Has Lovecraft become required reading?

[Silverblade The Ench]

well, the mind flayers didn't come from Lovecraft, but from the Myhtos tale "The Burrowers Bneath" by Brian Lumley
you'll often find much of the mythos was created by or improved by OTHER writers, not HPL himself.

and yes mythos stuff is incredibly scary when done right. Freaked out your head scary style
"It" by Stephen King is the scariest damn book I have ever read, and heavily influenced by the Mythos

Shemeska
yup Clark Ashtom Smith is great! his ideas of...oh true fantasy things being DIFFERENT and downright eerie are great

 

[Desdichado]

Hobo, come on. Personal anecdotes as support for broad policy?

A million and more gamers, right? Your personal small sample size? Self-selection on people you've gamed with? Do I have to break out the full argument, or is the outline enough?

If you're going to bring that up, what's your counter-proposal? I'd say unless demonstrated otherwise, my anecdotal experience makes a better null hypothesis than a completely speculative one. And since you don't have any data to the contrary either...

:shrug: Yeah, I'll go with my anecdotal experiences for now. Lacking data, it beats speculation every time. At least it's something.

 

[Raven Crowking]

For a Lovecraftian take on Rudyard Kipling, try The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

 

[Desdichado]

Part of it has to do with which version of the game you are playing. Being familiar with the tropes of the Weird Tales writers and those that followed them (Moorcock, Carter) does, quite frankly, make D&D (particularly OD&D, B/X D&D and AD&D) make a lot more sense. But i think it is still valuable to understanding the foundation on which the newer, more anime and video game inspired (I don't mean that in a bad way; I *like* anime and video games) D&D got the tropes it still holds on to.

Fair enough.

Also, I didn't say 9nor do i believe) that solely a diet of classic S&S writers would suffice, merely that when looking at the sword and sorcery genre, it is better to examine the original works than the pastiches.

Nah, I was just commenting more generally, not specifically in response to you. I agree that the originals are vastly superior to most of the pastiches.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Lovecraft, Howard, Leiber, Moorcock and Tolkien

That's what we talk about. Well, Lovecraft, Howard, Tolkien and Vance are the four you see name-checked a lot. Not so much Leiber and Moorcock.

Gary's list of primary influences is a bit different - "The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, REH, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, HPL, and A. Merritt".

The particular books he mentions from those authors in Appendix N are:

de Camp, L. Sprague. LEST DARKNESS FALL; FALLIBLE FIEND; et al.
de Camp & Pratt. "Harold Shea" Series; CARNELIAN CUBE
Howard, R. E. "Conan" Series
Leiber, Fritz. "Fafhrd & Gray Mouser" Series; et al.
Lovecraft, H. P.
Merritt, A. CREEP, SHADOW, CREEP; MOON POOL; DWELLERS IN THE MIRAGE; et al.
Pratt, Fletcher, BLUE STAR; et al.
Vance, Jack. THE EYES OF THE OVERWORLD; THE DYING EARTH; et al.

There's some weird, obscure stuff there. I've not read any L Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt or Abraham Merritt. Not that I feel I'm missing much with the first two, mind.

 

[Roland55]

It would seem to me that broadening the tastes represented in D&D would be supported by broadening the reading palates of the GMs and players.

If we are in danger of treading too closely to what came before, it is those things that have come recently before. Most of us have read Dragonlance, we know FR, and Greyhawk - and by in large, I suspect most campaigns mirror, for example, the mortal-deity relationship structure seen in those books.

How many have actually read the original Lovecraftian horror? How many have even read a contemporary author's takes on it (like King's "From a Buick 8", or "The Mist")? How many of us are actually working only off of partial references handed down in games, never having bothered to see the original?

If you want broadened tastes, then support broadened exposure, and reading in genres that the players haven't likely had before.

I'll support this!

But I'm one of those old fools who believes that knowledge is a good thing, in and of itself.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I'll support this!

But I'm one of those old fools who believes that knowledge is a good thing, in and of itself.

Even knowledge of those squamous and blasphemous Elder Gods, the very contemplation of which drives strong minds to the very brink of insanity, and beyond?


RC


--

 

[rogueattorney]

There's some weird, obscure stuff there. I've not read any L Sprague de Camp, Fletcher Pratt or Abraham Merritt. Not that I feel I'm missing much with the first two, mind.

That might be weird obscure stuff, sitting in Scotland in 2010. It was not weird or obscure in Wisconsin in 1974. The notion that Gary and Dave were channeling sources outside the mainstream of popular fantasy/sci-if is just plain wrong, and ignores the incredible change in "mainstream" fantasy/sci, which occurred in the latter half of the '70s, due in part to D&D, but probably more so due to overwhelming success of Star Wars and Terry Brooks' Shannara series.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Too true.....I lived in Wisconsin in 1974!

No trouble finding the works of L Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt. Abraham Merritt I haven't read, and will have to look for.


RC

 

[Doug McCrae]

the incredible change in "mainstream" fantasy/sci, which occurred in the latter half of the '70s, due in part to D&D, but probably more so due to overwhelming success of Star Wars and Terry Brooks' Shannara series.

Hadn't Lord of the Rings been popular before then, on college campuses in the 60s and 70s? I can see how it would be a big hit with the hippies, with its pipe-smoking reactionary yearning for a rural idyll.

But I think the success of fantasy in the 70s wasn't down to any one movie or novel, it was the zeitgeist. Things were terrible then - Vietnam, Watergate, terrorist hijackings, the energy crisis. Science fiction wasn't sufficiently removed from reality, people sought escape into completely imaginary worlds of magic and elves.