History A Question for the 25 and under crowd - What have you read?

[Storm Raven]

Originally Posted by Cadfan

The real question is whether these authors have survived the test of time- whether now, with many more competitors than they once faced, they're still considered worth reading. I'm pretty sure that Leiber and Howard have not passed this test.

Having read a fair amount by both of them, and a pile of more recent fantasy, I'm pretty sure they have.

But that's just me.

[Hussar]

I would point out something here. We've drifted way off topic. My point was never, "Old authors suck". I don't even believe that. I'm in the middle of a big mess of Harry Harrison (again) and loving it. And, you guys are right, people should at least try a few of the older authors just to get sense of the roots of the genre. I have no problems with that.

My beef is a different sort of bovine. My beef is with the persistant idea that somehow, D&D should remain "true" to its roots and close off the walls from later influences. We've all read posts that look something like this:

"I can't believe the crap that they're putting into fantasy these days. It's just regurgitated crap. No real meaning, not depth, nothing interesting. Back when I started playing D&D, we watched movies like Ladyhawk and D&D was good. Now, it's all anime/computer games/kung fu/whatever (take your pick on any given day). The game has lost any sense of real fantasy. We need to circle the wagons and make sure that anyone coming into the hobby is beaten about the head an ears with a copy of The Lord of The Rings tied to a copy of Ill Met in Lankmar.

Let's be honest here. We've all seen posts that look pretty much exactly like that. I've seen posts like that since 3e was announced (which coincided with my exposure to gaming boards). To me, this is the absolute worst approach we can take to gaming. We should be welcoming new influences, not protecting against them.

Take a new player to 3e. He says, "I want to play a wizard." Ok, you say, here's the wizard. "What? This is a wizard, no, I want to be like Harry Potter." Oh, well... err... gee... "Wait," he says. "Here's this sorcerer thing. Is that like David Eddings?" Oh, well, errr....

To me, trying to force people to accept these very obscure elements while denying popular options is the worst thing you can do for the hobby.

[Hussar]

Cadfan - I'm going to disagree with you on this one. For the simple fact that reprints of these genre authors are very, very popular right now. The reprint biz is booming and authors like Lieber and Howard are really seeing a comeback into the mainstream.

[Gentlegamer]

I have no real objection to current "pop fantasy" influences coming into the game as new players discover it. But I don't think it is beyone the pale to "educate" newcomers in what has come before, if only by letting them know about their existance and how it influenced the origins of the game (influence that can still be seen in the current incarnation of the game).

make sure that anyone coming into the hobby is beaten about the head an ears with a copy of The Lord of The Rings tied to a copy of Ill Met in Lankmar.

I'm in favor of this, but then, I agree with my former professor that a sniper should be stationed near the graduation stage of every university to take out any student who has not studied The Republic just as he reaches for his diploma.

[Cadfan]

They're getting reprinted, sure, and that's great for them, but I stick by my estimation that far, far, FAR more people are familiar with Conan the Barbarian through secondary sources like movies, comic books, and video games, all not written by Robert E. Howard, than are familiar with Conan through the actual written word of Robert E. Howard. If you told people that Conan didn't start with comic books, I bet a fair percentage of them would be vaguely surprised.

I stick by the rest. I don't have to have read Howard to know I don't like penny dreadful style writing about mighty thewed barbarians hewing things in twain. Leiber wouldn't be anything important if he were born today. Vance would be fun, but not a legend. Tolkien would probably still be Tolkien. Moorcock would be part of the general rabble of authors. That's just how it is.

[Gentlegamer]

Cadfan, what authors and works in your estimation rise above the rabble?

[Hussar]

Originally Posted by Gentlegamer

I have no real objection to current "pop fantasy" influences coming into the game as new players discover it. But I don't think it is beyone the pale to "educate" newcomers in what has come before, if only by letting them know about their existance and how it influenced the origins of the game (influence that can still be seen in the current incarnation of the game).
/snip

Why? Why do I have to be "educated" in what came before to enjoy a game? Why is my game being influenced still by things that so few have any real link to?

That's my whole point. Why keep Vancian casting, for example, when very, very few people have read Vance and the system runs counter to how magic is presented in a large chunk of genre fiction? Just to belabor one example.

The inclusion of these elements, I am arguing, creates an artificial barrier in the game to new gamers who not only have likely never read the sources of these elements, but, for a large number of them, have no way to actually read them even if they choose to do so.

To be fair though, a lot of the older stuff has become a LOT more accessible in the past five to ten years, primarily through the huge growth of the reprint market and things like Stanza or E-Readers with access to the Guttenburg Project.

[Storm Raven]

Originally Posted by Cadfan

I stick by the rest. I don't have to have read Howard to know I don't like penny dreadful style writing about mighty thewed barbarians hewing things in twain.

And Cadfan reveals that he doesn't have any idea what the Howard books are actually like, and destroys any credibility that he might have had on the topic of older fantasy authors.

[Mercutio01]

Originally Posted by Cadfan

I stick by the rest. I don't have to have read Howard to know I don't like penny dreadful style writing about mighty thewed barbarians hewing things in twain.

Originally Posted by Storm Raven

And Cadfan reveals that he doesn't have any idea what the Howard books are actually like, and destroys any credibility that he might have had on the topic of older fantasy authors.

This. This exactly. You are still judging something you've never read and assigning it qualities you don't know that it has, which points out that you don't have a clue what you are talking about.

[mmadsen]

Originally Posted by Cadfan

They're getting reprinted, sure, and that's great for them, but I stick by my estimation that far, far, FAR more people are familiar with Conan the Barbarian through secondary sources like movies, comic books, and video games, all not written by Robert E. Howard, than are familiar with Conan through the actual written word of Robert E. Howard. If you told people that Conan didn't start with comic books, I bet a fair percentage of them would be vaguely surprised.

I don't think anyone disagreed with you that more people know Conan from derivative works than from the original short stories. More people know James Bond from the Roger Moore films, too.

The point is that those derivative works lack much of what makes the original stories great. Again, like the Roger Moore James Bond films.

Originally Posted by Cadfan

I stick by the rest. I don't have to have read Howard to know I don't like penny dreadful style writing about mighty thewed barbarians hewing things in twain.

You're just embarrassing yourself now. Let me reiterate. It's the copy-cat pastiches that are "books about might thews"; the originals aren't. The copy-cats distilled away all that's good about Howard's work and kept nothing but the alpha-male hero. (Again, not too different from James Bond.)

[mmadsen]

Originally Posted by Hussar

Why do I have to be "educated" in what came before to enjoy a game?

I think that's an exaggeration of a valid point. You don't have to be "educated" in what came before -- but it's a good idea.

Originally Posted by Hussar

Why keep Vancian casting, for example, when very, very few people have read Vance and the system runs counter to how magic is presented in a large chunk of genre fiction?

I agree completely. Anyway, D&D's spell system wasn't particularly true to Vance, and I think the Vancian fire-and-forget trope was useful for "gamist" reasons.

Originally Posted by Hussar

The inclusion of these elements, I am arguing, creates an artificial barrier in the game to new gamers...

Agreed. Actually, they're something of a barrier to fantasy fans in general, because they're so idiosyncratic.

[Gentlegamer]

Originally Posted by Hussar

Why? Why do I have to be "educated" in what came before to enjoy a game? Why is my game being influenced still by things that so few have any real link to?

That's my whole point. Why keep Vancian casting, for example, when very, very few people have read Vance and the system runs counter to how magic is presented in a large chunk of genre fiction? Just to belabor one example.

The inclusion of these elements, I am arguing, creates an artificial barrier in the game to new gamers who not only have likely never read the sources of these elements, but, for a large number of them, have no way to actually read them even if they choose to do so.

I only mean that any player who participates in this game on a hobby level would probably enjoy understanding the fullness of its history and various inspirations. There's no requirement in order to enjoy the game itself.

I'm also not taking a stand on the desirability of various fluff or crunch and their genre inspirations (that's a subjective matter). I just mean that the history and development of the game "is what it is," and that for some, understanding it answers or at least nuances their critique of certain elements (such as "Vancian" magic).

[Nellisir]

Originally Posted by Cadfan

Leiber wouldn't be anything important if he were born today.

I was going to take issue with this, and then I realized I was thinking of Gene Wolfe. The Wizard Knight is -still- blowing my mind, and I read it 3 years ago.

I'll echo a previous question, though - we've established who you don't like (or at least scratched at it); who DO you like?

[Ariosto]

"D&D is not just like X, so it's wrong and must change" is a view that has been around from Day One or so (when discrepancies with Tolkien's Middle-Earth were the main complaint).

"It's not supposed to be a simulation of X (or Y, or Z)" still seems to me an adequate answer. D&D is itself, and I like knowing what -- at least as a baseline referent -- that means. When someone invites me to play Risk, it's inconvenient if he really means Parcheesi.

The brand fetish in a more benign form is familiar to me from the days of gamers who refused any RPG without the TSR logo on it (easily remedied, perhaps, with a bit of artful cut-and-paste work ). At least they did not insist that the game should be gutted, razed and rebuilt from the ground up every few years.

House-rule it to your heart's content. Let a bajillion splat books bloom. Spell points, steroids, super destroids ... whatever. Been there, done that, probably some time between '78 and '84.

[Hussar]

Originally Posted by Gentlegamer

I only mean that any player who participates in this game on a hobby level would probably enjoy understanding the fullness of its history and various inspirations. There's no requirement in order to enjoy the game itself.

I'm also not taking a stand on the desirability of various fluff or crunch and their genre inspirations (that's a subjective matter). I just mean that the history and development of the game "is what it is," and that for some, understanding it answers or at least nuances their critique of certain elements (such as "Vancian" magic).

Fair enough. "Read more" is good advice regardless of anything else, after all.

And, unlike Cadfan, I can appreciate that there are some real gems from "back in the day" as well. Some, err, not so gems as well. Take REH's Conan for example. While "mighty thews" might be from the pastiches, the rampant racism of the books certainly isn't. The fact that Conan, while a "barbarian" is a "white" barbarian and thus better than the other savages out there is not subtle, it's explicitly pointed out in some of the stories (Beyond the Black River is one). I remember reading on the Paizo blog referencing the Planet Stories line, that they are having some issues with this as well.

Never mind the John Carter stories, yeesh.

I guess this tends to inform my reaction when people start talking about how we should maintain the "purity" of the game. Those old stories are absolutely brutal sometimes. And, when people talk about how great those old stories are, without even bothering to mention or criticise, well, it makes me wonder how much they really read. Do we want to link the game to this?

I don't know.

GG, I totally agree that it never hurt anyone to read more. And, I don't think you are saying this, but, I've certainly seen it said that "true" gamers must be grounded in these stories. That's what raises my hackles.

[Doug McCrae]

Originally Posted by Mercutio01

This. This exactly. You are still judging something you've never read and assigning it qualities you don't know that it has, which points out that you don't have a clue what you are talking about.

Originally Posted by mmadsen

You're just embarrassing yourself now. Let me reiterate. It's the copy-cat pastiches that are "books about might thews"; the originals aren't.

I think Cadfan is essentially correct about REH's Conan, he certainly has enough info to decide whether he wants to read the stories or not.

Conan gets naked or strips to his loincloth a lot compared to other protagonists in adventure fiction. He doesn't even have Tarzan's excuse of being raised by apes. His muscular body is described in a fair bit of detail by the author. The word thews is used:

"Conan struck as a wounded tiger strikes, with every ounce of thew and fury behind the blow." - Jewels of Gwahlur
"his was the endurance and vitality of a wolf, his thews steeled and his nerves whetted" - Queen of the Black Coast
"he had held too many women, civilized or barbaric, in his iron-thewed arms, not to recognize the light that burned in the eyes of this one." - QotBC

Stirring stuff, eh? There's a lot of violence in the stories. Skulls are split in twain many times:

"the lion was dead, its slanting skull split in half" - The Tower of the Elephant
"I drew my sword and cleft the judge's skull" - QotBC

The fighting isn't realistic. Conan is ridiculously strong, his blows are constantly tearing through armour, ripping men's bodies apart and shattering skulls.

[mmadsen]

Originally Posted by Doug McCrae

I think Cadfan is essentially correct about REH's Conan, he certainly has enough info to decide whether he wants to read the stories or not.

I still completely disagree. I hate most Conan pastiches, but I still recommend the originals.

Originally Posted by Doug McCrae

The word thews is used.

The argument is not that Howard never said thews. The argument is that the pastiches reduced Howard's work to little more than a caricature. (Again, very much like James Bond.)

Originally Posted by Doug McCrae

There's a lot of violence in the stories.

Of course. Who said there wasn't?

Originally Posted by Doug McCrae

The fighting isn't realistic. Conan is ridiculously strong, his blows are constantly tearing through armour, ripping men's bodies apart and shattering skulls.

I don't find it the least bit unrealistic that a great warrior would chop off limbs with a sword and shatter skulls with a club.

[Doug McCrae]

Originally Posted by mmadsen

Who said there wasn't?

You were disagreeing with Cadfan's characterisation of REHoward's Conan as "mighty thewed barbarians hewing things in twain". I think that characterisation is entirely correct. There is a mighty-thewed barbarian and he does hew things in twain. His thews are described many times. He hews things in twain many times.

L Sprague de Camp or anyone else's version of Conan is irrelevant here. Cadfan's description of REH's Conan is accurate.

[Mercutio01]

Originally Posted by Hussar

Take REH's Conan for example. While "mighty thews" might be from the pastiches, the rampant racism of the books certainly isn't. The fact that Conan, while a "barbarian" is a "white" barbarian and thus better than the other savages out there is not subtle, it's explicitly pointed out in some of the stories (Beyond the Black River is one). I remember reading on the Paizo blog referencing the Planet Stories line, that they are having some issues with this as well.

Never mind the John Carter stories, yeesh.

Just a response to note that Howard is hardly alone in this, and that, as "racist" as his stories are, they are actually far more enlightened than, say, Hemingway. Indeed, Howard's Picts are dark-skinned, and Brule, a Pict, is a heroic figure in the Kull stories. I think you're reading "better" into the stories that Howard doesn't indicate. Conan is just as savage, makes bad moral decisions which end up costing him, and has just as many problems as the other savage races. I think the discussion of politics with Howard is far more rational when considering barbarism vs civilization than race vs race. If anything, Conan is not a racist, having befriended and traveled with hosts of people of different colors and races. Conan even frees a bunch of black galley slaves as he recognizes that the bondage of slavery is inherently evil.

Beyond the Black Rive is often trotted out as evidence of Howard's racism, and probably rightfully so (his letters to people like Derleth and Lovecraft are far more damning), but it's still far tamer by comparison to many other writers of the time period. Indeed, Howard's Aesir, the whitest white characters in any of his stories are some of the worst villains and not heroes at all. They are the true "Aryan" culture and are depicted as bloodthirsty amoral savages.

Again, this isn't to say Howard wasn't racist. Society at large was racist at the time. Find me a famous black author from the turn of the century. This isn't to minimize the racial biases, but they have to be taken in context. Otherwise you create the same kind of argument that gets The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn banned from schools.

Heck, even Shakespeare was a racist and we still read him.

EDIT - Forgot about John Carter, where the good race of Barsoomian mankind is red, and the worst is white (the Therns). John Carter is by no means the "civilized white" leading the poor savage red people. In fact, he's just as much a war-monger and savage as they are and he's not the leader. He's the warlord, a chief in charge of war. He befriends a green man and marries a red woman. His children are red.

[Sandwich]

I've never read any Conan stories, but I was looking through a comic book adaptation (maybe not the best representation), and I stopped when he was about to rape some frost lady. No offence to anybody, but, in most situations, a protagonist who's a potential rapist isn't something I'm into.

All this talk about classic fantasy authors has piqued my interest, however, and I picked up some Leiber and Moorcock. I mentioned it in another thread, but I don't think I could really recommend the Moorcock to anyone, but Leiber seems pretty good so far. I liked the Elric stories I read, but I don't really think the writing was very good. They were fun and interesting stories in regards to there being a fair amount of adventure, foul magics, demon lords and ancient, cursed runeblades. But maybe that's the point.