IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!

Sorry the website hasn't been getting the proper TLC. My attention has been almost wholly consumed -- albeit divided -- between (a) working on my new house and (b) the production of The Seagull I'm directing at South High School in Minneapolis.

South High is my alma mater, and under the guidance of Louise Bormann it has had a consistently excellent theater department. I feel very honored to be serving as a guest director. For The Seagull I started by producing a completely original proxy translation of the play, and am now embroiled in the actual directing of the play -- which also includes developing in-depth acting workshops for the actors.

I keep expecting to be able to get a few days ahead in my prep work for the project and, thus, find the time to work on other projects. But that hasn't actually happened yet.

And I'm still stuck working off my laptop... which is a perfectly nice computer, but has only a fraction of the software I use to keep this website properly up to date.

Soon, however, I'm hoping to have things back to normal.

Thanks for your patience.

WHAT I'M READING 55: THE LEGACY / STARLESS NIGHT

   

WHAT I'M READING 54: THE ICEWIND DALE TRILOGY

       

R.A. Salvatore has two strengths as a writer. First, he’s capable of writing fresh, detailed, and exciting battle scenes – battle scenes which not only serve as really excellent set pieces, but which also actively contribute to the plot. Salvatore’s stories don’t get put on pause while his characters throw down. Instead, each fight is an important part of the evolving drama.

Salvatore’s second strength is his ability to craft epic, rapid-fire plots, cramming them full of the action scenes he writes so well, and then moving the whole package along at a fast clip. He keeps you entertained on every page.

For example, The Crystal Shard, the first novel in the Icewind Dale Trilogy, stretches across half a decade. It starts with a barbarian invasion, moves through a well-done coming-of-age story, and then concludes with a massive military campaign against the armies of an evil sorcerer. It includes dragon-slaying, demonic machinations, and barbarian heroes becoming kings.

That’s a lot of stuff to cram into 300 pages or so.

And Salvatore doesn’t slow down. In the second novel, Streams of Silver, you’ll find a deadly assassin bent on vengeance, a beautiful elven queen, a quest to reclaim a dwarven city lost to an ancient evil, a circle of evil wizards plotting for power, bar-room brawls, back alley dealings, and (of course) more dragon-slaying.

And in the third volume, The Halfling's Gem, the trend continues: Desert intrigues, damsels in distress, wererat thieves, battles with pirates, an epic duel between the two greatest swordsmen in the world, and a portal to hell.

Salvatore’s narrative palette, as you can see, is drawn straight from stock fantasy and adventure fiction. His prose (except for his exceptional battle sequences) is purely pedestrian and frequently marred by his penchant for repeating the same piece of information (just in case you weren’t paying attention the first time he said it, I suppose). But what makes Salvatore’s stuff fun to read is his ability to reach a critical mass of sheer niftiness.

And that’s an important word: FUN.

If you’re looking for the next Great Fantasy Novel that will touch your soul and live unmarred in the book and volume of your mind, this isn’t it. But if you’re looking for some serious fun -- the type of fun that used to be found in the best pulp fiction – then you can’t go too far wrong by grabbing some Salvatore.

There are a couple of other qualities which make the Icewind Dale Trilogy worth your while:

First, it feels like a really good D&D campaign. And I mean that in the best possible way. I don’t mean that you can see the dice being rolled or anything like that. Rather, I mean that the main characters have that rare sense of camaraderie, witty repartee, and ineffable chemistry that can be achieved when a gaming group really gets into the groove. They feel like the Three Musketeers. Again, it’s fun. (Just in case you weren't paying attention the first time I said that.)

And, speaking of characters, they’re another highlight of the trilogy. The supporting cast is a bit cardboardy, but the main characters are a memorable and entertaining bunch: Each has a unique voice and personality. Each is given a distinct and interesting backstory. Each is developed in detail, with meaningful growth and change.

In this last regard, Salvatore shows a remarkable degree of skill when it comes to putting his characters into crucibles which serve to not only actively reveal but also change their quality.

Perhaps the most notable of Salvatore’s characters is Drizzt Do’Urden, a dark elf. Although the dark elves are known for their cruelty and evil, Drizzt is possessed of a noble heart. An exile from the great underground cities of his people, Drizzt is also an outcast in the surface world he has chosen as his home -- perpetually judged by the color of his skin.

Drizzt is notable because he’s probably the first swords-and-sorcery hero of significance – cut from the same cloth as Conan, Elric, or the Gray Mouser – to appear since Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane stories in the 1970s. (His status as an outcast seems to draw frequent comparison to Elric, although that’s pretty much where the comparison comes to an end.)

In the narrative of the Icewind Dale Trilogy, Drizzt is on an equal footing with the rest of the main cast. But something about the character simply resonated with the readers. Personally, if I had to take a guess at what caused Drizzt’s immense and inordinate popularity, I would point my finger at Salvatore’s inspired decision to not only make Drizzt the finest swordsman in all the land, but to simultaneously give him a villainous rival of equal skill and ability. Conan, Cyrano, and the Gray Mouser are all clearly swordsmen of legendary prowess and skill… but only Drizzt, after being similarly pumped up in the expectations of the readers, gets to demonstrate his skill in a life-or-death duel with a villain of equal talent in the form of Artemis Entreri.

(For the record, Cyrano de Bergerac is still the finest swordsmen in all the many worlds. Leiber is an idle boaster.)

Drizzt’s popularity lead to a prequel trilogy dedicated to the telling of his personal history. And from that point on, he became the main character of the series (which is now referred to collectively as "The Legend of Drizzt").

GRADES:
    THE CRYSTAL SHARD: C+
    STREAMS OF SILVER: C+
    THE HALFLING’S GEM: C

QUICK-SHOT: DUNE SAGA

I originally wrote my What I'm Reading reactions for Dune and Dune Messiah in the summer of 2006. They were supposed to be part of a series of reactions covering the entire Dune saga, but I got distracted by other projects and never finished it.

Basically, I think the Dune sequels are almost universally under-rated.

In order to complete proper reactions for the later books at this late juncture, however, I would need to re-read the series. That's unlikely to happen for awhile, so -- in the interim -- here's a quick summary of my thoughts.

CHILDREN OF DUNE

I think that either Dune Messiah or Children of Dune is the weakest book in the series. However, it's difficult to figure out which book is worse because it depends on how you choose to look at the problem

On the one hand, Children of Dune is almost certainly a better novel than Dune Messiah. On the other hand, it is also very derivative of Dune Messiah. Essentially, Children of Dune retells the same story: In Dune Messiah, Herbert tells the story of how Paul slips out of the shackles his prescience had placed upon the human race. And it culminates in the birth of twins he did not foresee, which (for me) pretty clearly indicates that Paul's vision has been derailed.

But then Children of Dune comes along and says, "Nah, just kidding. You need to pursue the Golden Path to derail the shackles of prescience." And then it promptly retells the same story as Dune Messiah, starring Paul's son instead of Paul.

Given the somewhat half-baked quality of Dune Messiah, I suspect that this is literally a case of Frank Herbert wanting a do-over. But the derivative nature of Children of Dune greatly diminishes it if you're reading the series in sequential order.

On the other hand, if I had to choose one book or the other, I think it's a no-brainer to choose Children of Dune.

GRADE: A-

GOD-EMPEROR OF DUNE

I think it safe to say that God-Emperor of Dune is probably the most-reviled book in the series. But I actually enjoyed it a lot. It's a very different novel from the earlier books. It's a contemplative, almost zen-like poem -- but one laced with deeply horrific tragedy. Watching Leto slowly strip away his own humanity in order to save all of humanity was a profound experience for me.

I think God-Emperor of Dune also speaks to the problem many people have with the series: Herbert didn't write sequels in the traditional sense of the word.

If you look at works like Star Wars, Lethal Weapon, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Bridget Jones's Diary, or Asimov's Foundation, for example, you will find that the sequels are all pretty similar in tone, content, and style to the original work.

But that's really not the case with the Dune novels. Even Dune Messiah is fairly distinct from Dune, and God-Emperor of Dune is a completely radical departure. And I can easily see how someone who enjoyed Dune would find absolutely nothing appealing about the style or structure of God-Emperor.

Fortunately, I like both styles of fiction. And, for me, the contrast between the two only enriches the experience.

GRADE: A-

HERETICS OF DUNE / CHAPTERHOUSE OF DUNE

I enjoyed Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse of Dune quite a bit. They, again, took the Dune saga in a radically different direction and developed the milieu in ways I had never expected.

But it's also difficult to know exactly what to make of them. Unlike the earlier books, they were specifically conceived and written as a trilogy... but Herbert died before the trilogy was completed. So it feels a little bit like reading The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers if Return of the King had never been written.

They're good books... but you're left dangling with no sense of conclusion or thematic closure.

When I was reading these books, the concluding duology -- written by Kevin Anderson and Brian Herbert -- had not yet been published. Although I've generally avoided those books like the plague, the next time I read through the Dune saga I'll probably break down and read the duology. If nothing else, it's supposedly based on Frank Herbert's original outline -- so it will hopefully give me some sense of where Herbert was planning to go.

GO FORTH AND VOTE

If you're a citizen of the United States, then today is the most important day of the year: Election Day.

Millions of people have suffered, bled, and died to give you your right to vote. But voting is more than just a right: It's a responsibility. Voting is the fundamental bedrock of a democratic civilization. When a citizen fails to vote they are, in a very real and definite sense, inflicting harm on society as a whole.

So if you've been thinking you might just skip this election, then you should take a moment to think about all the sacrifices which have been made to give you your vote. And then find the resolve within yourself to wait in line and perform what is both your duty and your privilege.

The stakes have never been higher.

Vote!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Enjoy the holiday made for geeky gamers.

The site hasn't been updated in about a week and probably will only update sporadically over the next few days. After that I'm hoping to be able to push more reliable content through the pipeline.

The short version of what's going in is pretty simple: I bought a house. I expected to have my primary computer -- the one I use ot update this site -- set back up pretty rapidly after the move, but that hasn't happened. So I'm kinda hacking together an update method.

During this interim period, new content may (or may not) appear on the front page, but the archives will not be getting updated.

THE MAP OF ANYOC

PART 4: MAPPING AS MUSE

When I finished putting everything together, this was the map I had created. I'm fairly proud of it. (Which would explain why I've written a four part series on its creation.) It's not the best map of a fantasy city ever published, but for a city supplement that can be purchased for as little as $7.99, I think it's fairly impressive.

Of course, I'm biased. (And shilling.)

(What is the best map of a fantasy city every published? For my money, Ed Bourelle's map of Ptolus wins that distinction hands-down. It's a beautiful work of art, featuring layered geography; individual buildings; crystal-clear information clarity; and an enormous amount of utility. Quantity isn't the same thing as quality, but it's notable that I have a version of the Ptolus map hanging on my wall which is more than six and a half feet long. And, even at that immense size, it remains an astonishingly beautiful piece. The map of Anyoc, by contrast, is designed to be viewed at just 21" x 16" -- which is big, but not huge.)

One of the things I love about mapping is the ability it has to provide a conduit for inspiration. Some of the best ideas I've ever had have been the result of my brain churning something out because there was a blank piece of graph paper that neede to be filled.

Designing the map for Anyoc was no exception.

Let me back up for a second and talk about the history behind City Supplement 3: Anyoc.

Anyoc was originally created back in 2001 as the setting for an adventure module. A playtest draft was completed and playtested (which is reflected in the playtest credits to be found in the published book), but the project was cancelled before a final draft was completed -- partly because the publisher was already moving away from D20 modules and partly so that I could focus on a supplement called Gods & Goddesses^TM (which was also cancelled before it was completed).

In 2002, Campaign Magazine started publishing my new column: Cities of Fantasy. Each issue of the magazine featured a complete fantasy city designed by me. I wrote two original columns, recycled and expanded the unpublished Anyoc material for the third, and started work on three more columns.

Unfortunately, after publishing a single column (featuring the city of Dweredell), Campaign Magazine went out of business. So the material was shelved again.

And shortly thereafter I got tired of my projects being cancelled by other people for reasons that had nothing to do with the work itself, so I took a hiatus from the roleplaying industry and when I came back I founded Dream Machine Productions.

All of which is to say that City Supplement 3: Anyoc was originally going to look a lot like City Supplement 1: Dweredell -- a shorter, cheaper book detailing roughly a dozen locations.

But as I was working on the map, a couple of things happened: First, I kept getting struck by inspiration as I considered the various stories behind the buildings and streets I was drawing. Second, I realized that there was a serious mismatch between the detail of the map and the detail of the gazetteer. It just didn't make a whole lot of sense to have a poster-size map serving up only a handful of detailed locations.

So, despite the fact that the entire book had already been laid out and proofread, I decided to scrap the existing gazetteer and rewrite it basically from scratch. At the time, I was appearing as Inspector Colquhoun in The Hollow by Agatha Christie. As the requisite detective in the story, I spent most of the second act onstage, but during the first act I was just sitting backstage waiting for the murder to happen.

So I would sit in the dressing room with my laptop, busily working away with fresh inspiration on an expanded gazetteer for the city. The final result more than tripled the number of locations detailed.

And that's how the map of Anyoc was both my creation and my muse.

THE MAP OF ANYOC

PART 3: THE SOUL OF THE CITY

Merely aping real world geography will give you a functional map, but won't create a living city. For that to happen, you have to understand the soul of the city: What does it look like? How do people move through it? What's it like to live there? These types of questions have a very real impact on how the streets are laid out; how the buildings are built; the whole nine yards.

In the case of Anyoc, I had already written up two evocative pieces of detail. The first was the literal look of the city:

Anyoc is built from fairy stone, which comes in seven types -- taylos, which is the faded green of a wood beneath the sun; vaylos, which is the faint violet of an evening cloud; saelos, which is the pale red of a friendship rose; kadlos, which is the golden color of burnished copper; anlos, which is the blue of a noontime sky; bahslos, the black midnight stone; and essabas, the star stone, which is of purest white.

This meant that I had a very specific color palette to work with, and it was important for me to get those colors right. I spent a non-trivial amount of time finding the right colors to help evoke the look I wanted for the city.

Second, I made a point in the city supplement of detailing what the common architecture of the city looks like:

I decided to forego the visual representation of buildings meeting each other across the top of the street (due to the loss of visual clarity when it came to the roads themselves). But the idea of these long, low buildings terracing their way up the side of the hill had a significant impact on how the buildings of the city were laid down on the map. Here's a representative sample:

To be concluded...

THE MAP OF ANYOC

One of the most important creative tips I ever got was to avoid genre incest.

This advice takes many forms, with perhaps the most common being: "Read outside the genre."

The earliest memory I have of this advice goes all the way back to when I was about eight years old and downloading the writer's guidelines for Star Trek novelizations off the Prodigy service. The editor of the line basically said (albeit in much more polite terms), "If your only influence for writing a Star Trek story is having seen 100+ episodes of the TV shows and reading 50+ novels, you are almost guaranteed to produce some unreadable, derivative crap just like the other 25,000 hacks dive-bombing our slush pile."

I can also remember, when I was about six years old, reading Asimov's Foundation Trilogy and promptly sitting down to write a story about the fall of a galactic empire. About three pages in I realized I didn't actually have a story to tell that wasn't Asimov's story, and I can very precisely peg revelation as the moment in which I discovered the importance of having a good idea.

(It was several more years before I realized that a good idea is only about 1/10th of the work, although it does help to make the other 9/10ths far easier.)

I seem to blithering. Where was I going with all this?

Ah, yes. Research!

So if I'm designing the map of a fantasy city, it's important not to spend all my time looking at other people's maps of fantasy cities. Coming into the project I already brought a weird and eclectic mix of knowledge --ranging from the study of medieval cities to classes in urban planning.

And I'm also lucky to be living in this day and age, because Google Earth makes it almost trivial to snag satellite imagery detailing the layout of streets and the shape of real buildings. So, as part of my prep work, I spent a couple of hours grabbing evocative and visually interesting satellite photos from a variety of cities:

Rome

Moscow

London

Kyoto

Because Anyoc was built entirely on one large hill, it was particularly important for me to be able to look at how streets and hills historically interacted (before the modern era when streets tend to simply cleave through the local geography). What I discovered that roads will generally follow the curve of the land, but not always precisely and often with exceptions. (It may be difficult to climb straight up that steep hill, but sometimes it may be easier than the alternatives.)

This was a good lesson to learn, because before studying these real world cities I had an inclination towards making the roads follow the geography almost religiously. I'm glad I moved away from that, because the result looked very unnatural -- resembling something closer to the contour map instead of a city.

When I was done, I (literally) had my road map:

To be continued...

October 22nd, 2008

THE MAP OF ANYOC

City Supplement 3: Anyoc was essentially a completed product when Dream Machine Productions went on hiatus. The only thing we were waiting for was the map. In fact, it was my intention to release it as our last product before the hiatus. But, unfortunately, the cartographer we had working on the project never completed it. Since we were shifting into a hiatus state in any case, I shelved the project.

As we started gearing up to come out of hiatus, however, I started working on the map myself. Here's what the original sketch map that I drew way back in 2001 looked like:

I knew that executing a city map to the standards that I would demand out of a product would be tough. I had previously designed the map for Aerie (City Supplement 2), but that was a very different type of project: Aerie had been carved out of solid rock according to a relatively rigid plan. For Anyoc, I felt it was important to capture the more natural and organic curves of a living city.

So I started researching.

SURVEYING THE FIELD

The first part of this research was a matter of "surveying the field". I went to my shelves and pulled down a wide representative sampling of city maps from other roleplaying supplements. Notable examples include:

Raven's Bluff

Ptolus

Minas Tirith

Freeport

Sharn

As you can see, there have been many different ways of handling the cartography for fantasy cities. Based on my recent experience with Ptolus, among other things, I knew how incredibly useful it could be to have every street and every building detailed on the map. As a player, I love the ability to say "I'm going to X by heading down this street right here". And as a DM I love being able to say, "Okay, the House of Violet Gold is this building right here."

With those goals in mind, I pushed aside the very generic style of maps like the one seen in the Freeport sample above. These types of maps are a bit more graphically detailed than my sketch on graph paper, but the detail is largely illusory -- none of those blobs actually represent anything meaningfully concrete.

I also stepped away from the style of map seen in the Minas Tirith sample above: These maps resemble the kind of cartographical lot maps created by city surveyors and the like.

While I couldn't create the type of detailed, individual buildings created by Ed Bourelle for Ptolus (unless I wanted to charge a lot more for the finished product than I was planning to), I felt that a "roof outline" style (such as those used in the Raven's Bluff and Sharn examples above) represented the best compromise. Here's the style I ended up with:

With a style in hand, it was time to start laying out the streets. But before I could do that, I had to finish my research.

To be continued...

WHAT I'M READING 53: DUNE MESSIAH

SPOILER WARNING

The following reaction will contain spoilers for both Dune and Dune Messiah. As a policy, I’m trying to keep the spoilers in What I'm Reading reactions to a bare minimum and limited to the first fifty pages of the book. If the spoilers exceed those guidelines, I’ll make a point to include a note up front.

DUNE MESSIAH

From a certain point of view, Dune Messiah is a disappointment: It simply doesn’t live up to the incredibly high standard set by Dune itself.

Some of the problems with Dune Messiah are failures in the basic craft of storytelling; flaws which would be notable in any work. For example, there are far too many scenes – particularly in the first half of the novel – which are told in flashback or exposition instead of being shown. One is often left with the feeling that Herbert just didn’t quite feel up to the challenge of telling the story to be found in those scenes.

This central flaw, in fact, contributes to many of the problems in Dune Messiah. For example, the stellar character conflicts of Dune are notably blunted in Dune Messiah… often because key components of those dramas are ignored or elided over. For example, there is a cold war tension between Chani and Irulan which begins to flare into open conflict at the beginning of the novel. But then the resolution of that interplay is simply shoved off-screen and then cursorily resolved in an almost incidental and completely off-hand fashion. (And this despite the fact that its resolution is absolutely pivotal in setting up the novel’s conclusion.)

What ultimately keeps Dune Messiah from achieving the true status of classic is that it fails to find that precious gestalt of Dune: Where Dune operated on many different levels at once, Dune Messiah is stripped down to a far simpler dynamic. Elements of the political thriller, character drama, and high tragedy remain… but Herbert can’t quite seem to keep all the balls in the air.

For one example, let us consider the tragic grandeur of Yueh’s betrayal in Dune. Herbert almost manages to capture the dynamic of high tragedy once again in his portrayal of Paul’s prescient vision turned to bane. Paul, trapped by the inexorable fate seen within his prescient vision and bound by the irresistible momentum of the race consciousness lying behind the Jihad carried out in his name, has all the makings of such a tragedy. But Herbert lets it slip through his fingers: The prescience itself, although brilliantly handled in many respects (such as the scene where Paul must let a doom befall himself in order to find a greater good), also ends up denying some of the central necessities of true tragedy.

I also think that Dune Messiah is a difficult story specifically because it ties Paul in those chains. I think a lot of people (myself included) read the end of Dune as a triumph… and Dune Messiah makes it explicit that Paul failed and failed badly. That’s a tough pill to swallow. I know it’s what made me put the book down the first time I tried reading through the Dune saga: It wasn’t the sequel I had written in my own head. I wanted the Messiah Triumphant and I got something akin to the False God’s Fall.

With all that being said, I would be seriously remiss in ignoring the strengths of Dune Messiah, particularly in the book’s second half: Duncan Idaho's personal struggle is a very powerful and well-handled piece of characterization. Paul's manipulation of his prescient vision -- his constant struggle to find the slightest loophole through which to escape the chains of his own future -- is often powerfully dramatic. And there's also some great expansion done on the nifty, sensawunda stuff, along with the depth and unique feel of the Dune universe (Tleilaxu face dancers, for example).

But, with that being said, I would still love to read a version of Dune Messiah in which Herbert managed to:

(1) Avoid the storytelling errors in the first half.

(2) Expand Alia's personal drama (something which would have also added a great deal of depth to Children of Dune).

(3) Let the Chani and Irulan conflict play out with the type of detailed political intrigue that he displayed himself fully capable of in Dune.

(4) Communicate the by-play of the mutual and interacting betrayals between the conspirators (and let more of those by-plays and betrayals play themselves out).

(5) Handle the framing devices of the story better.

In short, Dune Messiah reads like a rushed novel. There's a lot of potential in the basic structure of the story, but little or none of it is realized in actual practice. Perhaps if Herbert had taken the time to develop the novel more fully, we might have gotten a work that would stand up better in the inevitable comparison to its predecessor.

GRADE: B-

CITY SUPPLEMENT 3: ANYOC

B&W Print Edition - Deluxe Color Edition
RPGNow PDF - Lulu PDF - Paizo PDF
36 pages - Sample City Map

WHAT I'M READING 52: DUNE

It’s interesting reading Dune immediately following a mass-reading of Vernor Vinge’s catalog, because both authors are essentially fascinated by post-humanity: Both see something essentially incomprehensible in the transhuman, but they approach it in different ways. Vinge chooses to approach it at oblique angles – from the POV of children; or on the rapid approach to it; or from a great distance; or through the lens of the primitive.

Herbert, on the other hand, tends to tackle the transhuman directly, but he does so from a fundamentally religious point of view.

To be clear on the distinction here: Vinge also equates transhumanity with godhood (the references to “Applied Theology” and “deicide”, for example, in A Fire Upon the Deep). But Herbert actually structures his narrative around a religious viewpoint – he couches his understanding of the transhuman through symbolism and prophecy; through divine mystery and ceremony.

Of course, the post-humanities of Vinge and Herbert are not exactly identical, either. But it would be interesting to see Vinge tackle Herbert’s thought (as expressed in an interview): “I had this theory that superheroes were disastrous for humans, that even if you postulated an infallible hero, the things this hero set in motion fell eventually into the hands of fallible mortals. What better way to destroy a civilization, society or a race than to set people into the wild oscillations which follow their turning over their critical judgment and decision-making faculties to a superhero?”

And it would be equally interesting to have seen Herbert tackle Vinge’s thesis: “Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the _last_ invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. ... It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century, an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be the last invention that man need make."

But I digress.

For those of you completely unfamiliar with Dune, it may suffice to say that it is one of those works grouped with the Foundation Trilogy or The Lord of the Rings: A transformative and pivotal classic which cast a long shadow upon the entire genre from the moment it was published.

To understand how Dune achieved this stature, consider for the moment a seemingly simple question: What is the most impressive thing about Dune?

The trick is not in any particular answer. It is in the breadth of answers your question will provoke. Many people will point to the planet of Arrakis itself -- painstakingly rendered and with a completely realized ecology. Others will point to the manipulation of prophecy. Or the action-packed battle sequences. Or the alien cultures. Or the evocative future history. Or the exploration of religious themes.

The story of Dune is a political thriller; it’s a character drama; it’s high tragedy; it’s mythological; it’s religious. And then Herbert tells it in the style of historical fiction within one of the most deeply realized science fiction settings ever realized on paper. It’s a gestalt creation.

And what do I, personally, find most impressive about Dune? The fact that Herbert successfully realized a story with the emotional depth and archetypal resonance of a Greek tragedy. I’ve probably read, watched, and listened to the Dune story more than two dozen times. And yet, every single time, there’s something fresh and new which can be gleaned from the experience.

GRADE: A+

For additional comments on Dune, which include SPOILERS, click here.

TWO SPELLS OF DARKNESS

Spells of Light and Darkness: The Art of the Flame and Void was released last week. If you've been thinking to yourself, "Light and darkness spells? Sounds pretty lame." here are two spells of darkness that might change your mind:

The eclipse spell is the type of thing that high-level necromancers use to keep their undead happy and Dark Lords crafts into sunslayer spheres to keep the yokels properly cowed with fear. 

But shadow spy is the type of all-purpose utility spell that just about any self-respecting spellcaster will find useful. It's less powerful than scrying, but also a slightly lower level and very flavorful.

Character Background: Ranthir

Many of you are reading this website because of "D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations", the essay I wrote in March of last year. One of the points I made in that essay is that low level characters are actually more than capable of being experienced experts in their fields. Even at 1st-level, while they don't have to be, they certainly can be.

Which brings us to the character of Ranthir, the last of our main characters: This guy isn't your typical 1st-level apprentice. Instead, he's an accomplished Acolyte of the legendary Academy in Isiltur, the Spired City. Although his esoteric theories are not fashionable or popular, he is nevertheless an accomplished scholar.

In our world he would be a gifted graduate student. In the world of D&D, there is a much higher ladder for him yet to climb. But I think it's important not to denigrate the accomplishments of those who would be considered gifted and extraordinary in our world merely because they happen to live in a world where the superhuman is possible.

Which is not to say I don't like my share of neophyte characters, too. Take a peek at Tee and Elestra, for example.

All I'm saying is that it can also be fun to shake things up a bit and roll up a starting character who hasn't just fallen off the turnip truck: The guy who was already honored among his tribesmen, served a long and glorious tour of duty in the military, or distinguished himself in a scholastic career.

And I'm pointing out that you don't need to start the character any higher than 1st-level to make that happen.

I WAS NOT SPEEDING (THANKS GOVERNOR PALIN!)

Your honor, I think you will find -- if you just peruse this report -- that I was not speeding when the state trooper pulled me over.

Hmm... Who prepared this report? Well, I did of course.

Now, if you'll just turn to page 2 you'll find the general conclusion of the report: I am not guilty of speeding. On page 4 you'll find the detailed diagrams demonstrating that if I was driving no more than 30 mph, I could not have been driving 40 mph when the officer pulled me over. And if you flip to page 7--

What's that? My protestations of innocence don't automatically me innocent?

I don't understand.

It worked for Sarah Palin.

ALL MEN ARE WHORES

I'll be appearing as "Sam" in Ronin Theater's production of David Mamet's All Men Are Whores.

If you come, feel free to stick around and say "Hi" after the show!