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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Adlon" data-source="post: 4447309" data-attributes="member: 1972">Novels... always a big point of contention....My take on the FR novels is this...I don't look for or expect literary excellence. I expect and look for good stories.The guy around the campfire spinning yarns may not do it well, in an entertaining way, but you can easily still be intrigued by the material itself....Thats me and the FR novels. None is ever intended to be canon necessarily. Some never even comes CLOSE to affecting my campaign in any way.But what I do look for and enjoy, is HOW these NPC's interact with everything around them. We can guess from the sourcebooks, and campaign setting writeups. But, I get insight as to HOW that NPC acts, thinks, REacts, ambitions, goals, etc.....Some were pure bombs from a literary standpoint. Most of the Authors were/are game designers first......authors second.But, take the Drizzt series. Ok, we all knew Entreri was a butt hole, but a dangerous butthole. In the series, we got a look into WHY, and how exactly he IS a butthole.Spellfire by Ed....in the Grey Box, meet the Knights of Myth Drannor. Well written up, the movers and shakers given good page space in the books......But, in the novel, we got a GREAT look at the Knights, Elminster, saw a Dracolich (good insight for an RPG encounter) , had Cult of the Dragon NPC's and THEIR personalities....All good insight.Absolutely great for when the PC's go left, instead of right, and decide to perhaps finally go past that first sign on a narrow walkway to a squat tower in a pastoral burg in the Dales.Or decide to hit Eveningstar, and perhaps interact with Tesseril Winter.We learn their thoughts, as per the author's vision of course, their vulnerabilities (human element) , so IF you don't want to do all this personification yourself, you don't have to.One thing I've found in 25 years... the Novel information is more easily retained than the actual game stats/specs/demographics are.I don't remember if Bruenor Battlehammer is a 6th lvl, 23rd lvl, whatever.... and if his Axe of Mess You Up is +1, +3, Vorpal.....???I would need to look that up.But, on demand, I can personify him from the acceptable-to-me vision I gleaned from the novels.You just decide if the authors representation fits your minds eye's version.Than, if EVER you need Bruenor to appear in game, the slide into his personna should be VERY easy.Elminster can sound to some like a cackling fool of awesome might in some sourcebook writeups... in Spellfire, we discover he is most certainly NOT a cackling fool.And, we get alot of insight as to how he is to deal with, how he reacts, how he casts and what?They work for me....</blockquote>

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