D&D 4E 4e Design and JRR Tolkien

[Nifft]

Darn! You beat me to it!

Also, I was funnier.

- - -

IMHO the paucity of good modern fantasy is due to a couple of things:

1/ Video games. They're as complex as movies. Generally, all these other media siphon off the available creative talent. The fact that we gain one KotOR and one Firefly means we lose one Conan and one Lord of the Rings.

2/ We're spoiled. There's never been much good fantasy, but we accepted a lower grade as passable before because we were young and inexperienced. Now we're old and curmudgeonly.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Raven Crowking]

Bunch of noise back then too - it's just that the bad stuff disappears whilst the good stuff stays around.

Yup. Which makes it easier to pick out good older fantasy....the dross has (largely) fallen away.

To some extent, yes. It also introduces new elements: a particular new element would be the urban (cyberpunk?) fantasy. Shadowrun's one example of this, but you could also look at Michelle Sagara's "Cast" series, Steven Brust's "Vlad Taltos" books, Leiber's books and so forth. (Mieville as well, although I find him difficult to take).

Tolkein added elements to the material he used, as did Howard, as did Burroughs, as did Stoker. This is nothing new; this is why it is an ongoing dialogue. We haven't yet said all that we mean to say.

A lot of tales tend to be bigger in modern fantasy, and also more intricate. See both Jordan's "Wheel of Time" and Erikson's "Malazan Book of the Fallen". Erikson is a superb writer - his writings are derived from a GURPS campaign, IIRC - and he owes a lot to Glen Cook's "Black Company" books.

I would say that LotR is far more intricate than anything Jordan has done, personally. The works tend to be longer, I agree.....series instead of individual stories. Of course, this often has more to do with what turns a buck than the needs of story.

So, though there may be Conan comics being written today, they're going to see today's presentation more than that of Howard's.

Take a look. You might be surprised.

RC

 

[Hussar]

Wandered through the bookstore today. I happened to go through the young adult section for a change. I was floored by the HUGE amount of YA fantasy out there. I know it's being driven by the Potter Express, but, WOW. There's just so much of it. I can't blame any young adult for not reading Conan or older fantasy when there's just a smorgasbord of fantasy on tap.

I did read the first two of the Bartimaeus trilogy. Certainly Potter inspirations, but, much, much darker. Really good book IMHO. Fun read.

But, to make my point for a second. Back in the day, when many of us were getting into fantasy, there just wasn't that much to read. There was no Fantasy section at your local bookstore. It didn't exist. Fantasy was SF's red headed stepchild until the mid 80's. But, this isn't the 80's anymore. Now, someone getting into the game at the age of say 18, has grown up swimming in thousands of titles. At least hundreds of new titles every year, and that's not counting franchise books like D&D books or Buffy. We're talking hundreds of original titles every year. We went DECADES without a hundred new fantasy titles previously.

If D&D wants to hook the older YA crowd, it can't rely on the pull of Howard or Lieber. Sure, it can use those. But, it also has to move beyond them as well. Trying to tie the game to classic fantasy, great as it is, is only going to turn off new gamers. It'll become "that game that old people play". In order to stay current, it's going to have to move some of the classic stuff back a few steps and bring forward some of the new. They don't have a choice really.

 

[Raven Crowking]

But, to make my point for a second. Back in the day, when many of us were getting into fantasy, there just wasn't that much to read. There was no Fantasy section at your local bookstore. It didn't exist.

Weird.

I'm 41, and I never had a problem finding the fantasy section. It certainly did exist in the 80s, in any bookstore that I was ever in. This idea that fantasy is somehow "new" has been refuted so many times that it isn't funny, but it is easy enough to find a vast amount of fantasy available in 1980 and before.

There was even a large amount of fantasy before Tolkein. Pre-Tolkein, there was no "fantasy" section in most bookstores. Post-Tolkein (and certainly post-Sword of Shannara) fantasy has been conveniently located in many, many bookstores. By the 80's, I would venture to say most bookstores.

RC

 

[Hussar]

Weird.

I'm 41, and I never had a problem finding the fantasy section. It certainly did exist in the 80s, in any bookstore that I was ever in. This idea that fantasy is somehow "new" has been refuted so many times that it isn't funny, but it is easy enough to find a vast amount of fantasy available in 1980 and before.

There was even a large amount of fantasy before Tolkein. Pre-Tolkein, there was no "fantasy" section in most bookstores. Post-Tolkein (and certainly post-Sword of Shannara) fantasy has been conveniently located in many, many bookstores. By the 80's, I would venture to say most bookstores.

RC

Wow, you're bookstores must have been pretty different from mine. Considering there has been more fantasy printed post 1980 than pre, I'm wondering where your books came from.

Sure, there was lots of fantasy. Fifteen Conan books (good luck finding straight up Howards before the Oughts). Four or five Leibers. The couple of dozen from the AD&D DMG reading list and that's pretty much done the lot. Most people couldn't even get fantasy published before 1980 unless they filed the serial numbers off and cast it as SF.

Put it another way. Do you really think that, other than Tolkien, any fantasy writer before 1980 came anywhere near the readership or publication levels of Heinlein, Asimov, Andre Norton or, heck, any of the SFWA grand masters? Considering the first fantasy novel to hit the NYT Best Seller List was the Similarian (sp), I'm wondering where all this fantasy was hiding.

Note, I do mark the dividing line at about 1980. Post 1980, the rules change and change radically. To the point where it's almost the opposite and finding SF is getting trickier and fantasy is king.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Wow, you're bookstores must have been pretty different from mine. Considering there has been more fantasy printed post 1980 than pre, I'm wondering where your books came from.

Sure, there was lots of fantasy. Fifteen Conan books (good luck finding straight up Howards before the Oughts). Four or five Leibers. The couple of dozen from the AD&D DMG reading list and that's pretty much done the lot. Most people couldn't even get fantasy published before 1980 unless they filed the serial numbers off and cast it as SF.

Perhaps your memory is faulty. Mine includes, at the very least,

Mervyn Peake: Titus Groan (1946), Gormenghast (1950), Titus Alone (1959)

John Myers Myers: Silverlock (1949)

L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt: The Castle of Iron (1950), etc.

C. S. Lewis: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), etc.

Jack Vance: The Dying Earth (1950), etc.

Ray Bradbury: Dandelion Wine (1957), etc.

T. H. White: The Once and Future King (1958)

Peter S. Beagle: A Fine and Private Place (1960), The Last Unicorn (1968), etc.

Michael Moorcock: Stormbringer (1965), Gloriana (1978), etc.

Alan Garner: The Owl Service (1967), etc.

Ursula K. Le Guin: A Wizard of Eartsea (1968), etc.

Fritz Leiber: The Swords of Lankhmar (1968), etc.

Kingsley Amis: The Green Man (1969)

John Gardner: Grendel (1971)

Roger Zelazny: Jack of Shadows (1971), etc.

Richard Adams: Watership Down (1972, inspiration for Bunnies & Burrows!), etc.

Patricia A. McKillip: The Forgotten Beasts of Eld (1974), etc.

Gordon R. Dickson: The Dragon and the George (1976)

Stephen R. Donaldson: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenent, the Unbeliever (1977)

Of course, this doesn't count the works of William Morris, Lord Dunsany, Bram Stoker, E.R. Eddison, Rider Haggard, Burroughs, & a ton of other stuff. It doesn't include, after all, The Sword of Shanara (1977), "The book became the first fantasy novel to appear on, and eventually top New York Times bestseller list. As a result the genre saw an incredible boom in the number of titles published in the following years."

http://www.warr.org/highfantasy.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fantasy#Early_modern_fantasy

I'd also recommend picking up The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, for a good overview of the roots of the genre, as well as some great ideas for D&D and other RPGs.

Also worth looking at are the anthologies Black Water and Black Water 2 (same editor as the writer of the Dictionary of Imaginary Places), and Tales Before Tolkein.

If you couldn't find any fantasy before 1980, you were either not trying very hard, or you were really unlucky.

RC

 

[tenkar]

I got heavy into Fantasy reading with the release of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenent and The Sword of Shanara. I had just finished the LotR triliogy and was hungry for books of the genre.

I was in 8th grade at the time, so that would put the date round 80/81. I had no problem finding books to read, and with the exception of Asimov I avoided science fiction (and never read a Conan novel either... go figure).

I found my books in Nova Scotia, New York and Pennsylvania... never had a problem.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Regardless of the availability of fantasy back in the day (I don't remember having that much variety either -- just Tolkein and some knock-offs), the fact remains that WotC, to stay relevant, does need to embrace new fantasy.

The game needs to change. Constnatly. It's always evolving, reflecting the predelictions of the fantasy-loving kids of the era. It should. This game isn't for 40-50 year olds. It's for 14-15 year olds. Some old people love it too, but no one is MAKING them play the new edition or change their game (just as Dialgo).

The game you played will always exist, it just might not be supported by WotC. And if you're open-minded enough, maybe you'll get that same rush you did as a kid with this newfangled fantasy, with an added level of deapth that comes from enjoying the classics.

It's like if record companies demanded music that sounds like the Beatles or the Temptations today, rather than like Britney and Kanye. People can still love that old soul music, but you can't dwell on it -- you need to be able to move with the times, too.

And just like with that old time rock and roll, new people will constantly discover it and love it and appreciate their modern music all the more because of it.

 

[Desdichado]

RC, I think you're doing three things that give you a different impression: 1) you're counting some stuff that's not considered "genre fantasy" by the book publishing industry. Dracula, H. Rider Haggard, etc. for example. 2) You've also given us 20 titles spread over 30 years and said, "look at all that fantasy!" 3) And you're looking back at writers that stretch more than a hundred years back and lumping them all in there too. That's not indicative of a lot of fantasy, that's indicative of very little fantasy, and the fact that everyone who had any interest in it knew all the same titles because there were relatively so few to choose from.

If anything, I think you're backing him up inadvertently. I'm on Hussar's side here; when I was a kid in the 80s, fantasy was mixed in with the sci-fi, and sci-fi by far outweighed the fantasy.

I'm curious; if that perception has something to it, what caused the shift?

 

[I'm A Banana]

and the fact that everyone who had any interest in it knew all the same titles because there were relatively so few to choose from.

This reminds me of the TV situation, too (big three networks -> over 1000 digital networks) In fact, in a lot of ways, over the last 50-60 years, American society has moved steadily away from a "shared experience" to "a different experience for everyone!" Niches are everywhere.

Conan and Lankhmar just aren't shared experience for the target audience of D&D anymore. Harry Potter probably is. Manga probably is. The Golden Compass may be. For D&D to evoke that old school at the expense of the new would be to stagnate.

To totally loose that old school would be tragic, too, but part of the virtue of D&D has always been it's modability. If they're not dunderheaded, they'll keep that element of it in 4e.