Stephen King’s “Fairy Tale”
Here is a link to Stephen King’s website.
Here is the transcript of the show.
Speaker A
00:00:00.240 - 00:00:00.820
Foreign.
Speaker B
00:00:03.920 - 00:00:07.720
Welcome to the Game Masters Book Club where great fiction becomes your next.
Speaker C
00:00:07.760 - 00:00:09.464
Great role playing game experience.
Speaker B
00:00:09.632 - 00:00:30.870
I'm your host, Eric Jackson of K Square Productions. And today I and three talented game masters, Chris Grannis, David Clarkson and Sam Liberty, delve into Stephen King's Fairy Tale.
We'll examine how to use the settings, scenes and characters of the master storyteller, Stephen King's meditation on the fairy tale in your next role playing adventure. Let's start the conversation.
Speaker C
00:00:34.090 - 00:01:49.914
For the listeners.
We're going to discuss this lovely book by Stephen King in order to give you some gaming material out of it because there are hundreds of thousands of books out there that don't have games written for them and they all have really great material in them that's fantastic for game masters to use in their campaigns.
And until the mind police track us down down and nail us for copyright infringement for running role playing games, we could continue to steal as much of this as we possibly can. So we're going to talk about what setting if we decided we were going to run a game in this world of Stephen King's Fairy Tale.
And then we'll talk about some other options around the setting, both mechanically and possibly stylistically.
And then from there we'll talk about pieces of the setting, characters, particular scenes, particular monsters or magic items or characters, whatever it is that we found that would be the most useful for our games.
And at the end of that, if anybody's got any recommendations for stuff that's similar to this, like oh yeah, if this is your jam, you should try this. And that could either be a game system or a block.
Speaker D
00:01:49.962 - 00:01:53.870
Creativity is hiding your sources. We're breaking that rule right off the bat.
Speaker A
00:02:03.100 - 00:02:06.260
That's a determination we're here to talk about.
Speaker D
00:02:06.380 - 00:02:11.320
I would say it's got to be, I'm going to say this is definitely modern fantasy.
Speaker C
00:02:13.420 - 00:02:16.804
Yeah, I think we could definitely say, yeah, it's a modern fantasy.
Speaker D
00:02:16.852 - 00:02:19.556
Dips into horror, but not as much as most.
Speaker A
00:02:19.708 - 00:02:47.310
Boy meets mentor in unusual circumstances circumstances and then learns about secrets and inherits the responsibility to protect and understand those secrets. And then those secrets lead him to a fantasy realm where he finds himself in the role of the reluctant hero.
First, of course, he doesn't expect to be, but then he ends up finds out he is and he performs that duty of saving things and bringing it to a conclusion.
Speaker D
00:02:49.580 - 00:02:51.172
Dave Mist is also a story about.
Speaker E
00:02:51.196 - 00:03:20.970
A boy and his dog on fairy tales as a form and kind of like what makes them what they are.
And there's even a like this kind of like philosophical element to it represented by this book about like the collective unconsciousness or fairy tales or some combo, that stuff. And like he's wondering if fairy tale world is like this metaphysical kind of Plato's cave and like all of our imagination springs from it.
Stuff like that. Which definitely gave me vibes of certain role playing games that we'll talk about later.
Speaker C
00:03:23.990 - 00:03:34.410
Yeah, gentlemen, you are all experienced game masters from a variety of different systems and backgrounds. So if you wanted to do this as a role playing game, what system would you use?
Speaker E
00:03:35.750 - 00:04:11.820
I would like to talk a little bit about what makes this of course, look an interesting setting in the first place. Place and what's interesting about it. And if you wanted to make a game of it or set a game in this world, do you think you'd rather do the.
You're a human on earth and you've discovered this portal to a fantasy world and that fantasy world can be whatever. Or would you rather say no, I want to set my game in the world of Empus, which is this specific, like fairy tale amalgamation.
Which half of it is interesting to you? The journey below to a new crazy world or the idea that it's a fairy tale?
Speaker D
00:04:12.880 - 00:05:20.370
Personally, I'm happy with both for my setting, you know, surprising only the listeners and not the people on here. I think Changeling the Dreaming or Changeling the Lost are both perfect settings for this.
Changeling the Lost more than Changeling the Dreaming, though, I don't like that one as much. It is the journey of discovery. It is the urban fantasy setting of it.
And even though this is really suburban fantasy to begin with, this book is two halves. The whole first half of this book is all the real world. It is all, you know, there's some feeling that there's something going on there.
But the second half of the book like totally flips everything. Although there are echoes in Empus of our real world. These two feelingly separate books that just combine there.
I like the whole duality in the White Wolf's Changeling books. You know, you're half fairy, half human.
Speaker E
00:05:20.410 - 00:06:07.340
I thought a lot about changeling as well during this. The fact that you are normal people kind of.
But there's this magical world kind of in Changeling, there's like these things called trods that bring you to the dreaming, which is a world of fiction and fairy tale. So like the connection is very one to one between that and fairy tale. I would say what will be lost, pun not intended by putting it in Changeling is.
This book is about a normal human who's totally flabbergasted by discovering that there's a well he can climb down into a fairy tale world. Whereas all the changelings who are the PCs of changeling are the only ones that know that there is this fantasy world layered over the original.
So it's not surprising to learn that you can travel to the dreaming, for instance. So you would have to think about.
Speaker A
00:06:07.380 - 00:06:44.350
How that entirely true. The fact that, you know, it can be a fantasy or it can be an urban fantasy where someone is in the real world.
Definitely wasn't lost when I took a look at it. But I do feel like there's been a lot of attempts to do the. I'm out of my element, I'm a normal person in the fantasy world.
So when I read it, I know that I looked at it and I said, be interesting to see the fantasy elements dealing with the modern world.
I would take the story a little bit beyond the confines of the book and be inspired by it and maybe taking the inhabitants of Empress and coming into the modern world through gates, through the trials, whatever you want to call them.
Speaker E
00:06:45.770 - 00:07:00.522
That's interesting.
And as you talked just now, I was also thinking like, okay, if you're an inhabitant of Empis, this fairy tale world, and then humans from Earth come through, like, how do you react to them? How do you respond to them? That could be interesting too.
Speaker D
00:07:00.666 - 00:07:20.138
Yeah, that'd be kind of the problem that we have and we're going to have with a lot of these, you know, single protagonist books is how you bring that into a group that's a. That's always a, you know, it's like the one person going down there, or is it, you know, six people going down there on their own?
Speaker E
00:07:20.194 - 00:07:21.114
What would you do?
Speaker D
00:07:21.282 - 00:07:47.900
I think the going into the fairy tale world is more interesting, typically than coming out of it. Might want to have a mixed group started at, you know, the entrance to Empus.
So several, you know, one or more humans discover this fairy tale world and the. And the fairies or the people of Empis are also players. So you have a mixed group going off to solve the problems.
Speaker C
00:07:50.320 - 00:08:07.898
We did actually have that when we were moving from the arena and escaping. We had that whole group dynamic that was happening there.
And obviously we had Charlie, who was our faded prince from another world, and then everyone else. But there were people who did have recurring roles and were with him the whole time through the.
Speaker D
00:08:07.954 - 00:08:16.170
I was gonna say, is it Urban Shadows is one of the games that I think might work with that, the Powered by Apocalypse piece a bit.
Speaker E
00:08:16.290 - 00:08:27.458
And make new playbooks for it.
But because like that's like I'm a vampire, I'm a werewolf, I'm like a paranormal investigator like in the underworld of this, like literally like a movie.
Speaker A
00:08:27.554 - 00:09:25.436
I couldn't fail to recognize the fact that Changeling was a thing that would be associated with this story. And I knew Chris was going to be talking and I knew that was going to be the first thing he would be thinking of.
But I also did think of Powered by the Apocalypse.
I started looking at mostly when they were in impos and particularly in the arena and thinking wouldn't this be cool if we kind of did a party like game and we used the lens of Powered by the Apocalypse to kind of translate the ideas of the. Of the book.
I even wrote down if I was going to do attributes I was thinking of action, hope, wonder and influence kind of came through when I started reading it and thinking wouldn't that be cool if you could play a bunch of inhabitants of Empis and maybe one of the character playbooks could be person from the other world or whatever you might want to call it. And then everybody else could be this sort of fairy tale character. That sort of fairy tale character.
And then going on adventures or even maybe going to the modern world to try to restore Empus could be cool.
Speaker E
00:09:25.468 - 00:09:26.080
Yeah.
Speaker C
00:09:28.100 - 00:10:08.544
Gotta jump in because I haven't said anything about it. I actually am just like Empus all the way. Totally fond of running.
When I think about it I think about it as like I want to run the game that's a hundred years down the road after this has happened. Because I like the idea of having a previous civilization when I'm building a campaign and I would to confirm my basic status I would run it in 5e.
I could see having that sort of ancient civilization, a very Barrier Peaks kind of feel to it. Except the technology wouldn't be space aliens. It would be 1920s, 1930s electricity. You know I think that'd be.
I think that could be a really fun piece.
Speaker D
00:10:08.592 - 00:10:11.088
D20 Modern themes of those made for this as well.
Speaker A
00:10:11.144 - 00:10:26.706
I kept going thinking of those games that I know better than some of the game. Newer games, newer being like Powered by the Apocalypse.
And after that one of the things that struck me is combat in this book was always subservient to the plot.
Speaker C
00:10:26.898 - 00:10:27.826
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker A
00:10:27.858 - 00:10:38.018
If something was going to happen it wasn't like oh roll miss, roll hit. You know the combat only mattered for the purpose of moving the plot along. And that's what made me think of these storage based games.
Speaker E
00:10:38.154 - 00:11:14.960
Exactly like, so there's this long sequence, like the most combat heavy sequence, when the prisoners and Charlie are escaping from the arena and there are all of these electrified undead monsters that they have to get by. And like running that in 5e, no offense to basic Eric over here.
Rolling to hit and then seeing if you do damage and then seeing if he hits you and then rolling to hit and seeing if you did. Like, it just wouldn't fit the mood of that whatsoever.
Like, all of the moves that the characters make are all about like changing the stakes and like, what do you lose and what goes wrong as you go through this sequence.
Speaker A
00:11:15.120 - 00:11:15.632
Right.
Speaker D
00:11:15.736 - 00:11:25.620
Because even the arena of combat is all, you know, it's. It's hyped up in there. And you hear the aftermath of the arena combat, not the combat itself.
Speaker A
00:11:25.960 - 00:11:34.700
Cortex has a very malleable system much like that, that you just kind of build the characters and the mechanics themselves based on what you need for the story.
Speaker D
00:11:37.320 - 00:11:49.672
Or the Genesis game. The Star Wars, Age of the Rebellion, Edge of Empire kind of thing. They have their own generic system. And with the. With the funny dice, I said I.
Speaker E
00:11:49.696 - 00:11:52.888
Would totally play Dungeons and Dragons set in emp. Like that does.
Speaker A
00:11:52.944 - 00:11:56.340
Yeah, the setting is nice. Yeah. I like the world.
Speaker C
00:12:01.040 - 00:12:30.004
Just thinking about, like how the stakes keep changing and things are moving along and there are consequences. I was thinking Blades in the Dark, which might also be. Might also be for those sort of combat sections. That's a pretty cool thing to jump up on.
And we can talk about what we would steal. The stealing part. If we're not going to run a game that is all about Charlie Radar or even Empas as a.
As a whole, parts would we want to steal outside of the hole.
Speaker A
00:12:30.132 - 00:12:53.650
I'm a. I'm a sucker for, you know, delving into the dark. Magic has a price.
You know, when I liked his invention of the curses that were bestowed upon the royal family. And it was interesting, the gray that was spread across the land. I'm someone who loves Ravenloft, so it certainly spoke to that part of my interest.
So I liked the darkness that was used.
Speaker E
00:12:54.830 - 00:12:55.734
What were the curses?
Speaker A
00:12:55.782 - 00:13:10.976
The goose girl had no mouth. She had that horrible sore that she had to eat through Claudia. She was deaf. So she spoke in a very loud voice constantly. Woody. Yeah, Woody. He was.
He was blind, you know, so they were.
Speaker C
00:13:11.128 - 00:13:11.680
Woody.
Speaker A
00:13:11.760 - 00:13:24.240
Curses bestowed upon them because they couldn't be transformed by the gray. But they still took away whatever it was that was important to them or that was a real big factor to them.
The goose girl was a princess and she certainly had a good strong voice.
Speaker E
00:13:24.320 - 00:13:35.020
Yeah, the.
She also had the most time devoted to like describing her on like the weird way she has to eat and the weird way she does like she talks through her horse's mouth and stuff.
Speaker C
00:13:37.840 - 00:13:43.128
Yeah. That was definitely the part that when that happened between that and the gray I was like, yep, we are in it.
Speaker D
00:13:43.184 - 00:13:53.180
Do you like the electric Skeleton monsters? The Night Soldiers? I thought they would be. They make a cool antagonist with a very cool weakness.
Speaker C
00:13:55.280 - 00:14:07.840
They're particularly good for a low level campaign, low power. They're practically unstoppable until you figure out. Until you figure out the thing and then you're like ah, now we.
Speaker D
00:14:08.220 - 00:14:09.600
Because, you know.
Speaker C
00:14:10.860 - 00:14:17.652
Yeah, because. Because it's. Because as Dave pointed out, there's always a price. Right. You can get past it, but there's always a price.
Speaker E
00:14:17.756 - 00:14:41.712
Very easy to mechanize. Like, oh, I know exactly how I would do this in D D. I know exactly how I would do it in pbta. I know like all of this. Like it's so clear. Right.
The fact that they're almost unkillable. Like they have an aura that weakens you and, and can. And knock you out and you trigger their weakness.
They explode and they do self destruct damage in a radius.
Speaker C
00:14:41.776 - 00:14:44.340
Yeah. Bone shards.
Speaker A
00:14:45.000 - 00:14:54.260
It's very well described when undead had a bigger consequence where you know, level loss when you touch them. It made me think of that type of monster.
Speaker D
00:14:56.200 - 00:15:42.032
There's also the. I like the dynamic between the princess in distress and her brother who is the big bad.
I like that whole abdication of responsibility that it can't be him and I'm not going to go and solve this the way only I can solve this because if it's, if I find out that it's him it's going to destroy my world. I like that. As a call to action for a hero or a group of heroes. It's the.
Well, we're not rescuing the princess but we sort of are because she has to confront her own darkness. And the darkness.
Speaker A
00:15:42.096 - 00:15:48.660
The modernization of that, you know, we're not physically rescuing her, we're helping her with her barrier, her mental barrier.
Speaker D
00:15:50.120 - 00:16:32.430
I was going to say one of the things I like about this, and I sort of said it in a maybe a complaining way earlier.
The first half of the book is completely different than the second half of the book because it deals with the mundane I like and want to bring from it and I try to do this in my games. The sense of here's your normal, there's an adventure in the normal as well as an adventure in the. In the paranormal. I like having that basis.
So you can see the difference. So you can see the growth, really the. The sense of beginning a game in the mundane. I like that.
Speaker C
00:16:34.650 - 00:16:39.170
Well, that's your whole Rumpelstiltskin character who appears in both places.
Speaker E
00:16:39.250 - 00:16:39.922
Totally.
Speaker C
00:16:40.066 - 00:16:41.682
I mean, that really helps draw that.
Speaker E
00:16:41.786 - 00:18:22.294
Dichotomy going down into the final encounter. But now I want to talk about. About Rumpelstiltskin, so I'm gonna do that.
So one of the things that Stephen King is really good at writing is suspense and setting up like cool scenes of suspense and situations. And he does that with this Ripple Stiltskin character twice. Once in the. In the real world and once in the fantasy world.
And there's two versions of this Rumpelstiltskin character. The first one is what Christopher Pauly, I think is his name.
And he, like Chris mentioned, the first half of this book is very different than the second half. And the first part, like almost verges on like hard boiled, like blue velvet or something. Like a crime story.
And he has this big bucket of gold in a safe that he's. That he, Charlie is caring for. And Christopher Pauly knows that it's there.
And like, you know, he showed up and tossed the house and couldn't get to it. So we end up in this situation where Paulie shows up with a gun and holds Charlie at gunpoint.
Charlie's a 17 year old boy at gunpoint and forces him to open up the safe. Like that scene is very tense. Like, we know that he survives it because he's the narrator, but like, how is he gonna get out of this?
He has a gun, like in the back. In his back. So I think that scene.
And like, how would you play that out if you were a PC and you were having a spotlight moment and you were in a very deadly system and had a gun in your back and you were being ordered to open this safe. You knew that it could go very wrong. Like, how would I as a gm, write that scene so that it was impactful to the player?
Like, there's a lot of juice there.
Speaker A
00:18:22.462 - 00:18:23.014
Absolutely.
Speaker E
00:18:23.062 - 00:18:24.214
I would love to see something like.
Speaker A
00:18:24.222 - 00:18:35.450
That, but try to get wrong. Most players then say, I'll take some damage, but I can survive it. And then, so I'll just turn around and beat the guy to crap.
And I'm like, that's very unsatisfying, not very thematic.
Speaker D
00:18:38.070 - 00:18:41.822
Yeah, that's, that's where the, the Dungeons and Dragons thing falls down.
Speaker A
00:18:41.926 - 00:18:57.730
It's like how Many hit points is he gonna do come up with an easy way to. You know, some systems, they have straight. Yeah. Like you get shot so you go down type of consequences. But it is hard to break out of that.
DND thinking that is pretty prevalent.
Speaker D
00:18:59.910 - 00:19:15.742
Yeah. The PBTA model I think works better best for that kind of thing in my experience.
Because, you know, you could succeed, but most likely you're going to succeed with a consequence. You're going, you know, or fail. Fail badly.
Speaker E
00:19:15.806 - 00:20:06.330
I don't know if you want to do EBTA exactly. Or some version of it or some version of that mechanic. But. Yeah. So the other scene that I want to talk about with Rumpelstiltskin is.
Is in the fantasy world and Rumpelstiltskin and this is this dwarf, but he's like this. Just this like real screaming and he gets, you know, put in his place by. By the protagonist.
But then later when the protagonist is going through this, this maze like city that he has to get through fast, this dwarf erases all the markings that he was following. Like. Like the birds eat the breadcrumbs in Hansel and Gretel. Right. And now all of a sudden he. He's lost.
So like the feeling of traveling through a dangerous place but having guideposts and then having those guideposts removed and now you're stuck. I think it's also an interesting dynamic.
Speaker C
00:20:06.490 - 00:20:35.860
I agree. That was actually on my list.
Love the idea of having a previous adventurer's journal to sort of guide you through things and then obviously and to let them know they're traveling in the right connection. It's a great way to not railroad, but to point to the road and say, there's the road. If you want to go to the road, it's right there.
But I agree that it's. It also gets really interesting when all of a sudden you also can erase those or get rid of those markings.
Speaker D
00:20:35.940 - 00:20:50.020
That was what I was going to say. I was going to point out again. Yeah, I like that whole. That was a really neat thing. It's like, here's the path in. Path out's not there anymore.
You know, that same, same, same way out doesn't work anymore.
Speaker E
00:20:50.180 - 00:21:07.280
Yeah. Which is also like, it's funny because normally in a game you get. You do the opposite, right?
Like you have a hard path there that you have to navigate and really like, you know, bushwhack through. But then once that because you've cleared the dungeon, you hand wave the way back. Exactly.
Speaker C
00:21:07.360 - 00:21:10.352
So I have a question for you guys because this is one that escaped me.
Speaker B
00:21:10.376 - 00:21:11.728
I kept trying to think about it.
Speaker C
00:21:11.784 - 00:21:32.932
But what I really liked.
He took a long time to talk about both the mermaid and the snob, the really cool giant red grasshopper that they only can speak to you if you can really listen to the story. And it's like the most writer thing I've ever heard. If you would just listen to the story.
Speaker A
00:21:33.036 - 00:21:42.980
Yeah, no, maybe that could be an attribute, kind of like tuning into the magic type of attribute. And the stronger it is, the more, you know, you can get out of it or more communication. You can have something like that.
Speaker E
00:21:43.020 - 00:21:50.520
You know what it reminds me of, Chris? It reminds me of the playbook you wrote for the Slui and the changeling PBDA hack you wrote.
Speaker D
00:21:51.120 - 00:22:10.500
That's one of them. And you know, the other thing I was going to say, you know, one of the arts that I have in changeling is the art of song.
One of the levels of that is you can hear the background music playing during your scene. So you can say, oh wow, there's that dun dun, dun dun. I'm in trouble. I'm going to go the other way.
Speaker A
00:22:11.280 - 00:22:13.688
Yeah, I can hear the bad guy coming.
Speaker D
00:22:13.744 - 00:22:15.060
I can hear the bad guy coming.
Speaker A
00:22:15.360 - 00:22:16.664
Here comes Vader's theme.
Speaker E
00:22:16.712 - 00:22:17.110
Yeah.
Speaker D
00:22:17.200 - 00:22:20.170
Or wait a second, everything's silent now.
Speaker C
00:22:20.290 - 00:22:24.070
Oh, oh, yeah. Where did all the birds go?
Speaker D
00:22:24.530 - 00:22:27.002
Exactly. But you know, you can hear great.
Speaker A
00:22:27.026 - 00:22:27.962
In a slasher movie.
Speaker D
00:22:28.026 - 00:22:28.410
Yeah.
Speaker E
00:22:28.490 - 00:22:46.572
The slew is nice though, because one of the moves is just that you can see and talk to ghosts.
So like if, if ever there's there's ghosts around, like you'll be able to see them and talk to them and it like creates this extra layer of depth for you. It's cool. I hate that mechanic who just loves.
Speaker A
00:22:46.636 - 00:22:48.028
It always is trouble.
Speaker D
00:22:48.204 - 00:23:07.372
The cool thing with the, the slua mechanic is, you know, they have to talk in whispers and so no one else can hear them most of the time. So. But they can talk to the ghosts and find out what's going on.
And you know, if you're a good slua, you'll say, oh yeah, there is a ghost there, regardless of whether there is one or not.
Speaker A
00:23:07.476 - 00:23:08.668
Sure. Yeah.
Speaker E
00:23:08.764 - 00:23:25.890
Yeah.
I can see like a similar move on a playbook in an Empus style PBTA where if there's a magical insect or being around that, like you're attuned to that and you can hear and talk to them. I think that would be a cool and appealing playbook move.
Speaker C
00:23:26.510 - 00:23:41.606
So what would you. If you had to pick another fantasy, either setting in A game that was close to this, or if you had to pick a.
A book that you could also, you know, that you might also want to recommend, what would you pick?
Speaker A
00:23:41.678 - 00:23:45.818
I don't have a book, but I definitely thought of an alternate way to tell the.
Speaker C
00:23:46.014 - 00:23:49.710
Okay, well, go ahead.
Speaker A
00:23:50.090 - 00:24:57.504
Okay, well, this is going, you know, and Crystal chuckle because this is going back to my days as a white wolf. But yes, I wrote down worm the Legacy, Mr. Bovich and Charlie. I start imagining them as dragons.
A young dragon, new hatchling or whatever just coming in. And of course, we're talking urban fantasy. So they're hidden dragons. They have powers to look human, that type of stuff. And Mr.
Bowditch being an ancient dragon, the Bucket of Gold certainly spoke to that theory.
So what about a setting where you are characters that are serving these draconic forces and you're caught up in their machinations, you're caught up in their attempts to take advantage of the fantasy world and the resources they have there and influence the modern regular world. You're not dragons. You're people that serve dragons. You have some magic powers. You have some connection. And I can think of all these different types.
Just like in White Wolf, you have all these templates that you apply to your, you know, particular draconic servant race. But that's what I, that's what came through when I was thinking of it. I was thinking that that would be a cool way to tell the story different.
Speaker E
00:24:57.672 - 00:25:03.980
Would there be counter dragons in the. In the fairy tale world? Or are the dragons only over here?
Speaker A
00:25:04.600 - 00:25:39.516
Yes. No, no, actually, I hadn't thought that far. But you're, you know, you got a good point. Said there would have to be.
Dragons would have originated from Empus. And maybe dragons are in their natural form. They're an. They are in their, you know, human form in, you know, in the regular world. And they're.
They know the passageways and they have their own purposes and, and they're, you know, trying. It would be a game that would take place in dual worlds.
There would be time, you know, much like a changeling game where you'd have to go into empas to do some things and then come back to the modern world. But you'd have to have a reason to always care more about the modern world to kind of tell the story that way.
Speaker E
00:25:39.588 - 00:25:40.600
Sign me up.
Speaker D
00:25:40.980 - 00:26:03.112
I mean, just to tie it to another book, you know, obviously. Well, Stephen King drop name drops his own books throughout book just crazily.
Just to put Stephen King's the Talisman, the one that he Wrote with Peter Straub that also fits into this genre, fits into this theme perfectly.
Speaker A
00:26:03.256 - 00:26:04.952
And isn't the gunslinger very much the same?
Speaker D
00:26:04.976 - 00:26:15.320
The gunslinger is also very much the same, although the gunslinger does it in the reverse is before the gunslinger is from the fantasy world and comes into ours.
Speaker E
00:26:15.400 - 00:27:09.670
Another student came back that I read recently is called Eyes of the Dragon. And that one is a straight fairy tale. There's no magical border between worlds. It's told just in the fantasy world.
And the tone of it is also really nice because it's like a storyteller tone. Like there's. The storyteller is almost a character who speaks to you in first and second person.
Like this is a story he heard from his grandmother or something, but it's also a true story. Or like maybe you are a person in that world like hearing something that happened 100 years ago or whatever.
It's a, it's a very nice book and like a very mature fairy tale.
He like turns phrases like oh, and I'm very sorry I have to tell you that like XYZ or like you probably already know that xyz, it's a very like spoken like oral tradition kind of storytelling.
Speaker C
00:27:10.260 - 00:27:15.644
My first thought is to call on the absolute classic of the portal fantasy genre. The Narnia Chronicles by C.S.
Speaker B
00:27:15.692 - 00:27:16.140
Lewis.
Speaker C
00:27:16.220 - 00:27:28.604
The first book of the series is the lion, the Witch in the Wardrobe and then the other one that I really like, just as a great portal fantasy is In Other Lands. And now I'm going to forget the author's name even though I just looked it up.
Speaker D
00:27:28.692 - 00:27:33.484
Or you could go completely anime and go for any of those isekai shows.
Speaker C
00:27:33.612 - 00:27:49.836
Oh yeah, absolutely. But yeah, Sarah Rhys Brennan In Other Land, great young adult portal fantasy. Very sassy young adult book.
So if you're, if you have family, if you're recommending it to family members, be sure they're cool before you give it to them because there's like off screen sexy times and stuff.
Speaker E
00:27:49.868 - 00:28:55.282
So you just reminded me, Eric, when you're talking about portal fantasies. And that reminded me of a Terry Pratchett book he wrote during the end of his life with, with a co author called the Long Earth.
And this is a science fiction story, not a fantasy story, but it's definitely a portal story where the premise is that one day somebody discovered a very cheap, easy way to, to mention hop. And now everyone can just dimension will they hop? And then there's another Earth that's totally unspoiled right next to it and it starts a gold rush.
But there's infinity of them. The book centers around this party who goes up in an airship equipped with one of these hoppers. And they want to see like, is there an end to this?
So, like just hop a million times and see what happens.
And then this party ends up, you know, seeing all these different worlds and one where a lot of action happens and like they, they meet these other, other creatures who can innately dimension hop without technology. And it's, it's a cool book. The setting is, I think, better than the story.
When I read that one, I was definitely like, oh, that's, that's one to steal.
Speaker C
00:28:55.346 - 00:29:02.830
All right, gentlemen, I think we've covered all the bases. Unless there is anything last minute you want to throw in is where we.
Speaker A
00:29:02.870 - 00:29:04.510
Plug our work, whatever we're doing.
Speaker C
00:29:04.630 - 00:29:06.010
Yeah, totally. Should.
Speaker A
00:29:06.390 - 00:29:14.490
I could plug my con. It's in April. Rising Phoenix Gaming Convention in Milford, Mass. In April 2025.
Speaker B
00:29:14.870 - 00:29:15.646
Sounds good.
Speaker D
00:29:15.718 - 00:29:20.010
I'll be running a game at that. At least one.
Speaker C
00:29:20.710 - 00:29:22.654
I'll be running two there as well.
Speaker E
00:29:22.822 - 00:29:27.894
Yes, come play our games. Maybe some of them will have these ideas and then you can be like, yeah, I knew it.
Speaker C
00:29:27.942 - 00:29:32.690
It's these guys. Sam, I know you have a game out, so you should plug that.
Speaker E
00:29:33.230 - 00:29:54.130
I have a game out. I guess it's been out for a long time. You could, you can always go and play Forsooth.
That's a game about Shakespeare that's available on my Itch and also on Amazon. And I have a free game. Oh my God, a free game. It doesn't cost you anything. You can download it and play it. And it's a Steven Universe fan game.
That's a hack of Swords Without Master. It's another great game.
Speaker B
00:29:55.760 - 00:30:51.820
And that's our discussion on Stephen King's Fairy Tale. Thanks to our contributing Game Masters, David Clarkson, Chris Grannis, and Sam Liberty.
If you're interested in the Powered by the Apocalypse hack of Changeling the Dreaming by Chris Grannis that was mentioned in the show, check out the show notes@k-squareproductions.com GMBC for a link to the document. Also, as mentioned, all of us will be running games at Rising Phoenix Gamecon and in Milford, Mass. On April 25th through 27th.
In 2025, check out the con@rising phoenixgamecon.com or grab the link in the show notes. Also, special thanks to John Corbett for the podcast artwork and Otis Galloway for our theme music.
You've been listening to the Game Masters Book Club, the place where great fiction becomes great role playing experiences. The Game Masters Book Club is brought to you by me, Eric Jackson and K Square Productions.
Later gamers, and to paraphrase the amazing Terry Pratchett, be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.