"Exceptional Fluff" - the bane of RPGs (ranty)

[Toben the Many]

In short, novels often harm rather than enhance a RPG since they are usually written by uncreative idiots.

Mm. No. I can easily refute this - the Black Library and the Warhammer 40k novels.

While some of those novels are good, and some are bad, they have not ruined the 40k universe. And, dudes, there are a lot of 40k novels.

 

[Shemeska]

Generally speaking, I don't particularly care if a novel set in an established game world strictly follows the in-game rules/crunch regarding how things happen. I prefer an author be aware of them, since in my opinion it aids in helping their story feel like a part of that shared world. However I don't care for the two opposite cases when an author either dismisses the in-game rules entirely, or when they stick so closely to them that it feels like a round by round transcript of a game session.

Also speaking in generalities regarding RPG novels: Among people who work on both game novels and sourcebooks for the same world, some novel writers are also wonderful rpg designers (Steven Schend -who is awesome- tops my list in this regard), while others who I will not be naming, should honestly stick to writing sourcebooks (which they do well) but never again attempt to write a novel because they're horrible.

You can get people good with both, but not always, and just because you work/worked on a game world on the rpg side, doesn't mean you're the best person to be writing the novels for it.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Mm. No. I can easily refute this - the Black Library and the Warhammer 40k novels.

While some of those novels are good, and some are bad, they have not ruined the 40k universe. And, dudes, there are a lot of 40k novels.

Clearly you haven't read anything by CS Goto ;p

I'd say his stuff doesn't just hurt the 40k universe, not just the English language, not even written language on it's own, but the very concept of sharing ideas. The global concept of creativity is tarnished by him.

 

[ProfessorPain]

Personally I read novels to illuminate the game world, not the rules system. If you restrict a writer to the confines of the spell system and the character class system, I think you would get some pretty uninspired results. Making a literary character isn't the same as making a player character or NPC. That said, if they deviate too much; by completely changing the world or introducing contradictory explanaitons for how magic works, then that does irk me a bit. I haven't read a TSR or Wizards of the coast novel since the late 90s, but I enjoyed stories like the Crystal Shard, The Black Knight, Heart of Midnight, and the Avatar trilogy. You need to take these things with a grain of salt though, and not succumb to the nerd tempation to create canon out of them (i.e. "...if you had read the the second novel in the X series you would know that King Y has been replaced by an evil Z...")

 

[S'mon]

I don't see why a writer shouldn't work within the framework of a game's magic system, at least loosely. Another smart approach is not to have spellcasters as protagonists, eg Salvatore's 'PC group' in The Crystal Shard and on is all-martial, and I suspect benefits from that.

 

[Fenes]

You need to take these things with a grain of salt though, and not succumb to the nerd tempation to create canon out of them (i.e. "...if you had read the the second novel in the X series you would know that King Y has been replaced by an evil Z...")

Tell that to WotC.

 

[SKyOdin]

This is why I like the fact that Eberron novels are not canon. There is no way someone can destroy the Eberron setting by making a poor choice for the plot of a novel.

 

[Starfox]

Instead of a compelling novel written about a young knight's struggle against a bandit lord, later revealed to be his half-brother, with the knight growing up and maturing, and facing the choices between honor, love, and family loyality, we're getting the young knight that's revealed to be the last scion of the royal line of the lost empire, facing off against the devil-spanwed bandit warlord leading the northern hordes against the southern kingdom before he can marry the celestial elven princess.

Its not a matter of whether the book meshes with the world. It is a matter of whether the book sells. If people bye high fantasy, why object. And face it, this is what most DnD campaigns end up as. With one level every 3-4 sessions, a good and stable campaign WILL be saving the world.

In other worlds, you might like mud, angst, and realism, but not everyone does.

 

[Fenes]

Its not a matter of whether the book meshes with the world. It is a matter of whether the book sells. If people bye high fantasy, why object. And face it, this is what most DnD campaigns end up as. With one level every 3-4 sessions, a good and stable campaign WILL be saving the world.

In other worlds, you might like mud, angst, and realism, but not everyone does.

It's not about liking mud, angst and realism, it's about liking characters that are not defined by their special heritage, special power, or special destiny, lacking anything else. And it's very much about whether or not the book meshes with the game world.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Its not a matter of whether the book meshes with the world. It is a matter of whether the book sells. If people bye high fantasy, why object. And face it, this is what most DnD campaigns end up as. With one level every 3-4 sessions, a good and stable campaign WILL be saving the world.

In other worlds, you might like mud, angst, and realism, but not everyone does.

I call BS on this. People buy high fantasy because they're lead to buy high fantasy. People don't buy books because they're good books - well, ok, some might, but not the majority - they buy books because of the names on them.

I had the utter misfortune of reading through a good portion of David Gaider's written prequel to Dragon Age. It was, to put it politely, schlock. Schlock is, in fact, perhaps the best word to use to describe it. And you know what? It's going to sell. Magnificently. Not because the writing is good. And not because it's high fantasy - on the contrary, it would sell just as good if it was an amazing work of literature that redefined the genre.

It's going to sell because it has Bioware, David Gaider, and Dragon Age on the cover.

Brand name is incredibly powerful. This is the same reason why people buy numerous fantasy books even when those same people admit to not liking them. There's a WHOLE lot of people who absolutely despise Richard Knaak's should-have-been-abortions of language that he forced the world to suffer through - I refer, of course, to his Warcraft books. And they all bought it anyways. And MORE people, who are being told not to buy it, that it's crap, continue to do so, not because they think it's good, but because 1) it has Warcraft on the cover or, even more bizarre, 2) They know it's bad.

The idea that "it sells, so it must be good" is insane. Human beings are not logical or rational creatures, good god no. And our buying habits point towards this with very large neon signs that read "NO SERIOUSLY GUYS WE'RE NOT QUITE AS CLEAR IN THE HEAD AS WE MIGHT THINK." We have internal mechanisms that make us purposefully enjoy things we originally disliked all because we bought them. It's crap, and we know it's crap, but our brains are wired to make us enjoy it after the fact because we put time and resources into gaining it.