15 KiB
The __ Year King (D&D FF)
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Author: u/GalateanGallows *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3g7g9z/the_year_king_dd_ff/
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Score: 3
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Created: 2015-08-08T03:19:37
Post:
On "r/rational upvoted" on fanfiction.net there was a story called (I think) "The Three Year King". the plot was a guy was summoned from our world to D&D land to rule a country for some predetermined titular amount of time. he was a fan of D&D and had read Harry Potter and the Natural 20. The country was at war with (rot13) n angvba jub arrqrq erpehvgf sbe gurve jne ntnvafg na hafgbccnoyr gvqr bs haqrnq. I've googled "one year king", "two", "2", up to 10 and checked everywhere I can think of; did the internet eat it?
Comments:
u/Chronophilia [+17] sci-fi ≠ futurology (9 minutes later)
It's called The Two Year Emperor, and like you say, "the internet ate it". You can't read it any more.
The author /u/eaglejarl took it down because he released it on Kindle Unlimited, and the contract he agreed to has an exclusivity requirement.
u/GalateanGallows [+6] (an hour later)
Emperor! I was thinking maybe "lord" or "master" or some other sort of gendered ruling title. And that's a bummer; it was really good.
u/bbrazil [+6] NERV (4 hours later)
You can buy it at http://www.amazon.com/Two-Year-Emperor-Deor-War-ebook/dp/B011DQOT74
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (7 hours later)
Is it really worth $9.00?
u/bbrazil [+4] NERV (8 hours later)
That's the price of 1-2 pints, or an average paperback. For that you're getting about 3 paperbacks of quite good content that'll last you around 12 hours. It's very much worth it, and I'd suggest looking into other things /u/eaglejarl has written too.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+10] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (8 hours later)
For that you're getting about 3 paperbacks of quite good content that'll last you around 12 hours.
I can get that much "quite good content" for basically free. The average price I pay for sight-unseen fan-originated work is maybe a dollar, between web fiction, free at Amazon, and cheap at Amazon. $9.00 is quite a lot for an unknown author when I don't know if I'll finish even one book.
Why is this one worth $9.00?
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+6] Champion of Justice and Reason (9 hours later)
It's not even the original version. Most people aren't interested in reading rational fiction, so EagleJarl took out pretty much all the explanations of how all the munchkinry works. I'm not sure what other changes he made.
u/None [+2] (14 hours later)
/u/eaglejarl this true?
u/alexanderwales [+11] Time flies like an arrow (14 hours later)
I own a copy. The issue isn't that things have been removed, it's that it's no longer D&D. Spells have been renamed and changed, the rules have been altered, etc. This has the effect of making a lot of the clever exploits of the D&D ruleset seem like they're just coming from nowhere, since the setup just isn't there. That in turn makes it a lot less rational.
I would recommend the unaltered version for that reason.
u/Pluvialis [+5] Second Age Sauron (20 hours later)
I would recommend the unaltered version for that reason.
Which apparently is no longer accessible. At least that's one bookmarked 'to-read' story I can discard, even if it isn't because I read it.
u/bbrazil [+3] NERV (a day later)
That's kinda annoying, half the fun was making our DM squirm.
u/eaglejarl [+2] (a day later)
That in turn makes it a lot less rational.
Huh. This surprises me, but maybe I'm misunderstanding your intent. It seems to be saying that 2YE was rational because you, the reader, knew the D&D rule set going in and were therefore able to appreciate the rule breaks without needing them explained. If so, the first corollary is that for someone who is not a D&D expert, the breaks come out of nowhere and therefore the story is not rational. The second corollary is that they were not explained, which I felt they were. Is that actually what you mean and, if so, do you think the explanations were absent or merely lacking?
u/alexanderwales [+6] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
For an exploit to be satisfying, it needs to have setup. Take these two short stories:
A wizard gets lost in the woods. All he has on him is his thaumometer, his wand, and a half loaf of lennan bread. He thinks he's going to have trouble finding his way home, until he realizes that lennan bread has a small quantity of lia particles. He takes apart his thaumometer to find the mana crystal inside, uses his wand to energize the crystal, then places the crystal on top of the lennan bread. The energized crystal interacts with the lia particles, illuminating the way to the nearest leyline. Knowing where the leyline is allows the wizard to get his bearings and travel home.
A man gets lost in the woods. All he has on him is his receiver radio, a bottle of wine, and a small sewing kit he forgot to take out of his pocket. He thinks he's in trouble, until he realizes that the radio has a speaker in it, and all electronic speakers have a magnet. He smashes the radio open, rubs a needle from the sewing kit over the radio's magnet in order to magnetize it, then pushes the needle through the cork of the wine bottle. When he floats the cork on a small puddle of water, the needle is pulled in the direction of the Earth's magnetic field, showing the man where true north is. This allows him to get his bearings and travel home.
This is pretty much the exact same story. I would argue that one is rational and works from a narrative standpoint, while the other does not. The second story gets its background from the real world; the setup that we need is contained within our reality. It doesn't matter whether someone knows anything about speakers, magnets, or compasses when they read it, because they can go look those things up for themselves. If they're not already steeped in scientific lore, they can at least be assured that they're not being fed bullshit.
Whereas in the equivalent wizard story, there's no such grounding. Even if I give you more details of how mana crystals are energized, or how they interact with lia particles, it doesn't matter, because I'm using that in the course of explaining the resolution. To make this work in a story, I would have to innocuously drop details beforehand; the setup would have to be embedded in the story, and all those details would come together at the right moment in order for the payoff (getting out of the woods) to actually satisfy anyone.
So my problem with the switch from 2YE-Original to 2YE-Refactored is that the grounding gets removed. If you see an exploit in 2YE-O, you can think, "Oh, cool, does that work?" and then you can go look it up if you want to; even if you don't look it up, you can have the confidence that yes, the author did his research and he's not feeding a line of bullshit, because he would have been called out on it. But in 2YE-R, there's no grounding. And because the rewrite didn't go add in a whole bunch of innocuous foreshadowing, things seem like they're coming from nowhere. The breaks are explained, but many of them are explained at the same time that the rules that allow those breaks are explained. The setup and payoff get merged together, which makes the payoff unsatisfying. And since it's an author-invented system, there's no way to check your work. There's no feeling of "oh, cool exploit" because for all I know you could be manufacturing the rules to suit your needs (especially since the universe of 2YE is relatively unexploited, so new exploits aren't contradicted by the "why didn't anyone think of that" factor).
So the first thing I come across is the Wall of Iron / Teleport / homonculous trick. All those three things are introduced and explained immediately prior to their use. The setup is too close to the payoff, unless you have the background setup of being in the D&D world. Which is why I prefer the original over the refactor, even with the other improvements.
Hopefully that makes sense?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
Makes sense. Thanks for the explanation.
u/eaglejarl [+6] (a day later)
Not quite. All of the explanations are still there, the only thing that has changed is the numbers and the names. (So as to remove copyright elements.) In addition, the writing has been tightened up -- some scenes and one chapter were removed because they didn't work well and weren't important, other scenes were clarified or extended, some minor plot coupons that had been left dangling were paid off, etc.
EDIT: The program with the exclusivity clause is called Kindle Unlimited. Members pay $10 / month to read as much as they want and the author gets paid for each thing that is read. Until July, this program was a no-brainer for authors -- about 90% of my income came from KU. On July 1, Amazon made a change in their payment terms which absolutely gutted that income; things are a little up in the air, but most authors are reporting 70-80% loss of income. Unless things change somehow, I will be yanking 2YE out of KU when its current period runs out in a few months. At that point I'll need to decide what to do, and one option that I'm considering is putting it out for free and also leaving it for sale (just not in KU), so that people can enjoy it for free and, if they enjoy it enough, they can choose to throw a few bucks at it as a thank you. I haven't absolutely decided on this, but it's probably what I'll do.
In short, if you want to read it and don't want to pay, wait a couple months until Amazon unclenches their fingers.
u/Escapement [+9] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (10 hours later)
I personally am not a fan of this particular author. I stopped reading the Two Year Emperor stuff partway through when it was free, and so I am unlikely to ever pay money for it myself.
That said, enough people seem to be that it is not impossible you would enjoy the author's work as well. There's a bunch of stuff that you can still view by checking out submission history for Eaglejarl to get sense of his style (e.g. the Team Anko story, Squiring the Phoenix). I didn't like any of his other works, either, so I am perhaps not the best guide as to what you should read by him.
From my perspective (as someone who didn't like his work), the weaknesses of the Two Year Emperor story that made me sad:
The characterization was weak and uninteresting. I am pretty sure that the main character was named Jake? He was a guy. That was the extent of my memory of his character. There was also some sort of fire elemental hanging around. Other than that... I remember no other characters' names. Or roles. There was a big invading enemy army, and I am sure that it had a name or something in the story... but I can't recall it. The kingdom (empire, probably) he got put in charge of almost certainly had a name as well, but I likewise don't recall it. It was pretty much generic medieval fantasy kingdom #245252-51b. If I don't care about a story's characters, then I am unlikely to care about or remember the story.
Munchkining RPGs by abusing the exact rules is sort of stupid / boring / uninteresting. I have a really good knowledge of D&D's breaking points already, and discussing some of them in a story wasn't super enthralling. If you know and care about D&D3 already, you likely won't learn anything new or cool, if you don't, you will lack context for a bunch of the story. Also, it raises questions, like "How is it that the main character is the first one to actually do these simple abuses? Why doesn't the world already look totally different than it does?"
9.00 is the price you might pay for a new paperback - at a used book store you're looking at like 3-6 books, or quite possibly more, and at a yard sale you are looking at like an entire box of books or more. I personally only buy new books when they're by authors who I have previously greatly enjoyed and who I am going to greatly enjoy the new book of - I basically never throw $9.00 out on a book that I don't know I'll actually read and enjoy.
u/None [+6] (12 hours later)
The moderately interesting part was the neighboring territory that had had millennia of munchkining, which, it appears, you didn't get to. But if you were bored before getting there, it's not worth marching on.
u/None [+1] (14 hours later)
Out of curiosity, how far did you read into 2YE? I stopped reading partway through just because of laziness, yet I have no difficulty recalling the characters and their names (or the general shapes of their names, like beginning letters and internal sounds ... I suck at name recall, and they're not exactly common).
u/eaglejarl [+2] (a day later)
Just so there's no surprises: the linked book is one novel worth.
2YE is 350,000 words, which is about four novels. The first 300,000 are about Jake, the last 50,000 are about Suze. The part about Jake breaks down into three arcs: the fight against the Deorsi, against Afi, and against Neklos. The linked book is the first arc -- it's about 110,000 words, which is a long novel by standard count. Under normal count that would be about 360 pages, but Amazon uses a high word count so they mark it as 300-ish.
u/bbrazil [+1] NERV (a day later)
I thought that was everything given the description states "This is a complete novel; it has also been released in segments for readers who prefer a less expensive introduction." Maybe that could be made a bit clearer?
u/eaglejarl [+1] (a day later)
2YE is a trilogy. I originally published it in one long story because it was easier than managing three separate stories under FFN's crappy interface. The linked book is a complete novel and this is all of it. For people who want to pay less to evaluate it, I also released it in four parts, each one being a certain number of chapters.
What would you suggest as a clearer way to say it?
u/bbrazil [+3] NERV (a day later)
Maybe mention that there'll be three complete novels in total?
As someone who read it on FFN, I'd assume that "complete novel" meant all 88 chapters.
u/None [+2] (14 hours later)
I'd say so
u/Empiricist_or_not [+1] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (9 hours later)
Yes
u/Shadowlost8 [+3] (4 minutes later)
The author is EagleJarl I believe. The story is the two year emperor