Good RPG gaming fiction, your favorites

[mhacdebhandia]

I liked the following Eberron novels well enough to recommend them:

• The City of Towers by Keith Baker (Dreaming Dark I)
• The Shattered Land by Keith Baker (Dreaming Dark II)
• The Gates of Night by Keith Baker (Dreaming Dark III)
• The Binding Stone by Don Bassingthwaite (Dragon Below I)
• The Grieving Tree by Don Bassingthwaite (Dragon Below II)
• The Killing Song by Don Bassingthwaite (Dragon Below III)
• The Voyage of the Mourning Dawn by Rich Wulf (Heirs of Ash I)
• Thieves of Blood by Tim Waggoner (Blade of the Flame I)
• The Orb of Xoriat by Edward Bolme (War-Torn II)
• In The Claws of the Tiger by James Wyatt (War-Torn III)
• Tales of the Last War, an anthology

None of these are great literature, but I found them enjoyable, and none of them are irritatingly out of step with the setting.

Outside of D&D/fantasy gaming fiction, I enjoyed the first and third Vampire: The Requiem novels, A Hunger Like Fire and The Marriage of Virtue and Viciousness by Greg Stolze. The second, Blood In, Blood Out by Lucien Soulban, is just weirdly off-base from the characters described in the game material. It's not bad, just . . . incompatible.

 

[Crust]

I like most FR books by Greenwood, especially Elminster in Hell, Silverfall, Elminster in Myth Drannor, and the Shadows of the Avatar trilogy: Shadows of Doom, Cloak of Shadows, and All Shadows Fled.

Elaine Cunningham's Elfshadow is an FR favorite.

Salvatore's Legacy, Starless Night, and Siege of Darkness stand out for me. I also liked Canticle.

Paul Kemp's books showcasing Erevis Cale are good reads. Shadow's Witness, Twilight Falling, Dawn of Night, and Midnight's Mask are four. I have yet to read Shadowbred, though I do own it.

I enjoyed Richard Lee Byers' Year of Rogue Dragons series: The Rage, The Rite, and The Ruin.

I also have a soft spot for the Dragonlance Chronicles series. The Legends trilogy is also dear to me.

I enjoyed I, Strahd. Knight of the Black Rose was interesting.

The Legend of the Five Rings series captured my interest. Scorpion especially. Phoenix and Crane were also enjoyed.

 

[MerricB]

Elaine Cunningham, Elfshadow, Elfsong, Silver Shadows, The Dream Spheres

That's the only ones directly connected to a fantasy game I advise.

For good fiction inspired by gaming, I totally recommend:

Steven Brust - all Dragaerea books. (Jhereg, etc. The Phoenix Guards, etc.)
Steven Erikson - all of his Malazan Book of the Fallen novels (Gardens of the Moon, etc.)
Raymond E. Feist - Magician in particular, but most of his books.

Cheers!

 

[Urizen]

Elaine Cunningham, Elfshadow, Elfsong, Silver Shadows, The Dream Spheres

That's the only ones directly connected to a fantasy game I advise.

For good fiction inspired by gaming, I totally recommend:

Steven Brust - all Dragaerea books. (Jhereg, etc. The Phoenix Guards, etc.)
Steven Erikson - all of his Malazan Book of the Fallen novels (Gardens of the Moon, etc.)
Raymond E. Feist - Magician in particular, but most of his books.

Cheers!

Steven Erickson. all I can say about him is.... Amazing. simply amazing.

 

[Glyfair]

The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizibeth Moon. (It's her own take on D&D from a game she played, but doesn't follow the rules of the game. You even get to see Hommlet and the Moat House in the second book. more or less.)

In this direction, I enjoyed much of the shared world series Wild Cards. It was initially based on a Superworld campaign some of the writers played in, including George R. R, Martin (the editor and one of the authors).

It wasn't strictly RPG fiction. It wasn't marketed as such and all the authors weren't RPG players (I doubt Zelazny played, for example).

• The City of Towers by Keith Baker (Dreaming Dark I)
• The Shattered Land by Keith Baker (Dreaming Dark II)
• The Gates of Night by Keith Baker (Dreaming Dark III)

I consider these very enjoyable books and would recommend them to most.

 

[Stormborn]

Long ago I read the first 3 Shadow Run Novels and loved them. The first one, IIRC, was "Never Deal with a Dragon." That was long before i got into gaming.

Since I then have also enjoyed the Mark of Death Eberron series and Keith Baker's as well.

The Magic: Kamigawa novels really made me want to run am asian themed game. I have read other Magic novels (either when i got them in fat packs or someone gave them to me)but those are the best.

I second A Game of Thrones and add the Black Company books as well as Cook's other series, Garret P.I.

I am currently rereading Perdido Street Station, the best of China Meiville's Bas Lag books so far IMO and great to get the feel of urban adventuring.

Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle is, if you are willing to wade into it, truly excellent. It inspired one of my longest running homebrew campaigns.

Several of Tim Power's books have inspired my games, but the ones that comes closest to "fantasy" gaming would be Drawing of the Dark, Anubis Gates, and Decalre. Of course there is a whole RPG system, Unknown Armies, loosly based on his modern books like Last Call.

My wife loved Poison Study and Across the Nighting Gale floor, she has the sequels beside her bed in the unending "to be read" stack. I read them, very evocative of campaign settings.

Those are the ones of the top of my head.

 

[Cam Banks]

To the point that certain incidents in the original Dragonlance novels directly came from things that happened during the playtests of the original Dragonlance modules.

I wouldn't necessarily call it playtests plural. Tracy ran a session of DL1 Dragons of Despair for some folks at TSR and that session inspired some quotes and scenes for Dragons of Autumn Twilight. After that, there wasn't any direct playtesting or game-inspired relationship other than the fact that all of the Dragonlance design team communicated about the direction of the modules and books.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[kenobi65]

I wouldn't necessarily call it playtests plural. Tracy ran a session of DL1 Dragons of Despair for some folks at TSR and that session inspired some quotes and scenes for Dragons of Autumn Twilight. After that, there wasn't any direct playtesting or game-inspired relationship other than the fact that all of the Dragonlance design team communicated about the direction of the modules and books.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Gothmog]

Not for D&D, but for Warhammer Fantasy:

Witch Hunter, Witch Finder, and Witch Killer by C.L. Werner are dark stories about a witch hunter tracking down heretics and chaos spawn. Sometimes Matthias Thulmann's methods are a bit...severe.

The Mallus Darkblade stories by Dan Abnett and Mike Lee- The Daemon's Curse, Bloodstorm, and Reaper of Souls. These are TRULY dark elves, and they aren't sissies like elves in every other setting. Drow look like mentally impaired kindergardeners compared to them.

The Eisenhorn books for Warhammer 40k are great too. Eisenhorn the Inquisitor is hunting down heretics, but becomes one himself in the process. The Eisenhorn stories are unusually complex and deep for fiction nowdays, not just gaming fiction.


Dead Man's Hand by Nancy Collins is a series of short stories set in the Old West by White Wolf. While they have vampires, werewolves, etc, they aren't the critters from the game lines, and its actually a really good read.

The are hard to find now, but a Fistful of Dead Guys, A Few Dead Guys More, and the Good, the Bad and the Dead were three books of short stories for the Deadlands setting. A few of the short stories were bland, but most were good and inspired me to run several campaign arcs in an ongoing Deadlands game. The three-part story involving Quantrill's Raiders was especially memorable.

 

[Clueless]

Steven Brust - all Dragaerea books. (Jhereg, etc. The Phoenix Guards, etc.)

I second Brust. The man is everything I wish I could be as a writer. Though his works aren't gaming based, so I'm not sure that that applies to your question.

Gaming based books - the first three Shadowrun books, it's the Secrets of Power series: "Never Deal with a Dragon", "Choose Your Enemies Carefully", "Find Your Own Truth" - a *very* good series that both gets you up to speed on the context of the world, and intriduces my two favorite characters, Twist and Dodger.