Quote from: Omega;702396The originals or the garbage remakes? Books and RPGs, though calling SAGA Dragonlance an RPG is being generous.

The books from way back when.

Quote from: One Horse Town;524740Settings that spawn (or are spawned by) game fiction invariably cause coniptions.

That would be all of them - at one point or another there were novels for every single TSR campaign world.

I think the problem is that you guys are comparing Dragon Lance to The Dying Sun and Lord of the Rings.  Which is unfair as these were great works by great authors.

Compared to some of the worse Hardy Boys books on the other hand, Dragon Lance is passable for what it is.  Beyond that it was a successful product.  Since it was conceived first and foremost as a product I will call it a success.  It is what it was intended to be and does what it set out to do.  Which wasn't to entertain, educate, or edify you but then, as I'm sure Jack Vance would tell you, there's not much money in that.

Quote from: David Johansen;702573I think the problem is that you guys are comparing Dragon Lance to The Dying Sun and Lord of the Rings.  Which is unfair as these were great works by great authors.

I did no such comparison.  It sucked all on its own.

No. I am comparing the original Dragonlance, which was pretty good overall to the 5th Age Dragonlance which was pretty awful. Both in books and setting.

Novel-wise the first 3 books and more or less the 2nd 3 books and kinda the first 3 anthologies stand up fairly well. Past that its a total hit and miss of the ones I have read.

In fact a fair number of the TSR era novels were not bad at all. But considering the sheer volume of novels put out between TSR and WOTC. You are bound to get some books that just do not work.

One of the problems TSR writers told me back then, and I had two as players in my games, was that there was interference sometimes from the execs. Usually to shorten the book to a certain page count which could end up with abrupt resolutions, etc. And in at least one case the book was not even written by the person who took credit on the cover.

Quote from: Omega;702579One of the problems TSR writers told me back then, and I had two as players in my games, was that there was interference sometimes from the execs. Usually to shorten the book to a certain page count which could end up with abrupt resolutions, etc. And in at least one case the book was not even written by the person who took credit on the cover.

You can't dangle that out there without naming names.

For adolescents the Dragonlance books are fucking brilliant and I won't hear a word said against them.

They're not great literature by any means, but that's because they're YA fiction, and those were the days when there were actual books written for teenagers, before "YA" came to mean "books for adults who don't want to admit they like reading fantasy books".

Quote from: noisms;702581For adolescents the Dragonlance books are fucking brilliant and I won't hear a word said against them.

They're not great literature by any means, but that's because they're YA fiction, and those were the days when there were actual books written for teenagers, before "YA" came to mean "books for adults who don't want to admit they like reading fantasy books".

Guess I was a teen who just happened to hate YA fiction taking me for a moron, both emotionally and intellectually. I'll take any classic when compared to the Dragonlance novels. Next to the guys I read when I was 12, i.e. Robert E Howard, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, HP Lovecraft, JRR Tolkien and so many others, DL is crap. Honestly.

IMO, YMMV, BBQ, ETC.

Quote from: One Horse Town;702580You can't dangle that out there without naming names.

Tom Wham writing Iron Dragons when Rose Estes could not finish it. He mentioned it a year ago after I made some comments on the book. And its also explained on his web site.

QuoteSome years ago (that would be 1992) Darwin Bromley approached Rose Estes to do a pair of Fantasy books to go with a Fantasy railroad game he was working on. Somehow, I landed the game project, and then, it turned out that Rose didn't have time to write the book and the part her co-author contributed was unusable... So I found myself in the pleasant position of writing most of a fantasy novel and designing a companion game to go with it (It did, however, have only her name on the cover.)

Rose had written the first several chapters, so I took the story from there. And on the game front, Darwin & Peter had already done the "system" so I had strict rules I had to follow. My innovations included the the world itself, new terrain types, foremen, ships, the underground, and, a Tom Wham regular feature: geographically alphabetical names (something not possible in the real world.)

The first book came out and hit the market, but sadly, Mayfair took too long finishing the game and the dual marketing at the book stores was a flop. Consequently Baen cancelled the second book (upon which I had been working). I do still have a 30 page outline of Book Two.

Nice book by the way. He should try his hand more at writing.

Quote from: David Johansen;702573I think the problem is that you guys are comparing Dragon Lance to The Dying Sun and Lord of the Rings.  Which is unfair as these were great works by great authors.

Compared to some of the worse Hardy Boys books on the other hand, Dragon Lance is passable for what it is.

Crappy works by crappy authors?

Quote from: TristramEvans;702670Crappy works by crappy authors?

Think you are mixing them up with Mel Odom?

(Sorry Mel! You are a nice guy and all but your RPG themed books tend to be bland and haphazard.)

Speaking of...
Another TSR setting. Free Lancers, the pseudo superhero RPG spin off from 2nd ed Top Secret. Interesting idea and some neet concepts. But felt a little lacking. Like there were bits missing.

Same goes for the amazing Engine RPG Kromosome with its biotech setting. But was better fleshed out than Free Lancers.

But that oft was the feel from the Amazing Engine series.

Magitech has some interesting ideas too. Neet Operation Chaos sort of extrapolation of what modern day earth would look like if D&D were its real past. Just did not feel like it played up on the concept enough.

And unfortunately same for Once & Future King. King Arthur in space. Though better fleshed out than Magitech.

And of course Metamorphosis Alpha which had the "oddly lacking" sensation and suffered from executive meddling as detailed in the book itself.

The other AE settings I have not seen.

Quote from: TristramEvans;702670Crappy works by crappy authors?

I stopped reading fantasy in the mid 80s largely because of the steaming pile of shit that was coming out of TSR.

There is no excuse for reading bad authors unless they are relatives.

There were some upsides to this haiatus

i) I had never heard of Drizzit until I came to this site
ii) When I got back into fantasy with Lies of Locke Lamora I was able to consume the first 3 SoFaI books over a week's holiday in Czech without having to wait 2-3 years between each one
iii) I was able to discover Joe Abercrombie the Blade itself in toto

I really do find it hard to fathom why people read trashy genre or spin off novels. I mean there are so many books by great writers why waste time with tut? God I even read the Davinci code because I was on holiday and it was to hand , sooo badly written that is a day of my life I will never get back...

Quote from: Benoist;702605Guess I was a teen who just happened to hate YA fiction taking me for a moron, both emotionally and intellectually. I'll take any classic when compared to the Dragonlance novels. Next to the guys I read when I was 12, i.e. Robert E Howard, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, HP Lovecraft, JRR Tolkien and so many others, DL is crap. Honestly.

IMO, YMMV, BBQ, ETC.

Yeah yeah, you were incredibly intelligent, mature and discerning at that age, I'm sure.

You'll notice that at no stage did I say that the Dragonlance books are better than those "classics", although to be honest plenty of what Moorcock wrote is drivel, and probably more adolescent than Weiss & Hickman in its own way. The Corum books, for example, are perfect for 12 year olds, and very entertaining, but if you think they're classic literature you need your head examined.

Ironically, all the pulp fiction we consider classics now (Howard, Lovecraft) were consider the same level of crap as people consider the "gaming fiction" today, back in their time.

Quote from: JRT;702787Ironically, all the pulp fiction we consider classics now (Howard, Lovecraft) were consider the same level of crap as people consider the "gaming fiction" today, back in their time.

And most of it is crap. Lovecraft's a pretty mediocre writer at best. The ideas are occasionally great, which is why he's worth reading. Leiber, Moorcock and RE Howard are decent stylists but no great shakes - they're just entertaining storytellers. I think most OSR types hold them in such high esteem because they happen to be in Appendix N.