# Thieves World **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [March 8, 2022, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thieves-world/960649 "2022-03-08T02:41:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Pavelb1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/439d5e/32.png) [@Pavelb1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pavelb1)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thieves-world/960649/1 "2022-03-08T02:41:51Z")
You all ever own or read these old Fantasy anthologies? It was hard to wrap my head around them (except for Joe Haldeman’s single contribution…Joe is always very readable) as a kid, but revisiting them, I can follow better. On a different note: 1. Man, 70’s Sci-Fi/ Fantasy writers generally didn’t seem to take care of themselves. They seem to have lower then normal life-spans 2. Or they had a very dark life ex: Marion Zimmer Bradley ---
**Author:** ![ParallelLines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/parallellines/32/3575_2.png) [@ParallelLines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParallelLines)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thieves-world/960649/2 "2022-03-08T03:01:59Z")
I read the first 3-4, but had the exact same problem with the series I had with most other anthologies of the era: the characters I liked, or storylines I liked, would appear once or twice and then fall out of the storyline. Same issue with the Wildcards series - tons of stories about various entities I couldn’t care less about, but the more interesting, or flawed, or unique ones were almost always one-shot stories. > [@Does anyone else have a problem enjoying modern books?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-else-have-a-problem-enjoying-modern-books/943812): > > All the books I like tend to be written more than a few decades ago. Am I not reading enough current books or is this an issue that other people also have? @Wendell_Wagner also mentioned the series in the linked thread, where I mentioned the exact same issue. As for your secondary points, well, there’s the oft-repeated issues about creative stories coming from tortured souls. The issues for HP Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, and other authors of earlier generations show it’s far from limited to the authors of the 70s. ---
**Author:** ![Pavelb1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/439d5e/32.png) [@Pavelb1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pavelb1)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thieves-world/960649/3 "2022-03-08T03:13:53Z")
Yup. The aforementioned Haldeman story is a one-off…until way down the line when someone else brought back the character he offed. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2022, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thieves-world/960649/4 "2022-03-08T23:37:41Z")
I’ve only read the first one. I was very surprised when I realized that it postdated Dungeons and Dragons, because it seemed very much like the sort of thing that inspired the game. ---
**Author:** ![Pavelb1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/439d5e/32.png) [@Pavelb1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pavelb1)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2022, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thieves-world/960649/5 "2022-03-09T00:06:36Z")
I think it had its own obscure RPG ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2022, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thieves-world/960649/6 "2022-03-09T00:25:14Z")
It never had its own RPG, as far as I know, but in 1981 Chaosium released an [RPG boxed set for _Thieves’ World_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thieves%27_World_(role-playing_game)) that included stats and gaming notes for _nine_ different RPGs - pretty much every fantasy RPG on the market at the time. The idea was apparently to reflect the shared world ethos of the anthologies by making it into a game setting that could be played in any game system - a sort of shared game world. ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2022, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/thieves-world/960649/7 "2022-03-09T00:44:21Z")
When I was in college, one of our players decided to run a short-lived AD&D campaign (2nd Edition was the version at the time) based off of Thieves’ World. I believe he was using the Chaosium supplement for our game. It only lasted a few sessions from what I can recall.