What's the Veeky Forums recommended literature?

William Gibson's Neuromancer

>david eddings, wheel of time, etc. a shit

Try something challenging, OP: The Worm Ouroboros by E R Eddison.

Eh. I tried Wheel of Time-got about six books in before I realized I hated all the characters' guts.

This is the real answer. The Worm Ouroboros is a e s t h e t i c as fuck.

>God Tier: Glen Cook, Eddison, Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, pre-modern epic poetry
>Okay Tier: Pratchett, Tolkein, Michael Moorcock, HP Lovecraft
>Shit tier: Gurm, YA fantasy, Wheel of Time, video game/RPG tie-in novels, Pern, everything you like

Hardcore porn with the subtitles on counts right?
That. A lot of that.

Really? Cook over Pratchett?

No, it's not.
1d4chan.org/wiki/Eragon
Yeah, it's 1d4chan... but then again, it's 1d4chan slamming on a series for being bland drivel so... yeah.

Here's the list. It's somewhat outdated, and there'll doubtless be arguments about it, but hey, it's a list.
1d4chan.org/wiki/Approved_literature

Pratchett is redditcore but unlike Douglas Adams he actually made me laugh so I'll say he's fine.

The Black Company is a classic and all of his stuff is practically bursting with perfect shit to steal for a Veeky Forums game.

He writes the best evil sorcerers, for one.

Yeah, really. Pratchett is lightweight fantasy comedy.

I feel like poetry doesn't come up in these kinds of discussions, but it can be super useful as tabletop inspiration, given how evocative and visual it can be. Longer stuff likeThe Faerie Queene is pretty good, but even shorter verse is nice for capturing an aesthetic. Try Romantic poets, esp. Coleridge, Shelley and Byron. Or any culture's "great epic," for that matter.

Yeah, read The Story of the Stone and get back to us in 3 years.

>ctrl f
>no Sword of Truth mentioned

Shame. Shame on you all.

This, Wheel of Time sucks.

book 6 is when the pacing issues come forward, could be that.

maybe its just me but i generally didn't find most characters annoying most of the time. Mat and Perin do some cool stuff later and Rand partially gets over his whiny saviour complex later on.

u 'avin a giggle, m8?

I got a bit frustrated by the fact that their initial plans were always there as a framing for them to just get the legs cut out from under them.
It was a decent way to go for book 1, but It would have been nice for at least one of the books to have them pulling off a con and just dealing with the natural complications of it, not just getting dicked out of nowhere just as it gets interesting.
It's not a twist if you know for a fact that it's coming in some form.

Inheritance, Twilight and sword of truth are the holy trinity of how not to do it.
They're unironically worth a read just to see how you easily can fuck up in so many ways if you go too long without a proof reader to reel back your ego.
It can't be stressed how much this can help a story heavy campaign, or make sure you don't form an unhealthy attachment to one of your characters.

Tri-dubs checked

Check out Stephen Donaldson's stuff, OP.

Good so far. Will finish soon

1d4chan.org/wiki/Approved_literature

The guys are all bros and cool, I hate all the women.

Nope, or at least that's when I stopped reading.

Same problem with the Space Wolf series.

I recommend Lawrence Watt-Ewans and his Legends of Ethshar series to everyone who wants to make settings and worlds for their games.

The stories themselves are pretty interesting, but the worldbuilding is very well done and a good example of how to build a world without going overboard. His blog also has good information on worldbuilding.

Black Company is indeed great, but don't forget that Cook also wrote Garret P.I., and that's, to put it mildly, not as good.

I'm an objectivist and I can't stand that series.

No kidding. And book three was barely about planning or heists at all, and more on unhealthy obsessive relationships.

The only thing that separates cook from Grrm is that cook was writing fantasy first and isnt widely known.

>no mention of Wolfe, Vance, le Guin, white, peake or Dunsany
pleb

Asimov's production. Pic related is my favorite scifi book series.

>Glen fucking cook above Tolkien
2edgy4me

Hell yes. Gibson is really good in general, Pattern Recognition is one of my favorite books of all time.

I dropped it after book 2. The Mule is too retarded for me.

Is this considered essential capeshit yet?

Elric of Melniboné

I don't know if I'd call it Veeky Forums recommended, but I've enjoyed The Dresden Files, it has problems but I enjoyed it all the same

No, and for a good goddamn reason.

I'd recommend it as long as you completely ignore most of the word of god crap that wildbow dropped, if nothing else it had some fairly interesting powers

It's pulp trash, and I say that as somebody who adores The Dresden Files immensely. Despite wavering between 'decent' and 'mediocre' in a technical sense, it always maintains a distinct sense of bumbling charm that makes up for a lot of it's faults.

The Codex Alera can fuck right off though.

>ctrl f 'Malazan'
>No results

Ree

I don't think I've ever seen people on Veeky Forums talk about it, but Tim Powers is great if you're into Unknown Armies.

Cook over Wolf AND Tolkien, good God, man.

At least you've got Howard in the right place.

This thread needs more E.R. Burroughs. Thus I suggest John Carter of Mars and all of the sequels except Chessmen.

>being this mad
>not elaborating
Do we have to beg you, user?

Oh, c'mon, you don't like Henshin Anime Romans?

As to Dresden, they are great. Pulp as ever-loving hell, but that's the charm. R.E. Howard would have approved.

I'd say it's better than trash, but that's about all I can say in defense of it
second user, not the one you're replying too, but if you pay attention to the word of god and really look at the setting it's grimderp as fuck

>Codex Alera
I rather enjoyed the worldbuilding and setting of the books, though some of the characters are frequently dumb. It's still a wonderful read though.

For the existential/horror side of things I'd recommend The Night Lands, though heavily suggest you find a modern retelling instead of the original prose.

>52006526
This. Codex Alera would be better without most characters.

Another fault with it is that they made the main enemy too strong so it doesn't feel plausible when they actually beat it.

The Mistborn series is a fun one, though I'm still torn on if it should have ended with the first book or not.
The rest are good books, but from a story standpoint it could have just stopped right there and I'd have been fine.

Codex Alera would be better if you removed the main characters.

Actually, Amara can stay. Tavi, Isana and Kitai are all awful and need to go.

Since we're getting a decent amount of discussion about Butcher, has anyone read The Aeronaut’s Windlass?

You know, it's sitting not five feet away from me right now because the premise looked interesting, but I've yet to get the energy up to actually pick it up and read it.

Gotta admit a guilty pleasure here, the book Dungeons of Madness.
I picked it up on a whim figuring it would at least be amusing, and what really sold it for me was the Warlock Davoren and the Halfling Slip. A bit of knowledge about forgotten realms helps, but it's not fully required to get the idea of what is going on.

The main enemy was outrageously dangerous. Like fucking Warhammer Tyranid level of dangerous.

What are some recommended resources for first time DM's? I've only played a couple of RPG's but want to set up my own.

I'd say Lovecraft, at least if you want to run any sort of horror based game, and want it to be spooky but not obviously so

I started to read it a few months back, but my killer's instincts told me to stop before I'd finished the second chapter. Even the flying ships couldn't save it from being unbearably dull.

Well, I mean, it makes a vague amount of sense considering the implication that there is a vast planar cosmology and each of the Aleran races came from a completely different world.

It makes a certain amount of sense that they're strong.

What doesn't make sense is a rag-tag group of not-Romans with bows and swords and a few mages beating them back.

I figured it was a combination of two things:
1) The Vord themselves are not Nid or Zerg level strong, they're just fast when it comes to spreading and infiltrating. This is also a point that they seem to try and match the ability and level of their opponents, either through evolutionary drive or some urge not to 'waste resources' and building up to curb stomp level right away.
2) The colony that Alera was fighting was intentionally crippled by a confused and tsundere queen into being far below capacity, as evidenced by how thoroughly the Canim got their asses kicked.
Now for any sort of continued story in that world, yea, things are bleak as fuck and I sure as hell don't want to see what the Vord make of the Leviathans. It's going to take a huge concentrated effort, the entire known world going onto war footing, and a few ass-pulls like the Great Furies and whatever the fuck is leftover in the Feverthorn Jungle to even stand a chance of breaking even.

They did have some bretty dank magic tho.

I keep seeing le flat world on turtle meme shared on Facebook by people who don't read books.

No, and it never will be. You severely overestimate the impact of this mediocre pile of misery. And I'm not talking out my ass, I followed it AS it updated.

To be perfectly honest, I've had more fun and more meaningful thoughts from the Worm fanfiction that I've read than from the original Worm itself.
Tried Pact, couldn't really get into it past the bit where he changelinged into a kid to break up the ritual and am just occasionally checking on Twig to see if it's finished so I can binge it, since biopunk is one of my fetishes.

He gets rekt and the Plan corrects course. Keep reading.

Question, does Worm get better? I've gotten to the part where they put Lung and Bakara away in the Birdcage but that's it. I can see that the superhero/supervillain duality isn't going to hold up for much longer, seeing as how she's not a hero.

The Feverthorn Jungle contains a Temple of Quetzalcoatl, some Not!Mayan remnants, and Lucoa having a long nap. King Tavi wakes her up and the ara ara dragon shenanigans begin.

It does, and the escalation continues nicely through the Coil Arc with Dinah with a few really good scenes and character illustration. After that though it's touch and go, but for every crappy cut ties and join the wards you get a very nice Accord being both turned on and reviled simultaneously by Skitter or similar scene that sells the moment and feel of things.
By the end I was honestly just skimming it until something caught my interest, then I'd backtrack a bit to find when that started and go from there.

agreed. Im just glad jordan died, otherwise it would have ended up being another 3 books not counting the prequels he planned. sanderson (love him or hate him) cleaned it up nice and proper.

>ctrl+f
>no Way of Kings mentioned
I know, I know, >Sanderson, but it's legitimately good, I promise.

Inheritance is a babby's first series fit for under 13 but at least it doesnt get too preachy. Sword of truth had SO much potential but got preachy af. still interesting in parts, but overall terrible.
twilight need not be talked about.

As I understand it, Inheritance got better overtime.

I remember hearing it got worse.

>Inheritance
Interesting world, fuck all idiotic characters and story progression
>Twilight
How to write young adult romance and remind girls that he only hits you because he cares. Also fuck off stupid vampires, seriously just call them anything else and it would have done the world so much less damage.
>Sword Of Truth
This shit.
This shit I read as a kid and drank it down like fucking kool-aid without realizing what it was. Rereading it as an adult, it is horrible aside from a good bit of torture porn and examples of horrible people being convinced that they're good guys for realz.

Running a setting in the Discworld is so difficult when you realise you will never achieve that level of wit.

I read the first book and didn't care enough about any of the characters or plotlines to pick up the second. I couldn't get a good sense for about half of the characters' motivations, and while I liked the worldbuilding it seemed to pile too much of it on too quickly.

Favorite characters were Tool, Crone, and Kruppe. I don't know why I like Kruppe, since usually I hate characters like him. Edgelord Rake made me facepalm from his description alone.

At leas you've got the RPG supplements to help.

>The Black Company

>This shit I read as a kid and drank it down like fucking kool-aid without realizing what it was.

Yeah, I know the feeling.

Besides a few good sequences I dont know what I ever saw in it.

Fucking this, I've only read book one. But fuck the villain of that book, it just felt so...hollow on his part that the villain just managed to have everything go his way until the end.

>what I ever saw in it.
It's got some decent depictions of magic and necromancy, some nice bull-headed paladin moments that can be repurposed. All the torture porn and crappy dom/sub stuff was a good jumping point for me when I ended up with a surprise sub girlfriend, though I wouldn't ever suggest anything in those books to anyone for those purposes.

I enjoyed the fuck out of it and still binge on Worm Fanfic but I seriously doubt it'll ever be essential as it is.

The rewrite might change that, with how Twig's been going. You can tell Wildbow has grown a damn bit.

I read it, and it was average overall with some really cool parts, but the cats were so dumb.

The world is very creative and I really liked the worldbuilding and the ship battles. The plot, however, is a fairly thin "enemies invade" story that strings action scenes together.

The two main girls are okay. One is green and easily frightened but learns to be brave, the other is daring but reckless and doesn't really develop much. Benedict is pretty much just there as Bridget's love interest. Captain Grimm is basically Harry Dresden with less snark, but he's more a secondary character. I really liked the etherealists, but others might find them tiresome because they're so quirky.

As I said before, the cats are dumb. They become really tiresome after like two chapters.

>sanderson
why do we hate him again Veeky Forums

Not the guy you're responding to, but I found him to be a mediocre writer, full of very predictable plot twists and whose characters all talked, dressed, thought, and acted like middle-class modern Americans despite the fact that they lived in weird fantasy worlds.

He has great "stuff" of fantasy, cool magical systems and monsters and the like, but I always had trouble with the suspension of disbelief, especially the way he uses language.

That, and the Mistborn can-openers. I mean seriously, wtf?

>Check out my grimdark medieval overlord setting
>Btw we have cans and shit
>This is almost never spoken of again

I would personally recommend the Malcontents series that Privateer Press has been putting out under their Skull Island Adventures imprint. It's actually what got me into the Iron Kingdoms to begin with.

Tool goes from strength to strength, though is at his best in the second and third books. He's probably the character who appears most often, actually, and one of the best in the story. Kruppe is good, has the spotlight for a big chunk of the third book, but sadly fades away until waaaay later on, as does Crone.

Rake is better than he seems. He never stops being an edgelord, but it works for him, rather than against him, after the first couple of books, and he's one of the most unambiguously good characters.

You meet a far edgier character in book four, but his development from fucking asshole into something more is one of the most well written character arcs I've seen

i only read the stormlight books, and i liked those. Are the other series really that bad?

I'm not really sure myself. I only read Elantris, the first three Mistborns, and the stuff he did for Wheel of Time, and was deeply unimpressed. Maybe he got better, those were predominantly from his earlier works, but I lost interest in his stuff.