Yeah, there is that. Some writers have a gift for names. Feist isn't one of them. Which is a shame, because there are moments when Magician is pretty good. There are moments when it is very much by-the-numbers fantasy, but on balance I think I'd give it four out of five.

I don't see why characters in a role playing game have to be from the Very Thin Book of Fantasy Women. That might be a reason for an oddly structured plot or awkward pacing (as the characters charge off in all directions failing to miss obvious clues) but character development doesn't fall into that category.

It was published 1982, not 1882!

I'm prepared to make allowances for historical cultural differences, but for a man in 1982, even one immersed in a relatively male culture, to be writing like this is not, in my view, cultural, it's just poor, careless and clumsy character building. He's obviously read Tolkien, one assumes he has probably read Le Guin, so he must have some idea that characters can have more than one dimension.

Whether the book is based on a game or not should not make any difference to the quality of the character building : there is nothing intrinsic to any game that says characters must be onedimensional.

He's just not very good. He may be better now, I don't know, I've not read the rest of his stuff. But his not very goodness is nothing to do with 1982 or roleplaying, it's just him.

I wouldn't say male roleplayer = shallow female characters. I know one or two women roleplayers whos male characters tend to be better than their female ones, and some male RPers who's female characters are awesome.