Who are Howard and Leiber?

[The Grackle]

Jack Vance's sf books are also very good, especially the "Demon Princes" series, which was arguably as influential on the Traveller rpg as the Dying Earth series was on D&D (heck, you can find "Smade's Planet" right there in the Solomani Rim sector!)

Don't forget the Planet of Adventure tetralogy. It's my favorite of Vance's SF. It's a little more cohesive than a lot of his other short sf novels.

 

[MerricB]

One of the things that is occasionally hard to remember is that the mythological tales we know (Greek, Egyptian, etc.) were once living mythologies - and indeed, could well be considered that now, with their reinvention in many novels.

There isn't one received wisdom. Instead you have variant after variant. (See a book like Robert Graves' "The Greek Myths" for examples). The tales changed as the storytellers changed.

Read Mallory and then read TH White - they share a lineage, but the actual tales they tell of Arthur are different. (And, if you'd like a real treat, then read Guy Gavriel Kay's "Fionavar Tapestry" for yet another take on it).

For examples of a living mythology, it is interesting to take the example of James Bond; there is the initial form of Ian Fleming's novels, then there are the movies, and then later novels by different authors.

James Bond is an iconic character, but the interpretation of him has changed with the years. D&D is not immune from this!

I came to D&D through the tales of Egyptian, Greek and Norse mythology, and the stories of Asimov, Clarke, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Tolkien (amongst others).

One notable thing about D&D (all versions) is that the default style of play embodies the "pulp" ideal: lots of combat and action, and discounts character interaction. I hasten to say that this isn't how it is played universally, but the tricks of making the game more role-playing based are something that could stand to be explored further.

I am mainly talking in this case about the art of constructing adventures that rely on secrets; I intend to write a longer essay on this in the near future.

Cheers!

 

[JoeGKushner]

I don't think anyone's saying not to reference them, just not to build them as the baseline from which 3rd edition has sprung.

For example, someone mentioned the Conan reprints along with Howard's other work. The bad news is only the first book sold very well. The others have been... troubled from what I've heard on various posts and boards.

Well, about Howard, et. al. being an influence on younger readers, I remember when I was a teenager in the 90s I went all out to track down Howard, Leiber, Moorcock, and Lovecraft. I mean, heck, Leiber was reprinted by White Wolf's imprint not too long ago. I had to work at tracking down original Howard stories though, and at the time, it was all mixed with De Camp stories. At any rate, this stuff still has a much more profound influence on me and my D&D gaming than Tolkien or any modern writer has (though I love Guy Gavriel Kay's and Patricia McKillip's stories).

The point is, to make a blanket assumption that young gamers are going to lose these influences or not seek out these influences is bull. If the stuff is out there, and the word is out there, young people will seek these stories out. I did. Lots of my gaming friends did. To just throw up your hands and say "Well! Kids don't read this stuff! There's no point to referencing these stories at all!" just makes sure that these fundamental influences are flat-out lost. Talk. Young people do listen. Give them at least some credit. Sheesh.

 

[Belen]

I don't think D&D should be 'restricted' to any set of authors.

My point was that as a 'baseline' or 'default', the classics are best (Tolkien, Howard, Vance, etc.).

The newer stuff shouldn't be built into the core of D&D. For one thing, there is too much disagreement about its quality (I think Feist is mediocre, apparently MerricB does not). For another thing, it should be up to different groups -- and supplements, and campaign settings -- to diverge from the default D&D assumptions.

Default D&D should stick to its original sources -- those are what made it what it is.

The problem with your comments is that some people consider Howard or Lieber to be mediocre. I attempted to read them when I was younger, but could not stand their style. Of the older authors, only Tolkien has made a real influence on me.

 

[diaglo]

I am mainly talking in this case about the art of constructing adventures that rely on secrets; I intend to write a longer essay on this in the near future.

Cheers!

Da Vinci Code

or the movie with Nick Cage ... National Treasure or whatever it was called.

 

[Belen]

Influences for my games

The fantasy literature I read definitely influences my current games. That literature does not include Howard, Vance, or Lieber. Instead, it is the books I am reading at the moment that gives me the ideas I use to run games. If D&D does not model some of the items that I love from the books I read, then I will create rules to help silmulate those aspects.

Here are my current influences:

Michael A. Stackpole: The man can write! He is one of the best fantasy authors I have ever encountered. His novel "Dark Glory War" and the sequel trilogy are major influences on my games.

Katherine Kerr: "Daggerspell" and the subsequent series set in the land of Deverry has been a HUGE influence in my latest campaign world. I love her world and her concept of Wyrd.

Mercedes Lackey: Valdemar. You can definitely find the influence from D&D within the pages of her books. Her new books starting with "The Outstretched Shadow" are spectacular and will find a way into my games!

Elizabeth Moon: "The Deed of Paksennarion." This trilogy has been a major influence on me. It is obvious that the woman plays D&D. I have even imported some of her deities like Achyra and Liart into my games. I have never seen anyone write a better Paladin character. Heck, I even ported the Marshals of Gird into my last two campaign worlds.

Terry Brooks: I love the Shannara series. The latest books are especially good.

James Clemens: He wrote "Wit'ch Fire" and the accompanying series. These books are amazing.

Elizabeth Haydon: "Rhapsody." She wrote a wonderfully amazing Bard. The story is compelling and may have the best prologue sequence of any novel I have ever read.

Robbin Hobb: The Assassin trilogy and the Tawny Man trilogy. These have been big influences on me of late.

Tad Williams: "Dragonbone chair." I loved this trilogy. The first campaign world I made from scratch was heavily influences by these books. I even had summer and winter elves as races in that world.

J.R.R Tolkien: Enough said.

These are the authors that serve as the greatest incluences on me and on the games that I run. I could care less about Lovecraft, Howard, or Burroughs. For me, the modern fantasy authors are amazing. If D&D incorporated these newer authors into the mix, then I would be sold.

 

[Ranes]

Apart from anything else, it takes time to make a classic. One of the interesting things about fantasy literature is that you can have a classic because of the fantasy, not the literature.

I agree with Merric that influences move on and the contemporary will and should have an influence on D&D. After all, Vance, for example, was contemporary with OD&D and I'm pro-Vancian magic without being a Vance fan. Meanwhile, the only fantasy fiction I've read this year is Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. Even Heaney's foreword, which concerns itself primarily with language, is enough to inspire a DM.

New blood will explore the classics but the response will be different to that of previous generations, influenced as it has to be by the present. I was watching Live8 Hyde Park with an old friend, when his seventeen year-old sent him a text message to say she couldn't believe she was actually seeing Pink Floyd live. I told him I couldn't believe she was sending a text message in the middle of the last live Pink Floyd performance.

 

[Desdichado]

There are a few exceptions. He has two or three other fleshed out characters. But in most books, the only distinguishing quality of the character is the name; everything else is pretty predictable if you know one of his other characters.

That's kinda ironic; if I'm remembering correctly, isn't your screen name one of those exact same characters you're complaining about?

 

[Arrgh! Mark!]

Here goes.

Fantasy RPG's to begin with were defined by Fantasy books of the day.

Sounds rational enough, right? The people who played fantasy were influenced by the big books of the day and earlier.

When was D+D first out? The seventies?

Right. Fantasy had been going much before that. Possibly due to it's extremely unknown subculture factor, people who liked RPGs were the ones that were deeply interested in Fantasy, and fantasy books in general. So we have some evidence of researching in our older patrons. Maybe because there wasn't such a glut in the market of pulp fantasy (I wouldn't know, I wasn't alive at this point) things such as the masterworks were able to be read much more.

So, these books were read by geeks and had a deep effect on games. This seems a fair inclination. Especially to start with. The good ole days when magic was rare and magical, monsters were new and dangerous and traps weren't simply assumed to be bypassed. Why? Because even this so called fire-and-forget magic of Vancian origin (If you read the books again) is quite amazing and different. (Read Sepulcraves Mostin the Metagnostic for a very good re-enactment of a Vancian wizard, at least the insanity.)




Cut to the current day. D+D is still a not-particularly-huge hobby group filled with geeks and fanatics. But it's bigger and it's more popular than before. People can pick up and play and enjoy games - and often do. But they don't need to be fantasy geeks to pick it up. In fact, they barely need be able to read at all. If they have read fantasy it's going to be the good fantasy of their day.

It's logical that if the books of elder year affected our elder, the books of today affect our RPGs. But thats a wrong statement. It's actually incorrect to assume this at all. If we assume modern authors to be Eddings, Lackey, Robin Hobb, Hickman and Weis for us geeks and so on - god, if we even look at those piss-poor D+D novels. Do our games resemble this? Everyone's game is different. BUT - the D+D "Core Setting" as I take it does not act like those books at all, especially regarding magic. New players are not as well read as older players because of the neccesity of old players to be more obsessive about fantasy (Needed to define it for themselves?). I have a good player in my group that's never read a fantasy book in his life. But he likes fantasy.



My theory is this - D+D over time has evolved its own sort of self-propagating stereotype. You can see this from Dungeon adventures. You can especially see this from the fact a 10 foot pole is standard equipment in a bog standard game. It's a stereotype that gamers themselves put forward, but it's there. It very much has traces of killing evil priests and taking their stuff, but it isn't taking a lot of the more complex issues raised in either the classics or Modern fiction in. Dungeon, the magazine that caters exclusively to our hobby - Does it deal with ignorant non-relativistic viewpoints as wrong as a general rule? Does it cover unknowable horror as a roleplaying stunt? Not very often, though Dark gods are common enough. Is there a great focus on this? Nope, not really - thats for the DM to use or abuse.

Nope. It gives us dungeons filled with goblins. I must admit, there's a few interesting dungeons and things lately. But generally, there's a dungeon and lets get people in it, looting away.

The self-propagating stereotype of D+D is it's very basic nature of a combat/problem game overcome with dice. You get a lot of D+D haters yapping on about this endlessly. But the very nature of this dungeoneering and general stereotype leads into a sort of Dungeonpunk atmosphere that absolutely permeates Dungeon. The artwork especially lends to this.

Now, I'm sure people will say the game is what you make of it. But look at the way it's set up and how Dungeon deals with how to play the game. It's a quick bit of investigation followed by combat and traps and underground passages. We can see the general feel of the standard gamer leaning toward this feeling - otherwise Dungeon wouldn't be able to publish itself.


Anyway, I think RPG's started with Conan and so forth. But due to the nature of the difficulty of intellectual matters, they kept the dungeons and the combat and the spunky women but lost the horror of things unknown. Modern writers haven't influenced this stereotype a great deal; at least not as far as I can tell. What was easy and good about the old novels was kept, even though now there's probably dungeons even Conan wouldn't recognise. The dungeons tone might have changed over the years, but it's still a dungeon.

Once, a group of frightened and drunk (White, Norman/Saxon) adventurers treaded cautiously through dripping caverns, lanterns held high and sword in the other. Now, red-metalled plate and indigo weapon carrying drow stalk through abandoned dwarven mines. Things are a bit more PC, maybe, but a ten foot pole is a ten foot pole.

It's up to the GM to give influence to his game - otherwise the influence will be the stereotype of a dungeon-hack. Simple as that.

 

[Desdichado]

The Face in the Frost by John Bellairs also uses a more-or-less Vancian magic system (and is referenced by name in the 1E DMG alongside the Vance books). It's also a tremendously entertaining book that I highly recommend.

More or less Vancian? In what way? I just read that for the first time about a year ago, and I didn't think that it and D&D magic had much (if anything) in common. It was more a prelude to Harry Potter esque magic, IMO.