January 29th, 2026
Yesterday, a comment from an old friend led me to search the Internet for reviews of Le Morte d’Arthur. I hadn’t done so for at least 18 months, so I thought it might be a good idea to see if there were any new takes on the storyworld. What I found was depressing.
First, I found only four reviews of the design. That in itself is depressing; I would have hoped that, after three years, word would have gotten out. People continue to play the storyworld at a steady pace, but apparently they don’t see fit to publish anything about it on the web.
Worse, though, is the fact that the reviews demonstrate a failure to grasp what Le Morte d’Arthur does. I noted four dispiriting thoughts about it that were mentioned by at least two reviewers.
Rape
The first was the complaint that the storyworld seems to revel in tales of rape. I was stunned by this accusation, because, out of 360 encounters in the storyworld, only 4 include any cases of rape and one refers to such an event. Perhaps those four incidents were so horrifying — as any story of rape should be — that they stuck in the reviewer’s mind long afterwards. In any case, my writing made it very clear that rape is a heinous crime that inflicts great suffering — and they seemed to think the opposite. In one encounter, one of Arthur’s men rapes a Saxon woman and she bites off his penis — and the kindest of Arthur’s possible responses is to note that he got what he deserved.
Misogyny
This one really got under my skin. Two reviewers complained about what they interpreted to be misogynistic views expressed in the storyworld. I cannot imagine whatever led them to this preposterous conclusion. While it’s true that the fighting was done by men, there are several important female characters in the storyworld, the most obvious being Guenevere. Arthur’s wife frequently advises him, criticizes his actions, and recommends courses of action — and Arthur heeds her advice. He clearly accords her great respect, turning a number of important responsibilities over to her. There’s Maben, the young woman who showed up at the gates of Camelot, starving and alone; now she manages the function of the great hall, where everybody dines and meetings are held. Arthur chats with her often. Rhianu is Camelot’s doctor, but she can seldom do much to combat the injuries and diseases that kill so often; most people who come to her die regardless of her ministrations. Still, she soldiers on, fighting battles against death that she always loses, knowing that the best she can usually do is ameliorate their pain. The women in Arthur’s life are all strong people who have endured endless travails and never give up.
Gamers
I don’t think a single one of the reviewers could shake loose from the gamer’s perspective; despite the first page explicitly declaring that Le Morte d’Arthur is not a game and would disappoint gamers, these reviewers expressed their disappointment at the storyworld’s failures as a game. It didn’t give them immediate feedback on the effectiveness of their decisions. Dammit, don’t these people know what a story is? Odysseus never had feedback telling him how to cope with Polyphemus, or what to do about Calypso or Circe, or how to get past Scylla and Charybdis. He just did what he could and bumbled through. The whole point of a story is that you don’t know how it will turn out until the very end, when all the pieces come together and suddenly the story makes sense.
Another complaint from the gamers was that they were unable to figure out the best strategy to “win”. The protagonist doesn’t win a tragedy. Arthur dies no matter what he does! Sheesh… gamers.
“It’s just like…”
Then there are the fellows who dismissed Le Morte d’Arthur as just another piece of interactive fiction. One said it was the same as any “Choose your own adventure” design. I gnashed several of my teeth to powder reading this crap. Obviously they never played more than one game, and I suspect that several of them never actually completed a single game. Yes, it’s long, but if it’s too long for you, you shouldn’t publish your uninformed opinion about it. I fully expect people to play it two or three times, and those who have done so have all expressed their praise for the design, because it communicates some deep ideas that you’ll never get out of any game or even any work of interactive fiction. I acknowledge that it’s possible to design games or interactive fictions with deep artistic content, but in 45 years of pursuing that goal, I was never able to accomplish such a thing, and I have never seen anything that did.
My conclusion after reading these reviews is that these people failed to understand Le Morte d’Arthur. Their thinking is so saturated with game-think or interactive-fiction-think that they simply cannot grasp a work that lies outside the pale of those genres. I’m composing music for the deaf.
While this realization is depressing, I am not so pessimistic as to think that culture will never surpass its current limitations. But for that to happen, people need to develop an impatience with the stultifying narrowness of these genres, an urgent desire for something that goes beyond those rut-bound fields. Someday, that will happen, and when it does, I hope that people will look back at Le Morte d’Arthur, recognize how dramatically primitive it is, but see also in it the path to success.