What Game Has The Best Fiction

[Snarf Zagyg]

"There is no such thing as good gaming fiction" is not only a pretty crappy way of engaging with the thread, it is pretty insulting to the many authors who have written gaming fiction as a career or as a way into the publishing industry.

I didn't think a thread as innocuous as this one would require a "+" but here we are, I guess.

Reynard,

I don't disagree with you. That said, I do think that people can reasonably say that most of the work-for-hire based on the IP of games* is generally of a lower quality than the fiction produced by people producing their own work. To use D&D as an example, I don't think that the overall quality (in terms of literature) for the books is the same as the fantasy that gets published because it's good, regardless of an IP tie in.**

That said, I am sympathetic to your comment. In that spirit, I would say the following:

1. Obviously, games that have pre-existing literature (LoTR, Lovecraftian mythos, Star Wars, etc.) are in their own category.

2. There are some TTRPGs that have great books within the game that are a joy to read. Some Paranoia Books, some of the GURPS sourcebooks, some WOD books, Reign, HoL, In Nomine, Nobilis, etc.

3. I am not familiar with games (TTRPG) that originated as games and have produced great literature as separate books. I think that the most recent D&D movie was really good! For the most part, the books tend to cater to fans of particular games.

That said, I would recommend the following- all of them are great books, and were based off of TTRPG campaigns.
Malzan series. Based off of a GURPS campaign.
Riftwar saga. Based off a D&D campaign.
The Expanse. Started as an MMORPG and d20 modern game.
Knaves over Queens. (soon to be a TV series?). Based off a Superworlds campaign.


*Or IP in general.

**This isn't a hard and inflexible rule, of course. As we've seen, whether it's Arcane or The Last of Us, you can make great stuff based off of an IP.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

"There is no such thing as good gaming fiction"

Yeah if nothing else, Arcane, some 40K novels, and various other bits and bobs show there is stuff that makes the cut to "good", for sure. Castlevania animated series is also in the broad "good" category, if we must sigh at the writer somewhat (Warren Ellis for the series before the current one). Dragon Age TV series is like... borderline. I'd say it was more "average" than good myself.

TLOU TV series I'd say doesn't count because it's just a retelling of the story of the game, but if you disagreed that's extremely well-regarded.

Be very interesting to see the Henry Cavill-attached 40K series and whether that's good.

Warcraft movie was sadly only kind of bleh. It wasn't terrible though, imho, which is kind of an achievement. Are there any good Warcraft books? I know there are a lot of Warcraft books, but I know nothing about them.

The Mass Effect and Dragon Age books range from the okay to the utterly terrible (c.f. the legendary Kai Leng book).

The Expanse. Started as an MMORPG and d20 modern game.

Whaaaaaaaaaaa? I did not know this. Explains a lot about the total milquetoast (in the books as well) lead though.

We could also add the legendary light novel series and I believe manga and anime, Record of the Lodoss War, which started out as actual-play of a D&D campaign (Japan was publishing actual-plays in zines back in the '80s quite regularly).

The might lead us the Critical Role TV show, the name of which escapes me, (mid, sadly - but not bad! Watchable, imho!) which is of course directly based on a couple of D&D campaigns.

 

[MGibster]

Cheeky answer is none of them as genre fiction is not often great. Though, I do enjoy Battletech fiction. Mostly becasue I really want to get a screen treatment for the amazing visuals this game could offer. The Warrior trilogy has a lot of potential as it involves a lot of the main players in the BT universe. Its also a great set up for the incoming clan invasion. Lots of political intrigue and battlemech combat! Just need to work on that dialogue and characterization...

Robot Jox wasn't good enough for you? You are tough man to please.

But the vast majority are drivel, absolutely including Dan Abnett, and whilst they have got better, overall, the odds of any given novel being good or even really fun are... low. Plus the very best 40K novels are like, about as good as middling other SF novels.

I picked one of the Dan Abnett books as my first 40k novel based on his reputation as being one of the better writers. It was one of th Gaunt's Ghost novels but I forget which one. It wasn't a horrible experience, but it remains the one and only 40k novel I've ever read as I don't care to pick another. I will say that I find the Horus Heresy series to be comical and I haven't read a single one. Sixty books. SIXTY books.

Cyberpunk 2020

I forgot all about Cyberpunk Edgerunners, which I would agree is a fantastic series.

"There is no such thing as good gaming fiction" is not only a pretty crappy way of engaging with the thread, it is pretty insulting to the many authors who have written gaming fiction as a career or as a way into the publishing industry.

I certainly wouldn't go that far. I enjoyed a lot of the Ravenloft novels back in the day. Before running Curse of Strahd, I took the time to re-read Vampire of the Mist by Christie Golden and it was okay. Nothing super fantastic, but it was good enough to be entertaining even if it wasn't great.

 

[Willie the Duck]

I think Dungeons & Dragons as a whole should get credit for the most recent movie, Stranger Things, the 80s cartoon (which, in the context of a throwaway 80s syndicated cartoon/22-minute commercial, is pretty good), and maybe even just the parts of the 2000 movie where Jeremy Irons clearly doesn't give a rip and goes full scenery chewing (although, if we're going down the so-bad-it's-good rabbit hole, this might end up as a long list).

Yes, let’s not delude ourselves into thinking any of the BattleTech books are great works of literature, but if we’re grading on a curve (and maybe wearing some tinted spectacles), I still say the Stackpole BattleTech books were a cut above all the other rpg related novels I’ve read

Stackpole certainly elevated Battletech books, regardless of anything else. The bar started very low, and he raised it, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.

It’s almost certainly going to be a licensed game for me. It’s hard to beat Star Wars or LotR!

I can't picture it being anything except a licensed IP that gained it's fame first through it's non-RPG media. Palladium's Robotech - though I did burn out on the phrase "techno knight" in the books, WEG Star Wars, Star Trek Adventures, Marvel Heroic Roleplay (or FASERIP, or half a dozen other Marvel RPGs), TMNT and other Strangeness assuming comic books count as books. Plus all of them had multiple TV shows plus multiple movies.

I feel like that's almost cheating. Yes, obviously those things that were already great that happened to get an RPG made of them later are still great after that transpired. And since (barring maybe that era when WEG was licensing everything from Men in Black to Tank Girl to Species) most things that are going to bother with an RPG are going to already be major hits. I mean, there are no rules to this, but at the same time if someone asked me, "what's your favorite RPG movie?," I'm not going to answer "Ghostbusters."

This may be bending the rules but I'm going with Hackmaster because of Knights of the Dinner Table. Granted, the relationship between KotDT is more like the game being the derivative property rather than the original literature, it's written like the KotDT exploits are derivative of the game. And it's brilliant.

I don't know whether Knights of the Dinner Table is the game fiction for Hackmaster, or the hyperbolic fictional 'how things were bitd' conception of mid-early AD&D. I mean, obviously it is both, since it is lampooning the notions of the later and the former is an attempt to capture the feel of the fiction. Certainly where the hair-splitting could get tricky.

 

[trappedslider]

I forgot all about Cyberpunk Edgerunners, which I would agree is a fantastic series.

The video game is pretty great too imo, the comics appear to be highly rated as is the novel the one book I have is The World of Cyberpunk 2077 which is done in-universe as an interview/historical look back kind of thing.

 

[Squared]

Excluding Star Trek, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings; they belong to another category.

Warhammer 40k without a doubt. If for no other reason than that The All Guardsmen’s Party exists. Caiphas Cain also is great.

I love WH40k, but only when it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

^2

 

[Argyle King]

The Fallout TV series has been solid.

Twisted Metal's series was better than I expected (and there are snippets of lore from a time when games still came with booklets).

FWIW, Dragonlance is one of the main things that introduced me to D&D. I read the books before I had any idea what D&D was.

Halo is hit-or-miss. I vaguely remember some of the old novels being okay-ish but a little dry at times. The TV show may be alright (according to some people,) but it has little actual connection to the source material.

The Resident Evil movies have been okay. I wouldn't say that any of them are cinematic masterpieces, but some have been enjoyable enough for a popcorn theater experience.

 

[payn]

Back on BT, its more guy reads the wiki while producers jazz up the artwork, but Tex Talks Battletech is probably the single greatest resource any game has available to learn the lore and fiction that a 40 year old game has.

 

[RangerWickett]

I rather fell in love with the Legend of the Five Rings fiction published during the period when Fantasy Flight Games oversaw the IP. They basically rebooted the setting to focus on samurai drama more than crazy gods and demons and such.

You can read the vast majority of it here: Chrysanthemum Era

The fascinating part of it is the way it was published. While they did have 7 novellas over the years (one for each of the Great Clans), the bulk of the story was tied to the card game. And the card game had little mini-releases every 6 weeks. You'd buy a pack of cards (and get all the cards of the set; it wasn't random like Magic: the Gathering), and the pack would have a little fold-out sheet with some fiction.

Every 6 weeks there was a new scene, advancing the plot by following one or two members of a cast of maybe 30 characters. Plots were scattered around the empire, and by following different stories a bit at a time, it created this sense of building tension. Little political disputes and border skirmishes and hints of conspiracies were all pointing toward an imminent great war.

And every Halloween there would be a standalone story showcasing some supernatural horror element, and those were always fabulously written by Robert Denton III, who was (in my opinion) one of the top two writers working on the IP.

It was a great way to engage the fanbase.

Heck, throughout the years when big tournaments were coming up, there'd be letters from the leader of each of the seven clans, which would be framed as a question of how the clan should deal with some dilemma. When you played in the tournament, you had to pick one of the clans to represent, and whichever player ranked highest in a given clan would be allowed to pick from 2 or 3 options, which the writers would then use to steer the broader narrative.

Like, the Phoenix clan one time had a letter that was basically, "Hey, one of our five elemental masters vanished mysteriously. Another is old and dying. A third announced he was heading to investigate the cursed Shadowlands beyond our southern border, and we're kinda worried he's maybe being lured away by an evil spirit. (And if you read the Phoenix novella, you know he and I love each other but our stations keep us apart.) I need to send a samurai from one of our four families to bring him back. Who has the right demeanor for this mission?"

By 2020 the clans were at war, but a sudden pair of crises forced them to try to put their differences aside: a coup in the imperial city, and an invasion of an army led by an oni.

Tragically, Covid basically killed the game, because nobody was playing tournaments and so nobody was buying cards. But in March 2021 they decided to send the game out on a high note by having a fan-run "March Madness" inspired bracket, with 16 characters who might end up being the one to defeat the oni. Fans voted, and - like madmen - the writers took those votes and within a couple days hammered out short fiction to tell the tale of a great battle where warriors of all the clans came together, and sometimes backstabbed each other over old grievances.

Sure, not everyone had a huge major arc, but there were some key players who I really loved following.

Bayushi Kachiko, the ambitious wife of the champion of the Scorpion clan, who ends up scheming a bit too hard and then has to fix the horrible damage she caused.

Doji Kuwanan, brother of the Crane clan champion who thinks his sister's peacemaking will bring ruin to their people, so he provokes a civil war.

Yoritomo, the braggart pirate lord from a minor clan who in a bid to win his people wealth and glory inadvertently gets swept up in a war where he might genuinely learn the meaning of honor.

And the whole Phoenix clan just hit the spot for me. Guardians of the empire's virtue, but in touch with the spiritual kami who are being corrupted by dark forces, and unsure if trying to fix that corruption will destroy them as well.

I think the era had a satisfying conclusion, even if I wish the game were still going. The new publishers are putting out some stuff, but it's not the same. sigh Maybe someday they'll use the engine of Ghost of Tsushima to make a Legend of the Five Rings video game with all these epic plots.

Their modern website is really cool: Lore - Legend of the Five Rings

 

[Ryujin]

I only read one of the three novels in the series based on the Dark Conspiracy RPG, but quite enjoyed it. The main conceit was rather novel an I liked how it played out. The writing wasn't High Prose or anything, but it was fun and engaging. It helped to inform my world view while running the game.