Game Night Review

To paraphrase the Great Bard, “All the world is a campaign, and the players are merely gods.” That pretty much sums up Jonny Nexus‘ Game Night.
Start with a generous helping of Terry Prachett, add a dash of Douglas Adams, a pinch of Christopher Moore and season heavily with Dead Gentlemen’s Gamers. A humorous novel about gaming? Yep. Let me break this down for you. The Allfather (our under appreciated DM) spent ages crafting the mortal realm and creating an epic quest for the other gods and their mortals (or as we call them player characters). And as players are want to do, they completely screw things up. The poor normal mortals (NPC’s) have to deal with those odd and sometimes morally reprehensible decisions that player characters tend to make. And of course there’s that occasional reality retcon thanks to metagaming and the time honored tactic of whining at the DM.
Most of this is caused the Warrior God playing his anti-paladin Draag. He’s an arrogant power gamer, a munchkin and a rules lawyer. One of his finer moments will hopefully lead to a new buzz word for my gaming group, “The Eleventh Slot” (Sorry, folks no more explanation. I try to keep the positve reviews spoiler free). Then there’s the Sleeper. We all know him, too. When he’s not dozing, he’s asking what just happened. Or worse, the infamous, “I’ll do whatever he is doing.” We also got the mandatory Halfling kleptomaniac, the lady wizard and the barbarian shaman/druid/cleric type guy rounding out the party of archetypical heroes.
This is one of those few books that I actually laughed out loud when I read it. All these characters were people I had gamed with at one time or the other. And I have to admit it, there were times when I was the one who made the DM roll his eyes in frustration. All in all, it’s a fun look at life around the gaming table through the eyes of a group of slightly dysfunctional gods.
And yes, the gods do play with dice.
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