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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Irda Ranger" data-source="post: 4705727" data-attributes="member: 1003">To a limited extent I agree with the OP. There are some really bad RPG-novels out there. I think the award goes to Prism Pentad, not just for completely breaking the setting but for doing it in the very first series of novels. They didn't even let the setting run for a couple years before wiping it out.I do have some sympathy for the writers though. Writing is hard, and doing it on salary under budget and committee-approval restraints doesn't make it any easier. Especially when much of the "exceptional fluff" is part of the job description handed to the author.So really it's the committee that write the work requests that are uncreative idiots. But calling a committee "uncreative" and "prone to stupid" is redundant.Er, no. When writing fiction in an already established world one has to respect the precedents that have been established. These guys aren't writing on a blank slate. If it's already been established that Raise Dead can be purchased at any largish temple for a certain fee then no fancy "logic" is needed. It's right there on the menu of options available to anyone that can pay.Right, because what D&D is lacking is the Batman Class that contains all the benefits of two or more other classes and no downsides.In one of the Pools of Radiance novels (I do not remember which one) there was a fighter that did not wear armor and relied on his speed and reflexes to keep himself out of harm's way. For AD&D that was innovative for "the game itself." Often novels can expose some of the silly restrictions imposed on the various class builds, like Wizards not be able to learn how to use a sword or what have you even if they take the time to train with it. The rules should support this "reasonable" flexibility (and thankfully in recent edition they now do).But what the OP is complaining about is something else entirely. There's a trend among some authors to just create characters that are "more super excellent" than any PC could ever be. It's sort of the opposite problem that The Wheel of Time RPG had, where the designers had to figure out how to make a balanced RPG in a world with both Tam al'Thor and Rand al'Thor.  Sure, one of them is the (retired) Captain of the Hundred Companions, Heron-marked blademaster and veteran of a dozen wars, but the other is frakkin' Rand al'Thor. Having a character like Rand in a novel that's only supposed to be read is fine, but introducing a Rand-like character to an RPG setting novel creates an unfortunate situation where the game's players cannot "be like Rand" without completely breaking the game.Then there's the "lets just ignore the established campaign setting" problem. I recall one Dragonlance novel that had a half-orc protagonist. WTF? There are no orcs (and thus no half-orcs) on Krynn! Wasn't anyone at TSR paying attention? Why couldn't he be a human, minotaur or even a hobgoblin? All those races exist. Even a draconian protagonist would have made an interesting novel, but the author chose to just completely ignore (or worse, was completely ignorant of) the established races living on Krynn.  In another novel the author appeared totally unaware of the fact that Krynn has three moons and kept saying "the moon was low in the sky" or "the moon passed behind the clouds." No mention of which moon, or where the other moons were. Yee-argh!And then of course there's the whole problem with "World Shaking Events", but I blame those on TSR/Wizards, not the authors, for the reasons mentioned above. They are disruptive though and rarely make for good stories in and of themselves anyway. The best stories are always about people. Sometimes the authors manage to fit a good story within the "World Shaking Event" narrative that's been handed to them, but equally often they don't.----Bottom line: Novels based in shared campaign settings cannot be as freely innovative as your average fantasy novel. You can still tell great stories (because all the best stories are about people, not classes and feats), but you have to obey certain restrictions.</blockquote>

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