Quote from: GrumpyReviews;703607Something occurred to me last night. While everyone may now hate the DL setting with zeal, it was a memorable setting and one which produced table-top books of art, an atlas, calendar, produced iconic characters and the like. Few other settings, if any, have produced the same range of secondary materials and memorable characters.

Re: memorable characters - you have got to be fucking kidding me.

Re: general production of secondary materials: Forgotten Realms had more videogames, and said videogames are more widely celebrated today. (Hell, the Planescape videogame gets more critical kudos than any of the Dragonlance games these days.) Forgotten realms had a novel line of comparable size back at Dragonlance's height, and has long since dwarfed DL's output. Just about the only medium Dragonlance entered which Forgotten Realms hasn't enjoyed is a movie adaptation, and the Dragonlance movie was a barely competent animation which combined stuff cel-drawn stuff with horrible CGI which was so cheaply animated you could see the rendering computer stutter and slow down in complex scenes so it isn't exactly a feather in DL's cap. Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 both have franchises that have proceed masses and masses of secondary materials. And looking at post-1974 fantasy settings originating outside of gaming, Game of Thrones absolutely dwarfs Dragonlance in terms of secondary materials and mainstream exposure, as does Harry Potter, and you could make a good case for Terry Goodkind's stuff too simply because he was able to get a TV series made out of his work and Dragonlance never did.

Dragonlance was only a big fish in the comparatively small pond of gaming tie-in fiction, and even there Forgotten Realms always dwarfed it and (along with Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000) still dwarfs it today.

Quote from: Warthur;703602What's with the assumption that 12 year olds/adolescents must necessarily like shoddy fiction? Are you actually suggesting that whilst it is possible to write interesting, moving, exciting and original books for 5-11 year olds and folk of 21 and up, folks in that awkward decade in between have to make do with crud?

In terms of the relative merits of Lovecraft, Moorcock and Howard, my take on it is this:
- Lovecraft had some daringly original themes when he was in his prime (though he did write his fair share of absolute trash), which make his stories of interest provided you can live with the limp prose.
- Howard's themes were, at best, pedestrian and unoriginal and at worst were offensively crazy and crazily offensive (if you read enough of his different fantasy series and figure out the recurring themes you find he constantly comes back to anthropological and ethnological ideas which were on the fringe in his time and are way out on a limb kookery today), but he does write some really exciting fight scenes, so if you want to read a story about a dude you may or may not find especially appealing hacking folks to bits he was a good pick back in the day (though there's a wide range of choices in such literature nowadays so if you don't want to deal with Howard's particular issues you really don't have to).
- When he puts his mind to it, Moorcock has both interesting themes and electric prose. However, when he's knocking something out quickly to pay the bills he produces tripe that's just as lukewarm and unpalatable as anyone else's tripe. Complicating matters is the fact that his back catalogue is extremely diverse (to pick three series at random, there's really no stylistic similarity between the Jerry Cornelius stories, the Elric saga and the Colonel Pyat novels) and also ridiculously huge - I'd say Moorcock's output trivially outstrips Lovecraft when it comes to word count and may give Howard (who was damn prolific himself during his short life) a run for his money - so unless you have a guide it's really hard to sort the wheat from the chaff with Moorcock's stuff.

So the best of Moorcock, for me, is more appealing than the best of Lovecraft and the best of Howard, though Moorcock has had the advantage of living substantially longer than either of the other two and also coming along after them and benefitting from standing on their shoulders. (And the less good Moorcock material tends to tread on the toes of the superior stuff - I think the Elric saga was much better when it was just limited to the original run of novellas plus Stormbringer, and the later additions to the series have been increasingly transparently about money and have little compelling thematic reason to exist). And all three are fallible mortals who shouldn't be used as the unwavering yardsticks of what's best in fantasy. (Does the fetishisation of Appendix N bug anyone else?)

Who said anything about shoddy fiction or crud? I said Dragonlance books are entertaining. For what they are - fantasy adventure books for teenagers - they do a job.

And I'm suspicious of anybody who says that at the age of 12 they knew what "good fiction" or "great literature" was. At the age of 12 I'd already read The Lord of the Rings, quite a few Shakespeare plays, books like 1984 and The Lord of the Flies, but I was 12 years old so I found the Dragonlance books, Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf novels and Jurassic Park just as good, if not more so.

Finally, I agree with your assessment of those three writers. My main point was simply that there isn't really much difference between them and Weiss & Hickman, except for the fact that they happen to be in Appendix N and they sometimes deal with more "gritty" themes. Some of the stuff in Appendix N is great, but most of it is pulpy tripe, although enjoyable enough.

There's a real divide between a great product and great literature.  I'm not sure they're mutually exclusive but I am sure that many teenage boys don't read well enough to appreciate Tolkien, Moorcock, or Lovecraft.  Indeed, most teenaged boys wouldn't be able to read the last two author's names without sniggering.

Quote from: noisms;703636And I'm suspicious of anybody who says that at the age of 12 they knew what "good fiction" or "great literature" was.

"Knew" as in "self-analyze like critics in a literary review"? Fuck no.

"Knew" as in "this is whiny and boring and therefore shit, while this is action packed and cool to read with some really good passages - here, read this man"? Fuck yes.

Do you think 12 year-olds are retards?

Quote from: noisms;703636Finally, I agree with your assessment of those three writers. My main point was simply that there isn't really much difference between them and Weiss & Hickman, except for the fact that they happen to be in Appendix N and they sometimes deal with more "gritty" themes. Some of the stuff in Appendix N is great, but most of it is pulpy tripe, although enjoyable enough.

You what? Weiss and Hickman exclusively plough a rather shallow fantasy furrow and have never produced anything with an ounce of the gravitas or erudition of, say, Moorcock's Mother London.

As others have pointed out, there's distinctions between great literature and great page-turners and the two categories can overlap (but often don't), but to say that there's little to no distinction between Weiss and Hickman on the one hand and Lovecraft and Moorcock (or, indeed, Vance and Leiber, or Wolfe and Le Guin, or McKillip and Norton for that matter) is either willingly overlooking the important contributions of the latter or vastly overhyping the significance of the former. (Not including Howard here because his work was far more squarely in the pulpy page-turner vein that is Weiss and Hickman's customary market than any of the other - Lovecraft, conversely, submitted his stuff to the pulps because he was a strange old bird who was producing material nobody else would accept, much as Clark Ashton Smith was.)

The setting for the D&D cartoon was pretty retarded. But the characters were awesome.

Quote from: David Johansen;703638There's a real divide between a great product and great literature.  I'm not sure they're mutually exclusive but I am sure that many teenage boys don't read well enough to appreciate Tolkien, Moorcock, or Lovecraft.  Indeed, most teenaged boys wouldn't be able to read the last two author's names without sniggering.

Depends on when.  Today?  Most HS grads can't even read at the level that was expected of 10 year olds when I was in school.

Quote from: Benoist;703641"Knew" as in "self-analyze like critics in a literary review"? Fuck no.

"Knew" as in "this is whiny and boring and therefore shit, while this is action packed and cool to read with some really good passages - here, read this man"? Fuck yes.

Do you think 12 year-olds are retards?

No, but I think that somebody who says that they read the Dragonlance books at the age of 12 and didn't think that they were action packed and cool to read with some really good passages is almost certainly lying or misremembering.

Quote from: Warthur;703644You what? Weiss and Hickman exclusively plough a rather shallow fantasy furrow and have never produced anything with an ounce of the gravitas or erudition of, say, Moorcock's Mother London.

As others have pointed out, there's distinctions between great literature and great page-turners and the two categories can overlap (but often don't), but to say that there's little to no distinction between Weiss and Hickman on the one hand and Lovecraft and Moorcock (or, indeed, Vance and Leiber, or Wolfe and Le Guin, or McKillip and Norton for that matter) is either willingly overlooking the important contributions of the latter or vastly overhyping the significance of the former. (Not including Howard here because his work was far more squarely in the pulpy page-turner vein that is Weiss and Hickman's customary market than any of the other - Lovecraft, conversely, submitted his stuff to the pulps because he was a strange old bird who was producing material nobody else would accept, much as Clark Ashton Smith was.)

Moorcock wrote a lot of stuff that is entirely in the same vein as the Dragonlance Books. He wrote some that is better, yes. But Corum? Hawkmoon? Come on.

Also, nice job slipping Vance, Wolfe, and Le Guin in there, when I hadn't mentioned any of them. No, Weiss & Hickman are nowhere near as good as those writers, although personally I find Le Guin boring.

Quote from: noisms;703692No, but I think that somebody who says that they read the Dragonlance books at the age of 12 and didn't think that they were action packed and cool to read with some really good passages is almost certainly lying or misremembering.

They might be simply compressing their memory. I loved DL at 12. Then at 14 I tried to read a new dragonlance novel and hated it, so I went back to read the old stuff and found it simple minded and bad.

To misquote Paul Graham: "The golden age of Dragonlance is 12".

Quote from: noisms;703692No, but I think that somebody who says that they read the Dragonlance books at the age of 12 and didn't think that they were action packed and cool to read with some really good passages is almost certainly lying or misremembering.

Or just didn't have the same tastes as you at 12 years of age. I know that might seem inconceivable.

Quote from: therealjcm;703697They might be simply compressing their memory. I loved DL at 12. Then at 14 I tried to read a new dragonlance novel and hated it, so I went back to read the old stuff and found it simple minded and bad.

To misquote Paul Graham: "The golden age of Dragonlance is 12".

Sure. I'm not arguing that I would sit down and read Dragonlance books now. But I wouldn't read the Corum books now either.

Quote from: TristramEvans;703698Or just didn't have the same tastes as you at 12 years of age. I know that might seem inconceivable.

It doesn't seem inconceivable. It is inconceivable.

Quote from: noisms;703692No, but I think that somebody who says that they read the Dragonlance books at the age of 12 and didn't think that they were action packed and cool to read with some really good passages is almost certainly lying or misremembering.

Oh so I don't remember right OR I'm a liar now?

Well. Fuck you too, dude!

Quote from: Benoist;703720Oh so I don't remember right OR I'm a liar now?

Well. Fuck you too, dude!

With you I think it's more that you've got this OSR hard core persona that you have to live up to, and you're afraid it will be damaged if you admit you once liked Dragonlance. It's okay, Benoist. You can own up to it. Your megadungeon-creating credentials will still outweigh the fact your teenage self loved the Chronicles and Legends.

Quote from: TristramEvans;703645The setting for the D&D cartoon was pretty retarded. But the characters were awesome.

The setting was not bad. It was just geared to a younger audience while still sneaking in some more mature themes. The writers slipped past some fairly interesting locales and themes while still conforming to the "group think" mandate they had to follow.

The fleshed out characters also helped immensely. Even if they did not necessarily carry over much growth from episode to episode.