Bad Fantasy Books (Dragonlance, Pern, Xanth, and more)

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Bad Fantasy Books (Dragonlance, Pern, Xanth, and more)

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Barudak posted:

The cover is great, yeah.

One of the best details in the book is that there are cosplayer conventions in the reality of the critique writer where people dress up like Hitlers characters and the description is basically garishly colorful wehrmacht stuff.

Snug black leather

# ¿ Sep 13, 2020 02:27

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 16:55

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Empty Sandwich posted:

I completely misremembered that and thought it was from Unearthed Arcana.

the 1e core books should go in this thread, come to think of it. they're some of the worst instruction sets I've ever read in my life, barring bad translation

1e dmg is basically outsider art

# ¿ Sep 13, 2020 20:55

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Just thinking about that 'taur

# ¿ Sep 13, 2020 21:05

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

juggalo baby coffin posted:

his name was the maulotaur cause i guess he was a minotaur who mauled you

tch maxotaur was right there

# ¿ Sep 13, 2020 23:19

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Silver chair owns

# ¿ Sep 14, 2020 12:01

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Galewolf posted:

The Witcher gets a pass due to becoming a Witcher is a choice

ummm

# ¿ Sep 15, 2020 22:03

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Galewolf posted:

Don't you get trained first and used alchemy to mutate? Unless I'm reading the wiki wrong.

oh, you could be right, I just thought they got them all as kids then killed 90% of them with forbidden herb magic.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2020 23:00

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

BattleMaster posted:

there's an transhuman RPG called eclipse phase where even though everyone exists as pure information divorced from their original birth body, and can have any body they want at will (aside from supply and demand issues), the writers have established that there are only two situations where you would ever use a body with a sex other than your original birth sex:

1. you need a specific body type for a task and there's none available at the time that matches your birth sex
2. you are a decadent rich person doing it for a thrill

I'm honestly not sure how TERF philosophy survives contact with the idea that one's sense of self has nothing to do with the original body they were born in, since that seems to even further devalue the idea of a birth sex, but here we are

It doesn't say that at all, what an odd thing to make up

# ¿ Sep 18, 2020 06:01

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Ahhh ok. Fwiw I just checked the ep opening fiction and it has an agent waking up in a female body because that was what was available after his previous body got killed, it's not really noted otherwise. And the altered carbon rpg doesn't seem to be out until November from a quick Google.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2020 06:54

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Gideon the ninth is great

# ¿ Sep 18, 2020 07:12

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Milkfred E. Moore posted:

Gideon the Ninth is marketed pretty... shakily, though. Should've emphasized the cookie-cutter YA elements and not the cool elements that barely feature. But it's not really an 'old ruins and dungeon' story. It's like Homestuck + Warhammer 40k + Twitter memes.

it absolutely shouldn't work, but it absolutely does, imo.

i do agree it's not really what that poster was asking for - maybe joe abercrombie? The Heroes is probably the best standalone, if you like that then there are a bunch of others.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2020 11:45

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Horizon Burning posted:

If you want an actually good fantasy series, you should buy and read the Traitor Baru series by SA goon General Battuta.

The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach is also goon-written and excellent.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2020 21:10

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

A Sometimes Food posted:

Delicious in Dungeon owns yeah.

Going back to books, I don't think Discworld came up? Cause Discworld's certainly a thing. I also remember liking The True Game/Mavyn Manyshaped? But it's been a long rear end time since I read that.

Going back to questionable fantasy, anyone else ever read the Katherine Kerr stuff? It's been ages and I remember liking parts of it but thinking it got real bad as it went on and even early on was real weird about some heavy poo poo that I'm not sure it handled very well. And that was with like twelve year old me's reading comprehension.

yessss hypercatholics and i suspect a lot of gay coding, I used to love these.

# ¿ Sep 18, 2020 21:11

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Flared Basic Bitch posted:

Katherine Kerr�s name reminded me of Katherine Kurtz. What are the scorching hot takes on the Deryni books?

I only ever read The Harrowing of Gwynedd- why that one I couldn�t tell you, but I thought was extremely dumb at the time. I�ve since wondered if maybe I should at least take a look at the original trilogy.

oh - wait. that's who i was thinking of, katherine kurtz and the deryni books, sorry i'm a dumbass. i loved those, not sure how well they stand up - probably fairly well, the writing in those 70s fantasy books was often a fair bit better than in the extruded fantasy product doorstoppers.

# ¿ Sep 19, 2020 02:13

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

julian may, the many coloured land et al. Just completely berzerk sci fantasy with space elf pliocene rape camps and glowing colour coded psychics zapping each other and lesbian hockey players blasting open the mediterranean while hanging from a hot air balloon, and and and

it's just really really good trash i tell u

# ¿ Sep 24, 2020 11:41

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Deptfordx posted:

The first couple of books of the Many Coloured Land are ok, but I feel they get genuinally intersting as you get into books 3-4 and she really shakes up the established status quo. Aiken Drums character arc is pretty good, and Marc Remillard is a great, not even sure what to call him, anti-hero?

She's a competent writer and doesn't love her farts too much to gently caress her characters poo poo up, yeah. Interestingly she came out of fandom and it's all tailor made for cosplaying, unfortunately she was too early for the internet

# ¿ Sep 24, 2020 20:05

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

quote:

Gully dwarves, also known as Aghar, are stupid, filthy, and obnoxious.

Gully dwarves are short and squat, averaging four feet in height and weighing about 100 pounds. Their skin tones range from olive brown to a light parchment color Males wear long, scruffy beards; females have cheek hair but no beards. Hair color ranges from dirty blond to duil black. Eyes can be watery blue, dull green, or hazel. Gully dwarves have narrower fingers and limbs than other dwarves, and their skin is often covered with scars, boils, sores, and filth. Pot bellies are common among both sexes.

The stupidity of gully dwarves is legendary. To a gully dwarf, any number greater than one is �two�, which simply means �more than one�. In spite of their dull minds, gully dwarves take themselves quite seriously. They tend to have inflated ideas of their own importance, and puncturing their egos is almost impossible.

Combat: Since they regard cowardice as a virtue, gully dwarves have raised groveling to an art form. If confronted by a dangerous opponent but not immediately attacked, gully dwarves either faint, cry, beg for mercy, divulge rivers of information, run away, or stand and hake. If attacked, gully dwarves defend themselves, but they sometimes fight with their eyes closed. Gully dwarves are not above stealing, lying, or bullying, and dirty tricks are among their favorite tactics.

Master scavengers, gully dwarves use any armor and weapons they happen to recover from garbage dumps or scrap heaps. Padded and studded leather are commonly worn. Gully dwarves rarely use weapons other than clubs, daggers, knifes, and hand axes. A few have learned to use slings.

Habitat/Society: Gully dwarf communities are quite small, seldom exceeding more than 2d10 members. A typical clan of 11 members includes a chieftain (a fighter of level 2-6), about four 1st-level fighters (one of whom serves as the clans shaman, although he has no magical abilities), one fighter of level 2-4 (or a thief of the same level range); the rest are females and children. Most clans live in abandoned villages or in the wilderness in old mines and caves. Others live in slums, refuse dumps, or the sewer systems of large cities. When several clans live together, the strongest and cleverest chieftain becomes the local king, whose title is produced by adding the prefix �High� to his clan name. Each successive king often calls himself �the First�, owing to the gully dwarves� inability to count.

Gully dwarves believe magical items are useless because their magic was put into them by other races. To gully dwarves, the most powerful items are those that seem to do nothing at all. Objects such as old bones, rotten fruit, fur balls, and bent sticks are treasured and venerated. The clan�s shaman keeps these �holy relics� and administers their use.

Ecology: Other races avoid gully dwarves, but they are occasionally hired to perform menial tasks. Gnomes occasionally hire them as assassins and spies, even though gully dwarves aren�t particular adept at these jobs. Gully dwarves eat anything. Many gully dwarves keep a pot of stew boiling constantly, throwing anything dead or nearly dead into the pot.

# ¿ Mar 9, 2022 00:02

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Atopian posted:

Assuming that their source material was real-world race science literature from Victorian times.

dragonlance-branded phrenology kits were a surprisingly large portion of TSR's bottom line in the mid/late 80s

# ¿ Mar 9, 2022 00:41

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Elric of melnibone is great, hosed up skinny white guy

# ¿ Mar 11, 2022 05:10

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

I imagine that mailing list is also worth A Lot

# ¿ Apr 6, 2022 08:10

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

super sweet best pal posted:

Aslan tier: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; The Magician's Nephew
Good tier: Prince Caspian, Dawn Treader, Silver Chair
poo poo tier: Horse and His Boy, Last Battle

I think they are all good apart from the last battle, though the horse and his boy is fairly racist in retrospect I guess lol

# ¿ Apr 7, 2022 21:59

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 16:55

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

sweet geek swag posted:

I agree, though I liked certain aspects of the first half of the Last Battle. Once they 'die' the story gets too heavy handed though. My favorite is The Silver Chair because I'm a sucker for Journey to the Center of the Earth type stories.

Same, Eustace and jane are much better characters than the tedious pevenseys

# ¿ Apr 8, 2022 00:07

The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Bad Fantasy Books (Dragonlance, Pern, Xanth, and more)