Tolkien more than anyone else.

But also Poul Anderson (he's mostly remembered for SciFi but The Broken Sword is a great fantasy book, fairly close to actual myth)

Also Robert Howard' Conan and Kull.

Blood Red Angel by Adrian Cole

Consider Phlebas  by  Iain Banks

Going Postal  by Terry Pratchett

A Fire Upon the Deep by  Vernor Vinge

Lords of Light /Creatures of Light & Dark   Roger Zelazny


I like big central ideas and well developed backgrounds/settings that push those ideas no matter how weird such that they almost seem natural. I also like really formulaic packaged publisher friendly stuff like Saberhagen and Chalker did. I like the Pip & Flinx stuff Alan Dean Foster did and Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos stuff.

Robert E. Howard's Conan for adventures
Karl Edward Wagner's Kane for amazing overall background events (wars and such)
Keith Taylor's Bard series

Greetings!

I like Tolkien, of course. Besides The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, I have always been inspired by the stories in The Silmarillion. Truly epic, and inspiring on every level!

Howard's Conan series of books.

Karl Edward Wagner's Kane series of books.

David Gemmel's books, Drus The Legend and Waylander the Slayer being especially good. Everything he wrote was fantastic!

Jack Whyte's Camulod Chronicles series of books. Excellent. Very Dark Ages, historical medieval stuff, with just a bit of mystery and magic.

Bernhard Cornwell's books. The Vikings and all that. Excellent stuff.

Steven Brust's Taltos series of books. Good stuff. Lots of fighting, politics, and so on.

Harry Turtledove's Videssos series of books. Good historical flavour, good characters, politics, mixed with fantasy and some magic.

Kenneth C. Flint's Saga of the Sidhe, series.

Morgan LLywelyn Finn Mac Cool, The Lion of Ireland, and more. Medieval Celtic drama.

Barry Sadler; CASCA: The Eternal Mercenary series. Historical fiction about the endless adventures of the Roman Centurion Casca Longinus, living through the ages as a mercenary. Excellent history, politics, fighting, lots of additional characters, friends, as well as women.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 07, 2022, 07:58:50 AM
Mishihari, have you seen the 6 volume set of Zelazny's collected works? It's got everything but the novels.

Love Zelazny, especially "A Night in the Lonesome October" and "Lord of Light".  Don't think any of his works directly inform by gaming, because I really don't have much interest in running games set around the premise of his books, but there is a ton of indirect influence in how I portray NPCs. He has that elusive writer quality of making highly flawed characters sympathetic.

Yes, actually.  The book I just got was volume 6 in the collection.  I'm starting there because I haven't read the Amber short stories and I have read most of the rest.  This way I can see if the extra commentary is worth it to me to buy the entire series.

I really miss reading new work by Zelazny.  I just read the first Amber short story and it was only a few pages but it felt like a cold drink of water after a parched week in the Sahara.

Quote from: jeff37923 on April 07, 2022, 05:40:57 AM
I'm primarily into hard science fiction, so my games are heavily influenced by CJ Cherryh, Arthur C. Clarke, George Alec Effinger,  Robert A. Heinlein, Larry Niven, H. Beam Piper, Jerry Pournelle, Aleister Reynolds, John Scalzi (only his Old Man's War stuff), and Allen Steele.

For science fantasy games there are a plethora of Star Wars authors but especially Timothy Zahn, Michael Stackpole, Alan D. Foster, Karen Traviss, Alexander Freed, and Kevin Anderson.

I think it's really interesting that literature can inspire how we want our games to play even if it's in a totally different genre.    From your list, I'm, also a fan of Niven, Pournelle, Zahn, Foster, and some Cherryh (I either love or hate her books, and it's about 50/50)  I should check out some of the others.  I've been looking for some new authors to read and having a great deal of difficulty with Sturgeon's law.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 07, 2022, 07:58:50 AM
me of Poul Anderson's fantasy, they've given me an appreciation of dark age and early medieval slants.  I'm far more likely to ban plate armor than include gunpowder in my fantasy games.  I'm not really a huge sci/fi fan, even having read widely if not deeply, but some of Anderson's sci/fi is strange in that it manages to be semi-hard tech mixed with early medieval sensibilities, which is strange enough to be enjoyable for a style not widely copied.  When I do introduce tech into a fantasy game, I'm more likely to go with that angle than the "magic as science" or "weird science" angles.

Any recommendations of Anderson's fantasy books?  I've read Operation Chaos and Three Hearts and Three Lions, but that's about it.  I thought he was primarily an SF author - I've read every Poleseotechnic League and Dominic Flandry book I could find.

Tolkien and Moorcock for me. Then HPL (and Poe), later REH. I love Lieber, Dunsany, and Andre Norton too. These are my favorites from the appendix N.

LeGuin is another favorite and, nowadays, I definitely feel CAS* should be in the appendix N (bot are on Moldvay's appendix BTW!)

*https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2017/03/mistery-of-month-why-cas-is-not-on.html

Recently, I have to say GRRM, despite him never finishing ASOIF.

Quote from: Mishihari on April 08, 2022, 04:22:22 PM
Yes, actually.  The book I just got was volume 6 in the collection.  I'm starting there because I haven't read the Amber short stories and I have read most of the rest.  This way I can see if the extra commentary is worth it to me to buy the entire series.

I really miss reading new work by Zelazny.  I just read the first Amber short story and it was only a few pages but it felt like a cold drink of water after a parched week in the Sahara.

You may not enjoy the 1st and 2nd volumes as much.  I enjoyed them immensely because I'm interested in how his writing evolved.  Some of the early stuff is not nearly as good, but I enjoyed it for what it was and for the historical, literary perspective of his style while it is still developing.  That said, there are some hidden gems.

BTW, I finally got around to reading some Jane Lindskold which had been on my list for some time due to the Zelazny influence.  There is only one Zelazny, but 2 books into the "Through Wolf's Eyes" series, I can see the connection.     

Quote from: HappyDaze on April 07, 2022, 10:29:56 AM

Quote from: Pat on April 07, 2022, 10:14:17 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on April 07, 2022, 09:29:53 AM

Quote from: Mishihari on April 07, 2022, 05:15:40 AM
-   Glen Cook - The Black Company books – I could probably just stop here, but I won't

I have to say that I thought the first Black Company book sucked. The way it was written just wasn't at all enjoyable. However, I read it as the first part of a compiled "Chronicles" book, and the second and third stories get better.

The writing of the Black Company books improve as the series continues.

Pat and I agree on something...?

I'm battening down the hatches for the apocalypse now ...

On topic, while I agree that Cook has gotten better over time, the original Black Company is still my favorite.  Part of that I'm sure is that it was my first exposure to the author's writing, so it was fresh, but I also like the episodic nature of the book, much like Lieber's work.  There were a few things that  bugged me, but on about my tenth read-through I realized that clever things were being done with the unreliable narrator technique and it all made sense.

Had never heard of CJ Cherryh before. Where to start?

Quote from: Mishihari on April 08, 2022, 04:35:16 PM

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on April 07, 2022, 07:58:50 AM
me of Poul Anderson's fantasy, they've given me an appreciation of dark age and early medieval slants.  I'm far more likely to ban plate armor than include gunpowder in my fantasy games.  I'm not really a huge sci/fi fan, even having read widely if not deeply, but some of Anderson's sci/fi is strange in that it manages to be semi-hard tech mixed with early medieval sensibilities, which is strange enough to be enjoyable for a style not widely copied.  When I do introduce tech into a fantasy game, I'm more likely to go with that angle than the "magic as science" or "weird science" angles.

Any recommendations of Anderson's fantasy books?  I've read Operation Chaos and Three Hearts and Three Lions, but that's about it.  I thought he was primarily an SF author - I've read every Poleseotechnic League and Dominic Flandry book I could find.

The Broken Sword is the other obvious choice, but if you want something more difficult but less directly relevant to D&D, try The Merman's Children. It's about representatives of the world of the fey dealing with the very alien mindset of the medieval Catholic church.

Quote from: Mishihari on April 08, 2022, 04:44:33 PM

Quote from: HappyDaze on April 07, 2022, 10:29:56 AM

Quote from: Pat on April 07, 2022, 10:14:17 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on April 07, 2022, 09:29:53 AM

Quote from: Mishihari on April 07, 2022, 05:15:40 AM
-   Glen Cook - The Black Company books – I could probably just stop here, but I won't

I have to say that I thought the first Black Company book sucked. The way it was written just wasn't at all enjoyable. However, I read it as the first part of a compiled "Chronicles" book, and the second and third stories get better.

The writing of the Black Company books improve as the series continues.

Pat and I agree on something...?

I'm battening down the hatches for the apocalypse now ...

On topic, while I agree that Cook has gotten better over time, the original Black Company is still my favorite.  Part of that I'm sure is that it was my first exposure to the author's writing, so it was fresh, but I also like the episodic nature of the book, much like Lieber's work.  There were a few things that  bugged me, but on about my tenth read-through I realized that clever things were being done with the unreliable narrator technique and it all made sense.

Raven in particular.

Quote from: oggsmash on April 07, 2022, 11:52:26 AM
   The Sanctuary anthologies
    REH Conan
    The hobbit
    The chapter from The Fellowship of the Ring "The Bridge of Khazad Dum"
    Eisenhorn series
    Ravenor   series

The last two are not pure medieval fantasy in the classic sense, but the "party" consisting of specific specialists, the feudal background, the literal adventures they go on massing loot and knowledge (and not sure if it was intentional or not, but the literal growth in actual power of both title characters, as if they "leveled up"). 

Sanctuary is a great inspiration for very low fantasy. I thought it was funny that Asprin's stories (IMO of course) were a lot better than those of the more established authors that he invited to contribute to his anthologies.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on April 08, 2022, 04:45:47 PM
Had never heard of CJ Cherryh before. Where to start?

My favorite is The Paladin, a pseudohistoircal book, followed closely by the Cyteen books.  I like the Chanur books primarily for their depiction of alien races, which I consider to be the best I've seen.  The Morgaine and Faded Sun books are popular, but i could never get into them.  Some others, like the Foreigner series and Merchanter's luck I just found tedious.