The Girl Who Played with Fire, by Stieg Larsson

I just finished the second book in Larsson's "Millennium Trilogy", and I have to say I'm even more impressed with it than the first book.

Dragon Tattoo was a somewhat claustrophobic and tight book about a complex mystery spanning generations. Played with Fire instead puts the well-detailed characters of the previous book front and center and weaves its mysteries around them more directly.

I was extremely impressed with the characters, especially as revelations cast new light on their behavior back through the first novel. I also thought the mystery was well-plotted, with its revelations still ... revelatory. However, I was the most impressed by Larsson's ability to surprise me. Several of the plot twists were shocking, as was his decision to take one of the main characters off-screen for something like 200 pages. One of the revelations near the end (the big one) actually made me gasp. I love it when an author is actually able to surprise me, but in a fair way.

I'm rarely willing to put in the effort for a book of Played with Fire's length (723 pages in our paperback edition), but here it was entirely worthwhile. It's likely the best book I've read this year, and also one that kept me totally enthralled, though a little less right at the end (when mystery turned to action).

Overall the ending was the one thing that I wasn't entirely happy with. It concluded many major points (and shocked me again), but left a lot up the air, with the next book picking up just hours later as a result. I would have preferred a better conclusion, as with Dragon Tattoo.

I would happily pick up the paperback of the Hornet's Nest, Larsson's final book, right away but the greedy publisher is still maintaining it only in hardcovers and trade paperbacks over a year after it's first publication in the US, so I'll just borrow it from the library instead, when I'm ready to read it in 3 or 6 months (before the facts of Played with Fire slip from my head ... though I might watch the movies beforehand to remind myself).

Free RPG Day '11

So today is the fifth annual Free RPG Day. I went down to Games of Berkeley to get a couple of things I wanted (as always: the Pathfinder & D&D books). If memory serves, I haven't been there for Free RPG Day since '07, as I've changed my main game store over to Endgame. Thus, I was pretty shocked to see GoB's display almost exactly as it was five years ago: one card table, set up near the register, with no signage and no discussion of what was going on.

There was also no limit on how much you should take, and thus all the short-run items in the set were long ago gone (which I cared about only because I wanted to take pictures of them, so that I could properly enter their names into the RPGnet Gaming Index).

I mean, kudos to GoB for putting out some cash to give some of its customers freebies, but I'm not convinced it's doing them much good without them paying it more attention. Me, I did try to buy something while at GoB as thanks, but the one book I wanted, the Adventurer's Armory (for Pathfinder) wasn't in stock, nor did anything leap out at me from the new rack. So instead I furtively slipped in and out, two books of loot in hand.

I went over to GoB today because Endgame opted out of Free RPG Day this year. The primary reason was that they'd already scheduled an event for the day, Dresdacon II. But, I'm sure the Free RPG Day hasn't done a lot for them either, though they've given it better attention and happily directed their customers to their freebies in the past.

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In my opinion, the problem with Free RPG Day is that it's blindly aped Free Comics Day without a clear understanding of what makes Free Comics Day a success. And I'm quite sure that Free Comics Day is a success, because I've walked by Comic Relief on Free Comics Days in the past and seen the line winding through the store as people waited to step up to the back counter and pick up their allotted pair of comics. The books were often for kids who were being introduced to comics for the first time. What great marketing that is!

But Free RPG Day just doesn't seem to work as well.

Part of the problem is the medium. A 16-page comic is a perfectly fine introduction to a comics line. However, a 16-page RPG book can't do nearly as much to give an impressions of a game. So, we see two different types of products on Free RPG Day. Some of them are loyalty books, like the Pathfinder adventure and D&D setting I picked up. Others are QuickStarts, which give a bare outline of a rule system and often an even barer adventure. I'm pretty sure the loyalty books don't do a thing to attract new players, while the QuickStarts seem pretty spare and would really need to be played to be effective.

Part of the problem is the cost. The economics of the comics industry allow publishers to produce comics in good quantities at reasonable costs. For whatever reason, the economics of the RPG industry don't. So we get a lot of half-assed productions that look like they ran off of inkjets. Worse, the Free RPG Day program supports publishers producing books in quantities as low as *1* per box (where a retail store might order as low as one box). I'm pretty sure neither low-quality products nor unavailable products are going to do a lot to endear the theoretical new fans to roleplaying.

Part of the problem is the program. To start with, the stores get very little material to help hype the event (basically, a press release and a spare poster [PDF] that they could print out). Worse, the program does nothing to encourage stores to run demos, which would do much more to draw newbies into the world of roleplaying than just picking up a book. I mean, the context of comics is reading, so it makes sense to get things you read on Free Comics Day. The context of RPGs is playing, so wouldn't it equally make sense to get things you play on Free RPG Day?

The QuickStarts could clearly be given to gamemasters as part of an organized demo program on Free RPG Day if they were just handed out to them early. However, a more complete and comprehensive adventure like Paizo's We Be Goblins! could be equally useful (and perhaps more immersive and enjoyable) if stores were willing to seek out GMs experienced with the system.

If a company was willing to go the extra distance, I think they could produce an even more engaging package. For example, Paizo could have produced We Be Goblins! for regular sale, given Free RPG Day GMs a free early copy, then made their actual Free RPG Day product a copy of a 16-page book on goblins. Thus, not only do they have a great demo (with little additional cost), but they also have a free book that players take home which builds on what they learned during the demo and encourages them to come back and learn more about Paizo's world.

I think with a better program, some of the problems of the medium could be solved. Sadly, the Free RPG Day program just doesn't consider the medium very well as it stands. Cost would still be an issue, but at least it'd be a start.