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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crust" data-source="post: 3367066" data-attributes="member: 22330">I chose "it depends" because sometimes novels don't blend well with the game.  It's a matter of preference.  It depends on whether the DM/players read/enjoy the novels that pertain to the campaign in question.When I was fourteen, I discovered Dragonlance right around the time I was finally able to play D&D.  I experienced both simultaneously, and I thought the idea of novels having roots in the game was an incredible idea.  It blended two things I enjoy, and both served to validate the other.  Certainly gaming through Ansalon was an incredible experience for anyone who had read Chronicles.  My fellow gamers and I agreed on that much.  It was incredible seeing how differently things panned out at the table as oppose to in the pages of the novels.  We all really enjoyed that.I felt the same way when a fellow Dragonlance reader (and the guy who played Raistlin in my Classics campaign) handed me a copy of The Crystal Shard, and I was instantly drawn into RAS' pulp stories.  A year later I had read 20 FR novels and felt prepared to run a campaign in Faerun (and was very excited to move on from DL).  Almost nine years later, I'm still reading Greenwood and RAS (and a few other authors as well, like Kemp, Baker, Byers, and Cunningham), and I'm still running FR.  Reading a novel dealing with events that tie into the game is a great merging of mediums.  It feels like I'm contributing to the world-building of Faerun, at least for my players (some who also read the novels, some that don't).I've recently had a similar experience with literature that stands above and beyond anything DL or FR: Robert E. Howard.  After reading his Conan stories I've developed a need to game in Hyborea.  I've already handed his stories off to some of my players, so they'll understand the flavor and the setting before we start playing.  Once we start playing, they will (hopefully) be able to make a connection between what their PCs are doing and what Conan and Howard's other characters did.  At least that's the plan.</blockquote>

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