Lankhmar, Gray mouser, Fafhrd- what should I read?

Just Another Snake Cult · May 05, 2017, 06:04:17 PM

Read the whole Goddamn saga. Every story. The F&tGM series is one of those rare delights of pop culture that really does live up to it's reputation.

Baulderstone · May 05, 2017, 10:09:10 PM

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;960875Read the whole Goddamn saga. Every story. The F&tGM series is one of those rare delights of pop culture that really does live up to it's reputation.

So true. It's been fifteen years since the last time I read them. I think I am going to pull them off the shelf tonight and give them another read.

Steven Mitchell · May 05, 2017, 10:14:14 PM

Quote from: Just Another Snake Cult;960875Read the whole Goddamn saga. Every story. The F&tGM series is one of those rare delights of pop culture that really does live up to it's reputation.

Just finished rereading the complete set last month, for about the 10th time. Agree. Even the lesser stories are lesser only in comparison to the better ones. The lesser ones are still far better than many other options being published today.

Leiber was a fairly odd guy, and sometimes that shows up in his writing.

finarvyn · May 07, 2017, 11:23:24 AM

One thing that I found cool is that the F&GM stories feel like RPG sessions, only they were written decades before the first D&D rules set was published. And years ago a Lankhmar board game was imagined (later published by TSR in the 1970's) which was a proto-RPG where you had to move characters around the map trying to fulfill quests and such.

If I was to make a short list of "essential" reading these would be on it.

Voros · May 07, 2017, 08:38:31 PM

I don't many of the stories actually resembling sessions at all but I know others do. You can see glimmers here and there but these are carefully crafted, often character based stories. I guess I can see it for the more location based stories like Two Sought Adventure and particularly Stardock.

finarvyn · May 08, 2017, 12:10:34 PM

Maybe it was the other way around for me -- my group started playing in '75 and there really weren't any modules out there so we made our own adventures, and I guess we patterned them after the stories we ran. That would explain why our early campaigns were so much like the Conan and F&GM stories.

RPGPundit · May 11, 2017, 12:32:12 AM

I know I didn't read every single story, but all the ones I read were awesome.

Psikerlord · May 11, 2017, 09:01:46 PM

Well I've never listened to an audio book before, and just finished The Howling Tower (it was like 45mins). Terrific! Really enjoyed it.

I also listened to Ill Met In Lankhmar, but I didnt like that one as much (something about the voice used for Fafhrd just rubs me the wrong way, and he does a lot of talking in this one).

Next up, The Sunken land