Jim and Pat Rothfuss Guest Blog at Borders' Babel Clash

[library lasciel]

DUUUDE!!!!

I play Birthright!!! 

I feel so cool by association now!

(ok, and slightly dorky.  But way more cool than dorky.)

 

[Myyrdn Eopia]

For those just joining us, here are the links!

Pat 1:  Awkward Foreplay

Jim 1:  Jim's Caesarian Section

Pat 2:  Parry, Repost

Jim 2:  Sturgeon's Law, Storytelling and Video Games, and the One True FRPG

Anton 1: Roll For Initiative

[Magnus]

And Anton Strout Joins the conversation

[Myyrdn Eopia]

Anton 1: Roll For Initiative

[Lisa™]

Hee. Hehe. Hehehe. Hehehehehehe.

[Serack]

With Borders having filed for Chapter 11, do you think it might be a good idea for us to archive this in the WoJ section of the boards?

[Shecky]

With Borders having filed for Chapter 11, do you think it might be a good idea for us to archive this in the WoJ section of the boards?

I think you just talked yourself into a job. Seriously, that would be an excellent idea for its own locked/stickied thread there.

[Serack]

I think you just talked yourself into a job. Seriously, that would be an excellent idea for its own locked/stickied thread there.

There's a pic Pat posted in his first post that I will have to rehost, which I would rather do from home, so it'll be later, maybe not today I have an appt late in the afternoon.

Do you think doing it in this topic and letting a mod split it off to place in the WoJ section is appropriate?

[Priscellie]

There's a pic Pat posted in his first post that I will have to rehost, which I would rather do from home, so it'll be later, maybe not today I have an appt late in the afternoon.

Do you think doing it in this topic and letting a mod split it off to place in the WoJ section is appropriate?

Indeed!

[Serack]

The following is a "blog conversation" between Patric Rothfuss and Jim Butcheron Border's Babel Clash, which could originally be found here

Awkward Foreplay
by patrickrothfuss on Mar.31, 2011, under Jim Butcher and Patrick Rothfuss

Heya everybody. It’s me, Patrick Rothfuss.

To be completely honest with you, I’m not entirely sure what do do here.

I’m no stranger to blogging. While I’m no Scalzi, I’ve written my fair share. Even so, I’ve never had a back-and-forth blog conversation with someone. It feels odd to me. I’m used to Q&A. Discussion. This feels vaguely Victorian to me. Like we’re two gentlemen sending letters back and forth between Oxford and… um…. Dumbricshire. Whatever. Somewhere else Englishy.

My point is, I’m a little out of my element. I’m winging it here.

First, let me say howdy to Jim. We’ve chatted a little bit on e-mail. But never met in person. In fact, I think most of our interaction has come from writing things in books to each other:



So… Hello, Jim. Though you have heartlessly rejected my friendship again and again. I have to say that I enjoy the hell out of your books.

First off, I want to ask you a question that came up while I was chatting with Veronica Belmont on her podcast about a month ago. We were talking about how you manage to write books, like, all the time. Really good books. One or two a year.

And, well, to make a long story short, we’re wondering if you are some sort of cyborg.

Any information you can provide on this topic would be really appreciated.

Here’s another few questions/topics. I’m just going to lob them up into the air real high and slow to see if you want to take a swing at them.

• Vampire LARP: Threat or Menace?
• How to be a dad and a writer at the same time. (I could use some advice here. Little Oot is one and a half, and I feel like a bit of an absentee dad sometimes.)
• Crazy things our fans have done.
• Cliches we hate about Fantasy.
• Why video games aren’t as cool now as when we were kids.
• Why everyone should get off of my lawn.

Okay. That last one isn’t a real topic. I just realized that I was giving off a bit of a crotchety old man vibe with those last two…

Looking forward to our chat….

pat

In the comments section:

patrickrothfuss
March 31st, 2011 on 6:26 am
P.S. Jim, if you want to be BFF’s check this box. [ ]

[Serack]

Jim’s Caesarian Section
by jimbutcher on Mar.31, 2011, under Jim Butcher and Patrick Rothfuss

Let me begin by stating, once more, how much I can’t stand you, Pat. You write gorgeous, lyrical, freaking poetic prose in one moment and then shift to gritty, hard-boiled clear and precise action scenes then BACK to the flipping poetry without breaking stride. And I just HATE that.

I just wanted that to be right up front about my feelings. I will, from this point, attempt to beat my hatred down and comport myself like a professional and a respectful member of of some notional society that doesn’t hate Pat with a seething passion.

While I am not yet a cyborg, I am looking forward to sufficiently advanced wetware to make that a reality! Though I suppose that if I keep on larping the way I do, I might blow out a knee or an ankle or something, and be forced to get an implant to replace it, in which case I would qualify.

That has nothing to do with my writing, though. THAT comes from the voices. I mean, shah, obviously!

Gotta say, the real question isn’t ever about being a good father and a writer. Or a good father and an anything. It’s how do you be a good father, period.

I asked my dad about that, before he died and he gave me the right answer: You just love them. Everything else flows from there.

(Which I thought was pretty darned poetic for a steel worker.)

Personally, I like applying the Julius Caesar model to my parenting and to my blogging: divide and conquer. If you have multiple problems, sometimes you solve them by making them go at one another. I, too, was having problems feeling connected to the kid, and as a result, I actually embraced his stupid video games, and what happened? HALO, bay-bee. HALO. Changed my freaking life, learning to play HALO with my kid.

And after he taught me HALO? I taught him Tribes. He showed me how to rock Army of 2? Then I showed him how to GET rocked by the aliens in UFO X-Com! We both had a blast. We talked, compared, competed, and spent an inordinate amount of time laughing at and with one another.

Awesome. Two of the questions responded to, booya!

The problem isn’t that modern video games suck. There’s just a lot more of them than there used to be, and by sheer quantity comparison, there is much more suck to be had. The good games, old or new, remain good.

I wonder what happens if you apply the same thought to fantasy and science fiction? Does modern fantasy just plain suck compared to the great old bastions of the genre? Or do the oldies, like high school, only /appear/ to look better the further down the road you get from them?

Okay, I don’t blog much and I’ve never used WordPress–here’s hoping this works!

In the comments section:

DanielF
April 1st, 2011 on 12:08 am
“Does modern fantasy just plain suck compared to the great old bastions of the genre? Or do the oldies, like high school, only /appear/ to look better the further down the road you get from them?”

No. As a proportion, probably roughly the same sucks as is great. We’ve just forgotten all the dross off the 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries whilst we have EVERYTHING of the modern era. I like the 16th century as an example: Everyone knows about Shakespeare, perhaps even Marlowe, but how many people know about Ben Johnson? In the future, the outstanding greats of today - the Tolkeins - will remain read and discussed, whilst the not-so-muchs (insert your favourite author to hate on here! ;-)) will have fallen by the wayside… as they deserve.


jimbutcher
April 1st, 2011 on 2:47 am
I’ll be one of those guys on the wayside, yeah. I have no illusions about the ongoing value of what I write–and all the pop culture references are going to go stale in what amounts to short order for book lifespans.

But that’s fine by me. I’m not trying to write literature. I’m trying to write popcorn. Smart, /good/ popcorn, the best popcorn I can possibly create, but popcorn! I’m doing entertainment, not lit-tra-cher.

I think that Pat has a real shot though, for the long-term big time. I’m a decent craftsman, and I can keep the pages turning–but his writing /sings/.

[Serack]

Parry, Repost
by patrickrothfuss on Apr.04, 2011, under Dungeons & Dragons, Jim Butcher and Patrick Rothfuss

Oh good. I was worried we were going to have to be nice to each other all through this exchange. Now I get to present my own grievances, and list the many reasons you fill me with the terrible anger like unto a thousand suns.

First, your action scenes are better than mine; moreover, you manage to write 1.7 books a year, not counting graphic novels. Secondarily, you are thinner than I am; sixthly and lastly, you stole my thunder by writing a first-person magician story with realistic magic based on thermodynamics; thirdly, James Marsters reads your audiobooks; and, to conclude, you make me look like a chump by consistently turning out delicious, cleverly-written brain candy.

But you know, I could ignore all of that. What I cannot forgive is the fact that Ghost Story isn’t out already. It was scheduled to be out in April, right? Why am I not reading it right now?

I can understand how an author might need a few more days to tie up some loose ends in a book. I imagine that sometimes you need to… I don’t know, run spellcheck one more time. Or make sure that you don’t have too many semicolons in there, or whatever.

But that should take, at most, 3-4 days. So why do I have to wait for 3-4 MONTHS for Ghost Story?

This delay is unconscionable, and it has caused me to lose respect for you as an artist and a human being.

There, I really needed to get that off my chest.

(Seriously though, welcome to the I-needed-to-take-a-little-more-time-to-get-it-right-club. We’re glad to have you as a member. Next time take more than just a couple of months, Okay? You’re still making me look like a chump….)

You blew my mind when you mentioned X-Com in your previous post. I haven’t thought about that in years. That was a great game. I it for a stupid amount of time…

However, I’m not sure if I can accept that games are only more sucky according to volume these days. I think a good argument can be made that modern games are aimed at the widest audience possible. I think big game companies are trying to appeal to a larger audience with the hope of making bigger profits.

But the down side is that when you try to make everyone happy, the lowest common denominator becomes pretty frikking low. If a studio designs a game so that it can be beaten by stone high-school sophomore, odds are it simply isn’t going to be much of a challenge for me. To say nothing of the fact that they’re obviously not going to take the time and energy to put together a fulfilling narrative experience.

That’s why I play these games. I like to solve problems and experience stories. That’s why Portal was great. That’s why Bioshock was great.

But after those two, I have to start thinking long and hard to remember a game I really loved in the last decade.

Planescape. Fallout 2. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Those were smart, challenging games with good stories.

But you have a good point. I might just be viewing some of these game through 20 years of rosy-colored hindsight.

I do have to thank you for the Dadding advice. It’s nice to hear about you playing games with your kid.

You see, not even five hours ago, I realized that there will eventually come a time when my baby will no longer want to hang out in a pillow fort with me. These days, that’s one of my very favorite activities. The thought of eventually having to give that up almost broke my heart.

It’s nice to think that when that day comes, we might be able to play some other games together instead. I’m going to cling to that idea.

Tangenting in a different direction, I know you tabletop, and I’m assuming you’ve done D&D. What’s your flavor of choice? Myself, I was an AD&D man. Though Second Edition has a place in my heart, as that’s the version I did most of my actual playing in.

D&D aside, what other systems have you enjoyed over the years? Most of my experience is in D&D, Storyteller, and Hero. (With a small smattering of other more indi systems.) I could stand to broaden my horizons a bit.

pat

P.S. While I was on tour, I met a young woman who had our signatures tattooed onto her body. I’m not even kidding.

[Serack]

Sturgeon’s Law, Storytelling and Video Games, and the One True FRPG
by jimbutcher on Apr.05, 2011, under Jim Butcher and Patrick Rothfuss, Patrick Rothfuss Jim Butcher Anton Strout

Oh, believe me, the video games of the past were absolutely riddled with crappy contenders and only partially-successful games, some of which were still quite fine. Pool of Radiance, for example, the absolute first D&D Goldbox game. Was there an ultra-fine story in place for that, or a storytelling narrative? No, beyond “get mission, go on mission, take the best loot home and sell it, get paid, get another mission.” But it /was/ the very first turn-based tactical D&D game, where you actually had a video game that was something like playing an actual D&D game, from the game-play aspect. That’s why it spawned a slew of sequels and a Dragonlance-based parallel game. It was something nifty-new.

(Okay, not newer than Shard of Winter, which was actually MUCH more involved as a tactical game, but it was reasonably new.)

But for every Pool of Radiance, there were multiple Avoid the Noids. This is Sturgeon’s Law in operation. It’s built into the nature of relative valuation: for there to /be/ an exceptional game, you really need a bunch of totally lame games for it to exceed. That’s just as true now as it was in the roaring 80s.

I think we do have fewer completely stupid games now–but we also have a much broader base of game platforms, which disperses our Sturgeon’s Law winners over a wider area. I think the HALO franchise was one of the strongest games I’ve ever seen, both storywise and in play, for example, and I never would have tried it if I hadn’t had the boy pushing me to learn to fiddle with an Xbox controller.

Ten years from now, we’re going to be standing around as toothless old men, eying the kids playing games that are played with brainwave-reading thought-based controllers, being displayed on virtual environments projected on their contact lenses, and thinking, “Bah, these sprats and their mental five-dimensional games. They got nothing on my old copy of Pool of Radiance. Now where did I leave that gold box… oh, and the little Elvish code wheel used to verify that you have an actual copy of the game every twenty minutes…”

I think one of the most exciting developments in video games is the increased use of, hey, actual storytelling. HALO, as an overt example, sets up a simple overall story (alien invasion!) but proceeds to develop a more complex and involving tale as you go, including friendships, a romantic subplot, shorter objectives, longer-termed goals, making and breaking alliances with former enemies, all building up to the big Save The Galaxy climax. Which is pretty cool, given that the game is basically just a First Person Shooter like any of a dozen other games. What made HALO big wasn’t its gameplay (although fun). It was the STORY that went with the game that made it so loved (and so successful).

Video gaming is THE moneymaking entertainment industry now, exceeding even blockbuster movies. There is a HUGE constellation of relatively crappy games out there to wade through now.

But hey. Not every game can be Archon. Or M.U.L.E.

As far as my own roleplaying tastes go? Well, I love the live action roleplay–provided I can beat on someone with a nerf sword as part of the game. When at the table, however, there is only One True Game: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

It has a fantastic story world, a very solid gaming system which adapts well to new story worlds (I run campaigns in my own fantasy story worlds as I develop them and get them ready for books), and the most satisfyingly grisly-yet-streamlined critical hit description tables known to man.

However, I will also admit, as a supplicant to the One True Game, the Birthright campaign setting for D&D. The Birthright system of Bloodlines shored up many of the weak points in the D&D system while simultaneously creating storylines that were great at getting players more involved with the game. Plus it carried along this whole Highlander vibe, when Blooded characters would face one another across a crowded battlefield and start chopping their way through the crowds to get at one another, all but screaming, “THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE.”

[Serack]

All done

[Shecky]

Ye gods. That was fun to read the first time... and just as much fun to re-read.

Oh - any way to include the comments on each? I think they contributed to the comments as well.