Best Shared Fiction IYO

[Desdichado]

I've never counted the Mythos. Although Lovecraft, and Smith, and Howard, and Bloch, and Derleth, and whomever all wrote in the same ouvre, and liberally borrowed names and entities and whatnot from each other when they felt like it, there wasn't any sense of it being a shared world. It was more of an extended in-joke.

 

[Richards]

One series I liked that I thought was underrated was Liavek.

I'm in full agreement there.

Johnathan

 

[Orius]

Timothy Zahn's fist set of Star Wars novels were pretty good. They're one of the best parts of the EU.

Some of the Conan pastiches published by TOR weren't too bad. Robert Jordan cranked out a couple of good ones before starting his behemoth of a series, and there were a few novels here and there that were pretty enjoyable.

 

[Voadam]

In contrast, most true shared world settings have rules- in Thieves' World and Wild Cards, for instance, you were not allowed to make major alterations to someone else's characters without their permission.

I seem to recall Robert Asprin (I forget the exact spelling on his last name) putting in an editors note/essay at the end of one of the first ones I read about how the authors all originally sat down and came up with their rules about how the world is and how magic worked, etc. and by the second story they were all breaking their own rules left and right creating different ways that magic, spellcasters, and sorcerous societies worked, messing around with each others characters, etc.

Looking back on it, it reminds me a little of 3e/d20/OGL "We've got wizards who do arcane and clerics who do divine. Plus sorcerers and clerics and paladins, bards, and rangers. Oh yeah and now there is the psionic psions and wilders, and the warlocks are arcane but do it completely differently by pacting to fiends and fey, and the Tome of Magic Truespeach guys and the binder pact magic which pact with non fiend vestiges plus soul incarnum and book of nine swords battle magic stuff. Then there is the d20 Call of Cthulhu magic cultists, Everquest RPG casters who are similar but a little different, Sovereign Stone elemental stuff, Elements of Magic freeform, Fantastic Science, etc. etc. etc."