I read the Dying Earth stuff. It’s writen between 1950 and the 1980is, I think. And you can fucking tell. It has rape scenes that are handed so utterly casual as if they said “and then the character got on a bus.” Got a lot of other problems along those lines too.
That said, it does give an interesting idea of how D&D Magic might look if you translate the game mechanics of spell slots etc. into how that would work and feel in a practical sense and what implications it would have for the world it is set in, in general.
But read it as a historical document, it you do so. It helps that the main protagonist is a fucking unlikeable brick.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant were wild like that too. Main character has leprosy and bitches about it making him a worthless person the entire book then raped a woman that helps him and more or less shrugs it off because he thinks the fantasy world is a delusion.
I only read the first book because yikes.
Fans will still foam at the mouth about the moral complexity but those fans are always weird edgelord incels for some reason. It is meant to be a deconstruction, but it’s one written by someone that’s definitely a rapist, and in the end it’s still just an absurd power fantasy with cynicism and casual 70’s misogyny.
I love the Numenara RPG concept - haven’t had a chance to play it, but I’ve workshopped ideas with a friend who likes to write stuff in it. I’ll put that book on my radar, another lemming got me going on Glen Cook’s Black Company series currently.
It’s actually a collection of four books, which I think these days are sold in sets of two.
It’s got some fun stuff, like an author who’s convinced of his own infallibility, and fantasy-like vocabulary, except none of the words are really made up, it’s just applications of somewhat obscure latin and greek words. I’d also kind of encourage going into it blind, since there are some bits of it that are more fun to figure out as you go along.
Kind of the inverse, but you may enjoy Gene Wolfe’s book of the new sun, and the Numenera TTRPG.
I guess Vance’s Dying Earth series, that inspired how spells work in D&D, also would fit there, though I’m not personally familiar
I read the Dying Earth stuff. It’s writen between 1950 and the 1980is, I think. And you can fucking tell. It has rape scenes that are handed so utterly casual as if they said “and then the character got on a bus.” Got a lot of other problems along those lines too.
That said, it does give an interesting idea of how D&D Magic might look if you translate the game mechanics of spell slots etc. into how that would work and feel in a practical sense and what implications it would have for the world it is set in, in general.
But read it as a historical document, it you do so. It helps that the main protagonist is a fucking unlikeable brick.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant were wild like that too. Main character has leprosy and bitches about it making him a worthless person the entire book then raped a woman that helps him and more or less shrugs it off because he thinks the fantasy world is a delusion.
I only read the first book because yikes.
Fans will still foam at the mouth about the moral complexity but those fans are always weird edgelord incels for some reason. It is meant to be a deconstruction, but it’s one written by someone that’s definitely a rapist, and in the end it’s still just an absurd power fantasy with cynicism and casual 70’s misogyny.
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Yeah, I can imagine it’s kind of in the Lovecraft category, as in, clearly influential, but, uhhh, yikes.
I love the Numenara RPG concept - haven’t had a chance to play it, but I’ve workshopped ideas with a friend who likes to write stuff in it. I’ll put that book on my radar, another lemming got me going on Glen Cook’s Black Company series currently.
It’s actually a collection of four books, which I think these days are sold in sets of two.
It’s got some fun stuff, like an author who’s convinced of his own infallibility, and fantasy-like vocabulary, except none of the words are really made up, it’s just applications of somewhat obscure latin and greek words. I’d also kind of encourage going into it blind, since there are some bits of it that are more fun to figure out as you go along.
Bonus for /c/finalfantasyxiv@lemmy.world players: it has Ascians.