Phillip Jose Farmer's "The Dungeon"
- Thread starter jester47
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Cthulhudrew
First Post
The first and second books were pretty good, they sort of went downhill after that (IMO). IIRC, he didn't actually write any of them himself- they were all done by different authors (likely the reason the quality of the books was so... inconsistent.)
Shame, really, as the premise was really interesting, and (as I noted) they started off so promising...
Shame, really, as the premise was really interesting, and (as I noted) they started off so promising...
I finished the first couple of novels in the series, and got about halfway through the third, though I managed to collect every novel in the series. (I'm talking about the original editions, not the recent reprints. BTW: Do these reprints have numerous "explorer's journal" illustrations, as the original editions did?)
The overall premise of the "Dungeon" series is fantastic, and it would certainly make a good roleplaying campaign. However, I found myself losing interest in the novels after the second one. (That was, oh, 10 years ago, and I might not have been in the right mindset at the time, so maybe I should give them another go?)
The overall mood and setting of the novels remind me more of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.G. Wells than they do what many today consider to be "heroic fantasy". The emphasis in these novels is more on mystery and mysticism than it is on action and adventure. There's also a good deal of exploration, though exploration more of alien worlds and exotic landscapes than of D&D-like "dungeons". And there is a liberal sprinkling of "steamworks fantasy" and "Victorian horror/romance" in these novels.
Comparable RPG moods/settings would be EverWay, Castle Faulkenstein, and the "Witchfire" trilogy of adventure modules by Privateer Press.
The overall premise of the "Dungeon" series is fantastic, and it would certainly make a good roleplaying campaign. However, I found myself losing interest in the novels after the second one. (That was, oh, 10 years ago, and I might not have been in the right mindset at the time, so maybe I should give them another go?)
The overall mood and setting of the novels remind me more of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.G. Wells than they do what many today consider to be "heroic fantasy". The emphasis in these novels is more on mystery and mysticism than it is on action and adventure. There's also a good deal of exploration, though exploration more of alien worlds and exotic landscapes than of D&D-like "dungeons". And there is a liberal sprinkling of "steamworks fantasy" and "Victorian horror/romance" in these novels.
Comparable RPG moods/settings would be EverWay, Castle Faulkenstein, and the "Witchfire" trilogy of adventure modules by Privateer Press.
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JoeGKushner
Adventurer
Read it a long time ago.
May be misremembering but it was kinda multi-genre setting and was okay as a brain-time killer.
May be misremembering but it was kinda multi-genre setting and was okay as a brain-time killer.
WizarDru
Adventurer
The act of having an author think up an idea and throw his name on a series was very popular in the mid-90s. People like Farmer, Clarke and Asimov would think up an idea, and then the publisher would slap their name up on top, and the actual author would be hidden somewhere on the cover.
No idea as to their quality, but I've never known anyone who's read it.
No idea as to their quality, but I've never known anyone who's read it.
JoeGKushner
Adventurer
In the 80's? I guess you haven't seen Tom Clancey's Netforce or any of the other major series that are created in concept by the author and then he doesn't touch them. Works out well for some I guess.
I read all of the books many years ago.
Due to the fact that there are several authors that contributed to the series there is a great variety of style. In a continuing story such as this I found it to be quite jarring at times when starting a new book with a different author.
Also, the abilities of the characters varied widly as the different authors took over.
I really enjoyed the first few books as it presented an extremly mysterious and fantastic world with a great many mysteries going on. I really love having stories with mysterious overlords pulling the strings.
As I recall the 4th book went in some unusuall direction which at first I did not like but it grew on me as I read it.
Then I got to the 5th book. I cannot emphasize how much of a dissapointment this was. I was livid out how horrible it turned out. I wanted my money back. I even started to write my own ending for it.
The author for this one was the same as the first. He ignored much of the occurances and tension built in the middle 3 books and completed the story as he must have envisioned from HIS start. Many of the characters others had introduced were simply dropped. The protagonist whose character had grown imensly from the 1st book was treated almost as if he had not learned anything from his ordeal and the overall ending was so rediculous that I don't know what to say about it.
There were many cool things in the book - Large intelligent spiders, a girl from the future with a cybernetic energy shield, a strange alien creature cloaked in a black rob with tentacle like hands.
It is defintely a games world and the group is exaclty like a party of adventurers. You can almost tell when they gain a level.
So, there are some cool things in it but you've got to be prepared for the awful last book (I would recommend not even reading it).
M.
Due to the fact that there are several authors that contributed to the series there is a great variety of style. In a continuing story such as this I found it to be quite jarring at times when starting a new book with a different author.
Also, the abilities of the characters varied widly as the different authors took over.
I really enjoyed the first few books as it presented an extremly mysterious and fantastic world with a great many mysteries going on. I really love having stories with mysterious overlords pulling the strings.
As I recall the 4th book went in some unusuall direction which at first I did not like but it grew on me as I read it.
Then I got to the 5th book. I cannot emphasize how much of a dissapointment this was. I was livid out how horrible it turned out. I wanted my money back. I even started to write my own ending for it.
The author for this one was the same as the first. He ignored much of the occurances and tension built in the middle 3 books and completed the story as he must have envisioned from HIS start. Many of the characters others had introduced were simply dropped. The protagonist whose character had grown imensly from the 1st book was treated almost as if he had not learned anything from his ordeal and the overall ending was so rediculous that I don't know what to say about it.
There were many cool things in the book - Large intelligent spiders, a girl from the future with a cybernetic energy shield, a strange alien creature cloaked in a black rob with tentacle like hands.
It is defintely a games world and the group is exaclty like a party of adventurers. You can almost tell when they gain a level.
So, there are some cool things in it but you've got to be prepared for the awful last book (I would recommend not even reading it).
M.
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