Normally this isn’t something that I would want to do, the players are clearly going to be the hero of the game or if it’s an evil campaign the villains of the game. But they had one idea that I want to run with more, and that I think could be an interesting game that would allow the players to still be the heroes of the game, while dealing with a chosen one hero who is going to save the day in the end.

Long ago in this game world, there was a prophecy of a chosen one who would defeat the mighty Zorlack, an evil deity from another realm. The hero would be born under a blood moon when the faeries sang their mid summer song and they would be born with the sign of the lioness on their right shoulder.

A couple of thousands of years have passed, and you are not that hero, but you know who the hero is. They are a big pain in everyone’s arse, because while they might be the way to defeat Zorlack, they’ve almost died ten times in the year from silly little problems like getting shot by a single arrow from a goblin, stepping off the edge of a cliff and falling 10 feet, because they wanted to get a better view, swallowing some bird poop from a bird flying overhead that they wanted to look at. They are not the hero that everyone was expecting.

Now, the signs for Zorlack’s return are starting to be fulfilled and you, a scrappy band of adventurers have your hands full dealing with this impending doom. But your life has become more complicated than just the monsters that you’re starting to deal with. There was more to the prophecy, and you’ve been tasked to help deal with the rest of the prophecy.

This is where the game really begins. I don’t see this is a massively long campaign, but it’s going to be a goofy campaign. To start, I think I’d have the players do a few fetch quests to get a few items that the hero is going to need to defeat Zorlack. I think that it makes sense that they are all pieces of an epic weapon that only the hero will be able to wield, somehow. With that, you can introduce Zorlack’s minions, some sort of small monster who are going to be a bother in numbers, but pretty easy to kill.

From there, I’d make the players have to fight their way to the remote monastery where the hero is being kept to keep them protected. This should be a pain in the butt for the adventuring party, dealing with wild creatures, fighting more minions of Zorlack, and probably dealing with some crazy weather. And when the players meet the hero, they are going to find that the hero is whiny, self-entitled, and basically a level 0 character that the players are now going to have to protect on the next fetch quest. But they need the hero to be able to get the weapon together. All the time they are doing this, I would have the hero almost die over and over again, if you have a cleric with revivify, definitely actually have the hero die a few times and have the party have to save them. But do it in absurd goofy ways so that the players don’t feel like you’ve added a complication to them, because it’s so absurd.

Eventually once they’ve collected all the pieces, there’s probably going to be a last part of the prophecy, where only a certain dwarf will be able to forge the weapon by heating it from the lava flows of a volcano. Again, making the players lives more annoying, but probably drop off the hero in one of the large cities at that point to keep him safe. Once the weapon is back together and delivered to the hero, now it’s time to ride into the massive storm that is the battle of the human, dwarf, and elf armies that are holding back the now massive hordes of minions to get to where Zorlack is so that the hero can destroy or banish Zorlack. Don’t have the players really take much part in the battle as the armies will clear a path for them, they’ll just have to deal with a few bands of minions, which should be easy.

Eventually they’ll finally face off against Zorlack who should be either tiny or the most over the top villain of all time, like those from 80’s cartoons. And I don’t think I’d even have the final battle be a normal battle. Borrow from something like The Devil Went Down to Georgia or Guardian’s of the Galaxy. Have it be a competition of some sort, and something that the players can help with, probably by either performing with the hero, rigging it so that Zorlack does worse, and the hero does better, whatever the rules are for the actual final battle.

In this game, I’d also be adding is something heralding with Zorlack actually shows up. Like a light in the sky that is getting closer, or something that is incredibly stupid, 80’s, and metal.

I’m definitely thinking that this game gets some of it’s styling for making everything over the top from 80’s hair metal bands, He-Man, Heavy Metal/Heavy Metal 2000. Really taking those 80’s sci-fi/future things and twisting them for a fantasy setting. Maybe Zorlack doesn’t end up being a deity, but a super powerful alien that this more primitive world would see as being almost god like powers.

Compared to some of my other ideas, this one is clearly the most silly. But sometime you want silly games with geysers of flame going off as Zorlack’s Minions are chanting the lyrics to We Will Rock You by Queen.

What do you think of this idea? Do you like to prefer in a more serious game or a sillier game?

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I didn’t know a ton about this novel before reading it, beyond the fact that it was near-future sci-fi, and that you can’t go more than a couple of sentences without hitting an 80s reference. What I didn’t know, however, was that this story takes the concept of virtual reality technology to its logical conclusion in a really satisfying and unique way, and that it, like so many sci-fi novels, is eerily prescient in terms of the ideas it deals with.

Ready Player One is set in the year 2045, and centers around a young man by the name of Wade Watts (so named because his father thought it sounded like a superhero’s alter-ego). Born into a world where poverty, drudgery, and misery are the prevailing winds (for his family even more than most), Wade escapes his harsh reality the way everyone around him does — by spending most of his waking hours logged in to the virtual reality platform known as the Oasis. When Wade was about 15, the mastermind behind the Oasis, James Halliday, passed away — but not before leaving a video clue letting the world know that he’d hidden an extremely hard-to-find easter egg somewhere in the Oasis. The first to find that egg, he tells them, will become the heir to his multibillion-dollar fortune, and will gain ultimate control over the Oasis itself. For Wade, who came from nothing, this chance at untold wealth is irresistible. So he joins the legions of others like himself in the search for the egg, under the guise of his Oasis avatar, Parzival. He learns every possible detail about Halliday’s life and absorbs as much of the 80s content Halliday so dearly loved as he can possibly stuff into his brain, in hopes of finding the secret that will unlock the series of gates that will finally lead him to the ultimate prize.

I have to admit — as this book began, I soon started to doubt all the hype I’d heard about the story. And let me tell you, there had been a lot (which may have been part of the problem). The book begins with infodump — a lot of infodump. Like, we’re talking most of the first six chapters’ worth. There were stretches where it was so tedious it was almost physically painful (hyperbole, you say? Just barely, trust me) — this was somewhat by virtue of the fact that, when listening to the story via audiobook, we weren’t able to just skim over the lists upon lists of information Wade offers when describing what, among Halliday’s repertoire, he has studied. But regardless, it felt excessive to say the least.

Thankfully, the infodump mostly subsided after the first few chapters, and that’s when things really got going. Once the setup has passed, the pacing takes off, and it doesn’t let up until the end. As you go along, it’s hard not to find Wade’s/Parzival’s obsession with all things Halliday/1980s to be infectious, and as the tension mounts, all you want to do is keep reading (or listening, in our case) to find out what’s going to happen next. Wade makes a lot of realistic decisions, both in-game and out — he’s almost preternaturally smart, to be sure, but it’s sometimes his downfall, and when he becomes too confident in his abilities and in his (staggeringly vast) knowledge of 80s canon, he’s often confronted with his humanness, as that last key bit of knowledge or foresight eludes him, and something just barely slips through his grasp (whether it be the latest clue, something happening in the real world, or one of his few but important relationships). It’s these moments that make the story both believable and compelling, and make us root for Wade/Parzival as he fights to win the prize against all odds.

One of the main things that stood out to me about this story (aside from the infodump) is how cinematic it feels. Part of this was due to listening to the story on audiobook, but a lot of it was because of Cline’s way with words. No matter what was happening in the story, I felt like I could visualize everything, vividly and easily, every step of the way. Strangely enough, it’s this aspect combined with the infodump portions that lead me to believe that the movie adaptation of the book (due out in March 2018), is going to be amazing. In fact, I think there’s a chance it could even better than the book itself. And book purist that I am, I can assure you that I don’t say such a thing lightly. My prediction is that the movie version will be able to quickly show many of the aspects of the story that the book took so much time to explain, just by virtue of being a different medium. And along with that, since the story has such a visual quality even in book form, I think it’s going to be dynamite when it’s translated to the screen. And the trailers we’ve seen so far have done nothing to diminish either of these notions, in my mind. Suffice it to say, I have high hopes for the movie, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

The other aspect that makes this story successful, as I see it, was its ability to look into the future with a keen eye — or at least one version of the future. The world of RPO has fallen into disrepair and decrepitude, mostly because everyone is so caught up in virtual society that they can’t be bothered to maintain the real one. Everything is run by corporations (most of them evil), and the number one concern on everyone’s mind is the next time they can log in to the Oasis, real-world responsibilities be damned. As I mentioned, this is taking the idea of addictive technology to its logical conclusion, and this naturally introduces some elements that feel pretty farfetched. Nevertheless, when our own world is seeing technology encroach into our lives to exponential degrees, the very concept of RPO feels like a wakeup call. Like similar cautionary tales in the world of sci-fi, it’s hard not to see it as a sign that we’re at a crossroads, and that how we move forward from here will determine whether our world starts to look more and more like Wade’s.

Overall, despite the pitfalls along the way, I found Ready Player One to be a satisfying, exhilarating read. As I mentioned, once things start moving with this story, they don’t stop, and the heights and depths to which the story takes the reader are well worth the wait. I’d recommend this book to any sci-fi fan, 80s afficionado, or pop-culture geek. After powering through the rough beginning, I found the payoff to be as good as I hoped, and if this book sounds up your alley, I think you will, too.

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