Good RPG gaming fiction, your favorites

[Deekin]

# The Binding Stone by Don Bassingthwaite (Dragon Below I)
# The Grieving Tree by Don Bassingthwaite (Dragon Below II)
# The Killing Song by Don Bassingthwaite (Dragon Below III)

These books are full of awesome. I would recommend them to anyone who reads game fiction.

 

[William drake]

Many people feel that RPG gaming fiction is poor in general. Some feel that the majority of gaming fiction is poor but might be interested in some gaming fiction if it was recommended as good fantasy fiction.

So help your fellow RPGers out who are looking for some good reads in the RPG world genre, novels connected either with an RPG game (generic D&D or Shadowrun) or a specific RPG setting (Dark Sun D&D, Forgotten Realms D&D etc.)

Some I have enjoyed a lot:

Weasel's Luck and Galen Benknighted (Dragonlance D&D).

The first Ravenloft novel, that dealt with Strahd and Jander Sunstar (Ravenloft D&D).

The First Half dozen or so of Wheel of Time series books by Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time d20)

The Elric stories by Michael Moorecock (Dragonlords of Melnibone/Elric!/Stormbringer).

Robert E. Howard's Conan stories (GURPS Conan/AD&D Conan Novels/Conan OGL)

Fritz Lieber's Lankhmar series (Lankhmar AD&D/Lankhmar Runequest)

Thieve's World (Thieve's World OGL)

The Amber series by Roger Zelazny (Amber Diceless)

A Game of Thrones (I think that's the first one in the series) by R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones OGL)

The Hobbit/Lord of the Rings (M.E.R.P./LotR)

Well, if you want to play the same old same old, then LOTR and Wheel of Time.
I think Elric is a great book, as well as the other novels which he is in.
Conan is great, but you have to find the few which were very well writen, some turned conan into a powergaming min-maxer that made him almost a walking verb to read about.
The Broken Sword, writen by Paul Anderson (its lord of the rings, but harsher..and much less 'we're still in the damn wooods'
I don't think any Salvator books, just cause I think Drizzt is a bad example of what players should try and be while gaming. Once again, a charcter strung together by angst, and verb after verb with afew "I'm to cool for anyone to get me" attitude.


The books I would otherwise recomend would be: DUNE, by Frank Herbert...which, if you've read The Wheel of TIme, is almost a clear fantasy version of it.
And, I know it's a bit childish, but I read them when I was in middle school. They are well writen, and inspire alot of fantasy. The Red Wall series by Brian Jacques.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

Hmm.
Lots of cool "fantasy-inspired" D+D/RPG reading lately. (I'm a rabid bibliophile, especially of the fantasy genre!!)

Here's a few:

1) Knight of the Black Rose: 2E Ravenloft. Arguably the best known Ravenloft novel, featuring Lord Soth pre-exodus. (Note that almost all the RL novels are worth reading; "Carnival of Fear" is my second favorite of the series.
2) The first "Dark Elf" trilogy: Really absoring and innovative. (But ignore everything that came after!)
3) The Black Company series: The RPG is a good adaptation, but you need to read the books to get the full expereince.
4) "Fire+Ice": By James Alan Gardener, for the Planescpae setting. Available for free here: (http://www.ralf.org/~krlipka/ps/fiction/local.html) One of the coolest RPG-novels I've read. I've been touting this for years, and I'm STILL bummed that the series isn't going on.
5) "Eric of Melnibone" saga. (First 6 books, anyway!!)
6) Dragonlance Chronicles and Dragonlance Legends series.

And obviously, "Wheel of Time" and "Game of Thrones" go without saying.

There's lots of other stuff that inspires me to play D+D, but isn't necessarily connected to a specific D+D setting:

1) "Memory, Sorrow and Thorn": No D+D discussion is comlpete without Tad Willaims
2) "Wars of Light and Shadow" by Janny Wurts. Extremely complex and thought-provoking, filled with "shades of grey".
3) "Perdido Street Station": More steampunk than fantasy, but still very D+D-esque.
4) "Nighwatch": The idea of two warring supernatural factions keeping tabs on each other and enforcing neutrality is very exciting, to me.
5) "Godslayer Chronciles" by James Clemens. Only two books out so far, but very engrossing nonetheless.
6) 3 Hearts and 3 Lions: Exemplary instance of a paladin.
7) "Guardian of the Flame" by Joel Rosenberg. (Sure, it's one of those "Modern day kids transported to fantasy world stories", but I still have a soft spot for this series.)

 

[Wombat]

Well, the defintions of "gaming fiction" seem a bit broad here. I assume that we are talking about fantasy books that influence our gaming style, rather than game-inspired novels?

Yeah, I love me some Lankhmar -- it is cheesy, but fun. Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser are fun little characters -- I can utterly turn my brain off and have a ball. Then again, some Dumas is also excellent in that line, albeit not fantasy -- long live the musketeers! (And one of these days I have to read Brust!)

Tolkein is very good for core elements. I would never want to copy that world, per se, but there is a deceptively powerful way of telling the story that I love to use -- start with something simple, homelike, and nonfantastical and slowly build up from there.

I also have a deep love for Arthurian literature, both in its original form (Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chretien de Troyes, and the Mabinogian) and its more recent incarnations (Bernard Cornwell, Mary Stewart, and T.H. White). The core tale of struggling to make something perfect in an imperfect world is a touchstone for most of my fantasy games.

Guy Gavriel Kay, especially in Tigana and The Lions of al-Rassan, fits my bill as to a type of gaming that I really love -- semi-historical. The fantastic elements are kept minimal, only to enhance the story. The characters are what is important, that and a big overarching goal that is psychologically important to all of the characters in the group. That makes for great game-fodder!

Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books have also informed a lot of my gaming over the years, especially as she has expanded the series.

For my more "out there" moments, I love to pull on imagery from Gene Wolfes' Book of the New Sun and Storm Constantine's Wraeththu books, with a nod to a lot of material by Tanith Lee. Heck, I even based a character once on Milorad Pavic's A Dictionary of the Khazars -- you want "out there" imagery!

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Truly good RPG fiction?

The only that comes to my mind are the Dark Sun novels by Lynn Abbey. She really got the setting.

 

[Clueless]

Fire+Ice is a good book that never did get published. If anyone still has contact information for the author I'd love to get in touch with him.

 

[ShadowDenizen]

Fire+Ice is a good book that never did get published. If anyone still has contact information for the author I'd love to get in touch with him.

Check the link I posted, see if there's an EMail address for him. (Since it's been some time since the book was posted online, alot could have changed, but you never know.)

Failing that, check online. The author is pretty well-known, and may have a website of his own.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Mine are:

Robert E. Howard -- Conan stories
Edgar Rice Burroughs -- Martian stories
Fritz Leiber -- Fafhrd & Grey Mouser stories
Jack Vance -- Dying Earth stories/books
Roger Zelazney -- Amber books
J.R.R. Tolkien -- Middle Earth books/stories
Glen Cook -- Black Company books
Frank Herbert -- Dune books
H.P. Lovecraft -- Cthulhu mythos stories
Michael Moorcock -- Elric/Corum/Hawkmoon/et alii
The Dragon Lord by David Drake
Le Morte D'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory
Eirik the Red and Other Sagas translated by Gwynn Jones

Probably some others I'm forgetting at the moment.