Who are Howard and Leiber?

[Hussar]

^ Agree fully on the "Dying Earth RPG" Bloody fantastic game. Very, very fun. And, difficult for some so-called native speakers as well.

Like I said, I've mentioned quite a few authors here that are very good. Tad Williams? Excellent fantasy author. Erikson? Also very, very good.

But, I will agree that the number of bad GREATLY outnumbers the good. I won't argue that one at all. There's tons of crap out there. But, then again, there always has been.

As a question though, would you say Moorcock is classic or modern? He's riding the cusp IMO. I'm just asking.

But, really, people who sit back and say nothing good has been written in the past twenty years, need to head to the library more often. It's kind of like the people who claim that no good music has been made since X. Nostalgia doesn't make something true.

On the point about White Plume Mountain, I think we actually agree. The older modules, like a lot of the older fantasy, simply handwaved away all issues of realism in favour of plot. Why are those cultists hanging out in the mountain, just waiting for Conan to find them? What are they eating, sitting in a mountain in the middle of a desert? We don't know and we don't care. We're reading Conan to see Conan kick butt and take names. Same goes for something like White Plume Mountain. An amazingly fun module with about as much realism as a rubber hammer.

As a genre, fantasy has evolved past those days. We can no longer simply plunk down a sprawling maze in the middle of nowhere without explaining how it can exist. Why? Because, as readers, we've become a tad more sophisticated, we've seen the "Cultists hanging out in the middle of the desert" more than a few times, and we've finally started to ask some of the hard questions. It isn't a case of angst ridden drama queens taking over the genre, it's a case of actually slamming a couple of brain cells together and saying, "Hey, wait a minute, just exactly how does this work?"

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Moorcock is at least part of the bridge between modern and older styles...especially if you read the Jerry Cornelius and the Dancers at the End of Time stuff...who needs acid when you've got THAT?

 

[Hussar]

:rotf:

To be fair, my fav Moorcock will always be the first three of the Krieghund series. The last one blows chunks, but, the first three, particularly the first one, is fantastic.

 

[Krypter]

On a somewhat related note, do any Leiber fans know where I can track down the comic book adaptation of Ill Met in Lankhmar? It was a great series from around 1990, drawn by Mike Mignola (see a review here). I haven't had any luck with ebay or amazon. The art was phenomenal, and I think it was collected into a graphic novel at some point. Tips? Pointers? Are there any websites that cater to finding old comics? All appreciated.

 

[The Shaman]

It's no longer enough to crank out a dungeon crawl in the middle of the wilderness for no reason other than to give the players something to kill. Dungeons need to have an ecology to increase verisimilitude. Look at the "Worst Modules" thread bouncing around and you'll see people thinking exactly that.

I finally got around to reading the "worst adventures" thread, and after originally reading your comment here, I was quite surprised to find that it says nothing of the kind.

I didn't find a single reference to White Plume Mountain in the worst adventures thread - there were only one or two references to Keep on the Borderlands, Palace of the Silver Princess, and In Search of the Unknown, IIRC, and a couple of reactions to Tomb of Horrors, but none of these negative comments had anything to do with "dungeon crawls in the middle of a wilderness."

In fact the most common source of disparaging remarks (including your own...) had to do with modules that were heavy on metaplot and railroaded the players and their characters along a pre-determined plot line – Dragonlance seemed to earn the greatest ire. The subjects of ecological or cultural verisimilitude never came up in the six pages of posts that I read.

I have no idea what you're citing as the basis for the opinion expressed above.

Twenty years ago, you didn't need a reason for that orc in the 10 foot room guarding a chest. No one cared. We do now. Because, as gamers, we've evolved and changed, and, well, become considerably more sophisticated. That's an element that has been reflected in fantasy as well. It's not enough just to plunk a serpent cult in the middle of the mountains. Now you need to explore where they get their food and why the heck they are there and not on some comfortable beach somewhere.

Again, I disagree.

First, let's let the 1e DMG comment on the view taken toward ecology and fantasy gaming, c. 1979 (twenty-six years ago):

Climate and Ecology
When you develop your world, leave plenty of area for cultivation, even more for wildlife. Indicate the general sorts of creatures inhabiting an area, using logic with regard to natural balance. This is not to say that you must be textbook perfect, it is merely a cautionary word to remind you not to put in too many large carnivores without any visible means of support. Some participants in your campaign might question the ecology- particularly if it does not favor their favorite player characters. You must be prepared to justify it….Dungeons likewise must be balanced and justified, or else wildly improbable and caused by some supernatural entity which keeps the whole thing running - or at least has set it up to run until another stops it.

More than twenty years ago the primary text on constructing adventures and campaigns for D&D suggested that GMs consider some basic ecology in constructing their game-worlds. The idea that this is some sort of recent development, somehow shaped by contemporary fantasy fiction, isn't borne out by a simple look back at the rules of the day.

The 1e AD&D DMG section quoted above concludes with the following:

In any event, do not allow either the demands of "realism" or impossible makebelieve to spoil your milieu. Climate and ecology are simply reminders to use a bit of care!

In a fantasy game, anything is possible - my view is that 90% of the world represents the probable and the other 10% the improbable and even the impossible. I have no problem with writing a White Plume Mountain into my games - the adventurers spend their lives immersed in that 10% because that's where the adventure is - the fame, the glory, the untold riches.

I think authors like Leiber and Howard and Moorcock and Tolkien understood this intellectually and viscerally - they wrote to that 10%. Later authors took a couple of different approaches: Some still wrote to that 10%, but by aping those classic writers, recycling thematic elements but without the elegant prose and the spark of genius that inhabited the earlier works. (Terry Brooks, I’m talking to you and those who followed your example.) Others among contemporary fantasists seem drawn instead to exploring the 90% through a mix of post-modernist contextualism and marxfem philosophy, perhaps to add “depth” to fantasy that the “dinosaurs” of the genre lack (or maybe just to show how far beyond the pale they can be).

Are their stories better? Without diving into the merits of literary criticism, I can only say that it’s a matter of taste. The more important question here and now is, do they make for good gaming? I’m simply not well-versed enough in contemporary fantasy to offer an informed opinion. I can offer a couple of metatextual observations however. (Yeah, I can work some post-modern mojo, too.)

Taking a look once again at that worst adventures thread, it seems that many of the adventures deemed “worst” by our ENWorld peers are those steeped in metaplot, where the adventurers are reduced to being passive observers while other heroes do great things. Conversely, the best adventures thread and the commentary on the Wilderlands of High Fantasy all point to the classic feel of those “dungeon crawls” that some enjoy ridiculing. Many gamers enjoy angsty navel-gazing, perhaps following in the example of more contemporary fantasy authors' desire to explore the implications or inner life of fantasy worlds and characters – others enjoy more red-blooded, often politically incorrect kick-in-the-door, kill-things-and-take-their-stuff, then blow-it-all-on-whores-and-ale adventures in the style of the classic writers of the genre. (Please note that I am not attempting to disparage either style of gaming – I’m really just going for a cheap laugh with my descriptions. ) It seems to me that perhaps the former group of gamers might draw more inspiration from contemporary fantasists while the latter would seek the classic authors for guidance.

For myself, I write my games to the 10%, so I will continue to mine fantasy classics, literary and cinematic, both well-known and obscure for inspiration.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I've actually found it harder to find good science-fiction and fantasy since the popularities of Tolkien and Star Wars upped the amount both genres to be found in stores about a generation ago. It's entirely possible that with the increase of material that there's an increase in good material, but there is definately an increase in the bad, to the point where the signal to noise ration is extremely frustrating.

Try baen.com. They've got an excellent stable of authors that run from sci-fi to fantasy to alternate history. David Weber's Bahzell books are wonderful fantasy with a solid setting. Holly Lisle is very engaging even if I feel her worlds tend to be a bit thin. John Ringo's sci-fi is like David Drake's Slammers but with character development.

The best part is they post 4-8 chapters of many books on their site so you can decide if the writer's a hack or a genius before you buy.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I think authors like Leiber and Howard and Moorcock and Tolkien understood this intellectually and viscerally - they wrote to that 10%. Later authors took a couple of different approaches: Some still wrote to that 10%, but by aping those classic writers, recycling thematic elements but without the elegant prose and the spark of genius that inhabited the earlier works. (Terry Brooks, I’m talking to you and those who followed your example.)

You are undoubtedly referring to the Shanarra books. In defense of T. Brooks, I would have to point out that what some percieve as ripping off JRRT is not neccessarily the case.

Tolkien's originality lay in his creation of new languages, and that while his prose is beautiful, his plot points were clearly derived from other sources. Many elements of his opus can be found in Grimm's Fairy tales and the numerous epics from the various literatures of Europe. Tolkien's masterstroke was that he was able to synthesize a new tale in a relatively new form (the Novel) that nonetheless echoed the familiar stories of legend. He took old forms and gave sent them in some slightly different directions, while simultaneously widening the scope of the tales- of all the epics, few beyond the Illiad have so grand a stage.

The thing is, Tolkien's work did not erase that original source material from existence, and any other subsequent author is as free as he was to mine the same literary veins. Brooks does use some of the same imagery as JRRT, but whether his source was Tolkien or the same epics the man himself used only T. Brooks knows for sure. Furthermore, he has added his own new trope to fantasy, unique AFAIK: Shannara is a magical post-apocalyptic world- but his world of magic succeeded the world of science, not the other way around as it is usually done.

(For the record- I've enjoyed the Shanarra books immensely, but even I'll admit that Brooks' prose is but a candle to Tolkien's bonfire...)

 

[Poster Bard]

Who are Howard and Leiber?

. . . and what of Lord Dunsany's The Book of Wonder?

 

[Krypter]

Nice. Thanks, CM Games. I've never had the chance to read his short stories, even though I've been a Lovecraft fan forever and have heard of Lord Dunsany many a time.

 

[Thotas]

Thanks, kigmatzomatz. I may have to give that a try ... especially that Bahzell stuff, since I've already been enjoying the adventures of the Royal Manticoran Navy.