Thread: Questioning chirine ba kal

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

With the moronic Tor articles and what not, I got to thinking. What are some of the favourite books or series of the regulars on this thread?
I originally was going to make this post "If you could only take 5 F/SF series or books, which authors' works would you choose?", but this became too limiting for me.

I know for me, and in no particular order, they are:

U.K. Leguin, The Earthsea trilogy. (Didn't really care for the later books added to the original three).
R.E. Howard: The Complete Chronicles of Conan.
M.A.R. Barker: All five books. (No surprise here I guess. Even though Phil may have not been "the best" writer out there I like Tekumel!)
J. Bellairs: The Face in the Frost.
R. Zelazny: The Chronicles of Amber.
J. Crowley: The Deep,
C.A. Smith: Eidolon and Other Tales,
H.P.Lovecraft (any of the Cthulhu stories, although my favourites are: The Dunwich Horror, At the Mountains of Madness, and The Whisperer in Darkness),
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Silmarillion (Not too fussy on LOTR these days).
M. W. Wellman: any compilation of his Silver John stories.
H. Harrison: either the Stainless Steel Rat, or The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted.

The funny thing is I've incorporated elements from all of these books into all of my campaigns over the years. Cthulhu works just fine on Tekumel, especially if you make him (it?) one of the Pariah Gods.

Shemek.

I like your list. For me:

Jack Vance - Dying Earth, Demon Princes...I have others that need reading.
EE Doc Smith - I have only read Galactic Patrol and Grey Lensman so far.
The big three, CAS, REH, HPL; I have multiple books and stories.
Fritz Lieber; Fafrd and Mouser, and others.
Manley Wade Wellman; Silver John, so good. I have some others too.
ERB, Mars, so many to read, Venus, Tarzan. More to get.
Moorcock; Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon. Dragon in the sword(Erekose)?. And others.
Heinlen; Starship Troopers
Phillip Jose Farmer; Hadon of Opar, Tier books, others I have that need reading.
Karl Edward Wagner; Kane
Tolkien; Hobbit(for a quick adventure fix), LotR, Silmarillian

I have so many others that need reading. I'm sure, I will get to them soon. I do also find myself going back to the books I liked and rereading as well.

I left off MAR Barker. He goes without saying. The Book of Ebon Bindings has some really great stories(the pitfalls of demon summoning)...

H:0)

PS Those are just the Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror/Pulp stuff...Wolfram Von Eshenbach, Mallory, Troyes, Homer...Off to Battle(work)!!!

I'm going to add Lois Mcmaster Bujold's fantasy. There's not a lot of it, but it's excellent. I cannot recommend The Curse of Chalion highly enough; it truly is a Chanson de Geste, and I put it up there with Three Hearts and Three Lions.

Wonderful suggestions from everyone!!! You've covered all my favorites as well - in the fiction field, but that's going to be another conversation - and I'm delighted to see so many great settings named.

May I ask what will probably seem to be a really dumb and naive question? In a lot of the self-described OSR forums and blogs, there seems - to my eye, anyway - a lot more emphasis on game mechanics and what I think it called 'crunch' then there seems to be on world-settings and what I think is referred to as 'fluff'. Is this my misperception, or the result of the way I'm sampling the data?

And an observation, if I may. When I read the Tor series, I got the impression that the authors were working from the assumption that potential readers of any of these books were not able to make up their own minds about the books - and their authors - on their own, and needed to have an 'interpreter' to make sure that readers were properly informed. Color me confused; I had always assumed in my reading and gaming that the people I was talking to had the intelligence and wit to look at the material and make up their own minds. I still assume this, which may be an obsolete way to look at the world...

Well, firstly, I've lost count of the number of times I've said that Dave and Gary's fundamental mistake was assuming that the players were smart enough to shit unassisted. Then again, my disdain for my fellow man is my besetting sin. I'm getting better but I still have SO very far to go.

Secondly, the 13 year old kids TSR started marketing to in the late 70s DID need a lot explained to them, and that has carried on in rules ever since.

Thirdly, I think an unforseen side effect in the increase of secondary education is that people overanalyze stuff, and expect everything to be subjected to academic style analysis.

Fourth and lastly, and perhaps most important, after letting the parts of the TOR series that I read percolate a while, my chief impression of them is "We have a deadline and need to write something." Honestly, I see a LOT of that all OVER the web.

Of course, that's an old problem... Robert E. Howard, in his letters to friends, used to complain about how in order to pay the rent he would take his own stories, rework them a bit, and resell them, and that people just wanted more of the same, not anything new or different.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

I'm going to add Lois Mcmaster Bujold's fantasy. There's not a lot of it, but it's excellent. I cannot recommend The Curse of Chalion highly enough; it truly is a Chanson de Geste, and I put it up there with Three Hearts and Three Lions.

Its funny, I love her space stories and I loved The Spirit Ring, but Chalion did not appeal to me at all.

I'd add Glen Cook's serious fantasy e.g. the Dread Empire and Black Company series. His stand alone novels The Swordbearer (1982) and The Tower of Fear (1989) are really good. I think the hero and the blade in The Swordbearer out Elric's and out Stormbringer's Moorcock. And I like Moorcock's Elric. His new series (Instrumentalities of the Night) is a bit harder going (no map doesn't help). But it has a late Renaissance European feel that I find especially entertaining since fantasy with gunpowder is rare and rarely done well.

Originally Posted by chirine ba kal

May I ask what will probably seem to be a really dumb and naive question? In a lot of the self-described OSP forums and blogs, there seems - to my eye, anyway - a lot more emphasis on game mechanics and what I think it called 'crunch' then there seems to be on world-settings and what I think is referred to as 'fluff'. Is this my misperception, or the result of the way I'm sampling the data?

And an observation, if I may. When I read the Tor series, I got the impression that the authors were working from the assumption that potential readers of any of these books were not able to make up their own minds about the books - and their authors - on their own, and needed to have an 'interpreter' to make sure that readers were properly informed. Color me confused; I had always assumed in my reading and gaming that the people I was talking to had the intelligence and wit to look at the material and make up their own minds. I still assume this, which may be an obsolete way to look at the world...

I've got a "dumb" question as well: what's OSP?
Seeing as this is the only forum I'm on I can't say that I've noticed this trend, but I sincerely hope that this is not the case. For what it's worth the mechanics have always come second for me, but a couple of my guys have, in the past, been strong mechanics advocates. I largely use "official rules" to appease them, but to be honest 99% is resolved behind my screens on a d20 or d100 roll vs an assigned difficulty rating. I just go through the motions as far as rulesets are concerned to make it look like I'm using a rule book.

I think this might be endemic of the current generations approach to life in general. I hate sounding like the old man, but I'm used to seeing this at work everyday with recent grads and co-op students. They really need to be spoon fed, and getting them to "think creatively" is like pulling teeth sometimes. I know I'm generalising, but your observation seems to support this view. Now in all fairness the youngest member of my group is 44 so I don't know if younger gamers as a whole are like this. I really hope not. I don't think your perspective or world view is obsolete in the slightest. I wish more people had this mind set.

Shemek

Originally Posted by Bren

Its funny, I love her space stories and I loved The Spirit Ring, but Chalion did not appeal to me at all.

I'd add Glen Cook's serious fantasy e.g. the Dread Empire and Black Company series. His stand alone novels The Swordbearer (1982) and The Tower of Fear (1989) are really good. I think the hero and the blade in The Swordbearer out Elric's and out Stormbringer's Moorcock. And I like Moorcock's Elric. His new series (Instrumentalities of the Night) is a bit harder going (no map doesn't help). But it has a late Renaissance European feel that I find especially entertaining since fantasy with gunpowder is rare and rarely done well.

I forget about Cook's Dread Empire and Black Company. Haven't read those in ages. I did like Moorcock, especially his Hawkmoon/Runestaff stories. Unfortunately I "overdosed" on him a few years back and just can't bring myself to read his stuff again. I didn't know he had a new series out.

Shemek.

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

The feeling that "Things fall apart" or that "the centre cannot hold" is not by any means new or unusual. Written records of the old despairing over the young go back at least to the ancient Greeks. And if we don't have Babylonian and Egyptian examples, it's only because we haven't found the right clay tablet or papyrus.

Originally Posted by Gronan of Simmerya

Well, firstly, I've lost count of the number of times I've said that Dave and Gary's fundamental mistake was assuming that the players were smart enough to shit unassisted. Then again, my disdain for my fellow man is my besetting sin. I'm getting better but I still have SO very far to go.

Secondly, the 13 year old kids TSR started marketing to in the late 70s DID need a lot explained to them, and that has carried on in rules ever since.

Thirdly, I think an unforseen side effect in the increase of secondary education is that people overanalyze stuff, and expect everything to be subjected to academic style analysis.

Fourth and lastly, and perhaps most important, after letting the parts of the TOR series that I read percolate a while, my chief impression of them is "We have a deadline and need to write something." Honestly, I see a LOT of that all OVER the web.

Of course, that's an old problem... Robert E. Howard, in his letters to friends, used to complain about how in order to pay the rent he would take his own stories, rework them a bit, and resell them, and that people just wanted more of the same, not anything new or different.

You've got some good points there, but I don't know... My experience at work has made me far more pessimistic.

Shemek

Originally Posted by Shemek hiTankolel

I didn't know he had a new series out.

The new series is by Glen Cook.