The peripheral community that is a f*cking pox on our hobby

[Kellri]

Here's a snipped review from sffworld. She loves the 'Lance, esp. those cover paintings...because there's a h'Elmore where that came from! Me, I want those complicated seams.

I have read the Dragonlance Series since I was a little girl. Being 22, I believe I have read Chronicles over 15 times. I read it once every year. "Dragons of Autumn Twilight" is an excellent leap into the vast world of Krynn, introducing you to characters, races, gods and all other complicated aspects of fantasy in an easy, seamless way. The original cover art by Larry Elmore is by far the most moving. My favorite Character has always been Laurana for her ever evolving personality.

I highly reccomend this book, as well as the original artwork by Larry Elmore. There are so many more paintings that bring this novel to life. - Venusmelody

[Jackalope]

I read some Warhammer Fantasy book years and years ago that involved a dude filled with bugs.  I remember liking it a lot at the time, and being really creeped out by it, and the idea of Chaos in that setting.

I really loved some the small little chapbooks that White Wolf put out that simulated in-game fiction pieces.  I still have copies of the Book of Nod and the Black Spiral Dance even though I got rid of all my WoD gaming material years ago (like '95).  They make excellent props for evil arcane tomes in any fantasy game.

I don't think it's fair to lump fiction derived from a setting, or books like the WoD ones I mentioned, with the sort of complaints raised earlier in the thread.  No one ever mistook a paperback novel for a gaming supplement, and while it might be possible to mistake Black Spiral Dance for a game product (I knwo I did the first time I glanced at it), if you actually read the back before buying it it's clear it's not a game supplement.

The real issue is stuff that is sold as a game supplement that doesn't do anything to help run the game except possibly "inspire" the GM.

[Kyle Aaron]

I once read Feist's novels without knowing they were somehow based upon Dungeons and Dragons... It wasn't bad, and I even picked some interesting ideas from that books...

I believe the system of Feist's game group was, in fact, proto-Rolemaster. He dedicates his first book to "the Friday Nighters", and the same group is mentioned, and the individuals named the same, in some of the credits for Rolemaster.

If you look at the way Rolemaster depicts magic - Mentalism/Essence/Channeling, it's plain that magic in one of the worlds is all Essence, and in the other, all Mentalism, and poor Pug was the wrong kind for his home world, that's why he had trouble learning at first.

Looking around at interviews with the people involved, it seems that they began with D&D, houseruled a lot, merged it into AD&D, houseruled yet more, and this all eventually turned into Rolemaster.

[Kellri]

Looking around at interviews with the people involved, it seems that they began with D&D, houseruled a lot, merged it into AD&D, houseruled yet more, and this all eventually turned into Rolemaster.

Very interesting. I'd heard Feist abandoned rpgs when his novels became popular, Midkemia Press just sort of hanging around selling the leftover stock or farming it off to for reprints.

I've got a slight obsession with what I call the 'D&D Cartoon Plot' wherein one or more normal people get sucked into a role-playing game. Andre Norton's Quag Keep and the Guardians of Flame series by Joel Rosenberg are the best known examples....anybody know of any more??

[David R]

....anybody know of any more??

This article mentions a few : http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ridler_howe_05_08/

Regards,
David R

[Age of Fable]

I've got a slight obsession with what I call the 'D&D Cartoon Plot' wherein one or more normal people get sucked into a role-playing game. Andre Norton's Quag Keep and the Guardians of Flame series by Joel Rosenberg are the best known examples....anybody know of any more??

The Narnia series

[Age of Fable]

It's a shame that most fantasy role-playing games don't have a "person from modern times" class/set of skills (or, similarly, "stranded time/space traveller").

[Koltar]

It's a shame that most fantasy role-playing games don't have a "person from modern times" class/set of skills (or, similarly, "stranded time/space traveller").

Two word possibility:

GURPS: BANESTORM

..or maybe even:

GURPS: INFINITE WORLDS.

Both of those have tempates for that type of character & idea.


- Ed C.

[ColonelHardisson]

But still no Great RPG Novel.... or even a very good one.

Depends on how you define "very good." I'm not a fan of game fiction at all, but I found Paul Kidd's "Greyhawk" novels (White Plume Mountain, Descent into the Depths of the Earth, Queen of the Demonweb Pits) for WotC to be pretty good sword & sorcery books. Surprisingly good, in fact.

[Aos]

It's a shame that most fantasy role-playing games don't have a "person from modern times" class/set of skills (or, similarly, "stranded time/space traveller").

I have a provision for the latter in my setting:
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=11468&page=6

Towards the bottom of post 54, I have delivery mechanism, but I haven't gotten as far as figuring out how character gen would work.

[Dirk Remmecke]

I normally don't read game-related novels - I remember Dave Langford's (White Dwarf) anticipation of reviewing Dragonlance "waiting for my ten foot pole in which I intend not to touch these novels"

I didn't find that quote, but Dave Langford did touch a Dragonlance novel:

"Not so OK is Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman and a cast of thousands (TSR 447pp £2.25), inspired by an AD&D campaign full of chunks ripped bleeding from Tolkien. The blurb says it all: 'The first fantasy novel from the people who know fantasy best - TSR, Inc.' Considering the relationship of games to books, this is a bit like 'The first country landscape from the people who know open-cast mining best'. Deadly predictable questing, with stock D&D characters in familiar encounters: nearly as bad as Valley of the Four Winds ... (Some of the poetry is of McGonagall standard: 'Through his doomed veins the horizon burst', etc).
Couldn't finish this one."

Source:
Dave Langford
in Critical Mass, White Dwarf #65, May 1985

[arminius]

I believe the system of Feist's game group was, in fact, proto-Rolemaster. He dedicates his first book to "the Friday Nighters", and the same group is mentioned, and the individuals named the same, in some of the credits for Rolemaster.

I didn't really know who Feist was, although I'm a minor fan of Midkemia's RPG works, so when the connection was made in this thread, I did some googling and came up with this. In summary, they started with D&D, streamlined it, then made their own game called "Tome of Midkemia".

This explanation seems plausible to me, that is, that ToM isn't a proto-Rolemaster but that "the Friday Nighters" played/playtested both. (See also posts 19 & 20 in the same thread.)

[David R]

I didn't find that quote, but Dave Langford did touch a Dragonlance novel:

"Not so OK is Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman and a cast of thousands (TSR 447pp £2.25), inspired by an AD&D campaign full of chunks ripped bleeding from Tolkien. The blurb says it all: 'The first fantasy novel from the people who know fantasy best - TSR, Inc.' Considering the relationship of games to books, this is a bit like 'The first country landscape from the people who know open-cast mining best'. Deadly predictable questing, with stock D&D characters in familiar encounters: nearly as bad as Valley of the Four Winds ... (Some of the poetry is of McGonagall standard: 'Through his doomed veins the horizon burst', etc).
Couldn't finish this one."

Source:
Dave Langford
in Critical Mass, White Dwarf #65, May 1985

Well perhaps I'm mistaken then or he said it in an earlier issue.

In issue #64, April 1985 he says:

"I don't want to think about what those sods at Games Workshop have just gloatingly sent , The Dragonlance Chronicles 1, produced by TSR, based on some campaign, and apparently written by committee. Have I really got to...(Yes. By next issue please - Ed)"

He was much kinder to Hickman & Weis then he was to Brooks of whose The Wishsong of Shannara he wrote - "concludes the trilogy of an author who unlike Tolkien and Hambly, can take the most powerfully magical fantasy archtypes and with a single touch of his style transform them into rotting hulks of cardboard. I reeled back in awe as the book slipped from my nerveless fingers. There are secrets of the universe with which reviewers should not meddle: they abadon the effort and go to the pub instead" -

Issue 69 September 1985.

Regards,
David R

[Jackalope]

It's a shame that most fantasy role-playing games don't have a "person from modern times" class/set of skills (or, similarly, "stranded time/space traveller").

I'd love to see an OGL supplement that added classic fantasy literature archetypes as character classes.  Modern Man would definitely be one of them.

[J Arcane]

Clearly I need to hunt down more pre-Citadel White Dwarf.  This Dave Langford guy sounds right up my alley.  

Also a "transplant from the modern world" campaign set in 40k that ended as much WHFRP/40KRP does with most of the PCs being violently dismembered or insane would be hilarious.