Why Sam Sykes Wrote a Pathfinder Novel

Around the time my first novel, Tome of the Undergates, got published, fantasy was awash in names like Abercrombie, Morgan, Lynch—people who were out there, subverting all this fantasy hogwash tripe such as heroes of pure good, always-evil orcs, people that weren’t utter buttheads. These were heady days for fantasy, freshly hip after the success of Martin’s very serious, very gritty series, and a new tablet of commandments was chiseled.
It was hard to sell a character who wasn’t an absolute jerk; after all, that might suggest that people were inherently good, and that’s very not serious fantasy. It was hard to pitch a loving, consensual relationship; all that frippery and fluffery is for not serious fantasy. And god help you if you wrote something that might resemble (shudder) a roleplaying game.
That garbage, with its rules and its call for imagination, was the surest mark of amateur.
And, indeed, that was a call leveled against me a lot when I first started out. The blogosphere was ablaze, in those days, with various people complaining that my work resembled an RPG session, and I had no respect for serious fantasy, and I clearly based my books off of gaming sessions between me and my lowlife friends.
Well, I didn’t have any friends, so the joke’s on you, nerds.
That’s an exaggeration, but not much of one: in truth, most of my friends didn’t play any sort of tabletop RPG, and the only exposure I got to that was the charity D&D games I played with Peter V. Brett and Myke Cole—and I was usually drunk at those. Regardless, in those days, “RPG” was among the foulest of words that could be used in reference to a fantasy book, and it was hurled at my work frequently.
I won’t say how long I internalized those criticisms and how long that haunted me, but I will say this…
The day you learn to stop listening to people who were always going to hate you is the day you are truly free as a writer.
Thankfully, blogging is a federal crime now, and many bloggers are either fugitives from the law or awaiting sentencing. But I found myself, after having tried (and admittedly failed) at being very serious for a long time, yearning to do the traditionally not-very-serious fantasy stuff.
And one of those yearnings was to dip my toes into RPGs.

When James Sutter of Paizo, Inc. asked me to do a Pathfinder book, he sent me a few reference materials: Bestiary, Core Rulebook, and, most importantly, Guide to the Inner Sea. It was a great little almanac of all the nations of the setting’s world, all of which was interesting, right up until I got to the part about the Gorilla King.
Effing. Sold.
There’s this nation, see. And it’s not civilized, but it has a ruler. The ruler is a gorilla. He wears a cape. He is a king. He is a Gorilla King (not King Gorilla) and he rules over a nation of ape-people. And I am so in.
Not precisely because I wanted to write a Gorilla King (I do, but Shy Knives features detective stories with centaurs and infernal genetics), but because I appreciate the idea of a Gorilla King.
There is a renaissance in fantasy, I think, as we slowly grow tired of the grim bastards and the relentless misery. Not necessarily a return to the days of Dark Ones and Chosen Ones, but a desire for stories that are fun again, stories that are exciting, full of magic and wonder and adventure and maybe a few less politics and feast scenes.

And I feel like tie-in fiction probably has a place in that. And, truth be told, it probably always did.
Some of the most popular and successful book series revolve around settings taken from various RPGs: Warhammer, D&D, and so forth. It’s one of those things that I think doesn’t cross our minds much, but these are not only hugely popular, they’re formative fiction. People who might otherwise not read extensively are often drawn in by their love of a game, which in turn leads to more books, more reading, and expanding tastes.
I’m evidence enough of that. I went from Drizzt, to Ned Stark, to crying softly into my pillow, to writing my own books. Each played an important part in my career as a writer and a reader.
And frankly, I’m kind of pumped to be part of that for someone else now.
Also Gorilla Kings.
Because Gorilla Kings.
Sam Sykes is the author of the Aeons’ Gate trilogy, Pathfinder Tales: Shy Knives, and the Bring Down Heaven series. He’s a popular humorous online personality with a dedicated fanbase. Learn more about Sam on his website or follow him on Twitter @SamSykesSwears (he sure does).