NPCs

Executive Summary: Why did I wait so long to listen to this one? This book is a lot of fun. If you're a (Tabletop) RPG fan, I highly recommend picking this one up.Audiobook: Roger Wayne is excellent. He does a variety of voices for the different characters. He speaks with good inflection and volume. Audio is an excellent option for this series.Full ReviewMost if not all people who have played Dungeons & Dragons (or similar tabletop RPGs) or any RPG game for that matter have suffered the loss of a character before. You may have poured hours of time into it's creation, and even more into bringing them to life, depending how long you've been playing it. It probably hurt when they died. But then you just roll up a new character and go on.Did you ever wonder what the NPCs think about your death? Or what they get up to when you're not around to rob, maim or pump them for information? Drew Hayes did, and it's pretty amusing. This book is full of in-jokes, both about RPG games (particularly the dice-rolling variety) and their players.I had this on my radar for some time, but it took an audible sale and a friend reading/enjoying this book to finally get me to give it a shot. I shouldn't have waited. This book does for RPGs much like [b:Off to Be the Wizard 18616975 Off to Be the Wizard (Magic 2.0, #1) Scott Meyer https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1390179189s/18616975.jpg 24775619] does for general fantasy/video games. It's both funny and smart.The characters are excellent too. You'll never look at Goblins the same way again. Mr. Hayes takes some well worn tropes of RPGs and comes at them from every angle, all while telling a pretty good story that will make you want to run out and pick up your dice. Or at least it did for me.For you D&D sorts you may want to keep your copy of the player's handbook at hand, so you can look up various spells as you read. Or maybe that's just me. Perhaps you have them all memorized anyways.The writing is a bit unpolished in some places, but I was too busy having fun to really care. Great characters, story telling and my general nostalgia of the years I spent playing Dungeons and Dragons really endeared this book to me immediately.Mr. Hayes also sets things up nicely for a series. I'm not sure how many he has in mind, but I could read a whole bunch of them. I'm not playing D&D anymore, so this might be as close as I can get for now.This book has far too few reviews on Goodreads. I highly recommend picking this up, at least if you're an RPG fan. I'll be curious to see if it's as enjoyable to general fantasy fans. I think there is enough here that it probably will be, but I suspect many of the in-jokes may be lost on them.