How I Myers-Briggs’d my way to the Shattered Plain
A novel course charted directly into familiar bogs.
Some believe the first line of a book should hook readers in their gills. That it is both mission statement and vibe check distilled into a punch of mental umami. Foreplay is apparently for lovers and has no currency in the kingdom of immediacy. As evidence, the internet is full of listicles ranking these best openers: They shoot the white girl first; The King is dead; and Call me Ishmael.
Call me skeptical. Fiction — good fiction — works like an engine that needs priming. You must open the air intake, fondle a couple of knobs, and give the whole contraption time to warm up. Only then, at just the right moment, can you punch the red button and elicit that “oooh” moment from readers. Games, too, are like this, especially when they begin with character creation. Roleplayers need roles, after all, and if a game takes the time to develop a unique engine for generating in-game avatars, then it’s worth digging under the hood.
I was recently invited by co-Rascal Caelyn Ellis to join a Cosmere RPG campaign using the Stonewalkers supplement. This full-length adventure will carry us to level 8 and through a story co-written by fantasy colossus Brandon Sanderson. It is “canonical” with his Stormlight Archive series, designer Brotherwise Games tells us, and it is happening somewhere just outside the scope of the books. It’s also not what this particular column is about, except to transport us to the opening scenes of the game. Our group was part of a caravan bound for Brightlord Kholin’s warcamp on the Shattered Plain, but it was suddenly ambushed by unknown assailants. Before rolling any dice or choosing a single class, Caelyn asked us how we wanted to respond.
