The Les Miserables Philosophy of Tabletop Gaming

It is an age old tale of the line drawn between right and wrong and the gray areas in between, if they exist at all. I'm talking about the struggle between players and Game Masters, of course.  Although the analogy fits for Les Miserables as well.  There are as many types of Game Masters, Dungeon Masters, and Story Tellers as there are characters in everyone's favorite French Revolution masterpiece.  Perhaps you know someone who fits these descriptions, or even see yourself in them.  If not, then maybe you'll want to go out and watch a Broadway play or read a classic novel after reading this.  Or maybe you'll just want to go steal a loaf of bread.

1.  The Jean Valjean-The Jean Valjean school of GMing is probably the most popular.  This game master has good intentions.  He knows the rules and sets out to follow them staunchly. However, he has a soft heart.  He can't say no to a sultry little elf who doesn't quite have the comeliness to seduce an ancient map from a dungeon sentry.  He will bend the rules here and there and sees no wrong in it.  He is also the story teller who will let the party take a little bit longer to lose all their SAN than the numbers show.  This type of game mastering can be fun and help a blundering party of poor dice rollers play a little bit longer before they're eaten by a giant bugbear.  However, hidden within his group may be the NEXT type of gamer who will toss his pack to the ground and disrupt the fun for everyone.

2.  The Javert-The Javert philosophy of dungeon mastering is the bane of existence for the Jean Valjeans.  Javerts, the 2nd most common game master, is also known as the Rules Lawyer.  He does not bend.  He has every Dungeon Master handbook that has come onto the market since 1982 and he can flip to the page that correspond to any argument you may try to bring up.  He has every Vampire the Masquerade clanbook since 1st Edition and do NOT bring up the new stuff to him.  He is a purist and you will not get him to allow your Assamite to know three dots of Vicissitude no matter how you try to justify it! He follows your cultist through time and space and if you so much as THINK of stealing a loaf of bread, he is on you like a Tzimisce at a Sabbat Ball.

3.  The Fantine-Yes, this is the girl GM, of which I've been, although I've been more of a Javert than a Fantine.  She may be cute, but  mostly she is a GIRL who is GAMING! and we know where that might lead.  You've come down off the high of defeating a cave of giant spiders.  Everyone's laughing, sharing stories, pointing out war wounds.  And then the dreaded words..."I'd like to run the next campaign." Several pairs of male eyes dart together, rolling mental dice to figure out how to get out of this.  The group loses 4 points of SAN. There's a trapdoor in the corner through which they could escape, but who knows where it might lead.  There is the slim chance that Fantine might wear that nearly see-through top to one of the gaming sessions.  And if you say "No" she might whine like she did to Jean Valjean that time when she wanted him to go to the innkeeper and take her little snotty nosed brat and raise it.

4.  The Marius Pontmercy-Marius is perhaps more of a bane to the existence of gamers than Fantine.  Marius is head over heels with Fantine (or the other girl in the group who plays but has no designs on being a GM).  When thieves ransack the campsite in the night, any female in the group miraculously has nothing of her own stolen.  When a superhero group of Champions is fighting a rampaging robot taller than the tallest city skyscraper, the girl always saves the day.  And in the end, there is Marius with his eyes glittering behind his glasses, drool on his bottom lip, hoping that THIS time she'll realize he did this all for HER! Luckily, there is usually a stalwart Javert in the group who can squelch this lovelorn young man faster than you can say 24601.

5.  The M. Thenardier and Grp-Yes.  Them.  Fortunately, this pack usually lurks in larger gaming groups.  Unfortunately, this makes them harder to weed out.  M. Thenardier has a bit of all of the above in him and appears at first to be jolly, goofy, everybody's bosom friend. But, behind every M. Thenardier is his Mme. Thenardier, who may or may not be female.  Mme. Thenardier floats amongst the gamers, laughs and talks and befriends them while M. Thenardier is doing his Game Mastering.  When everyone breaks for the bathroom, M. and Mme. Thenardier go to get more chips from the kitchen, at which time Mme. Thenardier drops all the secret plans and plots of the unsuspecting gamers right into the lap of M. Thenardier who is quick to devise ways to destroy players' hopes of having a favorable outcome.  But he cannot do this alone.  And he won't have to.  For, lurking in the depths of the gaming group, is a sweet little scamp known as Gavroche.  He probably knew the Thenardiers from before, in the last group they were kicked out of.  He is their henchman.  He takes the evil plans of the M. Thenardier and uses them to guide the group into the wicked clutches of the game master.  How? Because Gavroche and Mme. seem to always roll the best dice, always have the best powers, and have lady luck at their sides.  Before long, Fantine is stamping all over the heart of poor little Marius. Javert has Jean Valjean against the wall at the end of his blade.  And the character sheets are trampled like so much ticker tape in the dust of their feet.

So, about now that much hated Javert in your group is looking PR-ETTY good, eh? Turn your rules lawyer loose on occasion.  He'll sniff out those Thenardiers and break the will of the annoying Fantines.  I like to think that he brings balance to the force.

My Top 10 Books of All Time

There is no doubt that some of the below novels and plays will seem out of order.  Who can deny that Hamlet is far superior than some of the works that appear after it? These are works of fiction that have warmed my heart for many years, crafted cities and villages and islands that I have returned to time and again in mind imagination long after I've put the book away.  I hope you might find something that sounds interesting and inspires you to check it out. If you do, or if you've read one of them already and feel strongly about it, please comment and let me know.

I want to begin with a few honorable mentions that I won't describe, just throw out there in case you're interested:

Honorable Mention 1:  The Kushiel Legacy by Jacqueline Carey-In a world where the Fallen Angels remained on earth and spawned half-human children, the Angeline, and live at the mercy of the whims and dispositions of their angelic ancestors.  A young girl who must feel pain to feel fulfilled finds herself drawn into continuous courtly intrigues.

Honorable Mention 2:  Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub-A fairy tale of a boy and his friend who travel through worlds to save a dying Queen.

Honorable Mention 3:  Swan Song by Robert McCammon-In a post-apocolyptic wasteland, a young girl who is the key to restoring humanity fights a growing evil.

On with the show.....
10.

 Mystery by Peter Straub

   Probably my favorite modern author, Peter Straub has the undeniable ability to bring tears to my eyes, make my heart race, and shock me into shrieking aloud.  This is the beautifully worded story of a young man on an island community who falls head over heels into a deadly mystery that takes him deeper into the identities of himself and all those around him.  A fine work of art, scary and thrilling and warm and familiar.  Peter Straub is more intelligent, more poetic, and more eloquent than any other writer of the horror genre alive today.



9.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

   I consider Hamlet the single greatest story ever written.  The imagery, the individual words, the well constructed ideals all paint a portrait of a life that could be lived in any country, in any time period one could dream up.  Of course, Shakespeare is the wordsmith, and this tale is the best showcase of his craft that exists.








8.

Weaveworld by Clive Barker

   No doubt Clive Barker can scare the pants of anyone, but I prefer his more fairy tale-ish wares.  Weaveworld, which I read as a teenager for the first time, is a magnificent story of a not-so-far-away land in peril.  The language is poetic and the suspense seems very real.  Not really a fantasy so much as an adventure, Weaveworld blends some of the best words into some of the most beautiful sentences I've read in all my literary life.

   "Nothing ever begins. There is no first moment; no single word or place from which this or any story springs.

The threads can always be traced back to some earlier tale, and the tales that preceded that; though as the narrator's voice recedes the connections will seem to grow more tenuous, for each age will want the tale told as if it were of its own making." 

7.

 Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

   I wish more people would give the classics a chance.  The language and imagery in the written play of Oedipus is breathtaking and very modern for having been written in 429 B.C. The story is not the titilating love between a mother and son as the name has come to mean over the centuries. It is the anguished story of a good man and king who sees the suffering of his people and seeks wisdom and help from the gods in ending their pain. In his search for answers, he discovers the truth about his identity that ultimately distroys everyone he holds dear.  The poetry and depth and strenth of emotion is expressed in a short play in such a way as most authors cannot express in 1,000 pages of a novel.

6.

Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

   I first fell in love with the movie when I was around six or seven years old when it came on PBS at least once a year.  That was in the days before VCRs.  I read the book when I was in my early teens and performed the opening monologue for a speech class contest once, which I won, incidentally. The most intriguing thing about this story for me was the lack of naming of the main, narrative character.  This single, almost off-hand decision on the author's part was so fascinating, forcing the reader to follow the journey and the bizarre triangle of Mr. deWinter and the 2 Mrs. deWinters, that the past and present seem to gently collide into one another in a heady collage of images, emotions, and sensations.

 5.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

   My father began reading this to me every autumn when I was five years old.  We began around the middle of August and he would read a few pages a night, pacing it just so, so we would finish on Halloween week, when Jem and Scout finally meet Boo Radley.  I read it to my daughter when she was 9 and we both lay on the bed sobbing together when it was over, then I allowed her to watch the movie.  Both transport me back in time to when I was a young Southern girl full of imagination and ideas to change the world.  When I pick it up occassionally and begin to read, I still hear my father's voice, soothing in the warm fall nights, counting the days until Halloween when I would hear my father read those magnificent words, "Thank you, Arthur, for my children."

 4.

 The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House by Mary Chase

   Originally titled The Wicked Pigeon Ladies in the Garden, this book still haunts me today.  I read it very often as a preteen and teenager and found a copy recently for my daughter, whose different tastes did not include a love for this book.  It is the story of a young girl who is quite unruly, always getting into trouble, who runs into the grounds of a long-abandoned Victorian house near her neighborhood to escape punishment.  There she finds the seven daughters from the old paintings on the stairwell are not only alive, but that she has been transported back in time to Victorian elegance in the midst of a mystery involving charms, lost children, and crime and punishment.  

3.

The Blackwater Saga by Michael McDowell

 

   My father started reading these books to me when I was around 2nd or 3rd grade.  We read them a few times as a family. I remember we would sit in the living room when the summer storms would knock the power out, the back sliding glass doors onto the veranda open, ran falling in great gray curtains and splattering from the eaves.  It was poetically appropriate.  Blackwater is a series of six books telling the epic tale of the Caskey family beginning in 1919.  The Caskeys were a deep south monied family who, upon encountering a young, mysterious school teacher stranded in a flood, were tossed into turmoil involving ghosts, monsters, murder, scheming, and more mayhem and plots than you can shake a broom at.  Written with McDowell's eloquent grasp on Southern language and sensibilities, Blackwater is a series of books that defines my personal literary culture.

2. 

The Ghost in the Swing by Janet Patton Smith

   I believe I was in fourth grade and it was summer the first time my mother and I found this book in the library.  We took turns reading it aloud to each other and were finished by August, in time for my dad and I to begin To Kill a Mockingbird.  We fell in love with the book and I spent years looking for a copy when I thought my retired library copy was lost.  Very hard to find and the only ones in existance are old library copies that begin around $100. Fortunately I found mine a few years ago.  It is the story of a young teenaged girl who is sent to live with an aunt for a summer and is haunted by the ghost of a relative she never knew who sends her on a quest to look for her body and tell her story.  We read this book every summer for about six or seven years and now and again I pick it up once more and relive those carefree summer days when I was a young girl, haunted by a gothic daydream.

1.

Harry Potter Books by J.K. Rowling

   Of course, anyone who knows me could tell you that I am a Slytherin and that Harry Potter is not only my favorite set of movies but also my favorite set of books.  Magic, friendship, secrets, broken alliances, evil wizards.  What more could you ask for! The first book, while on the childish side, is just the beginning.  As the children age, so does the age level and appeal of the books.  Can't say anything more without gushing.