I am not a gamer, but I think I might know how it works now

The premise of NPCs is not terribly original: what if when people stopped playing, the world of the D&D-like game kept moving, and the characters who aren’t actually players have independent existences. I feel like I’ve seen this sort of thing before, but at the same time, here it was still somewhat entertaining. This is not highly literary fiction one reads for the sake of being able to say one has read it; this is the kind of thing you read when you want something somewhat mindless but entertaining and fun.

Eric, Gabrielle, Thistle, and Grumph are a pair of humans, a gnome, and a half orc respectively who end up in a tavern when a group of player-adventurers commit a fatal error of judgement and end up dead. For the players, this means they have to stop the game and begin a new session for the characters they need to figure out how to not get blamed for killing a group of adventurers under commission by the king who likes to burn villages to make examples of those who bother him. They decide to take over the dead men’s identities and roles, and complete their quest to save their village from the wrath of the king. As they journey, they actually have to become adventurers, battling strange demons, getting caught by goblins who turn out to be pretty decent, meeting other adventurers (sometimes the same players whose characters they’ve taken over), and learning that there exists another world which somehow can influence their own. Along the way, the settle into their roles as character types, after having to switch a time or two to best suit skills to individuals.

I have to admit, I liked the alternation between the world of the gamers and the game. Both have a degree of realism to them achieved by focusing of the characterization of the individuals. The gaming nerds seem like actual people (that is, they have some variety to them), and the non-playable characters actually have some personality. And {minor spoilers ahead} it turns out that maybe the world of the game can influence the world of the gamers, at least a little. There’s a bit with exploding dice and a playable character becoming independent of his player and joining the team; it’s little moments like these that keep things interesting and not totally predictable.

There are a couple of sequels that I may at some point hunt down, but I feel no hurry. While I wouldn’t say this novel is forgettable, it’s easy reading and just generic enough that it won’t take long to catch up before picking the story back up again at some point in the future.