NPCs

What? Just 13min of reading? This book is unbearingly boring! Another case where the twist makes no difference.

I'll force myself to write something about what I read:

” A group of adventurers die in a tavern due to unintentional self poisoning. While looting their corpses, the tavern patrons find out a scroll requesting their presence before the king. Since the king apparently a mad, suspicious SOB that would likely destroy the whole village if these adventurers weren't to show up, the patrons decide to take their place. The thing is the adventurers were 1st level PCs (Player Characters), while the patrons are just 0 level NPCs (Non-Player Characters). in order to save their village, they decide to risk their lives gaining levels by killing monsters in order to attend the king and perform whatever high risk quest he is to give them.”

Read 0:13 / 7:51 3%

This is a fun romping adventure wit ha nice twist. If you ever enjoyed playing Dungeon's & Dragons or anything similar for hours with your friends, you'll “get” this book.

A group of players starts a new campaign that the GM has invested a lot of time and effort preparing for them. A campaign that is “a lot more realistic” than their previous ones. That means they have to pay attention to every little detail. Unfortunately, as many gamers have experienced, there are always those in a gaming group who only care about certain parts of the gaming experience (the fighting) or who are so busy trying to figure out how to short circuit the “experience” to get to the loot. So not long after setting the stage for the campaign, the whole party ends up dead due to an unfortunate side effect of some mushrooms they found along the way.

But the NPC's (Non-Player Characters) in the campaign world are left to pick up the pieces when they find the bodies and realize this means the less-than-benevolent King may come to their town and destroy it because of these “lost adventurers.” So they have to take up the mantle and set off on an unexpected quest.

It's a pretty fun read. I'm not going to say there's anything exceptionally original about it, but it moves quickly, develops the characters and world, and definitely left a smile on my face after reading it. This is the first in a series, and I'll definitely pick up the next one to see what happens next. That said, this is a pretty well-contained story in itself. More like reading The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe than The Fellowship of the Ring.

Similar reads:
Off to Be the Wizard (Scott Meyer) (the whole Magic 2.0 series, in fact)

I like the idea of casting a group of unwilling (at least at first) NPCs into the roles of adventurers. I love how the author uses and abuses quite a number of RPG clichés.
The story does have its funny moments, though the number of typos and grammatical errors were a bit distracting.
I'd like to read more about the main characters (especially how the new recruit fares in future adventures).