NPCs

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)