Mearls talks about his inspiration for the 4e classes

[pawsplay]

Really? You'd say that R. A . Salvatore is that obscure?

I only know him because I read his books out of a sense of completeness. As a name of interest mainly to FR fans, he's far more obscure than Vance in the sense of having an audience outside hardcore D&D players.

 

[Hussar]

You think there's enough hardcore D&D players to put someone at the top of NYT's best seller lists, repeatedly?

 

[amysrevenge]

And, really, you think Howard is that obscure too. Heh. Guess I'm letting my own preferences color my perspective to much.

I'd go as far as saying that pre-2001 Tolkien himself was reasonably obscure outside fans of the genre. Less so than any other genre author you'd care to name certainly, but really to "outsiders" we're a pretty marginal bunch at the best of times. There's a whole wide world out there of people who have no idea (or who know but don't care) that Lord of the Rings was a book first.

 

[Dire Bare]

I only know him because I read his books out of a sense of completeness. As a name of interest mainly to FR fans, he's far more obscure than Vance in the sense of having an audience outside hardcore D&D players.

Salvatore more obscure than Vance? Not in this universe! Vance IS obscure (but as Mona points out, not as obscure as some of us might have assumed), but Salvatore regularly makes the NYT Bestseller Lists with practically every book he pens, and has been prominently displayed on bookstore shelves since The Crystal Shard was released back in . . . ah, the 90s? (too lazy to look up).

Salvatore is why the Forgotten Realms is one of WotC's biggest properties and Drizzt is the most popular D&D character of all time . . . tons of folks who couldn't care less about D&D read the man's books.

Although, he's no Stephen King . . .

 

[MerricB]

And, really, you think Howard is that obscure too. Heh. Guess I'm letting my own preferences color my perspective to much. Was a HUGE fan of Savage Sword of Conan way back when, so, I knew who Howard was from an early age.

You have authors whose names are more famous than that of their work, and you have the other way around as well.

I feel Vance's name is more famous than his work (thanks in no small part to "Vancian magic"). However, Conan is more famous than his creator.

Tolkien and Lord of the Rings pretty much go together.

Tarzan > Edgar Rice Burroughs > John Carter ?

Cheers!

 

[pawsplay]

Yup, buried amonst what 300 ish pages of Gygaxian prose is the name of Jack Vance. In a book that's been out of print for twenty years.

I was not making that his claim to non-obscurity. I was just mocking the scare quotes about D&D "mentioning" him. Which, you know, it "does."

Sure, among D&D players, and a very, very small subset of those who've actually READ the 1e DMG, Vance might be known. But a common name that's recognized outside of that subset? Let's be realistic here.

How many truly obscure authors get omnibus reprints of their books? There are plenty of non-obscure authors whose works are basically never republished.

Why is it so hard to believe that an author that has been out of print for longer than most players have been alive is obscure.

Next you're going to tell me that Leigh Brackett is a household name as well. Can you tell me what she wrote without looking it up?

For all I know, Leigh Brackette *is* obscure. But I'm not going to make the argument on the basis of my ignorance.

Quick, name two other fantasy authors who have been received credits or dedications on roleplaying games that were not the licensed RPGs of their works. Heck, name one that is credited thusly on one game; I can't think of any. Then there's that whole "has two official roleplaying game products based on his writing published by two different publishers" thing; how many authors have achieved that?

Anything not current is "obscure" in a certain sense, but I'm not going to call Ella Fitzgerald obscure because most modern listeners don't know who she is. Comparing Vance to Tolkien would be like claim someone without Mozart or Bach's fame is "obscure." Using the 100 random people test, we can easily demonstrate that Stravinsky is an obscure composer, Hayao Miyazaki is an obscure filmmaker, Havarti is an obscure variety of cheese, Yuri Gagarin is an obscure astronaut, and Pompey is an obscure Roman general.

 

[Dire Bare]

I'd go as far as saying that pre-2001 Tolkien himself was reasonably obscure outside fans of the genre. Less so than any other genre author you'd care to name certainly, but really to "outsiders" we're a pretty marginal bunch at the best of times. There's a whole wide world out there of people who have no idea (or who know but don't care) that Lord of the Rings was a book first.

Huh? Practically everyone I've met had to read The Hobbit in junior high! That's anecdotal, I know, but I really can't see Tolkien as obscure in anyway at all! Once Tolkien's works became popular in the US in the 1960s, they became American classic literature!

You could argue that everything Tolkien wrote outside of the Hobbit and the Rings trilogy was obscure, I'd buy that.

 

[Hussar]

I suggest you read more RPG books.

Blue Rose mentions a number of authors. Forgotten Futures mentions more (and some REALLY obscure ones). Savage Earth name drops. And, I'm very sure Spirit of the Century does as well.

Your point would be?

I suggest you read the rest of the thread before you answer me. It's not like I'm pulling this out of my hat here.

 

[Hussar]

Tolkien does manage to become something of a household name for the simple fact that he's on a very large number of academic reading lists. I know I read The Hobbit in Grade 8. The fact that the Professor was an Oxford Professor helped greatly in getting his works onto reading lists, which, I think, helped greatly in saving him from obscurity.

I still love the line from Friends:

Joey: Why do you call him Gandalf?
Ross: Because he's the party wizard. You know. Gandalf. Didn't you read The Lord of the Rings in High School?
Joey: I was having sex in high school.

Always makes me giggle.

 

[Erik Mona]

Really? You'd say that R. A . Salvatore is that obscure? I'll admit he's not my cup of tea (I think I read one of his Ravenloft books way back when) but, I do see his name hit the best seller lists fairly often (although not as much of late).

It depends on what you mean by obscure. Salvatore rules the roost of the game fiction tie-in world, which is a very reliable world complete with the potential for sales that even the "big boys" like TOR would be impressed with. A huge-selling D&D novel is a huge-selling fantasy novel, period.

The more popular books Salvatore FR novels do occasionally hit the best-seller lists, and he was also very successful with a Star Wars novel as well. In both cases the built-in audience value of the associated brands _underscored_ and propped up whatever audience an "R.A. Salvatore" book would have in its own right. Salvatore (and Greenwood, and Weis and Hickman, and others) have published books in their own universes, with other publishers hoping to cash in on their success elsewhere, and in the main these books do NOT sell as well as books they wrote for their D&D (or Star Wars) brands.

Salvatore is hugely influential with the D&D crowd (perhaps moreso than any author save Tolkien and probably eventually Rawling). But if you ask your parents about him, or non-science fiction fans, and they won't know who you are talking about. All of them know Tolkien, and I'll bet they've probably heard of Ray Bradbury or Isaac Asimov. I don't know how many have heard of Salvatore.

I realize that that's a difficult standard for any author to achieve, but I felt that was the benchmark being laid earlier in this thread regarding Jack Vance. If Salvatore is known primarily to readers of gaming tie-ins, his audience would seem to be still relatively obscure, insofar as sci-fi fandom and culture in general is concerned.

But really it's counting angels on the head of a pin stuff, and subjective as hell. I am starting to lose interest in the semantics part of this conversation, and will soon be drawn back to VH1 reruns.

Again, not arguing with you, just surprised.

And, really, you think Howard is that obscure too. Heh. Guess I'm letting my own preferences color my perspective to much. Was a HUGE fan of Savage Sword of Conan way back when, so, I knew who Howard was from an early age.

Does go to show why I'd think Vance was so obcure. I'm just smidgeon too young for your criteria.

I don't think Howard is obscure at all among fans of sword and sorcery, but I think your average reader of fantasy like A Game of Thrones or The Wheel of Time or Dragonlance didn't know who he was or was only dimly aware that he had created Conan didn't know much about Howard until the recent Del Rey re-issues.

That's because Conan, even in its mangled, L. Sprague de Camp Lin Carter perversions, was starting to fall out of print around the same time the Red Box came out and brought many of us, as little kids, into the hobby. I think Robert E. Howard and Conan and (for that matter) Jack Vance and Edgar Rice Burroughs were more influential to the D&D gamers who are in their 40s or older at this point (a lot of the OSR crowd) than in my own age cohort or younger (I'm 34) because those books were not as reliably in print and available to us during the time we came into the game as adolescents and even into high school.

Anyway, I know that a huge handful of game designers currently working at both Wizards of the Coast and Paizo had not read Robert E. Howard until the Del Rey collections came out, because most of them have come up to me and told me how awesome it was, as I've long been an advocate of the books.

Furthermore, I think the kind of nerd who dedicates his career to fantasy gaming or who spends a large portion of his leisure time talking on page 9 of EN World threads is a subset even of total D&D players worldwide. Every campaign I've ever been in has featured only a couple of "uber" players, and a lot of casual fans who enjoy the game but don't live or die on its every nuance. A lot of those guys might read The Wheel of Time, but their connection to fantasy isn't strong enough that they know the difference between Robert E. Howard and Jack Vance or how to correctly spell Fafhrd.

I happen to suspect that that more casual fan is actually the majority of D&D _players_ (not active customers, mind you), and that most "D&D Players" don't care about things like edition wars, authors of products, or really much of anything best described as "minutia" related to the game.

So we are talking semantics here and we're talking subsets of subsets of subsets of customer cohorts, and I see some lovely ladies in bikinis on my television so I am out.

--Erik