Totally agreed. Mieville, for example, has talked of two of his major influences being Moorcock and the Gormenghast novels (neither of which I particularly care for).
Here, Patrick Rothfuss talks about why he began to write:
Here’s China Mieville talking about his influences:
More later.
Basically Blizzard’s first game (under that name, the company had some other games before that under the name Silicone & Synapse like Lost Vikings and Rock and Roll Racing) was originally going to do a Warhammer game. The details aren’t known TOO well to those outside the company, but some people say Games Workshop agreed and then withdrew licensing rights late in the game and some say Blizzard never got them in the first place and foolishly thought it would be no problem. Either way, it forced them in the end to quickly retool some of the units and redo the story (in which they did take names at at least one concept from the Mograine Stories, the third book was called Fires of Azeroth and the series centered around interdimensional gates, but the similarities end there), making Warcraft what it is today.
I wouldn’t really argue that Warcraft, in its modern incarnation, is a ripoff though. Blizzard is the one who brought it to a lot of people outside the uber-nerd demographic, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say future writers and developers could legitimately say Blizzard Influenced them. Sure Warcraft started out as Warhammer, but there are more than enough differences to make it a credible influence all its own.
I also don’t see the similarities between Warcraft and Warhammer. Until now I never even thought there was a connection. Other than both being strategy fantasy games, you really couldn’t get more different in tone (lighthearted versus dark) and play style (automatons that act by themselves outside of formation without special abilities versus micromanaged formations with specialized heroes.)
It’s all an art style thing, really. Blizzard was heavily influenced by Games Workshop’s house style. I was 75% joking with my comment above; the influence in there but I’d never seriously call it “ripping off”.
Completely true. That said, people who accuse Warhammer Online of ripping off WoW are very silly. The point is, Warcraft I was Warhammer until fairly late in the dev process.
As I said, more later.
Here, Joe Abercrombie talks about how he came to write his books:
I can’t find a quote in which Scott Lynch talks about his influences. FWIW, however, here’s Scott Lynch interviewing Gary Gygax. It seems to me that the interview is conducted by someone with a pretty solid grasp of gaming. An dthis article by Scott Lynch, in which he applies Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to LARPing, is beyond geeky.
Daniel
I agree that a lot of the furniture of D&D came from Tolkein. But the tone and substance of how people actually play comes more from the pulp style of Lieber and Howard and Burroughs: tough guys wandering around and killing stuff for fun and profit. And at the end of the day you ride off into the sunset looking for another adventure. It’s easy to conduct a sword and sorcery pulp campaign, it’s hard to run a high fantasy campaign. And in the early days of D&D nobody even tried.
Define early days? I played in one in 1976 and ran one in 1978-80 and many since? I drew up my world and I had a threaded plot. Intrigue between kingdoms, an arch-evil hiding behind pawns and those manipulated, etc. Along the way I ran many campaigns in Middle-Earth and several different worlds of my own creation. I’m betting you’ll find **Glee **has had similar experiences and probably a bit earlier than I. That is two out of just the small population that is active Dopers.
I guess we should have been listening to Led Zepplin when we played D&D instead of Blue Öyster Cult.
Note: that is not a joke. Blue Öyster Cult was playing in the background at least 50% of the time during my teenage gaming sessions. Ah, youth.
Actually we did listen to a lot of Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Tull and such. I think BOC got some play too but not as much. Later we also added Yes, ELP and Rush into heavy play with other Prog Rock groups.
Did you actually recall I was a big Zep fan or just take a good guess?
I didn’t actually remember your youthful musical tastes–just that Led Zep=Tolkien, Blue Öyster Cult=Moorcock. So yeah.
And besides BÖC there was also Rush, Black Sabbath, Aerosmith, Van Halen.
The guys I gamed with in college had a completely different soundtrack: The Cure, Oingo Boingo and The Smiths.
Heh. We were Dead Can Dance, Enigma, and Loreena McKinnit.
Focus, people, focus! Given the quotes from my last couple of posts, do y’all agree that Gygax is having a huge influence on good modern fantasy, including the authors from the OP?
Daniel
No.
I would acknowledge that some modern fantasy writers had RPGs as their introduction into major influences that do still affect the direction that modern fantasy has taken.
But as Gygax himself was stealing from those influences, I don’t regard him as the influencer. And since Gygax’s D&D was by far from the only game that started the RPG industry off – it is merely the one that has had the most staying power – I don’t give him credit for writers’ RPG experiences leading to earlier fantasy influences, either.
You have failed to make your case specifically connecting Gygax to any of those writers, much less to all of them.
Yeah, they were gamers. May as well say they were readers, and that their fantasy writing was influenced from that.
I would have to read some of your examples, but most of the newer fantasy’s I have read that were based on/inspired by D&D were terrible with the exception of Feist. From your Op what would you say was the best fantasy by an author inspired by Gygax? I’m willing to give it a shot. This might boil down to a matter of taste.
Besides, I think many of the better authors are still inspired by the classical sources instead, including Tolkien.
Lightray, I think the quotes I gave indicate that D&D was a major influence on these authors. They didn’t mention Lieber, Moorcock, or Tolkien, but they did mention gaming. Are you reluctant to allow that gaming has a huge influence? If so, why? If not, why do you not trust the authors’ own words?
I suspect one of the biggest ways Gygax fathered modern fantasy was to covince millions of kids that they could write their own stories and own worlds, getting them started doing so at a younger age than they otherwise would have done.
I’d say that all of the four I mentioned are inspired by gaming (see my quotes), but that none of them are inspired in a derivative, RA Salvatore fashion. Mieville is my favorite, but he’s a like-him-or-hate-him guy. The Name of the Wind is the one I read most recently, and is the one I’ve heard most consistently positive praise for.
I need to get to Barnes & Nobles soon anyway to pick up a book on hold for my son. I will look for “Name of the Wind” by Patrick Rothfuss when I go. I need a break from my current reading anyway.
I am not disputing that gaming was a major influence on the authors. I am saying that you have failed to prove either:
It is as though I had pointed out that Stephen King had seen a traumatic accident early in life that was a major influence on him, and that therefore witnessing traumatic accidents early in life has led to the modern horror genre. You’ve skipped a bunch of steps in your proof between “some modern authors are gamers” and “Gary Gygax is the father of modern fantasy”.
Gary Gygax is to gaming (under the relevant definition of “gaming”) what Thomas Edison is to electric light. If gaming was an influence, it’s because of Gygax.
I’ve certainly demonstrated that, with my quotes.
Naturally the decade has seen first-time fantasy authors whose works have shaped the genre and who haven’t ever gamed; especially in children’s lit I think this is true. But the four authors I mentioned are snapping up all sorts of awards in the field recently. I think it’s fair to suggest that they’re representative of the direction modern fantasy is taking.
If Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Peter Straub, and Clive Barker had all seen the same traumatic accident as kids, and if they all mentioned it in interview as having written their first stories about it or having had it as a major influence, or perhaps had joined a messageboard founded after the accident and interviewed the major survivor of the accident, I’d be similarly willing to call that accident the foundation of modern horror.
If they don’t have it, I’d recommend The Lies of Locke Lamora as the second-most-fun: it’s the funniest of the four I mentioned IMO, and is vaguely similar to Ocean’s 11. If they don’t have either of those, Perdido Street Station is a phenomenal work that you’ll either love or hate (very few folks seem to be lukewarm on it), very dense and weird. Abercrombie’s books are wickedly funny and vicious; one of the more sympathetic characters is an Inquisition-style torturer who willingly tortures people he knows are innocent. Not at all for all tastes. After I read them, I wasn’t even sure they were for my tastes, although I certainly devoured them quickly enough.
I read Lies of Locke Lamora a while back now and did not enjoy it. However I just finished The Name of the Wind and my only complaint is that the second novel is not available until next year. This was a excellent book Daniel. Thank you for recommending it.