a much easier time in the computer game versions, like Bard’s Tale and Dungeon Master. They had the same mechanics, but there was less work involved, because I could just be a player.
The trouble with them, of course, was that they could be manipulated. And teenagers love to find the cracks in things and exploit them.
In Bard’s Tale 3, I took my low level party off exploring in the high level areas. While they got killed a lot, I managed to find a chest with a scroll in it. Which gave me a level 73 golem. Then I could wade into any fight I liked and the golem would take care of it all.
Of course, that made the game kind of boring. I was progressing quickly, but nothing was a challenge any more. So I stopped playing.
In Dungeon Master, a friend and I did something similar. He worked out that if you threw items, you levelled up very slowly in the Ninja skill. So we spent a half an hour throwing things around an empty room in the game.
Then he worked out that if you hit a door, you levelled up in the Warrior skill. So we hooked up a joystick with the button jammed down and went away for a few hours.
When we came back, our character had almost maxed out on the Warrior skill. Which made the rest of the game a lot easier.
All of which wouldn’t have happened in a tabletop game with a human DM. Lately, I’ve been watching a lot more tabletop games on YouTube. Acquisitions Incorporated is surprisingly entertaining, considering it’s just people playing D&D.
So Dave and I thought we’d write something related. That wasn’t the only influence, of course. The Princess Bride was a topic of discussion when we planned out Adventure. Not that we thought we could match a classic like The Princess Bride, but we certainly drew inspiration from it.
Writing Adventure was a lot of fun, imagining the dungeon and the monsters that inhabit it. Which has brought me back full circle to playing the role of DM. Only this time, I can write the quest once and have it read by lots of people.
Simon Cantan, 12th October 2016
Dave’s Afterword
This is the second volume of the Dragons & Magic series, but it’s the first one that we outlined. Because the classic Dungeons and Dragons that inspired the series is all about heroes going into a series of rooms and tunnels.
The biggest issue we had assembling that outline was how absurd dungeon-crawling is to begin with: massive subterranean complexes filled with immensely complex traps; many different species living next to each other; horrific monsters living in rooms only slightly larger than they were.
With the experience we gained writing Greenstar turning the ridiculous up to eleven then having the characters treat it as deadly serious was easy; and we quickly had many more humorously overwrought mechanisms and unfeasibly risky situations than we could ever use.
We needed a reason why the dungeon existed, though; why would anyone build it, and who would keep it running? Our initial concept was that the dungeon was a combination test-bed and showroom for a bespoke trap manufacturer; which got us started. And you can still see some of that in the traps being reset in different places, the hidden broom closets, and the back-tunnels between levels.
However, when we read through the first draft, we realised the image of Edmond, his friends, and all those “real” adventurers as lab-rats wasn’t in many scenes; and when it was, it didn’t fit perfectly.
So we took it out. Because as Simon said in his afterword to Origin, this is a story about being a hero; and what’s more classically heroic than a young farm worker taking up arms against an invading horde of thieving killers.
Dave Higgins, 11th October 2016
About Simon Cantan
An avid reader from an early age, Simon Cantan loved to get lost in the worlds that Piers Anthony, Douglas Adams, and others created. When he read Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted at the age of thirteen, he knew he wanted to write, and has been pestering people about it ever since.
Two decades later, Simon has published several books, including the Bytarend series, Shiny New Swindle, and Hard Vacuum. He continues to write science-fiction and fantasy, usually with a humorous slant to it.
More details about Simon and his books can be found at SimonCantan.com.
About Dave Higgins
Dave Higgins has worked in law and IT for both public and private sector organisations. When not pursuing these hobbies, he writes poetry and speculative fiction.
He was born in Wiltshire, England. Raised by a librarian, he started reading shortly after birth and has not stopped since. He currently lives in Bristol with his wife, Nicola, his cats, Jasper and Una, and many shelves of books.
More details about Dave and his books can be found at davidjhiggins.wordpress.com.