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

[Storm Raven]

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]

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]

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]

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.

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]

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.

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.)