The Joy of Erudition’s Reviews > Gamer Fantastic > Status Update

Despite being one of the longer stories, "Being Played" didn't have enough space for all of its ideas to breathe. It's a story about an old pulp writer attending a con, where his stories are adapted into a new VR RPG. Then it becomes an occult detective story for a while, then a kind of Inception plot, then a Dr Strange story. Sometimes we hear more interesting action taking place over radio. Then an abrupt end.

"Aggro Radius" uses a non-linear format, going back and forth between the big chase scene and the events that led up to the chase, and I think it would have been much better simply linear, especially since one character is introduced *after* he's taken actions. Also named a location both "Annex" and "Annexe". Otherwise, this is a good Die Hard-like action story with good characters and setting, and some nice ideas.

"The War on Two Fronts" is an interesting story of ghostly possession via a magic RPG at a gaming convention. Along the way, it made an RPG based around WW1 aerial dogfighting sound pretty fun!

"You Forgot..." is a revenge-fic starring real life authors, companies, and executives, names altered but still easily recognisable. Ed Greenwood, creator and main consultant of the Forgotten Realms, is pushed out entirely by the new head of Hasbro's RPG division, for petty reasons, who plans to gut the setting and turn it gritty. Mistake. Odd to have this here, since the real Greenwood also has a story in this book.

"The Gods of Every Other Wednesday Night" is one of the worst, most self-indulgent things I've ever read. I don't know how the editors thought this was a good idea to publish, or even how the author thought it was a good idea to write it. Interrupting the story every few paragraphs to inject an author's commentary and a 2nd-person description of my reactions? No ending? And full of errors? Garbage.

"Mission from Hel" kept it unclear exactly what was going on until near the end of the story, interspersing adventurers in a fantasy setting with a modern governmental mission control room watching them. I didn't like this structure. Additionally, all of the previous stories have been free of spelling and grammar errors despite the errors in the intros, but this one was full of all kinds of errors.

"Griefer Madness" takes place at an augmented reality MMO-like theme park in the future, where a private detective has to find a player who's unaware that his grandfather is dying. Unfortunately, the grandfather's greedy wife has hired griefers to slow him down. I've read a lot of VR and AR MMO based books, and they rarely ring true, but this was okay.

"Mightier than the Sword" is a wisecracking urban fantasy focused on book magic, where certain people can pull things out of books, but only 3 times a year. Many real world authors and books are referenced, but the antagonist is a fictitious author with this power, whose books have newly become popular. Not a bad story, though this one doesn't have anything to do with gaming, despite being set at a SF/fantasy con.