“WHY DID YOU SLASH THE MAINTENANCE BUDGET?!” you scream. “THERE ARE BABIES DYING OF DYSENTERY! ONE OF THESE SOLID GOLD PUNCHBOWLS WOULD FUND IT FOR A YEAR!” “But then I wouldn’t have a solid gold punchbowl,” says the industrialist, as a rat tapes dynamite to his eyelids and pushes the detonator.
I like it. @kjcharleswriter.com has something kind of like it when heroes save a sewer-worker's* daughter from being sacrificed by a former high government official,* and the HGO gets eaten alive by starving eels. *kind of
which book?
*yoinks* -- tho not from amazon, the vendor of last resort afaic
Warning: the guy gets away with a lot of very evil shit before his final comeuppance. Also it's a steamy gay romantic fantasy, so be prepared for sex scenes, some of which are absolutely key to the plot.
No Rat Kings but Grayson Saunders is actually did a lot of infrastructure p*** In his Commonweal books, especially a Succession of Bad Days. He does have a rain of frogs though.
It's funny, I've never seen the book written with the conflict character vs. society where society *was portrayed as the hero.* Always the other way around, or with a hero saving the society.
The inversion feels like something a gnole would find obvious and intuitive - paladin marches forth to save the day to find it already saved by a community who wasn't waiting for saving.
There’s a movie called GUNLESS that is the opposite of a western “hero comes to town, town has a problem, hero saves it.” It’s very Canadian.
And it’s one of the most satisfying movies I’ve ever seen.
I _have_ seen a bunch of fanfic where the weary antihero stops to rest somewhere (coffee shop? Family-owned motel?) and the community fixes them.
Doing this is actually pretty fun! One of our D&D party is a swashbuckling Hobgoblin Paladin of the God of Contracts, Paperwork and Archives. The GM described his temple as 'imagine if a job centre worked as advertised'. One of our current main quests is investigating a major food safety violation.
(Someone put necromancy in their beer to make it compulsively drinkable. It's. It's not great :|)
Genius 😁
Ahem.
I’m just saying, if you want civic conscience in your entertainment, you gotta meet the people where they live.
This is where I leap in to recommend Victoria Goddard's book The Hands of the Emperor, which is a fantasy about relationships, reforming the postal service, and implementing Universal Basic Income.
Thank you; I've just bought it based on your recommendation!
I was going to recommend that if no one else had yet!
Someone described that book as The Most Canadian Fantasy ("peace, order, and good government" being the Canadian equivalent of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"). It's aspirationally so rather than literally so (though we HAVE just announced a new rail project) but a girl can dream.
(It’d make a better game than a book. NPCs begging for clean water. Sidequests to stop the water gougers and to deliver pamphlets about a boil notice while mutated rats roam the streets. You get the idea.
I woukd play the hell out of that.
I'd love a management sim about not letting everyone die of disease in the streets using public infrastructure
Honestly, I'd play the hell out of that (especially since my brain's very much of the opinion that it'd be Dishonored-flavoured [though that might just be the rats and the dickhead nobles partying while ordinary folk die])
)
I will always like the closing parenthesis.
Can't tell you how glad I am to see that someone else gets that one of the problems is with the stories we tell.. that urge to make it all 'one good, one bad' so that people don't lose track of who's who and you can make it exciting.
I've totally incorporated her into my D&D campaign. The world needs more people like her, and, apparently, so did my fantasy world. :-D
There's definitely versions of this as strategy/resource games. Frostpunk being perhaps the most notable example of recent years.
It's a privilege to pee!
I love Beartongue so very much, she is my absolute favorite character in your books. And I agree, the more you know of the details of how the world works the more you can see the importance of bureaucracy and civil servants and all the little work people were doing to keep the world working.
One of the things I was very afraid of was that our medical devices & medications would be less safe, if we could even get them in the first place, and I hate that people in HHS who are being fired are people who oversee safety of durable medical equipment & other healthcare devices.
I’m a cancer survivor who had a port installed while I was doing chemo. I am so happy that *at the time* it didn’t cross my mind to worry about the safety of that. And I am mad that going forward it *could possibly* be an issue because of these asshats.
It's what the Mario movie could have been if they weren't cowards /hj
Familiar at all with the Salt In Wounds environment? Short version: Big mining town… but for the Tarrasque’s bits and pieces.
Not really into RPGs but would definitely buy the book and plushy.
Oh I would LOVE to see the Bishop lecture a god.
Now I feel like I need to reread the Paladin series.
I'm currently rereading Paladin's Grace. I needed a comfort read because... *Waves hand at the surrounding continent* Though I like Swordheart best of all. Not sure why. Paladin's Hope had the sexy gay doctor, but I just really like spending time with Halla.
In case you missed the memo, she has the next two Swordheart books coming out next year. 😃
Thanks. I had not learned that yet. I tend to just catch things when they come out on the library's app.
She made the mistake of mentioning two companions, so we’ve been waiting for their stories. There’s the remaining Paladins to be written, plus the Soldier series and whatever else she decides to make. Lots to look forward to.
I always figure that if things happen they happen, but I never count on the mentioned side characters getting their own book. Sometimes a story just never quite works out or there is an authorial existence error. I love stand alone books more for these reasons. No worries about waiting.
This touches on one of my pet peeves actually - which is when a video game has you playing A Lone Hero, and it's primarily a combat game, regular RPG stuff. Fighting the good fight. And then there's a quest or something where they go "and what NOW, hero?! You can't battle your way out of CIVICS!
"You're a BAD HERO because you thought you could just use violence to solve everything!" and then, most importantly for this to hit my peeve, leaves that as an unchallenged message that the game writers decide to send. Because it's a form of breaking kayfabe? I think?
Like no, yes, violence is limited in its uses, but this is A Combat RPG. If it was A Card RPG, then everything would be solved with card games. If it was a dancing RPG, everything wld b solved with dance. Combat serves that role here - it's not like IRL violence, in social dynamic OR consequence.
So suddenly by MAKING it like IRL violence, conferring the same concerns and drawbacks to it, takes it out of that kayfabe space, and suddenly - usually - a lot of other stuff about the game doesn't make any sense either! Because it ALSO relied on kayfabe to hang together.
More respectable, IMO: Recognising the kayfabe element, leaning into it, and making your Combat RPG Protagonist fight (or your Card RPG Protag play cards with, etc.) a monster that is the embodiment of bureaucracy, with themed attack names to match.
The problem there is that bureaucracy is not inherently a bad word, much as people try to make it one. They can become so, sure, but they’re also what get the troops paid and the Social Security checks going out.
One unexpected negative effect of the information age is how much less obvious that is than it used to be. Back when you had to queue up to do _anything_ at a bank or a university, you really _felt_ the bureaucracy making everything go. When you mostly interact with it via Web portal, you don't.
I wonder what it would do if some of it were exposed again, even just for call/chat help centers. "We have 354 agents working. There are 12,734 people in line. You are number 3,985. Expected wait time: two days, five hours." Rather than just "All agents are assisting other callers."
We've forgotten (or never knew) that the vast majority of bureaucrats are civil *servants*. They serve society.
I agree, I think because it's tremendously complex and slow that a lot of people don't know how to include it in an encounter-based RPG except as a "gotcha". Leaving it out or handwaving it is OK, but I'd love to see additional engaged (and bonkers) takes on how to reflect it in an encounter...
I've said before that I will 100% buy whatever you write, please take my money!
I hope this thread was as cathartic to write as it is to read
I would buy this book. Rats taping dynamite to an oligarch's eyelid? That's my genre right there.
Cf Slow River, @nicolaz.bsky.social
I commend L.E. Modesitt's The White Order to you, actually. A shocking amount of that book is devoted to sewer maintenance. (A lot of the Recluce books are in this vein, and I love them for it, although most of them come to the conclusion that Sometimes You Just Gotta Assassinate a Motherfucker.)
I haven’t read any Modesitt in a long time, but I did like the first one!
Boy, talk about a recommendation I wouldn’t have expected to land, but very much does.