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Dogsbody, like so much DWJ, is just lovely.
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Nov 2, 2021 00:02
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NoneMoreNegative posted:the PoA and tDP series I'd quite like to read some Vance but uh what are these
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Nov 2, 2021 00:20
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:One of the things I really like about the Wheel of Time -- for all that it is, in many ways, junk food -- is that ultimately it's a fantasy that most of us have had, but that we almost never see rendered in fiction: "I wish I could have a do-over." There was a comic book where the hero invented time travel and after he completed his heroes journey through time he used his Time Travel device to go back in time and just be a better Husband which I thought was a nice twist.
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Nov 2, 2021 00:38
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Crashbee posted:I'd quite like to read some Vance but uh what are these The Demon Princes is a slowly increasing in quality series about revenge starts off really pulp and by the last one is full Jack Vance high baroque Planet of Adventure is just pulpy ethnographic fun set in weird alien societies/ecologies, each book is primarily set in the society that book is named after.
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Nov 2, 2021 01:07
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NoneMoreNegative posted:Also there was another Tchaikovsky book, Redemption's Blade which had a bit of a Vance-style vibe hero's journey; several disparate characters coming together for a quest, stopping at various locales and having to deal with the idiosyncrasies at each. Theres also a pair of Magical Artefact hunters who were especially JV. It was a little weaker that his other books but I enjoyed it well enough to buy the sequel, only to notice after I'd hit 'Buy' that book 2 was actually written by a completely different author?? I have not read it yet. The second book was 'fine' but left me with no interest in reading any further.
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Nov 2, 2021 01:10
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Kalman posted:Would absolutely read a book that was the critique of this concept, where the story is of the attempt to map and optimize on false values which creates the apocalypse and the reaction/revolution against the value structure. (I mean, to some extent this is the history in the Broken Earth series.) The Traitor Baru Cormorant and sequels are pretty good.
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Nov 2, 2021 02:28
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Rand Brittain posted:I recently had a thought that I liked, which is that the common thread linking bad wish-fulfillment fiction together is that it reveals the terrifying poverty of the creator's dreams. This is pretty much it. It's why so many of them are tied up with VRMMOs or LitRPG worlds. Battuta has a good point, but I'd argue it's more that the people who read it and the people who write it just have very limited imaginations. Probably as a consequence of growing up in the world as it is -- I imagine progression fantasy audiences are the same as web novel audiences: young. Imagining yourself as a brooding elf with two swords and a tragic past is more difficult than just imagining yourself in a world where your knowledge of video games allows you to succeed. On reflection, this is really just the same point -- progression fantasy/LitRPGs/whatever else you wanna call them reflect a level of escape from reality that goes beyond even the most shallow fantasy novels. I once sketched out a LitRPG kinda idea, and I still really like the characters and plot, but the beta readers I had among that audience all said it had too much story and not enough progression. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Nov 2, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 04:17
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Kesper North posted:The Traitor Baru Cormorant and sequels are pretty good.
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Nov 2, 2021 04:37
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Doctor Jeep posted:seconded, these were a pleasant surprise problem is I really hate anime and tv lol. well, i hate the mass produced popular stuff. i like genre fiction too but while I do plenty of reading just because I'm bored I got into it from reading stuff that (attempted, usually really badly) to present some concept or idea. basically im too stupid to read non fiction so i like stuff that makes me feel like im literally experiencing another culture instead of being me, but epic Larry Parrish fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Nov 2, 2021 |
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Nov 2, 2021 05:02
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90s Cringe Rock posted:another general alt smh Speaking of sockpuppets, is there a way I can get a bulk discount if I order in advance? I might need some in six months or so.
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Nov 2, 2021 05:12
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pradmer posted:Ask for deals and they shall come. Eventually I might end up with the whole Discworld just on ebook deals! Also Volume 2 of this was on sale a little while ago in a deal you posted, now Vol 1 is and thus justifying my purchase of Vol 2: The Adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser Volume One: Swords and Deviltry, Swords Against Death, and Swords in the Mist - by Fritz Leiber $3.99 https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Fafhrd-Gray-Mouser-One-ebook/dp/B0741VJC4D/
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Nov 2, 2021 07:44
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Swords against Death has maybe my favourite of the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser shorts in it (Bazaar of the Bizarre), and Mist is mostly a novella that I think was the first story featuring them-- very different from all the rest and very fun, highly recommended.
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Nov 2, 2021 08:40
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General Battuta posted:I had an occasion to Comment On Progression Fantasy recently and basically my beef with it is that we live in a world where the high modernist program of "let's map and quantify how everything works then use that causal map to figure out how to value human labor + optimize human society" has turned catastrophic, because (predictably) our schema of what to value turned out to be wildly wrong, and gaming the system turned out to be much more successful than playing fair. I've been holding off on reading Seeing Like a State for far too long... want to learn more about the Soviet famines before I delve into it.
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Nov 2, 2021 12:27
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pradmer posted:In that vein, does anyone have any recommendations for books with journeys through weird and alien settings. The best examples I can think of are Cugel's Saga by Jack Vance and Kameron Hurley's The Stars Are Legion when they're traveling through the inside of the world. Not so much Arthur Clarke's Rendezvous at Rama because I found that pretty sterile. *Funnily enough, in parallel with the litrpg talk, The Mysterious Island (its sort-of-sequel) I recall as basically being the olde timey version of that kind of build-yourself-up stat-padding fantasy, where you till and tame and alter the land around you to make it habitable, because they didn't have pen and paper adventuring rpgs back then but they DID have dreams based around colonialism and homesteading. The Swiss Family Robinson was like that too but turned up to 11.
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Nov 2, 2021 15:32
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Drakyn posted:If you want to go a ways back you could give Journey to the Center of the Earth a try (and once you've read it, you can see its fingerprints everywhere) - and 40,000 Leagues Under the Sea*, which is a little bit less 300% fantasized and has a tad more racism. Cool typo, quoting it for posterity before you fix it. Anytime 20000 Leagues Under the Sea gets mentioned, I think the Kelsey Grammer SNL skit about 20000 Leagues under the Sea needs to be mentioned too. quote:First Mate: 20,000 leaguessss! That’s pretty deep, Captain!
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Nov 2, 2021 15:59
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quantumfoam posted:Anytime 20000 Leagues Under the Sea gets mentioned, I think the Kelsey Grammer SNL skit about 20000 Leagues under the Sea needs to be mentioned too. Has anybody read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16281371-twenty-trillion-leagues-under-the-sea
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Nov 2, 2021 16:44
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StrixNebulosa posted:And Wheel of Time. God, WoT reddit fans are insufferable. At least WoT books are decent and the series got finished. Rothfuss is a mediocre hack who got extremely lucky, likely knows it which is part of why he's not working on his next book, and his fans are the absolute worst. They're the fantasy author fandom equivalent of Elon Musk's cult following.
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Nov 2, 2021 19:02
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fritz posted:Has anybody read: It’s Adam Roberts being very Adam Roberts so it’s got great imagination, a lot of playful genre awareness, some bad French puns, and gives the sense that the author got kinda bored with it towards the end. It’s decent. Fantastic illustrations though, considerably creepier than the novella itself.
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Nov 2, 2021 20:47
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fritz posted:Has anybody read: I read that and found it pretty middling. It's been awhile, but I recall it started interesting and just kept going while not being interesting, particularly.
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Nov 2, 2021 22:41
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Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice - $2.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004AM5R20/ The Two of Swords: Volume Three by KJ Parker - $1.99 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y5K2CK2/
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Nov 2, 2021 23:01
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Silver2195 posted:Well, yeah. I like Cradle, but it definitely stands out mainly because it's part of a subgenre that sets the bar insanely low. And I dunno what fantasy everyone else is reading, but the popular and praised series I have read for the most part don't seem obviously superior. General Battuta posted:In fact trusting in the algorithm of Progress has brought us to the edge of a major existential threat! So fantasies about a world where you really can map and optimize how to succeed at life (without, as in reality, causing enormous terror-famines or accidentally building Brasilia) seem even more like a flight from the real challenges of the human condition than, well, the rest of fantasy. Kalman posted:Would absolutely read a book that was the critique of this concept, where the story is of the attempt to map and optimize on false values which creates the apocalypse and the reaction/revolution against the value structure. (I mean, to some extent this is the history in the Broken Earth series.)
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Nov 3, 2021 04:57
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Oh my goddddd shut up about your weird number go up poo poo
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Nov 3, 2021 05:07
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No
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Nov 3, 2021 05:10
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im gonna be honest, most of the video games i play where i care about the story even a little bit are interested in things like real challenges of the human condition, even if usually superficially, so i'm not exactly sure what video gamey means here. The literal inclusion of game mechanics as game mechanics? That's more game manual-y and I mean I basically taught myself to read from d&d manuals so I am capable of understanding an appeal. I also work on an ongoing video game project that does treat mechanical things as real parts of the game fiction rather than handwaving it away as mechanics so I can understand an appeal there too. I just kind of find the notion of treating rules text as prose to be absolutely repellent to my sensibilities as a reader. There are few things in this world I would rather read less than an unveiled grinding session, which is what my understanding of the subgenre to mostly be composed of. Which, I mean. No skin off my back if you're into it. The impression I just keep getting is that it's a type of story that half-assedly wants to be a game and half-assedly wants to be a story both at once and no description I have ever heard has ever made it sound appealing. This is not an invitation to try.
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Nov 3, 2021 05:57
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Cicero posted:This is true, but I think the writing quality of Cradle is pretty good even by regular fantasy standards. It's not deep, no, but it clearly doesn't intend to be, and it succeeds at being fun. One of the reasons I like Matt Dinnimann for LitRPG is he’s actually creates settings where #numbergoup is meaningless. His LitRPG systems are all Cosmic Horror than Progression Fantasy. The theme is no matter how hard you try and how much your number go up, you are still a slave in the machine. This is super clear in Dungeon Crawler Carl where it’s obvious from the start that there is no “happy ending” for Carl and Donut. Even if they meet the game’s “win condition,” they won’t ride off into the sunset happy and safe. It doesn’t matter how powerful they get and how many magic items they loot, they’re just as screwed as ever. Just like you and me!
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Nov 3, 2021 05:57
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neongrey posted:im gonna be honest, most of the video games i play where i care about the story even a little bit are interested in things like real challenges of the human condition, even if usually superficially, so i'm not exactly sure what video gamey means here. quote:I just kind of find the notion of treating rules text as prose to be absolutely repellent to my sensibilities as a reader. There are few things in this world I would rather read less than an unveiled grinding session, which is what my understanding of the subgenre to mostly be composed of. Which, I mean. No skin off my back if you're into it. The impression I just keep getting is that it's a type of story that half-assedly wants to be a game and half-assedly wants to be a story both at once and no description I have ever heard has ever made it sound appealing. But no, you're actually right in a lot of ways: there's a bunch that are exactly like that. I would say Cradle and my other faves aren't, which is why I like them, but yes there are definitely LitRPG's that are absolutely crawling in charts telling you exactly how much damage an ability does, how much exp you need to level it up, blah blah blah. navyjack posted:One of the reasons I like Matt Dinnimann for LitRPG is he’s actually creates settings where #numbergoup is meaningless. His LitRPG systems are all Cosmic Horror than Progression Fantasy. The theme is no matter how hard you try and how much your number go up, you are still a slave in the machine. quote:This is super clear in Dungeon Crawler Carl where it’s obvious from the start that there is no “happy ending” for Carl and Donut. Even if they meet the game’s “win condition,” they won’t ride off into the sunset happy and safe. It doesn’t matter how powerful they get and how many magic items they loot, they’re just as screwed as ever. Just like you and me!
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Nov 3, 2021 06:25
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I love the way every defense of a LitRPG talks up the parts that aren't LitRPG. If I'm reading a LitRPG for the characters and philosophy, why does the narrative keep interrupting that with DING! LEVEL UP! Skinner box bullshit, and why did I decide to read a book that does this instead of one that doesn't?
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Nov 3, 2021 07:54
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Some people like that stuff and think it's fun. Personally I'm of the opinion that modest amounts of it can be interesting if used in the right way, but if it's very in your face and takes up too much page space it just gets tiresome. It's definitely a less-is-more kind of situation. I guess it's that the LitRPG elements can be useful as framing, but they're not a real replacement for story or for character progression, and if there's too much focus on them that's what it feels like the author is attempting.quote:If I'm reading a LitRPG for the characters and philosophy, why does the narrative keep interrupting that with DING! LEVEL UP! Skinner box bullshit
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Nov 3, 2021 08:28
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Basically someone noticed that a substantial subset of reader demographics really like the scenes in epic fantasy where the hero finally busts out his new Sword of Many Power and lays a smackdown on the evil overlord's armies to turn the tide, and thought, "What if this happened in a series all the time?" And yeah that diminishes the impact of each individual event a good deal, but it can still be pretty fun.
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Nov 3, 2021 08:38
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silvergoose posted:Dogsbody, like so much DWJ, is just lovely. I read so much DWJ when I was a kid, it was the main “fantasy” series in the local library children’s section. The adult section was mostly Mercedes Lackey IIRC. To this day I can’t help feeling that “Chrestomanci the Enchanter” is a more impressive wizard name than any number of Elminsters or Dumbledores.
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Nov 3, 2021 08:56
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Sham bam bamina! posted:I love the way every defense of a LitRPG talks up the parts that aren't LitRPG. If I'm reading a LitRPG for the characters and philosophy, why does the narrative keep interrupting that with DING! LEVEL UP! Skinner box bullshit, and why did I decide to read a book that does this instead of one that doesn't? There are two groups of LitRPG readers. The first group is your Ciceros -- 'it's kinda bad but I like it so there', defensive deployment of irony etc. The other are absolutely obsessed with the Skinner box bullshit and it's the entire draw. This second group will crunch the numbers and quite literally point out when the author has done the math wrong and their prose about the strongest guy ever with the number one game-breaking exploit isn't actually the number one exploit in the rules-as-written. neongrey posted:im gonna be honest, most of the video games i play where i care about the story even a little bit are interested in things like real challenges of the human condition, even if usually superficially, so i'm not exactly sure what video gamey means here. The literal inclusion of game mechanics as game mechanics? That's more game manual-y and I mean I basically taught myself to read from d&d manuals so I am capable of understanding an appeal. I also work on an ongoing video game project that does treat mechanical things as real parts of the game fiction rather than handwaving it away as mechanics so I can understand an appeal there too. The thing to understand is that LitRPGs aren't drawing from tabletop RPGs or computer RPGs -- they draw from MMOs and that's the entire appeal. It's why so many LitRPGs involve a character being sucked into an MMO, having their consciousness injected into a MMO, the population of Earth being trapped in an MMO, someone inventing a new MMO, MMOs serving as criminal punishment, alien civilizations arbitrarily deciding that Earth should be a MMO, etc. etc. The whole focus on systems mastery and breaking the system and becoming the number one powergamer is something that'd get you thumped on the back of the head at a table and is meaningless in a story-based CRPG. When was the last time an MMO had a story with "real challenges of the human condition"? Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 10:26 on Nov 3, 2021 |
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Nov 3, 2021 10:23
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neongrey posted:
This is exactly how I feel about progression lit. I love a well executed system! I can read with rapt attention a 20 page derail about the merits of GURPS v D&D v whatever ropekid put in Pillars of Eternity. But all of those are representations of a fictional reality somewhere. When in the middle of a story I see a stat block update with a new skill or whatever, it’s like the story slams into a barrier at high speed and my immersion goes flying through the windscreen like a parent from an 80s public service announcement about seatbelts. Milkfred E. Moore posted:When was the last time an MMO had a story with "real challenges of the human condition"? I’m tempted to say EVE Online Beefeater1980 fucked around with this message at 10:56 on Nov 3, 2021 |
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Nov 3, 2021 10:51
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I can imagine a theoretical litrpg novel that was enjoyable. Something sisyphean where dude is trapped in a gamified hellscape he can't escape and all he do is meaninglessly increment statistics. Like, ok, I can imagine a few different stories that could be told that way and be interesting. What I have a hard time with is litrpg as a whole separate genre, where playing the game, but it's a book, seems to be the point. I can play a game myself, I don't need a book to do it for me. If the game is the point then let's actually game .Make it a choose your own adventure with some dice.
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Nov 3, 2021 11:32
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Yeah try as they might LitRPG authors have never managed to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle of the original Legend of the 10 Elemental Masters 
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Nov 3, 2021 12:01
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Beefeater1980 posted:I’m tempted to say EVE Online Lmao, okay, fair.
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Nov 3, 2021 12:42
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:There are two groups of LitRPG readers. The first group is your Ciceros -- 'it's kinda bad but I like it so there', defensive deployment of irony etc. The other are absolutely obsessed with the Skinner box bullshit and it's the entire draw. This second group will crunch the numbers and quite literally point out when the author has done the math wrong and their prose about the strongest guy ever with the number one game-breaking exploit isn't actually the number one exploit in the rules-as-written. So they are just book versions of WH40k, battletech, forgotten realms, magic the gathering and so on, where the main purpose is to cash in on the franchise. Given the average quality of these books, I guess LitRPG can’t be that horrible. I mean, a novelisation of baldurs gate 2 exists.
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Nov 3, 2021 13:39
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Beefeater1980 posted:I read so much DWJ when I was a kid, it was the main “fantasy” series in the local library children’s section. The adult section was mostly Mercedes Lackey IIRC. I still reread them when I want a quick treat. Hexwood and Archer's Goon are perennial favorites. Agree with you on the name, even when he appears in a dressing gown looking befuddled.
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Nov 3, 2021 13:47
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To me, with Cradle specifically, it didn't feel like some kind of subgenre of fantasy or anything. It just seemed like the kind of fantasy where some average person found out they're a hidden baddass or whatever. The getting stronger stuff didn't feel like a Level Up screen, it just felt like the character organically getting stronger. On the other hand, I am terrible at critical thinking and analysis when it comes to media, so maybe I'm just a loving moron.
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Nov 3, 2021 14:16
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Milkfred E. Moore posted:There are two groups of LitRPG readers. The first group is your Ciceros -- 'it's kinda bad but I like it so there', defensive deployment of irony etc. The other are absolutely obsessed with the Skinner box bullshit and it's the entire draw. This second group will crunch the numbers and quite literally point out when the author has done the math wrong and their prose about the strongest guy ever with the number one game-breaking exploit isn't actually the number one exploit in the rules-as-written. Lets all figure out the right kind of stereotype of LitRPG readers. Should the stereotype be number-crunching grognards? power-tripping RPG enthusiasts? Video gamers who are barely literate? True, this is all based on nothing more than my own cheap assumptions, and maybe knowing one guy, but I need to get this right. I'm prepared to hear suggestions, but only if they preserve my vague sense of moral and intellectual superiority over other people enjoying a genre of book. And LitRPG readers... stop getting defensive about my implicit claim that you're some variety of dumbfuck. It's a bad look.
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Nov 3, 2021 14:37
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it is very funny that anyone posting on somethingawful in 2021 feels superior to anyone else for what they enjoy doing
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