labcats | Noir, Dresden. and Inverted Plots

I've read three of Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden novels, in a rather odd order. I read the 4th one first, which was the best for me to start with, as I liked the particular plot he was doing. I did find it moved at dizzying speeds, and I was annoyed that, at the cost of a %$_*& paperback, the ink smeared, but that's not Butcher's fault.

Then, I read the 2nd, which is a good follower, as it introduces characters who reappear in the 4th. Next, the 6th, which is both good and a bit wearing, but that's another tangent. I'm currently working on the 3rd.

So, I went through the 4th and 2nd again, sketching out the Relationship Maps. The R-Map basically is the plot in the 4th, probably no small part of why I liked it. Both looked like I could borrow the plots for Cthulhupunk sessions, and I tried with the 2nd book, running it for

ebartley. It worked well, with some interesting changes.

Noir can be a very moral genre, and this is the case for the Dresden books. It's part of what gives them their strength. I remember a panel on fantasy noir at Noreascon 4, and I'm sure Butcher was on the panel and that this is where I first heard of the Dresden books.

This type of noir has as the stakes the soul of the hero. Corrupt forces want to buy it. This is an interesting power fantasy, as many of us may wish we had that kind of temptation to face, but folks just aren't interested in buying our souls at a high rate. But, I digress.

So, fantasy noir can make that literal, but doesn't have to, and one of the many good scenes in the 2nd book involves a very non-literal attempt to buy the hero's soul.

This isn't likely to happen in an rpg unless everyone is on the same page, firmly. I mean, here I am, the gm, playing the guy who wants to buy your PC. If you do not really want to play out this kind of temptation, it's not a very interesting scene.

So, first thing I did was to figure that's likely the case. No big. And, that's what there are NPCs for. Some of them can be tempted, come to the PCs for advice, and find the strength to resist temptation. Some can fall, letting the PCs do cool stuff in reaction to that.

That's probably an inversion of the usual pattern.

Another inversion has to do with power. Harry Dresden is a powerful wizard, but he's in a world where most folks don't believe in magic, and where his bills pile up, and where he's a perpetual outsider in the world he would protect. Here, the PC was not any kind of wizard. He had people to do that for him. Money was not a problem. Just about everyone knew that the supernatural existed. He's got a firm place in his chosen community.

Obviously, I changed a lot of things from the book. I actually kept all the factions, except for the hero's -- and, it could be argued that another faction that ebartley's PC was concerned about served that function. But, I added some of the NPCs that were already part of the game world, and that changed the dynamics. I also tied one element that is deliberately not explained in the book into some stuff I'd done before and some stuff I'm planning to do in the future, if things last so long.

And, the adventure worked just fine. But, it was not the kind of adventure Butcher would have written. And, that's fine, too. Different media, different expectations.