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Subscribe to my Substack: patrickemclean.substack.com. I launch everything there for free first. New shorts every Wednesday. New chapters every Friday. I'm currently serializing a "A Town Called Nowhere," but I have begun work on a sequel to the Merchant Adventurer (working title: The Brother's Grift.) Now that they've won the Kingdom can they keep it? The mightiest military forces in the world are coming to take Robrecht back by force and somebody better think of something quick.

About Writing the Merchant Adventurer

In the middle of my life, I found myself in a maze of twisting passages, each alike…

I’ve had this thing I’ve needed to get out of my system. It’s writing a heroic tale without a hero in it. How to Succeed in Evil, my first series, is about a really smart guy in a world of super-powered people. He succeeds not because he’s powerful, but because he’s smart, ruthless and (in a very strange way) reasonable. The book you hold in your hands (or file you hold on your digital device) represents another one of those stories. And it had an odd genesis.

I begged my way into a gig writing and designing levels for a cRPG (computer role playing game). This is not the kind of thing I would be likely to do, except that it was the sequel to Wasteland, a game which my 16 year-old self deeply adored and admired. So of course, I helped fund the Kickstarter for Wasteland 2. Since I knew one of the original designers, Mike Stackpole, I asked him if I could pitch in some words. I was happy to do so for free as a thank you to my 16-year-old testosterone-addled self for not getting me killed at that awkward age. I was not suicidal, but curiosity and fearlessness are dangerous brew.

I did some concept stuff for Wasteland 2. I came up with some ideas and mythology for the cults in the game as well as some background bits. Brian Fargo liked it, so he asked me to do more. He and Matt Findley were very patient and helpful as they coached me through the process of writing and designing levels. Along the way I got to meet and work with very talented and dedicated people including Chris Avellone, Colin McComb, Nathan Long, Chris Keenan and Kevin Saunders.

I learned a great deal from the experience. And I discovered something interesting about myself along the way. I knew a lot more about computer role playing games than I realized. In fact, I had played most all of the seminal games in the genre. Misspent youth? Perhaps.

Enter the Merchant

One of my most favorite, and one of the most ancient games was the original Wizardry. Wizardry and Ultima came out at, effectively, the same time and they have served to define the cRPG genre ever since. Wizardry gave the first (albeit crude) first-person perspective I ever encountered in a game. Ultima used the top-down perspective that would one day evolve to frazzle my nerves in Starcraft.

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I played Wizardry on an Apple III. This was the same box on which I learned to program Pascal. This ungainly beige wonder was also connected to my first hard drive. A 10 pound miracle of innovation called the Apple ProFile. Who would ever use more than 5 megs anyway?

Thirty-two years later, I drew on the experience of playing Wizardry and countless other games, to write Wasteland 2. And that’s when I remembered Boltac.

Just as Wizardry is the granddaddy of all cRPGs. Boltac is the granddaddy of all merchants and stores in cRPGs. For me he was a magnificent bastard of a character. In spite of having no in-game characterization at all. In fact, the only hint you got about him was a note in the manual suggesting that he would sell you his arms. This ambiguity was intentional.

Oh, and there was one other thing you quickly learned about Boltac – his absolutely ruthless approach to trade. Boltac’s Trading Post was quite literally the only game in town. And he perfectly exploited his monopoly privilege in a way that would make the greediest inside trader say, “Damn, dude. That’s harsh.”

In economic terms, he knew exactly how much everything was worth and exactly what to sell it for to get the most money. This is something that business people would give their eyeteeth to know. Perfect information does not exist. And the whole of useful, durable knowledge about pricing can be summed up in the phrase, “Whatever the traffic will bear.” The only way to know that is to make a deal and try to find out. But you’re always, always wrong. The only question is “by how much?”

If you’ve ever negotiated a salary or a project payment or the purchase of a ruby necklace, then you’ll know that feeling – that awful feeling that you might have left money on the table. But that’s the thing with Boltac. He never left money on the table. And he never lost a sale because he asked for too much.

What would a story about that guy be like?

This question popped into my head as I was writing the dialog for a merchant in Wasteland 2. Balcom Maldrige, the merchant you can find in the Free-Trade Zone in the Gipper’s area of Los Angeles. The idea of the groups of people you encounter in WL2 is that, in response to the physic terror of the end of the world, they grouped themselves into cults created around one aspect of pre-war society. With the Gippers it was Ronald Reagan.

Playing a game, especially one with as rich, dark and satirical a subtext as Wasteland 2, it’s easy to overlook the process of writing any character in any setting. Among the questions that the writer has to ask is “What does the world/scenario look like to this character?” Often the world is fanciful, absurd and ridiculous. This presents no problem as long as the creator(s) maintain an internal consistency.

So what does the world of a fantasy RPG look like to a merchant like Boltac?

In Wizardry, you don’t have to answer this question. He’s just the store, he never talks or interacts with the players. But now, countless cRPG’s in, we need an answer to questions like this to refresh the genre.

So here are the facts of the Merchant’s existence as I see them.

1. He’s trying to make a buck.

2. He sells to penniless, unsuccessful adventurers who are trying to stop some malevolent blight (evil wizard, dragon, ancient demon, what-have-you) they believe has plagued the land.

3. Most of these unsuccessful adventurers get killed.

4. The Malevolent Blight might not actually be a plague on the land. (Maybe it’s just misunderstood? Maybe it’s all a con?)

5. The ones who come back from their adventures do so with loot that they want to sell.

6. The merchant then, would be a surly, jaded pawnbroker, making his living off a desperate, deluded and non-productive group of people.

7. He’s a greedy bastard who sticks his neck out for nobody.

So then the question became, how do you tell a story where the merchant is driven to become the hero and save the day? Piece of cake. En-henh. But whatever. The book that follows is the result. I unapologetically wrote this story for myself. But you’re certainly welcome to enjoy it too.