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Review of The Aubrey/Maturin Epic
Set during the Napoleonic Wars, the books detail the friendship and naval career of Jack Aubrey, a large, good, enthusiastic and brilliant captain, and his surgeon Stephen Maturin, a dark, melancholy Irish-Catalan, who is a doctor, naturalist, and excellent spy for Britain against Napoleon.
The strengths of the books lie not so much in plot, although when the action does come it is vivid and bloody, and Maturin's activities as a spy are thrillingly full of disguise, double-crossing, and murder, but in the richness of O'Brian's character-building, and the intricacies of his depiction of period life. Both Jack and Stephen come to seem both absolutely real and deeply mythic; I suspect that they are characters of such power that any subsequent work set in the Napoleonic Era is going to have to deal in some way with their shadows.
On literary and entertainment value alone, you should all go and buy all twenty books right now. (I'd make an exception for THE HUNDRED DAYS, the weakest of the series by far.) Among the many delights that await you are Jack's escape from France disguised as a bear, the fearsome fighting prowess of Awkward Davies, Stephen's destruction of the French spy network in America, the declaration of Jack's genitalia 'taboo', and the transcendent depiction of a Buddhist sanctuary where animals and man live at peace with each other. If you need somewhere to start, I'd recommend the third in the series, H.M.S. SURPRISE.
But this is, after all, a roleplaying review. How do these books apply to gaming?
Most obviously, they're an invaluable resource for the late 18th and early 19th century. There's few games set in that period at the moment, but the depiction of London civil and criminal life would suit GURPS Goblins well, and the nautical material would be useful to any earlier swashbuckling game, such as LACE & STEEL or 7TH SEA. They could inspire an entire Napoleonic era game in and of themselves; I'd recommend GURPS as capturing the feel of the series, with its detailed characters, frequent use of skills, and realistic, bloody combat.
More generally, any of the characters could be stolen wholesale for a game. Clarissa Oakes, in particular, would be interesting to drop in on a group, to watch them fighting over her. The minor seamen, such as Barret Bonden and Preserved Killick, are a fine example of how to use grogs in ARS MAGICA - indeed, the whole structure of the ship would be a good framework for 'troupe' style adventures.
Nautical adventures, too, have been distinctly lacking from roleplaying, although the recent boon in swashbuckling games might counteract this. O'Brian would obviously be a great inspiration here; his descriptions of storms and shipwrecks, as well as the ordinary tedium of life at sea, are great material.
The best source of inspiration, however, is O'Brian's description of foreign locations and cultures. From India to Peru, he takes the same rich delight in the people, landscape, and flora and fauna of different parts of the world as his alter-ego Stephen Maturin does. Many role-playing games, especially fantasy ones, seem to depict all cities, peoples and cultures as the same, so that the game ends up being set in a generic 'fantasyland' and the world has no sense of reality. O'Brian makes aspects of real-life cultures seem more marvellously exotic than any fantastical race or science-fiction planet, and GMs who can capture some of the same feel will improve their games immensely.
I'm an O'Brian fanboy, obviously, but then, so are an awful lot of people; I've heard them described as 'crack for intellectuals.' Go buy them, and apply the lessons therein to your games.
Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)
