#RPGaDAY2023 Day 10: “Favourite tie-in FICTION”
While I could just about stomach the Star Wars and Star Trek tie-in fiction that arose from the movies and TV series, the tie-in fiction to RPGs… well, it sucks!
Ok, ok… let me qualify that. I read the Dragonlance Saga novels as a teen and loved them! They would be my favourite RPG tie-in fiction. But re-reading them was when I realised how much they sucked.
The Dragonlance books sucked as novels, at least compared to what I would enjoy now, and it would have been better to have left them to fond memory. But more than this, they sucked as AD&D modules too. Dragonlance was when I first learned how to railroad and it was enough to put me off GMing for a decade.
Since those times, I have found very little interest in reading novels for RPG game worlds. They represent more canon that I am expected to remember. Such novels also tend to be poorly written and, to my mind, reflect the fact that RPG adventures should not be reproduceable as written fiction.
The real joy in roleplaying is the emergent story, the exploration of the world, and the experience of being someone else in a fantastic realm. Tie-in fiction has a fixed story, shows me the world before I even get to play, and gives me the experience of someone else’s characters. Why would I want to read that?
Game on!
Roleplay Rescue’s Blog 
I’m not sure that an author will ever be able to replicate the actual vibe of a role play session in the form of a written novel or similar.
The narrative forms of cinema certainly haven’t been able to present novels properly in more than a century of consistent adaptations so I doubt either will be up to the task either time soon
I have to admit that the first time I ever heard that D&D novels existed I imagined the story reading as
“the fighter hit the orc and then the orc hit hit back before the fighter killed the orc with a second blow” 😆
I’m not saying that it isn’t entirely impossible to adapt an RPG to accurate reflection of the hobby in story form although I suspect it would take the form of an experimental body of word, unrecognisable at first glance from a novel and possibly as impenetrable to gamers as RPGs are to the ordinary man on the street
All that being said I do find some work stands well beside the work that inspires it, a lot of 40k fiction stands well on its own but to be fair The Black Library approach works by placing the 40k universe and vibe over established genre fiction forms; the war novel, the detective novel, the pulp novel etc and it delivers solid work more often than not using this method
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Got to admit, I always thought the Black Library did a pretty good job of rendering Wargaming IP to comic and novel form… but it always sought to add to that IP and generally GW resisted the urge to try and render the novels and comics into wargame scenarios. But RPGs… not seen it done so well there.
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I never came across RPG tie in fiction that I’d claim was great writing. On the other hand, I haven’t read much tie-in fiction. One I can remember is a book of short stories tied to Mage the Ascension, which, if I recall correctly, was uneven. I think what tie-in fiction could do if it’s done well, is to give players (and GMs) a better idea about the mood and flavor of a setting, and introduce them to some of the big features of the world, in a way that doesn’t feel like homework.
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