Quote from: danbuter;429264What I mean is that it gets tons of support, novels are starting to appear (and Prince of Wolves is very good if you liked Ravenloft), and it just feels very alive. I hope this continues, as I think the world is one of the better ones that have been released for D&D style games.

Quote from: Benoist;429353When an RPG publisher comes up with a line of novels set in the RPG setting of their choice, I know that for me, it jumped the shark.

I picked up the two already released Pathfinder novels.

So far after reading a few chapters, they're kind of a "generic" read.  If they continue to read this way, I may very well not even end up finishing these two books.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;429464Does that include a comic book series? Cause one of the settings in your sig has one.

Jus' sayin'.

Somehow I wouldn't define the Ptolus comics to be part of that paradigm for me, no. They were conceived in parallel to the book itself, and were part of the way the setting was showcased. They were not altering the setting, or proposing any "timeline", or "metaplot" onto the setting. Ptolus is also a one-man design, which seems quite different to me from settings like Forgotten Realms or Golarion.

My original statement probably wasn't accurate in terms of fiction, but in terms of novels based on a gaming setting, it really seems to be like each time such a setting starts to come up with novels based on it, it starts to go down in quality, if not dive immediately into depths of crap for me, as far as I'm concerned.

Then, maybe it's just the authors' style of fiction I really dislike. I can't stand anything by Elaine Cunningham, for instance. Don't get me wrong: she's a lovely person and everything. I just can't stand her writings for the love of God. That just rubs me the wrong way. God her elves. I'm going to have nightmares tonight.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;429312But yeah. 2e FR wasn't all awesome. But it sure delivered some awesome. And Golarion is a bit like FR sans an Elminster-figure. (Edit: Or Drizzt figure.)

I remember being underwelmed up stat by the First Edition of the Forgotten Realms. I was really disappointed - and that feeling never totally left me. My two quibbles - even before reading the books - were an uninteresting landmass and vast area of the continent that screamed "Fill me with something! Put together some names and let's decide later what is actually here - which led to many overlapping and uninteresting kingdoms/cultures.

However, they slowly grew on me, exp. after I started to adapt them to my personal gaming style. And the quantity of stuff that they wrote for the FR over the decades guaranteed that, even if only by chance, you got some cool things/places/ideas. Just don't mention the truly horrifying saga of "The Time of Troubles" (AKA "The Avatar Saga") - something I wonder why was not killed on day one of the 1E ---> 2E brainstorming.

Still, IMHO the 3E FR Setting stands as the paragon of how a book setting should be written - even if I would have liked more a similar book for another setting. Same for books like "Races of Faerun", which I read because the cultural backgrounds and the rest of the fluff is often well thought out - and deserving of a better place.

Talking of the narrative stuff, I confess I feel embarassed every time I even just think of using one of the "staple" Realms characters: Elminster, The Seven Sisters, Drizzt and the like. I actually use Elminster, but my version of it: i.e., basically Hitler from the Youtube parodies. My players' characters are inept Harpers (Pst: the players don't know that...) Elminster sends them as far as possibile from where important stuff is happening. The character manage to stumble on the important stuff anyway. Dire things happen. Elminster is informed. Youtube parodies ensue.

I have read some novels too. "Darkwalker on Moonshae" was good, the rest of the trilogy was rubbish. Elaine Cunningham's books are good, too: they are mature enough to present the Harpers as a shadowy organization, with many streaks of grey: the result are novels with a definite "Robert Ludlum" atmosphere.

But, talking as a professional writer and editor, some of the books put out by TSR/Wizards are dire. I sadly bought the first book in "The Last Mithal" trilogy, and it is beyond redemption. The writing stumbles from amateurish ("We have already alerted our spies on Faerun!" say the elves of Evermeet. No one calls his own scouts/informers/collaborators "spies". Maybe "agents", or one of the other nouns), to illogical (lot of tedious writing is spent explaining how a character "never left Evermeet"; but, as soon as she is on Faerun, her ranger skills allow her to recognize "troll tracks"; WHERE on Evermeet she ever saw troll tracks?) to sheer embarassing (a 300 years old elf, who traveled Faerun for the better part of his life, is surprised to learn how, after 50 years, most of the humans he traveled with are either old or dead...)

Not to mention how the writer fails to do what every DM does for the weekly session: i.e. look at a map of the places he describes, and read stuff about them on the manuals. And I won't go into the plot proper. Sometimes I wonder: is there one editor checking this stuff before it is pushed out?

The irony is that my player actually *like* my version of the Forgotten Realms. I have suggested to switch to either Golarion or even Mystara, but they just say: "There are so many places we still haven't visited!" Maybe I'm too good

If you just get the main setting book and maybe the religion book, you'd have tons of info, but also lots and lots of space to fill in, for those interested in that.

Quote from: Benoist;429483My original statement probably wasn't accurate in terms of fiction, but in terms of novels based on a gaming setting, it really seems to be like each time such a setting starts to come up with novels based on it, it starts to go down in quality, if not dive immediately into depths of crap for me, as far as I'm concerned.

Then, maybe it's just the authors' style of fiction I really dislike. I can't stand anything by Elaine Cunningham, for instance. Don't get me wrong: she's a lovely person and everything. I just can't stand her writings for the love of God. That just rubs me the wrong way. God her elves. I'm going to have nightmares tonight.

Oh, I've yet to read RPG-setting-linked fiction I can stomach. But I've only ever see the phenomenon you speak of occur with TSR/WotC. My point here being that your thumbrule here seems too much of a sweeping generalization to hold as general principle.

That being said, I do agree with you about its impact on FR (and Dark Sun, which was the real travesty), which was why I only plundered the setting instead of running it out of the box.

Quote from: Benoist;429353When an RPG publisher comes up with a line of novels set in the RPG setting of their choice, I know that for me, it jumped the shark.

Half the time, I feel that way the moment I see that a book has in-game fiction, never mind outside novels.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Benoist;429483I can't stand anything by Elaine Cunningham, for instance. Don't get me wrong: she's a lovely person and everything. I just can't stand her writings for the love of God. That just rubs me the wrong way. God her elves. I'm going to have nightmares tonight.

I read your post after posting mine Ironically, the two books I read written by her ("Shadowblade" and "Evermeet") were among the very few I would save among the general mediocrity of FR's novels. As I wrote, "Shadowblade" had a really nice "Robert Ludlum-esque" atmosphere, a good plot (well, I didn't saw the twist coming) and presented the Harpers as a shadower organization than the usual "secret agents for the Good!!!111" portrayal.

Anyway, to me a good novel set in a GdR setting should be the opportunity to show "things in motion": how places, organizations, cultures, politics and what else act and interact in the daily life beyond their dry descriptions. If done right, it would be stimulating (and those precious few that did it right were stimulating). However, when you see how the "author" never even bothered to look at a map of the area he is setting the story in, you really wonder what "professionalism" means for them...