{"id":15173,"date":"2015-03-20T00:56:45","date_gmt":"2015-03-19T13:56:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/?p=15173"},"modified":"2025-02-24T18:03:23","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T07:03:23","slug":"rat-on-a-stick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/rat-on-a-stick\/","title":{"rendered":"Rat On A Stick – In remembrance of Terry Pratchett"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Model<\/a>

‘Pyrkon 2013 Niewidoczny Uniwersytet’ (Unseen University) by Klapi (Own work). Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – click image to view license.<\/p><\/div>\n

Terry Pratchett OBE
\n(28 Apr 1948 \u2013 12 Mar 2015)<\/h3>\n

The world lost a giant of the fantasy genre on March 12th. Terry Pratchett brought farce to the elements of his novels while spinning straightforward fantasy stories out of those elements that built and built until reaching the point of melodramatic farce in their own right while never forgetting the first law of writing: Entertain the readers. No matter what, entertain the readers.<\/p>\n

I and two of my friends had the pleasure of sitting with Terry at an event during Noreascon 3, the 46th World Science Fiction Convention, held in 1989 in the city of Boston. We wanted to talk Discworld, he wanted to talk about Australia, about the cliches and many misunderstandings that foreigners often posess about our country and culture, about the Australian sense of humor and perspective, and about the pranks that Australians would often pull on tourists. Nine years later, The Lost Continent<\/em> was published. I don’t know<\/em> that the chatter at the table that night had anything to do with the novel, which (amongst other things) parodies Australia and aspects of our culture, many of them dating from the subsequent years. Certainly, there’s no direct correlation between the anecdotes that I remember being shared at the table that night and anything in the novel. Nevertheless, I will always believe that we provided the seed of the idea that night. And Terry was a perfect British Gentleman, and great company.<\/p>\n

It would be easy to implant a superficial commemoration to Terry and Robert and the many other comedic writers named in the course of this article simply by placing a deliberately farcicle game element. An Inn that is nothing but a storeroom surrounded by beds and tables in the open air, for example – an Inn that is an Out. But I think there’s a better approach.<\/p>\n

It is illuminating to compare his style with that of another comedic fantasy author I greatly enjoyed, Robert Asprin<\/a>. Asprin subverted the cliches of the fantasy genre in his Mythadventures<\/a> series of novels with a whimsical nature and sense of fun, which usually translated into a twisting of over-used plotlines into something not-quite silly.<\/p>\n

Terry’s style fused the manic irreverance of Monty Python with straightforward Fantasy. He was by no means the first to fuse fantasy and humor, but he gradually became the standard by which all others would be judged. Terry’s humor was different. The characters took their world and situation seriously, no matter how strange or farcical things became. If Pratchett’s writing embodies Python, Asprin captured much of the spirit of classic Warner Brother’s cartoons like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. His characters could be serious at times, but were just as likely to make a joke of their current plight – for the benefit of the reader, not for the consumption of the other characters.<\/p>\n

Back in December 2013, I wrote Lessons from the Discworld of Terry Pratchett<\/a> which quickly became one of the most popular articles ever published at Campaign Mastery. I introduced it by stating, “There are a number of valuable lessons for any RPG that can be observed in the looking at how Terry Pratchett achieved the success of the Discworld series of novels.”<\/p>\n

Today, in honor and rememberance of Terry, I’m going to point out the broadest and most general lesson of all, one that goes to the very heart of Roleplaying Games (which was another subject discussed that night in Boston). And that is the similarity between the Discworld Novels and a roleplaying game – any<\/em> roleplaying game.<\/p>\n

\nBut first, I’m going to interrupt myself to talk briefly about another way that some people have come up with to commemorate Terry: The Clacks Code. If you don’t know what that is, I suggest you start by reading https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Terry_Pratchett#Personal_life<\/a> which will give you the basics.<\/p>\n

I don’t like or approve of this memorial to Terry and I don’t think he would have, either. The problem is that it won’t stop with just Terry. Sooner or later, someone else will pass away and be added to the commemorations because it seems appropriate. And then people will add others who have already left us, such as Steve Jobs or Isaac Asimov. And then someone’s favorite TV show will be canceled and they’ll add the show and the names of the characters. And then their friends, and their pets. And then someone will realize that a picture is just a string of 1’s and 0’s and can be added as “text”.<\/p>\n

And it’s all overhead added to web traffic, bloating web pages, and slowing the internet. It’s not hard to imagine a situation in which a ten-line blog post has 100 lines of headers, or a thousand, plus the code to hide and retransmit them.<\/p>\n

And then, someone will find a way to embed executable code in the headers — or, more properly, will modify this<\/em> way of embedding executable code — and Terry Pratchett’s memorial will become just another vector for viruses and malware.<\/p>\n

While the farcical aspects of all this might appeal to Terry’s sense of humor (my forecasts are ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek), I don’t think that’s how he would want to be remembered.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just like the inhabitants of Discworld, PCs and NPCs are expected to take the world around them reasonably seriously, even if they are a deranged lunatic like The Joker. To them, this is<\/em> the world, this is<\/em> reality, and if you fail to take its rules seriously, they can and will kill you for being a party-pooper. It doesn’t matter how farfetched and unlikely, or how big a pun the world element might be, you take it seriously. This is not unlike the most popular works of science-fiction writer Douglas Adams<\/a>, the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy<\/em><\/a>, and the behaviour of the characters within. These characters may joke around, but they still take the world around them as real, even if that reality is ridiculous even to them. Likewise, the characters in a Monty Python movie or sketch treat the world they inhabit as real, no matter how ridiculous. Robert Asprin’s writings are more akin to a roleplaying game from a metagame perspective. The humor is that of players and GM joking around the gaming table as they have fun<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Think about that for a moment. Between them, the fictional worlds and characters these authors created with the ultimate purpose of entertainment exemplify what has come to be the ideal of how to roleplay, of the spirit of gaming. Every time we pick up the dice, we strive to honor their memories and their creations without even knowing it. And our purpose in doing so is exactly the same as theirs was – entertainment. Fun.<\/em> I can’t think of a much better legacy to leave, a much better way to commemorate the lives and riches that these writers bestowed upon us – can you? So let’s pick up a die, and resolve to strive to be better players and GMs, but never to forget to enjoy what we’re doing. And that’s a remembrance that I think Terry would be proud of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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