Babel Clash

One of the things I wanted to have in The Magicians — see how I’m staying on message here? — was a game. I love games in novels, I always have. So I put one in even though I was sailing a bit close to the wind, what with Quidditch and all.

The game — it’s called welters — turned out to be surprisingly hard to construct. I’m novelist, dammit, not a games theorist. I wasn’t sure how much detail to go into, how much to fudge the rules, how to call the action, and so on. I’ve never been convinced that Quidditch is completely playable, but I think welters is, though I could be wrong. And I wanted something more cerebral than Quidditch. Quidditch is a sport. I wanted a game.

Why did I do this? I suppose I was trying to recreate all the great games I’d read about in other SF/F novels. Like the game in Piers Anthony’s Adept books, where there’s a whole society based on game-playing. Or Herman Hesse’s Glass Bead Game. The Battle School in Ender’s Game, Azad in Iain Banks’ Player of Games … it is basically impossibly to write a crap novel as long as there’s a game in it. Right? Right?

Related posts:

• re: Best Fantasy Game
  Magic the Gathering? Best fantasy game? Bite your tongue sir! There is only one fantasy game, and that is D&D. All other fantasy games are but its imperfect reflections and bastard by-blows. Except for Otogi. That was cool, too. Though I will admit that I had some very formative experiences...
• Best Fantasy Game
  What is the # 1 fantasy game?  If you had to pick, what gets the nod?  Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons, Magic the Gathering?  Is there a dark horse candidate?  I’m taking Magic.  It is a game in constant evolution and incorporating vast #s of possible variations.  It has puzzle solving...
• Some Thoughts on the General Dearth of Non-Crap Fantasy Movies
  It’s sort of amazing, really. Imagine if fantasy movies were like SF movies. There are actually good SF movies that are not merely based on good SF novels. In the world of SF there is actual parity between books and movies. They can hang together. Have a beer, play Settlers...
• More secret crushes
  Lev, those are some excellent choices.  Here are a few of my secret crushes. Great fantasy fun:  Richard A. Knaak’s Dragonrealm series.  It’s a classic and tasty treat of dragon vs. wizard action.  Thank you Pocket Books for bringing it back into print. Favorite video game treat: As much as...
• My Dungeons and Dragons Problem. It Wasn’t that I Didn’t Play Enough
  See, that’s awesome. A vampire prince who got turned human again! Seriously, wrap that in a black cover with some hands holding some fruit on it and you’ve got yourself a runaway bestseller. (BTW everybody looooook! The Magicians is on the bestseller list. That’s a big first for me.) The...