What Game Has The Best Fiction

[schneeland]

Re: Battletech I feel like there's a lot of rose-tinting going on. I loved the Battletech novels back in the day, but I was a child. I tried re-reading one in my 30s and it was... bad. Real bad.

I guess it's a question of expectations - I read the Gray Death trilogy not too long ago, and yes, the characters have about as much depth as a shallow puddle in summer, but overall, I found it enjoyable. But it has large, stompy robots with lots of guns, and the plot was ok.
I think if someone competent worked on this, at least the stuff up to the clan invasion would be good as the basis of an animated series.

Other than that: assuming one is generally into it, early Shadowrun has a few decent novels - 2XS is probably the best one, but I also like the Secrets of Power trilogy.

I do agree with @Ruin Explorer, though, that most game-based fiction is not exactly groundbreaking and at best enjoyable, and usually not something that stands out in its genre.

 

[payn]

Re: Battletech I feel like there's a lot of rose-tinting going on. I loved the Battletech novels back in the day, but I was a child. I tried re-reading one in my 30s and it was... bad. Real bad.

Well, yes I said as much in my posting. Its a difficult assignment becasue the answer is always the same.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Other than that: assuming one is generally into it, early Shadowrun has a few decent novels - 2XS is probably the best one, but I also like the Secrets of Power trilogy.

Yeah they're not great but they're surprisingly acceptable. I read them at an age when I was starting to realize how bad most game-related fiction (very much including Dragonlance) was, and I remember thinking they definitely weren't as bad as a lot of this. Probably because Nigel Findley wrote them (or 2XS at least), and he was honestly an absolute gift to the TTRPG world in terms of writing talent in the short time he was with us.

I think if someone competent worked on this, at least the stuff up to the clan invasion would be good as the basis of an animated series.

Absolutely. Imagine - and I know this will make you sad because we'll never see it - if someone with the talent of the Arcane writers/animators (and the writers aren't stellar, but they're clear cut above most writing for animated series) took on Battletech, the results could be insane. It'd likely easily be the best mecha show ever made, including anime etc.

And I guess if we include video games there we go - Arcane is probably the single-best "game-related" work out there. It's so much ridiculously better than anything about League of Legends that it's an absolute joke. It's insane to think LoL lead to this. Of all the games!

 

[TheHand]

Yes, let’s not delude ourselves into thinking any of the BattleTech books are great works of literature, but if we’re grading on a curve (and maybe wearing some tinted spectacles), I still say the Stackpole BattleTech books were a cut above all the other rpg related novels I’ve read - including the much beloved Dragonlance (for me at least).

But yeah, as a general rule the rpg tie-in books just aren’t that great… but I’d love to find out if there’s some gem that I’ve missed

 

[Morrus]

It’s almost certainly going to be a licensed game for me. It’s hard to beat Star Wars or LotR!

 

[Argyle King]

Does it count if the supporting books are inside the game?

The Elder Scrolls series has a lot of "books" that can be read in-game. Some of them are interesting (albeit short) reads.

 

[Blue]

I can't picture it being anything except a licensed IP that gained it's fame first through it's non-RPG media. Palladium's Robotech - though I did burn out on the phrase "techno knight" in the books, WEG Star Wars, Star Trek Adventures, Marvel Heroic Roleplay (or FASERIP, or half a dozen other Marvel RPGs), TMNT and other Strangeness assuming comic books count as books. Plus all of them had multiple TV shows plus multiple movies.

 

[Reynard]

I can't picture it being anything except a licensed IP that gained it's fame first through it's non-RPG media. Palladium's Robotech - though I did burn out on the phrase "techno knight" in the books, WEG Star Wars, Star Trek Adventures, Marvel Heroic Roleplay (or FASERIP, or half a dozen other Marvel RPGs), TMNT and other Strangeness assuming comic books count as books. Plus all of them had multiple TV shows plus multiple movies.

This is the exact opposite of the premise of the thread.

 

[Reynard]

"There is no such thing as good gaming fiction" is not only a pretty crappy way of engaging with the thread, it is pretty insulting to the many authors who have written gaming fiction as a career or as a way into the publishing industry.

I didn't think a thread as innocuous as this one would require a "+" but here we are, I guess.

 

[billd91]

This may be bending the rules but I'm going with Hackmaster because of Knights of the Dinner Table. Granted, the relationship between KotDT is more like the game being the derivative property rather than the original literature, it's written like the KotDT exploits are derivative of the game. And it's brilliant.