NPCs

Good if you like D&D. Had some really nice moments but I don't feel that I need to read the rest of the series.

This whole thing is so fucking meta. I love the world that is created and the fact that the characters are the opposite of their stereotypical classes. The way the D&D mechanics are interwoven into the plot and worldbuilding is really funny. 

The toxic murderhobo party having bad luck is fucking amazing too. I'm curious how the universe will develop with all this meta stuff. Waking up a real character to be a NPC is fucking amazing. 

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

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%

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).

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)

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

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.

Short, but fun.

I love RPGs, so the concept was interesting. I wish that the there had been a little more to the plot and a lot more to the character development, but I'm excited to read the sequel.