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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 5374275" data-attributes="member: 5948">In defence of Drizzt...Drizzt Do'Urden is the reason I became interested in fantasy, and is the reason I play D&D.  I picked up The Crystal Shard from the library aged about 15, out of curiosity one time when I was sick, and I've never looked back.  Drizzt is why I'm on this website, and is the reason I've spent huge amounts of money and time on D&D over the past 20-odd years.No, it isn't great literature.  No, Salvatore is not a particularly good writer from a stylistic or technical sense, nor does he do intricate characterisation or subtlety in plotting.  None of that matters.At least when the 'formative' Drizzt books where being written, TSR novels were explicitly targeted at the young adult market, 13-18.  And they do the job, beautifully.  A lot of action, a misunderstood hero who feels outside of things, a gruff and well-meaning but slightly stupid father-figure, a recurring antihero ... it hits all the teen geek boy buttons, and it hits them dead on.  For me, there was just enough multifacetedness in Crystal Shard - the hints of a wider world, Errtu, the Crystal Shard itself and so on, to make me read more, to awaken the love of fantasy in general.I bet i'm not the only one.For what it's worth, I've never seen a Drizzt-clone in-game, though that may have been due to the fact I didn't find a regular group until we were all in our mid-twenties and might have grown up past that stage a bit.  I did, i'm sure, create a couple of never-to-be-played stoic dual-wielder ranger PCs when messing around with scrap paper in my mid teens, but seriously, who didn't?  For everyone who despises Drizzt and all he represents - what were YOUR characters like as a 15 year old?  Were they literary, subtle, nuanced and interesting, or were they Conan ripoffs, or Gandalf ripoffs, or whatever?I used to have a complete set of Salvatore books (up to a point, I stopped keeping up about three trilogies ago), but I recently gave them away during a big bout of spring cleaning.  Because they AREN'T good literature, and if I read them now after a decade or so of Mieville and Guy Gavriel Kay and Stephen Erikson and George R R Martin I would only make myself miserable and mess up a memory that is precious to me.  But to someone younger they ARE evocative, and inspiring, and hopefully some kid will find them in the charity bookshop and, like me, discover a wider world, to get a creepy thrill as Drizzt summons Errtu from Akar Kessel's side in the Crystal Shard, or shake their heads in reluctant admiration as Artemis Entreri sics the Calimport mob on Drizzt when his mask of disguise slips, or feel that Luke-vs-Vader anticipation when Dantrag Baenre stands in the way of Drizzt's escape from Menzoberranzan.Being overenthusiastic and underoriginal is teenage trait, not a Drizzt trait.  Don't blame the books for the excesses of their fans, and don't blame teenagers for being teenagers.  The annoying kids bringing angsty duel-wielding drow to the table today are the solid, reliable, mature, creative interesting players and GMs of next decade.  I know, because that was me.</blockquote>

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