Gaming/RPG Fiction Should Make A Comeback

[KYRON45]

Maybe not at the time, but look at Alan Dean Foster’s lawsuit against Disney refusing to pay royalties after the Lucasfilm sale etc.

A tie-in pays far less. I just watched a analysis on this recently where they compared tie-ins to Amazon self-publishing and self-publishing pays more even for new authors.

Companies have competition now for these authors and they need to improve pay and working conditions for tie-ins.

Doesn't this also mean that self published authors should also improve the quality of their work though?

 

[thullgrim]

If your into comics there’s a Humble Bundle running right now of Pathfinder Comic books starring the Iconics.

 

[Reynard]

If your into comics there’s a Humble Bundle running right now of Pathfinder Comic books starring the Iconics.

Are they any good?

 

[Kaodi]

I think the term "pulp fiction" exists for stuff like all of those tie-in novels? I read a lot of them as a kid. I own a lot. But I have not added to my collection in, I feel, close to two decades.

 

[thullgrim]

Are they any good?

I’m not much of a comics guy. I remember liking the first series years ago, taking it for what it is. I didn’t read any of the other series.

 

[Velderan]

Pathfinder has novels coming it seems.

I bought the Godsrain hardcover. It's next on my "to read" list.

 

[kimberlyto69]

I think the trouble is that most of it was really bad and really tame, and audiences today are less tolerant of both.

The 1980s and and 1990s was the era of "extruded fantasy product", where a lot of incredibly bad or deeply mid fantasy stuff sold simply because it was all there was for "new" fantasy, and for whatever reasons, those audiences were very undiscerning and brand-loyal in a way modern audiences are less so.

Now, please don't misinterpret me as saying modern fantasy is all better or something, but there's so much of it now that it's weirdly a lot easier to find pretty good to great fantasy, or at least stuff which supports specific vibes or, lets be real, fetishes.

So I think the market is a lot tougher for merchandised fiction. That even applies to Star Wars and so on - for example, they're ending their High Republic series of novels, and I don't think they'd be doing that if they'd been stellar successes (having read some they're far from terrible, but they just didn't stand out in a crowded marketplace of SF/F), which in the 1990s, they almost certainly would have been.

Further, I think WotC and others are actually trying to get into this market, and even trying to get talented authors for it (as are others, increasingly - Black Library - i.e. Warhammer - convinced/bribed Adrian Tchaikovsky to write a short novel for them, for example!). I think the reason it isn't really happening is just how dense and tough the SF/F market is today.

Re: specific fiction, I didn't like most of the the tie-in stuff, the only major exceptions that I can think of were:

1) The Alias stuff. I dunno why I vibed with it so much but it's probably something complicated and worthy a therapy session or two!

2) An Ultima tie-in novel I read once, which I think I read at exactly the right age and reading level, and which really "got" the virtues from Ultima, profoundly understood them.

3) The "Secrets of Power" Shadowrun trilogy, which were bad, but fascinatingly so because they at least got the Shadowrun universe right.

I read a lot of other merchandised stuff, because I read like, multiple books per week back then. Tons of Forgotten Realms stuff (most of it drivel), tons of Dragonlance (eventually it got too weak to read though I think some of the non-core stuff is stronger than the core stuff, even when Hickman/Weis are writing), quite a few Battletech novels (rubbish, sorry, I know some people love them, but utter tosh and not even fun tosh), a lot of Star Trek novels (meh for the most part, but there was the odd banger, kind of like an inversion of the shows) and so on.

What could work now? DARK SUN.

You even look at it, modern mobile games are better now. If before, for example, when you had a heavy airplane flight, you had no chance to occupy yourself with an interesting game. Now, when you have a long journey, you can play any game, you can play even in the airplane, thanks to https://www.unfinishedman.com/can-you-play-games-on-your-phone-while-flying/, although a few years ago you could not do it. Therefore, to compare modern games with the games that were before does not make any sense, now there is a clear advantage.

That's where I think you're absolutely right

 

[User51]

Also he at least is good at writing fight scenes. Which some '90s authors weren't even. But ooof those bland, implausible characters, that hilarious PG (not even PG13) attitude to human sexuality, and so on.

I'm actually a little relieved to hear this. I've been struggling to get through his Stormilght archive at the request of my sons, but I get so frustrated with the writing sometimes. I was wondering if I'd just lost the taste for fantasy, despite having torn through Abercrombie and Sloan in the past year. Maybe it's not me ....

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm actually a little relieved to hear this. I've been struggling to get through his Stormilght archive at the request of my sons, but I get so frustrated with the writing sometimes. I was wondering if I'd just lost the taste for fantasy, despite having torn through Abercrombie and Sloan in the past year. Maybe it's not me ....

It's definitely not you.

Sanderson has a lot of flaws, and he's quite honest about some of them, including his weakness in writing convincing romantic or sexual relationships between characters (never better exemplified than by the utterly insane "sitting on his lap" scenes in the second Mistborn book, which is so demented, unnatural and out-of-nowhere it's basically a specialist fetish for people with specific religious upbringings - I won't go into further details). He's also admitted that he sometimes can't bring himself to write characters naturally how they'd actually behave but instead imposes his authorial morals on them and he even saw how that weakened the books.

Its really his fans (who can be a little extreme, because it's a lore-obsessive-based fandom, though that is less toxic than a shipping-obsessive-based one) who continually defend even the obviously weakest elements of his work, to the point of contradicting Sanderson's own accurate self-criticisms (which is genuinely the rarely-seen "toxic positivity").

Stormlight Archive particularly, because it's so gigantic, so full of implausible and Deus-Ex-y/hand-of-the-author character behaviour (with one notable exception, which immediately started on retcon'ing the next book!), and has large chunks of totally unnecessary and pacing-destroying Cosmere-reference stuff in it, has defeated almost my friends who used to be Sanderson fans. One of my best friends read literally every Mistborn book and some of Sanderson's other stuff, but he still couldn't chug through book 4 of Stormlight. I fell out in book 3 myself. Even my friend who always slams through the most turgid and awful fantasy novels (he got through nearly half of Sword of Truth for god's sake - insane) still hasn't started on book 4, though he hasn't "officially" quit the series.

 

[User51]

One of my best friends read literally every Mistborn book and some of Sanderson's other stuff, but he still couldn't chug through book 4 of Stormlight. I fell out in book 3 myself.

This is just where I am, at the beginning of book 4. I'm going to plow through because I want to share this with them, but I think his world building gets in the way of his story telling. Brandon, I've got it with the rockbuds. Really. You don't need to tell me anymore. And please tell your characters to stop wallowing chapter after chapter. Something something brevity something wit.