Books

One of the things that distinguishes me from most other people is my reading speed - it's fast. When I'm reading my preferred books (fantasy), I can approach or exceed 200 pages per hour. So, whilst my friends would take a week or more to read a single book, I'd finish two or three in a day. (Another aspect to it is that I can do nothing but read for a day - though I haven't had that much time to do so recently). This is a natural attribute, it isn't something that I've consciously developed.

Today, I was rather happy to discover that the latest in Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series had come out: Chainfire. This was actually a surprise: I don't keep track of upcoming fantasy releases in the same way I do for D&D books and miniatures.

So, my brand new copy of Chainfire is sitting on my desk, and I'm impatiently waiting for the time (after tea) when I can really settle down to read it.

So, who are my favourite living authors? In the fantastic side of fiction, I'd say that they were Terry Goodkind, Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin, Stephen Erikson, Guy Gavriel Kay and Steven Brust. On the science fiction side - not that I read a lot of SF at the moment - Dan Simmons and David Brin are the two authors I keep an eye out for.

Roger Zelazny is my favourite author of all time, but he's no longer with us, alas!

Interestingly, for all the fantasy fiction I read, I don't consciously use many elements of it in my D&D games. My County of Ulek campaign was definitely influenced by Michael Moorcock's second Corum trilogy, and I was weaving elements of Stephen Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen series into it at the time when it ended prematurely.

With my current Great Kingdom campaign, I'm not really using much from the books I read at all. At least, not consciously. I'm sure that the plots and adventures I think up for the campaigns are influenced by the books. How could they not be?

One way this influence could be manifesting itself is in my current love of "deep" campaigns, where there are several competing factions and undercurrents influencing the PCs. This is very true of most of the books I'm reading at the moment: they're not simple adventure stories any more. It's a trend of modern fantasy. In the older fantasies, such as the Conan or Lankhmar books, it was all quite simple. This was partly due to their form: short stories or independent novels.

Series of fantasy books that go for 8 or more books is a new phenonomen for fantasy literature. (One of my favourite series is Jennifer Roberson's Chronicles of the Cheysuli, a dynastic fantasy that spans 100 years and 8 books).

However, most of the popular fantasy books of recent times have been such long sagas. From Jordan's Wheel of Time, to Goodkind's Sword of Truth, and Erikson's Malazan Book of the Fallen, the obvious forms of story are giving way to more subtle interactions.

Incidentally, if you were to ask me what current series I'm enjoying the most, it would have to be the Malazan Book of the Fallen, which begins with Gardens of the Moon. It took me several readings to really begin to grasp what is happening - and it is absolutely glorious. Do yourself a favour and find it!

The aspects of the Malazan Book of the Fallen that I was using in my Greyhawk campaign were related to the Warrens - magical pathways and strongholds where some of the "Ascended" live, and that give wizards their powers. The idea of the Ascended is interesting - many are worshipped as gods, and others are close to that. So, I added an Ascended and a warren (though not revealed as that to my players) to the game, and had a look what happened.

It was interesting. One of the PCs actually ended up serving the Man in Gray. At some point, I hope the game will progress back there, and we can work out what actually was happening.

The other aspect from books that I was using was Moorcock's second Corum trilogy: I appropriated the idea of the Fhoi Myore (or Fomorians) - giant deformed giants from another realm. I then tinkered with it radically: the Fhoi Myore were bodiless spirits from a corrupt realm, who had deformed the Firbolg giants into the Fomorian form when they possessed them. The possessed Fomorians then launched a reign of terror against the Flan (Celts) of Ulek. Eventually they were defeated and the Fhoi Myore spirits entrapped. The current era Fomorians are just the discarded and deformed shells that they once used.

But, of course, the Priests of Chaos want to free the Fhoi Myore, and we had a great adventure in the making. Alas that people got jobs and became unavailable before the game finished!

Part of the art of using ideas from books in your campaigns is to not to use them unaltered. You need to adapt them to fit your game, and sometimes quite radically. Yes, this is obvious. It is also amazing at how resistant you can get to it... you like something so much, that you have to use it exactly as it was presented. However, alas, books and RPGs are two different forms, so it won't usually work.

The other problem is to make the pilfered material interesting to your players. This is most relevant when you're trying to give the PCs options/restrictions or similar based on the books. Especially when they're not familiar with the normal source! This happened once in my journeyman days of DMing (back in 1991 or 92, I think). I gave a couple of PCs Wolf companions, and the ability to change into the forms of those companions. (This comes from the aforementioned Chronicles of the Cheysuli books). Of course, they weren't familiar with the source, and it turned out that pretty soon, we'd all forgotten about the ability and the wolves!

DMing is hard enough without remembering the players' abilities for them. I can also have a similar problem with running cohorts for the PCs: I really need to focus on only one side, the bad guys.

When I was growing up, my favourite authors were Arthur C. Clarke (particularly Against the Fall of Night), Isaac Asimov (particularly Foundation) and Piers Anthony (especially the Incarnations of Immortality). These days, I read more fantasy than science fiction, and the long, intricate series we have are glorious.

You might have noticed I've made no mention of a certain J.R.R. Tolkien in my musings above. Well, I love the Lord of the Rings. I've read it over ten times. Interestingly, I haven't read it much in the last three years - for I really, really like Peter Jackson's movies. I think the original is better for the most part, but actually seeing the story is incredible as well. And I have other books to read.

The next book I'm looking forward to? The City of Towers, by Keith Baker. The Eberron campaign setting is looking very interesting indeed and I enjoyed the short story Death at Whitehearth that was included with the first of the Eberron adventures, so reading the first novel set in the new world will be interesting to say the least.

Tonight, however, I'm reading Chainfire.