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Thread question: post the book which has defined your conception of fantasy

Also, is the Chronicles of Narnia worth reading at all or no?

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>post the book which has defined your conception of fantasy

The only part of it which doesn't routinely show up in my fantasy games is the gods playing an active role in mortal affairs.

...

>Also, is the Chronicles of Narnia worth reading at all or no?

God Tier
>Prince Caspian
>Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Good Tier
>The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
>A Horse and His Boy

Okay Tier
>The Magician's Nephew

Shit Tier
>The Silver Chair
>The Last Battle

>Thread question: post the book which has defined your conception of fantasy
Not fantasy, but post-(post-post-post-post...post-)collapse science fiction. Good inspiration for games like Gamma World.

How is Malazan? I tried reading the first chapter of Gardens of the moon but blech, does it really worth it?

>Adventurers gathered by a mysterious/powerful benefactor
>Get given a map and key to a giant hoard of loot guarded by a dragon
>Quest across the land fighting random encounters
>Give elves the finger as you pass by
>Defeat the evil dragon through absurd means the GM never intended
>Argue with party about who has what rights to which treasures in the hoard
>Ignore the rest of the campaign politics your GM author has set up
>Return home with magic items and gold

It's the quintessential fantasy adventure for me, having been read it at 7 years old it's colored the majority of Keep It Simple Stupid approach to GMing.

Arguably it's the elves giving the finger to the dwarves.

Also

>having the OP PC getting batshit insane but dying an epic rediming death

>Arguably it's the elves giving the finger to the dwarves.
Not with that barrel escape, fuck you and your shitty knife-eared prison guards.

I guess I should also add:
>Getting imprisoned for insulting legitimate authority, followed by prison break
Unusually common in my games....

>fuck you 'elves' and your shitty knife-eared prison guards.
Not fuck "you" in paticular

Watership Down

>Also, is the Chronicles of Narnia worth reading at all or no?
I liked it as a kid (even if the constant deus ex machina bullshit annoyed me). I reread some of it as an adult, and found it really hard to get past the whole Christian allegory.

Which is the one where they're exploring all those islands? I want to say it's the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, since they're on the Dawn Treader, but I think I remember it not being that, so maybe it's Prince Caspian? Well, whichever one it was, that was my favorite, at least from what I recall.

I stumbled upon "The Two Towers" in middle school with zero idea about what it was. I skipped half a period ready about Aragorn running through the woods and discovering Boromir atop a pile of bodies.
Was hooked.

Eh, but in that case it was rightful. Don't even remember what was Trhanduil's problem.
I'm talking about the elves in Rivendell that seem to bully the dwarves because why the fuck not.

>Also, is the Chronicles of Narnia worth reading at all or no?

Absolutely, you fucking pleb.

>Defeat the evil dragon through absurd means the GM never intended
DM's mary sue NPC he just introduced kills the main bad guy in one shot.

My Holland Lop friend.

I really want to play The Warren, damn.

Mm, fair. Still hasn't stopped my group's frequent tradition of screwing with NPC elves whenever possible, as is the dwarven/human tradition.

I was thinking more of Bilbo talking the dragon out of his lair only to get shot down, but this is also true.

>rediming

The prequel to the unauthorized, serial-numbers-filed-off sequel to Lord of the Rings. So basically a retelling of LotR that's better paced with fewer plot points that don't hold together. There's no Gandalf-type, no ring, and no Gollum, and the hobbit stand-ins are badass archers. The drawbacks? Well, other than being hugely derivative, the writing can be a bit young adult-y. It's hard to rate it above LotR, since it's pretty much the literary equivalent of a cover song, but I sure enjoyed it a lot more.

...

It's kinda funny how much Bilbo seems OP as fuck actually.

That second cover shows off way cooler Ring Wraiths.

I not a fan of The Two Towers. On three different occasions (separated by many years), I tried to get through LotR. Each time it was The Two Towers that did me in. The first time I got maybe a bit more than 1/3 of the way through before walking away. The second time, maybe a bit more than 1/2 of the way. The last time, maybe a bit more than 2/3 of the way before giving up in disgust.

I'll admit, I fucking loved the Iron Tower trilogy.

To this day, warrows have replaced hobbits as my campaigns' halflings.

GoAT, coming through.

The Ghuls, or Ghols, are undead humanoids mounted on Helsteeds, who act as leaders of the Rucks, Hloks, and Ogrus. They are very hard to kill, with wood through the heart, beheading, and dismemberment being the only things that are sure to work.

Bilbo was the only experienced PC at the table, knows how to fight smart and actually roleplay to his advantage. Everyone else at the table heard "quest for dwarven treasure" and showed up with a dwarven fighter functionally identical to each other.

sick

>To this day, warrows have replaced hobbits as my campaigns' halflings.
They don't bumble around, do stupid shit, and basically trip over victory. When there's fighting on the ramparts, they're right up there with everybody else. (I will say that even though they call themselves warrows, I always liked what everybody else called them: waerlinga.)

Disregarding the edgy shit, which it fairly has a lot of, there's some good ground of urban fantasy in the series that appeals to me. Especially considering urban fantasy wasn't really my shit before it.

And as for the more traditional stuff, I'd say Night Angel as a hardy example.

I really want to see pre-New Sun Urth through the eyes of someone other than Severian, just because he doesn't seem to care about anything but himself, girls, and how cool his sword is.

I like the linguistic variations in the book, so that what are Hloks (essentially hobgoblins) to a Warrow are Drokha (Valon), Lokha (Pellar), Loka (Elf) and Hroks (Dwarf) to others. They're similar enough that you know what people are talking about without having to look shit up, but it still makes the world seem like it has more depth.

If you want a less biased overview of the setting, the GURPS sourcebook is pretty decent.

All the evil creatures -- rucks (~goblins), hloks (~hobgoblins), ghuls (~ghouls), ogru (~ogres/trolls/giants), vulgs (~wargs), etc. -- have been cursed with Adon's Ban following their defeat in the last great war (before the planes were sundered) and wither and die in sunlight. So their conquest of the realm is only possible with the dimmendark, a magical darkness that spreads across the land, choking out the sun.

I'm surprised A Wizard of Earthsea doesn't get brought up more often.

That's strange, the two towers is literally my favorite book of the series. The Fellowship is comfy but slow, and the return of the king is too crowded. The two towers is perfect pacing for me, and has my favorite part in the book trilogy (shelob)

I tried to start the Wheel of Time series and gave up midway through book 2. Is it worth reading? His prose is unbearable sometimes

I'm 'reading' this at the moment. I loved it when it was him in the torturer's tower, a really nice grounded slow burn, but the moment he steps outside it's all Wacky Adventures and Colourful Characters

idk if I can be bothered continuing

I think I have strong liking for doomed or apocalyptic worlds because of it.

You guys would really like this if you gave it a shot

I'm not alone. As far as I can tell, virtually everybody who got at least a decent way into the first book (and didn't stop after like 20 pages or something), either made it all the way through the series, or were bested by The Two Towers. Speaking for myself, The Two Towers doesn't seem very well put together, and there were a number of moments I just didn't buy. The whole confrontation with Wormtongue, for instance, as well Gollum swearing on the ring and being bound by it until he suddenly wasn't anymore. Then there was the undoing of the striking plot point of Gandalf getting killed, and the whole "white rider" nonsense. And the hobbits futzing about. The Two Towers is what convinced me that not only was Tolkien bad at telling a story, but also at creating the plot in the first place. Great world-building, but the actual narrative, itself, is mediocre at best. Tolkien is way overhyped.

Everybody I know loves the book, but I found it to be dull and lifeless.

Book of the New Sun is a good series but it really is dense and convoluted. People will tell you you have to experience it with virgin's eyes the first time, but I think its way more enjoyable if you read some spoilers and fan theories as you go along so you dont have to read all 5 books twice to get the interesting bits.

I'd say it depends on what you're used to reading. If you're most used to hoighty-toighty HIGH LITERATURE and are a bit more patient, yeah, read it with virgin eyes the first time, then go back and reread it, maybe with some of analysis books close at hand.

If you're more interested in the setting and the story itself, then feel free t read the fan theories as you go.

>running a voyage of the dawn treader inspired dnd campaign

i love it
yeah, dawn treader.

M o u s e G u a r d

Good but dense as hell. Maybe I'm thick as shit but it took me quite a few readthroughs to even get it.

...

This and the early Artemis Fowl books make for some great Shadowrun fuel. Although I could also see Artemis played as the young heir to a Rogue Trader.

thats helpful, perhaps an English translation?

Apparently no english translation BUT it has been translated in french as Kabir. here is english synopsys 4U lib.ru/OLDI/fragments_engl.txt_with-big-pictures.html#1

Short summary: Swords are sentient and train humans as their wielders. As it is a way of long term investment only light weapons can train their humans themselves others have to wait for years before wielder is ready to maim/kill there are no murders and violence is incomprehensible. Story is about our party going on a quest find out why are there are murders happening and how to prevent more of them.

It does amazing job of creating a society that is and completely alien and completely believabe.

Can get annoying when GMs/that guys try to constantly reference his work (much like Monty Python fans), but I love me some Pratchett.

Princess of Mars, hands down.
Sword and Planet is my fetish genre and I really wish there was more stuff set in it.

It's super outdated, and suffers from Deux Ex Machina, but damn do I love it.

Don't hate me too much for this.

Yes. It's one of my favourites.
I actually enjoy the pacing and the prose. It's definitely very slow at times and has a lot of descriptions of shit that doesn't matter (like Tolkien), but damn do I love that useless rambling.

Ever read anything be Leigh Brackett? I like Sword and Planet a lot as well and she seems to have written a few works that fit the criteria.

What about some classic swashbuckling novels? I know Three Musketeers and Scaramouche but I need more.

Read the Bible instead, the Chronicles of Narnia is it's cheap rip off.

It even had an RPG build around it so I think it counts.

Fafhrd & Gray Mouser, no question. It's the perfect tone for tabletop games.

As a teenager I got somewhat far in Wheel of Time and it just isn't that good.

It's an excellent series, but Gardens is the literary equivalent of being handed a sharp stick and thrown into the trenches at the Somme. Persevere, it's worth it.

Was surprised how good original Conan stories were.

ERB is god-tier pulp fiction fantasy.

Any good indie recs for s&s or heroic fiction? Something along the lines of Gemmell for heroic or Gotrek and Felix for s&s

Nobody for the Vietnam War of fantasy? Really?

also apparently Cook's fantasy-military writing was a huge inspiration for Erikson's Malazan Marines.

I would have picked Fifth Element.

Political plot involve a dwarf king, murderous werewolf aristocrats, and a party of various classes and fantasy races all working for a foreign police force being sent as representatives for the coronation but end up fighting against a conspiracy?

That would be one hell of a campaign.

God I actually made a typo on Fifth Elephant and wrote the name it was supposed to be parodying.

I've been reading this series and I'm up to She is the Darkness. One of the things I have enjoyed most in the series is Goblin and One-Eye's never ending feud. You just don't know how they're going to fuck things up for the Company once they get into it.

I read up through book 11 over 2 years, and then he fucking died. I still don't know how the series ends. There are a billion characters and a thousand plot threads, and I know if I tried picking it up with the Brandon Sanderson ones I wouldn't get much out of it.

The series is okay. I really enjoyed some of it, but a lot of it didn't stick with me.

Tee Bee Aitch my defining fantasy is probably Discworld - Pratchett's dwarfs and wizards are especially good

But if you are looking for alternate fantasy races to round out your campaign:

Anvil of the World by Kage Baker features some really cool dwarf/elf/demon societal relations. Her "Company" series of time-travel cyborg shenanigans is my favorite series of all time, but her fantasy is good too.

And "The Goblin Emperor" by Katherine Addison is top tier comf and a really cool depiction of elves and goblins.

Earthsea took me a few tries to get into but once I did I was hooked.

>Earthsea took me a few tries to get into but once I did I was hooked.
Really? Did the subject matter just not grab you at first or something? Because it's not a long book, and I think it's written in a very accessible style (it's often categorized as "young adult" on this basis, even though it's in no way juvenile).

Has anyone here read pic related, or anything else by Tamora Pierce?

I love what she writes: it's always the perfect blend of engaging and comfy.

This.

>Dawn Treader
My African-American companion

>tfw he blew his brains out in his late twenties
We could have had so much more

Not him, but when I first read it in like middle school it felt rather dense in terms of prose.

I wish there was more like it. The other books are pretty great too.

In a lot of ways I agree with I very much enjoyed reading them, but little of it "stuck" with me. He's got a lot of clever wordplay and mythological annotation, and I at least enjoyed it when reading, but outside of a few clever puns, I can't look back on it and say "oh wow, this was great".

That being said, I did not really like the first two books, and I thought ones 3-6 were the highlight of the series, when the main trio stops simply reacting to events and starts trying to do their own thing.

I know now that it the Hero Journey to a tee, but to my 10 year old self it was mindblowing.

My grandfather is a huge book nerd with a library that would make most people on this board cream their pants.
He took a look at the books I was bringing home from the school library and scoffed. He handed me the Pawn of Prophecy and I read it all that very night. Truly it was one of the greatest gifts that man has ever given me, not just the book series, but an appreciation for reading and delving into fantasy and sci-fi.

Now his health is declining and his memory isn't the same after his minor stroke, he's re-reading as much of his library as he can to enjoy his favorites one last time. A few of them he's forgotten all about and it's like he's reading it for the first time... even though he read them only a month previously

I picked up the second book and I think fell prey to the "Seinfeld syndrome".
On top of the underwhelming prose, you've got the farmboy Chosen One, a magic sword or something I think, your basic Aragorn, and an evil cult of a BBEG meeting to discuss their diabolical plans.
The only interesting things were the intro blurb about the Wheel of Time, the matriarchal mage nobility thing they set up and I recall magic being well described. Farmboy and Aragorn were practicing swordfighting and they get hit with like a magical shockwave or something.
I didn't read much of it in any case.

Man, user, these are some real feels to have this early in the morning. I'm sorry about your grandfather, and make sure that you spend as much time with him as you can before he has to move on.

I don't know why, but most david eddings book I have read have some really interesting things, but half the time the person relations are so awkwardly cringey shit that it's impossible to go through them. It's like the guy never had a normal relationship or something.

Cheers dude, I'm trying my best but I live and work 30 miles away. He's being cared for and lives with my family in my hometown so he's well looked after. It can be hard though, every time my mother phones I have this fear that something has happened to him, but he's mostly stable.

Though everytime I visit I go home with at least 2 or 3 books that he loans me "to have a little leaf through and see what you think". It's a privilege and a special honor that he trusts me with his collection. Some of them kinda rare first or second editions. I overheard him chatting with my mother one night over a glass of wine saying that he plans to put a large amount of his collection in his will for me, had to hold back some manly tears in the next room

I remember reading The Hobbit in second grade, but the book that really bit me with the fantasy bug was pic related (really, all 5 books are top-tier). The Post-Roman Celtic shtick has been my jam ever since, and really influenced my feelings regarding giants in a fantasy setting, giving them the role of once-mighty society that was forced into hiding by the predations of man.

That's some hard shit. You should sit down with him and catalog his all time favourites. I'd love to read some of the stuff he loves too.

I am ashamed. I read your post and instantly thought "lucky grandfather, he gets the pleasure of reading his favorite books for the first time again." I know that it's more serious than that, and I feel really bad and really sorry for thinking it.

Have hope user. People recover from minor strokes, and I'm sure someone as brilliant as your grandfather will be fine.

Narnia was my childhood, and like star wars it invokes nostalgia whenever i see or read it. I don't know how good it is, since i cannot objectively judge it, but i'd say give it a read.

yes, take my word for it it is going to get great, it touches on a lot of modern themes.

Pratchett would probably be his pick of favourite if you put a gun to his head and told him to choose one.
He took his death very hard, I saw him the morning after the announcement of his death sleeping at his chair at the top of the dining table with an empty bottle of whisky and at least 4 Pratchett hardbacks in his "finished pile" and a couple more in his "still to read" pile.

Otherwise Anne McCaffrey, David Gemmel, David Eddings, Ursula LeGuin and others are all amongst his favourites. He always says that Tolkien's work was a bit stuffy but very important to fantasy.
He told me once over a few drinks how Tolkien started writing to make a "playground" in which Elvish and Dwarven languages make sense, as language comes from and evolves because of culture and events, not the other way round.
I could pick his brain for hours, and I'm sure I'll never meet another man like him if I lived for a thousand years.

>I saw him the morning after the announcement of his death sleeping at his chair at the top of the dining table with an empty bottle of whisky and at least 4 Pratchett hardbacks in his "finished pile" and a couple more in his "still to read" pile.

I think it's raining, user.

The world building is really good in the Belgariad and the Mallorean, and its expanded upon hugely in Belgarath and Polgara's "autobiographies" and in the Rivan Codex, which I shit you not has about 50 pages dedicated to how the currencies of the different nations looks, weighs and values compared to others.
I agree that some of the characters are meh or downright cringy, but always entertaining to some degree. For example Silk is supposed to be a morally grey rogue but just just as heroic and righteous as the rest, though some of his quips and jabs had me in tears.
Belgarath is possibly my favorite version of "old man with white beard and insane magic" in fantasy, because he feels real. When his wife died, he went and drank and fucked his way through half a civilization before his daughter tracked him down about 400-500 years later to stop his bender.

I will just drop this here:
snip.li
/RPGNovels

any help with fills/contributions gratefully recieved.

didn't define my conception of fantasy per se but fucked my shit up pretty good
it was a one-two punch as I began playing Baldurs Gate the following summer, and THAT defined my conception of fantasy

Golden Bough. While it is out of date a lot of the sins people accuse it of it doesn't actually commit.

Also the Bible.

Don't be ashamed user, I hate to admit the thought flashed across my mind as well, mostly because of my wish to forget playing certain games, watching certain movies or reading certain books to enjoy them for the first time again.
Thankfully due to the NHS in Britain, if you can get someone suffering a stroke in 4 hours or less to hospital, they can almost fully reverse the effects for free, no questions asked. He was discharged a few days later. Unfortunately in this case it seemed that almost was the keyword. He's mostly the same as before, but it seems to have accelerated other degenerative brain problems he suffers from. He seems to have aged more in the past few years than in the past few decades. We are at a strange place as a family as every Christmas we seem to be gearing up for it being his last one with us, so we've been grieving in part for a few years, even though he always trucks on through to the next year.

Thanks for letting me "blog" about my shit guys. I know I'll never likely talk with you again knowingly, but its nice to see that when you shout into the void, sometimes... it cares and shares kind words and heartfelt love.

What is a good fantasy setting novel?
I mean a novel where it's clear there is more to the world than the main character and party and anyone in that world could stumble upon ancient dungeons and magical loot/power.
Most fantasy stories seem like "only the main character could do this because he is special and so is the antagonist and everyone else are basically just normalfag chumps in this magical world"
Where is muh dungeon fantasy?

user, your grandfather sounds amazing
Please cherish the time you still have with him for me, I lost both my grandfathers way too early and I always have wanted to have that one more drink with them to hear their stories

Thanks for sharing the books and wonderful story, it warmed my heart user, it really did

I adored these books as a child.

>We are at a strange place as a family as every Christmas we seem to be gearing up for it being his last one with us, so we've been grieving in part for a few years, even though he always trucks on through to the next year.
I know how this feels, sorta. My grandparents are both in their 80s, and while they're still happy (thank god) it's pretty clear that they're thinking more and more about their death. They always try to say "I love you" to family members as often as they can, as if its the last thing they'll get to say to the family.
Yesterday was my birthday, and my Grandfather gave me a ring he wore when he was younger. It's an amazing present, and I'm over the moon for receiving it, but it's disheartening when you think of why he thought now was an appropriate time to give it to me.