I just wanted to jot down the part of the novel that outs Mieville as a geek with D&D in his past:

“Apparently, there’s a few serious adventurers in town right now, claiming to have just liberated some major trow haul from the ruins in Tashek Rek Hai. May be up for a little paid work.”

Derkhan looked up. Her face creased in distaste. She shrugged unhappily.

“I know they are some of the hardest people in Bas Lag,” she said slowly. It took some moments for her to turn her mind to the issue. “I don’t trust them, though. They court danger. And they’re quite unscrupulous graverobbers for the most part. Anything for gold and experience.”

From his interview in Dragon #352:

“With the adventurers, I was simply aware of that and I was playfully and affectionally but critically say, ‘You know, if adventurers really wandered around a coherent world with coherent societies and coherent politics, this is what they’d look like.’ They go wandering into other people’s barrows and steal jewlery off their dead kings. This is not okay. They wander around looking for fights, they kill people at a drop of a hat… As I say, I was that soldier, I’m not casting aspersions. But its a playful way of saying, ‘this is what we play.’

“It’s an affectionate critique.”