Who are Howard and Leiber?

[Glyfair]

(Incidentally, as I've rarely found any Vance to read, how many books does he use the system in? I've read his Lyonesse series, and the magic seems to have a different tone there).

When AD&D was released there were only two books, "The Dying Earth" and "Eyes of the Overworld." Two later ones were released.

The "The Dying Earth" and "Eyes of the Overworld" are clearly direct influences on D&D. Besides the magic system, many specific spells came from the series (Prismatic Spray, Imprisonment). The ability for Rogues to use scrolls with mishap chance is from "Eyes of the Overworld" (Cugel the clever tries to cast a spell that will have his enemy carried away, and it backfires and has him carried away).

 

[Aldarc]

Any product reflects its own times. Any old-school C&C game is just as much a product of pop psychology as the most abstracted FFZ game. It's becuase products are created for the audience, and the audience changes.

This has been quoted for emphasis.

 

[kenobi65]

More seriously, just want to jump in with Paul Anderson: Three Hearts and Three Lions. This thing reads like an old D&D adventure, and serves as the direct source for many D&D conventions. (Paladins, trolls, gnomes, saving throws). Its one of the real finds I got from tracking down books mentions in Giants in the Earth from old issues of Dragon (the other being Shakespeare's The Tempest).

"Giants in the Earth," as well as the bibliography in the back of the 1st Edition DMG, influenced my reading materials for several years, back when I first started playing D&D in the early 1980s.

I can't believe I wound up not reading "Three Hearts and Three Lions" until 2 years ago...it's a very nice little book, and surely has a tremendous "D&D Feel" to it.

 

[Shemeska]

I'd tend to agree --- even in my mid-thirtyish group, most have not read Howard or Leiber, and only a few of us Lovecraft or Moorcock.

I'd all but put money that Lovecraft is much, -much- more well known by name than Howard or Leiber, especially Leiber. With Howard however, I think that his name is much less known than his creations might be known by the general public. People know about Conan, or have at least heard the name, but to hell if they known who Robert E Howard is. *chuckle*

I've read a decent amount of Howard's work, but I've never read anything by Fritz Leiber.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

I can't believe I wound up not reading "Three Hearts and Three Lions" until 2 years ago...it's a vry nice little book, and surely has a tremendous "D&D Feel" to it.

The irony being, of course, that one of the three PCs in that group is a swanmay. I don't ever want to hear old-schoolers tell me weird PC races are out of the question again.

Hell, I'd rather play a game based on Three Hearts and Three Lions, even with all its eccentricities, than on Tolkien.

 

[T. Foster]

I'm still getting a great deal of enjoyment out of the inspirational reading list in the back of the 1E DMG, having just recently read Philip Jose Farmer's "World of Tiers" series, Fred Saberhagen's "Changeling Earth," Margaret St. Clair's "Shadow People" and "Sign of the Labrys" and several others, so I have no interest in any of the 'modern' fantasy fiction that clogs the shelves at Barnes & Noble. If it's got more than ~200pp, doesn't have cover art by someone like Jeffrey Jones or Frank Frazetta, and I can't get it at my friendly local used book store for ~$1.50 I'm not interested. So I suppose it's really no surprise that my favorite versions of the game are still the ones that emulate that style of fiction, and not the later stuff.

P.S. Note to everybody: if you haven't read the fiction of A. Merritt, drop what you're doing right now and go find some. He's the missing link in the D&D inspiration chain, every bit as influential upon the style and feel of the original game as Howard, Leiber, and Vance. The Moon Pool, his first novel, is probably the best place to start.

 

[The Shaman]

P.S. Note to everybody: if you haven't read the fiction of A. Merritt, drop what you're doing right now and go find some. He's the missing link in the D&D inspiration train, every bit as influential upon the style and feel of the original game as Howard, Leiber, and Vance.

I'm re-reading The Moon Pool at the moment - good stuff!

 

[wingsandsword]

My little anecdote about the relative obscurity of certain Fantasy authors. . .

Circa 1992, I'm first getting interested in D&D. I'm loaned a pile of D&D manuals by a friend, and start voraciously reading them.

I'm also first getting into Fantasy, with Tolkien being my first step, the first "real" fantasy literature I read started at the Hobbit and went into LotR. I found Howard's Conan books on our bookstore shelf and read a few (recognizing the name mostly from the movies, and realizing they were based on these books). If not for the Conan movies, I would have doubtless overlooked the books. Lovecraft I knew only from a few obscure references, it was many years before I knew what the deal was with him.

My mother is a very prolific reader, a die-hard bibliophile (our house at the time had a garage filled with boxes of books she'd read).

In Legends and Lore, among the other religions and mythologies, it had the works of Lieber. I thought it seemeed interesting, and my mother was keeping abreast of what I was reading in these D&D books (my dad didn't want me reading them at all, but my mom was cool with it as long as she kept an eye on what was in them). This big chapter references the works of Fritz Lieber and the whole set of mythology and history of his world, and it was the first literary reference she'd never heard of.

My mom, avid reader and devout bibliophile, had never heard of Lieber. She read Tolkien back in the 60's, Lovecraft long ago, and some of Howard too. A few books by other authors, but she seemed pretty well read in Fantasy literature. When she'd never heard of these books that Legends and Lore was talking about, I dismissed those books as some obscure D&D tie-in I'd missed out on.

I can't honestly recall ever seeing Lieber's works on a bookstore shelf, and this discussion was really one of the very, very few times I've ever heard him come up after that early brush with Legends & Lore well more than a decade ago. Therefore, I'm sorry to say that from my point of view, he's highly obscure.

By the same token, I only ever hear Jack Vance come up in discussion of D&D magic, and since people tend to react like D&D magic is completely unlike fantasy literature, Vance's works aren't exactly standing up to the test of time.

 

[Turjan]

By the same token, I only ever hear Jack Vance come up in discussion of D&D magic, and since people tend to react like D&D magic is completely unlike fantasy literature, Vance's works aren't exactly standing up to the test of time.

I have the feeling that he has always been much more popular in Europe, where he is generally well known. I was a bit surprised not to find him on the book shelves here . That said, he definitely shows several weaknesses. His characters are mostly bland (indistinguishably so), his plots are often weak and the endings are even weaker to non-existent. His strengths are the flavorful and fantastic worlds he creates and his colourful language. I think he's the only writer where even brutish monsters engage in sophisticated debate before they try to eat you .

Btw, he has written much more SF than fantasy, although I heard he's writing some sequel to the 'Dying Earth' series at the moment.

 

[Akrasia]

... His characters are mostly bland (indistinguishably so), his plots are often weak and the endings are even weaker to non-existent. ...

I thought that many of the characters in the Lyonesse series were quite colourful, especially the villains. I also thought that the plots for the first two books in that series were rather strong. The conclusion to the entire series was rather satisfying as well, IMO.

...I think he's the only writer where even brutish monsters engage in sophisticated debate before they try to eat you . ...

That's true -- everyone from ogres to young children are astonishingly witty in Vance's stuff.

But I would recommend the Lyonesse trilogy to anyone who loves D&D -- and fantasy more generally. They are really great, IMO.

Also, they've recently been republished by Gollancz, and so should be available in the U.K. (and specialty shops elsewhere, or online).