NPCs

Finally the NPCs get a chance to be heros!

Review by: The Audiobook ReviewBetween the books in this series (Spells, Swords, & Stealth), the Caverns and Creatures series by Robert Bevan, and the Authors and Dragons (A&D) podcast, I've learned everything I know about the D&D universe (and the similar but legally distinct worlds portrayed in these novels).

I mostly became aware of the works of Drew Hayes after listening to the A&D podcast. At the time I was only familiar with works by Robert Bevan and Rob Kroese, but since then I've expanded my reading list to include most of the other authors involved in the podcast.

The story opens in the normal (our) universe where five guys are playing a game of "Spells, Swords, & Stealth" (basically D&D but without risk of copyright infringement). Their Game Master, a particularly anal type is trying for more realism in their game, and abruptly kills them all thanks to something dumb they did hours earlier.

We then switch to the world inside the game where the characters the guys had been interacting with (the Non-Player Characters, or NPCs) are standing around looking at the dead adventurers. After they find out the adventurers had been summoned by the mad king of the realm, and knowing the king would likely lay waste to the entire village in revenge, the poor saps assume the adventurer's identities and go forth into the world.

They divvy up the roles as they think best (e.g. Half-Orc is the barbarian, etc) but in their travels, they discover they may have been a bit hasty in this respect. It was good to see stereotypes being broken.

Later, they're given their royal mission to retrieve an artifact of immense power. As the plot slowly unwinds, you get an idea of what effect the artifact is having on the SS&S world, to the bafflement of the players in the real world. I don't want to say too much more because I don't want to spoil any of the plot. Suffice it to say though even as someone who has never played a tabletop RPG it's a highly enjoyable story filled with lovable characters.

Mister Hayes does a great job of injecting the details you need to know to understand the basics of a dice-based decision game without making it sound like an info dump, for example explaining the effect of triple-thrown "1" by alternating between the real universe and the cavern the character is exploring.

The narrator, Roger Wayne, delivers a solid performance. Voicing the different characters and bringing the story to life, I found him easy to listen to, certainly will be happy to listen to further books in the series with Rodger telling the story.

TL;DR Version
A fun, humorous fantasy epic with many more books left in the series!