NPCs by Drew Hayes

What happens when the haggling is done and the shops are closed? When the quest has been given, the steeds saddled, and the adventurers are off to their next encounter? They keep the world running, the food cooked, and the horses shoed, yet what adventurer has ever spared a thought or concern for the Non-Player Characters? In the town of Maplebark, four such NPCs settle in for a night of actively ignoring the adventurers drinking in the tavern when things go quickly and fatally awry. Once the dust settles, these four find themselves faced with an impossible choice: pretend to be adventurers undertaking a task of near-certain death or see their town and loved ones destroyed. Armed only with salvaged equipment, second-hand knowledge, and a secret that could get them killed, it will take all manner of miracles if they hope to pull off their charade. And even if they succeed, the deadliest part of their journey may well be what awaits them at its end.

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%

Very fun, light adventure. Looking forward to continuing the series.

What a fun read! The ‘characters' are nicely fleshed out and intruiging enough that I want to keep journeying with them.

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)