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Message: <blockquote data-quote="PaulKemp" data-source="post: 243550" data-attributes="member: 2809">Quality of Gaming FictionWhile I'm admittedly biased in this regard, here's my two cents on the subject.I'm forced to acknowledge that there *is* bad gaming fiction.  Back in the day, TSR put out some novels that are *generously* characterized as bad.  Those books and the people behind the decisions to publish them took their audience for granted (hey, they're gamers, they'll buy it).  That proved unfortunate for business reasons, and has proved unfortunate for current gaming-fiction authors.  I have no doubt that a good number of readers out there simply won't look at a new WoTC book because of their bad experience with TSR.  I think that's too bad, because there is a lot --  and I mean a lot -- of excellent gaming fiction out there now (esp. from WoTC, IMO).  WoTC has made a deliberate effort to allow room for more mature themes in their books (no talking aardvarks, as far as I know), and I've tried to push that about as far as it can go in my books for them.  Similarly though, there is bad ( sometimes abyssmal) non-gaming fantasy fiction.  I recently started a hardcover from Tor by a well-known author and had to put it down after the prologue.  It was that poorly written.  It's obvious that there's also excellent non-gaming fantasy (G.R.R. Martin is one of my favorites).  I have yet to read a generalized statement about non-gaming fiction to the effect that it isn't very good because of x and y book.  Yet that is the very thing that seems to me to occur with gaming-fiction.  I'd really like to see folks make finer distinctions in that regard -- "I don't like x *author* because.... rather than, "Gaming fiction all sucks because of my experience with x author." The upshot is this:  In my view, the quality of the writing and story have nothing whatever to do with whether or not the fiction is gaming-related.  It has to do only with the talent level of the author and the subjective tastes of the reader.  So often I wish I could reach through the computer and hand someone my book, or something by Elaine Cunningham, or Salvatore (even if you don't like Drizz't, Salvatore spins a good tale), and say *read* this" before you make generalizations about gaming fiction.  If you think that I suck because of what you've read, okay; but I'd rather not be grouped into the "sucks" category because of what someone else wrote. Of course, I can't reach through the computer.  So instead, I pop my head up out of the message board crowd from time to time and try to proselytize.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> You may not know who I am, so here you go:  I contributed to "The Halls of Stormweather," wrote the novel, "Shadow's Witness," contributed to "Realms of Shadow," and am writing an upcoming trilogy about my "signature"<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f644.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":rolleyes:" title="Roll eyes    :rolleyes:"  data-smilie="11"data-shortname=":rolleyes:" /> character, all for WoTC.  In addition, I've contributed a couple short stories to Dragon, including this month's fiction (July).Paul Kemp</blockquote>

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