/tg/ - Traditional Games

>>419050

>They're all beautiful, respected, hyper-competent and appear to have absolutely no weaknesses

No, no and no. But they are skilled in sex.

>It was all about milking the planet dry of resources, not making the people's lives better. If he wanted to be a benevolent dictator he wouldn't have installed an overly edgy tyrant government (Rabban's) in the first place.

Everyone was planned to milk dune, just at slightly different speed. Atreides were planning on propaganda champing to ally themselves with freeman, because they needed them.

Read next books. They have stuff like "woman army is better than man army, because man start fucking each other in the ass, when there is no war, and woman go back to kitchen instead."

>>419094

not wanting to see some tumbler-nosed genderfluid trans version of your characters doesn't make her a bitch in my book

>opinion

wouldn't say favourite but like to read her stuff and have read most of it (even the old stuff under alias), but there might be nostalgia playing into it since I first read them way back. it's not overly edgy, shit happens (even to good people), heck even the ntr makes sense for the characters although the last farseer trilogy was kinda unnecessary. sure I want to know what happens with those characters but there's a good chance it goes completely off the rails and will never be as good as the first, so why bother - that being said I've read much worse continuations and lot of it is personal opinion anyway, so ymmv

Tarrasque is a french monster?

>>419736

Huh. I thought it was based off of Godzilla.

>>419736

Weird, I thought it was based off this guy

Short story The Machine Stops by E.M.Forster is pretty good

>>419788

>Godzilla

No breath weapon.

What's a suitably weird setting?

>>419050

>They manipulate absolutely everyone,

It's not like they are trained in manipulating absolutely everyone and were refining this for centuries. Oh. They did.

> They manipulate absolutely everyone, they have muh training that allows them to read minds, know all the languages, control emotions, know absolutely anything about anyone not long after they start talking, and literally control people with voice.

Bennies are merely one of the largest organizations in human space, that picks and indoctrinates agents to be very dedicated to its goals. Again, for centuries.

It's really surprising that training in its main specialization actually works?

>>419091

>It's almost like they're the preachers of the major religion in the galaxy.

All the major religions in the galaxy, at that.

>>420650

More or less weird than Tekumel?

>>420650

Solaris is weird as fuck for a sci-fi setting. It's so weird, even fully understanding the appearance and the behaviour of all of the phenomenons in the planet is challenging. A shame the book doesn't do anything extra weird with it, story-wise.

>>420765

It would detract from the story and just cause the reader to shut down and not even try to figure anything out. You can't ever go full Xen.

>>420650

Roshar's a good one. So for starters, let's take a generally earthlike world, with one supercontinent, and then add one difference: there's a massive storm that continuously circles the planet and absolutely fucks everything up as it passes (this is called a highstorm). Sort of like a hurricane except it blows in one direction every time instead of circling.

Life, naturally, is adapted to this. Basically all animals have shells. The plants have shells as well, and retract their leaves on certain stimuli (such as the highstorm, or people nearby). Rather than growing conventional grain, people grow rockbuds, which are pretty much like giant barnacles but with plant instead of animal inside. Because most buildings can't survive the highstorms, towns and cities are only built in the shelter of ridges or valleys. There isn't any topsoil because it would all get washed away, so most of the surface is either bare stone or shell-covered plants. The whole place is basically like a rocky beach at low tide.

Humans are not adapted to this climate (no shells) and neither are horses this is because humans aren't from Roshar, and the indigenous Parshendi people are capable of growing shells although there is a small area to the far west edge of the continent with an earthlike climate, due to highstorms having lost most of their energy by the time they make it that far this is where humans originally entered.

It's weird, and very different from Earth, but it's done in a way that actually makes sense and isn't just a bunch of random crap thrown together for the sake of being different. Everything comes off the premise of "how would life adapt to a massive storm sweeping across the world regularly" and the result is a world that, while very alien, also feels very believable and authentic. Brandon Sanderson's prose is sort of lacklustre and even amateurish at times, but his worldbuilding is absolutely top notch, and easily carries his books.

>>418965

I've been reading The Black Company recently. I like it. Also bought Garret P. I., fantasy detective stuff, from the same author. Haven't had time to read it yet.

>>419066

I thought I replied to this but I suppose it didn't post properly. At any rate, yes, it's a testament to Howard's skill as an author that Conan is simultaneously a Gary Stu and still finds himself in compelling, intense situations wherein the reader is unsure his survival is guaranteed (since your disbelief is well in suspense by the time Conan is in any danger). Anyway, I plan to read some of his non-Conan works some time before the year is out, and I will report back on their quality.

>>423101

>intense situations wherein the reader is unsure his survival is guaranteed (since your disbelief is well in suspense by the time Conan is in any danger)

Not really. That's what the other characters he hangs out with are for.

>>423141

Technically the definition is supposed to be "idealized character created explicitly for the purpose of wish fulfillment". Which, to be honest, is fairly close to what Conan is - Howard was himself Irish, and in his Hyborian Age, the mountains of Conan's Cimmeria will eventually become Ireland. Conan's triumphs are Irish triumphs, written by a man who was considered a minority group within the States at that time period, when Anglo and Germanic dominance was the rule of the day.

>>423149

There's only maybe three Conan stories where he even has a chance of dying, and they're all the King Conan stories - him becoming King is something you know will happen from the start. And even then, Hour of the Dragon is the only one with real risk, in no small part thanks to the fact his enemy can freely collapse mountains.

>>419011

Dune is sort of like reading an old world fantasy epic like Charlemagne's paladins or Arthurian knights, the characters have this sort of epicness to them but they also definitely have their failings, such as Paul having a mental breakdown for the first third of the book after he was first exposed to spice, which is also the answer for his super human nature alongsode Gesserit eugenics.

Also Paul and Jessica may have great abilities personally bit they are also shown to be constantly walking on eggshells, Jessica fears her son and Paul fears a possible future where his actions spiral out of control and the Fremen swarm out of Arrakis on a cosmic scaled jihad no one can stop. That I feel makes them interesting characters but I can see where some may find fault based solely on their capabilities.

On the topic of the Bene Gesserit they are far from Mary Sues, they are downright insidious schemers like all the other players. How they got where they are, by tactical marriages to act as gatekeepers for what lineages continue or not feeds into their level of control behind the scenes, they are very on the ball but they are not flawless, which if you finish the book you see them getting some commupance at the end by having their generations long plan bleed out in front of them.

It has been some time since I last read the original, but I thought a big part of why the Sardakar were losing was because they were being mismanaged, either the emperor wasn't allowing them to work as they are used to in order to keep their presence under wraps or some other excise, but also it's discussed that essentially the majority of their skills come from surviving on a nightmare world before being shipped off, a world that is a picnic as compared to Arrakis so the Fremen have a natural edge over them.

So yeah it has been a while since I last read the book, but a lot of your complaints feels a little unfounded if you try and meet the book half way on some points.

>>423141

No, a character who is perfect or idealized can still find themselves in dangerous situations. They can also be written in an interesting way, as long as the author is aware of the character's power (which Howard was) and balances the threats around it. I also think differently of Gary Stus than Mary Sues, with the principle difference being that Gary Stus prove they are cool or essentially unbeatable through their actions (i.e. it is earned) while Sues do not. An example of a male Mary Sue is Harry Potter, or if you wish to avoid accusations of sexism you can call him "a particularly egregious Gary Stu."

>>423149

You're right that the other characters contribute too. The People of the Black Circle is an example, I think, of a story where Conan and the side character (the Devi) both find themselves in some kind of trouble, though admittedly Conan breaks free of the villain's magic quite easily. Like >>423158 said, Hour of the Dragon is probably the best example of a Conan story where he finds himself in real danger, and his own strength isn't all that wins in the end. It's also, from the stories I have read, the strongest Conan story, but there may be a better one I haven't gotten to.

>>423218

Hour of the Dragon is probably the best. But a big part of that, I think, has to do with its position - it's the second-to-last story published, and the last one chronologically. Spoilering this next part, for whatever that's worth:

**Conan throughout most his youth rampages around the countryside, and you know damn well, since he's going to become king one day, that he'll succeed. A lot of the energy from the books comes from seeing a person who goes around kicking ass. Ultimately, a lot of his comes from the fact that while he's a monster, he's a monster who knows his own limits - he doesn't mess with wizards and the like when he can avoid it, unless there's a hell of a profit to be made. Through all of this, you get to see a little bit about how he handles things, how he came to consider kingship, and generally what makes Conan, Conan. The side characters are a big part - the rebel wizard apprentice in Black Circle, and the huntsman + dog pair in the story where Conan fights the Picts. And here's another thing, which both of these highlight - those side characters die, and often die heroically. Conan's role is very much an avenger - the one to take down the bad guy, and help the side character in question find peace (sometimes with their help - getting the magic belt in Black Circle is the only thing that gives him a chance). He's a living, breathing embodiment of catharsis.

The King Conan stories are a little different. Conan here, rather than looking ahead, is doing a lot of looking back. More than that, as king, he's bound to the throne - his enemies come for him, rather than the other way around. And since he's king, he doesn't get to pick his enemies, who are often wizards of some form. In Phoenix on the Sword, the only reason he survives is because his enemy in the story fucks up royally and pisses off Thoth-Amon; and even the cross-fire almost gets him, if not for literal divine intervention. In Scarlet Citadel, he gets fucked by a wizard, and unfucks himself with another wizard - fucking wizards, amirite? Even then, when it comes down to it, he can still hold off a group of twenty men, is an expert tactician, and is effectively unbeatable among men. When he's not getting fucked by wizards, he's bored.

Then you get to Hour of the Dragon. It's a full on book, unlike the others. It's antagonist isn't just another evil priest or wizard, who for the most part rely on gunpowder or summoning things - this is a full on ancient arch-wizard, capable of commanding elementals, turning invisible, teleporting, and straight-up paralyzing Conan with magic. He gets curbstomped, and even worse, has his face dug in - he can't even go to retake his kingdom, because if he does, he'll just get crushed again. He goes on an odyssey across the world, reliving his time as an adventurer, as a pirate, and as a thief. It's the early fantasy equivalent of that part in a TV show where all of the cast gets together for a pose, except in this case, the cast is just different steps in Conans life. And along that journey, he has to struggle with the question - why should he go back? He's been all of these things, and he's lost his wealth before, so why should he go back? The people tend to just accept whoever is in charge, no matter how well he does, so why should he go back?

Ultimately, Hour of the Dragon ends up being about one thing - responsibility. Conan has always taken responsibility for the girl of the week, or whatever else is needed. But with time, he could always move onto the next thing. Here, though, Conan finally accepts the role - he returns as a triumphant king, with the item needed to beat the villain, and hands it to the people who can do it. He disposes of the bad guys, and makes the decision to take a queen - meaning a commitment to settling down, having a son, and leaving a dynasty. It's a good chronological conclusion.**

As an aside, Red Nails, the last chronological story, has one of the only characters who - while not as good as Conan - still impresses him, without the use of magic. A good send-off, in the form of "Hey people, go make your own heroes - they won't be as cool as this guy, but they might still kill a dinosaur or something."

>>423247

You know, I knew it was for each paragraph, but here we are.

>>423247

Good write up. I think the Conan the King stories improve the other stories by emphasizing the subtle character development Conan has over his lifetime. As he ages he becomes a better leader of men, and starts to become more proactive about upholding his moral backbone, development which isn't quite finished until the end of Hour of the Dragon.

While I enjoy Conan stories, I wish Howard had written more fantasy stories involving less invincible, one-off, characters as the main character instead of as support to a Conan story. For example, I think the renegade wizard in the Black Circle could have been a main character of his own story.

>>423454

I wasn't especially a fan of the first Dread Empire book but stuck with it to later ones and it actually did take a big leap upwards in quality. If I recall correctly the first Dread Empire book was one of (or the) Glen Cook's first published works, so I guess that's understandable.

>on another hand, the books i really CANNOT recommend are from the cycle of malazan book of the fallen. fuck this shit, i feel offended that somebody would ever recommend this garbage to me on /tg/. i can go more in detail later

I can name some reasons it's shit:

>the author's fat fetish that he inserts every now and then

>series reads like a franchise tie-in novel for an MMO or something

>absurdly rambling, full of all sorts of little stories that go nowhere and an overarching plot that's largely treated as a background thing with minimal development which is not a good way to implement an overarching plot

>suspension of disbelief destroyed by shit like female soldiers without some in-universe justification for them

>a lot of the dialogue verges on "stark snark" at the same time that the writer is trying to be SO DEEP AND PROFOUND (and failing at that too)

>constant stream of new characters that aren't introduced or explained properly but are supposedly integral to the history of the world and the question of "who the fuck is this guy" is never answered, so you have characters that other characters treat as being important but we the reader are never shown or even told why

>edgy redditor-tier m'fedora type handling of gods

There's probably more problems that I'm not remembering at this exact moment. It's not all shit, mind you. The worldbuilding has some interesting ideas, and there are a few good characters/subplots scattered through the mountain of shit that is the series overall. But by and large it's a really bad series and, no surprise, is beloved on Reddit. I tried to make it through the main series and I made it as far as the last or second last book and I just couldn't continue. It was that awful and plodding.

>>423507

I stopped reading after the book that got Whiskeyjack killed for a year and a half only my sheer autism kept me going now I am stuck at book nine and the only thing that keeps me going is sunken cost.

>series reads like a franchise tie-in novel for an MMO or something

IIRC the first book was supposed to be a movie script but because they couldn't get any producers they made it a book.

>suspension of disbelief destroyed by shit like female soldiers without some in-universe justification for them

Yeah the strong independet woman schtick is fun for a while but gets old pretty fast.

The other points didn't really bother me that much consciously but now that someone wrote them out I realized they affected my enjoyment of the books too. Maybe I should read more critically from now on. I will admit some of the character's monologues and ramblings got me thinking about certain topics so it was not all that bad.

Just going to open up about some guilty pleasures, things I enjoyed when I was younger, and shit.

>The Death Gate Cycle, Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman

I liked the variance of the worlds and some characters, although I remember being pained during some viewpoint chapters because interesting things were happening elsewhere.

>Sovereign Stone trilogy, Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman

I think I liked it overall, but the last book felt a lot like wasted potential.

>Deathscent, Robin Jarvis

Weird Victorian England with odd things in it, I remember it being rather comfortable to read.

>Everything by David Eddings

I'm pretty sure I've read most of his books and yet I remember so little. Besides Althalus and his retarded adventures, mostly because it got so stupid when it could've been so interesting.

>The Night Angel Trilogy, Brent Weeks

I think I actually like these books, the worst part was when the protagonists tried to pretend that he was normal person with a wife.

>The Dwarves, Markus Heitz

Rarely has anything been so unbearable to read that I dropped it. Halfway through the second book the protagonists whining became too painful for me and I never continued.

>The Black Magician, Trudi Canavan

I don't think it was all shit, but it was mostly shit.

>The Riftwar Cycle, Raymond E. Feist

I loved The Serpentwar Saga when I was younger, liked The Riftwar Saga when I finally got access to it. From there I continued to The Empire Trilogy and dropped that shit hard almost immediately upon opening the third book when a child is killed and I found it impossible to symphatize with anything happening. I really should skip the whole trilogy and try to continue reading rest of the series.

>...

Some book where there is a situation in which the king is king because he slew a dragon, when in actuality some actual hero had already slain the dragon with a magic sword and gotten crushed by the corpse or something, which the current king took advantage of by taking the sword and proclaiming his victory. Then there's a descendant? of the original hero or something and a bunch of fey and war against the false king or something the false king failed to stop. I really have no idea what book it is from and sometimes I wonder if it's not an amalgamation of multiple books I've read and forgotten. Please help.

I should just go visit the library in my hometown and spend an afternoon browsing the young adult and adult fiction shelves for memories. What kind of trash must be hiding there. What kind of nostalgia. Maybe I'll do that when summer vacation starts and share some of the gems in this thread.

>>423565

Mormon Abraham in space, but still pretty decent.

>>423454

>Robert M. Wegner

I couldn't find much on this guy or his stories in English other than the fact that he is a Pole and I could only find one of his books in Polish in my usual haunts. Mind giving a link preferably pirate?

S.F.

The Tau Ceti Agenda was good, so was Neil Asher's Line of Polity.

Old classics are Dune, Starship Troopers, The Forever War, Keith Laumers' Bolo stories, and E.C.Tubb's Dumarest saga.

Philip Jose Farmer's Riverworld and World of Tiers.

Larry Niven's Ringworld, Destiny's Road, and The Mote In God's Eye, Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama. The Red Mars trilogy. The Gap Cycle. Hammer's Slammers, Honor Harrington, and the RCN Series/Lieutenant Leary, the Battle Circle, and Combat K.

Fantasy

Tolkien, Thomas Covenant, Thraxis, Nine Princes In Amber, Gormenghast, The Sundered Realm/The War of Powers, the Lords of Dûs, Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft's Dreamer Of Unknown Kadath, Elric, Pern, Earthsea, Eiji Yoshikawa's Musashi, Robert Shea's Shike, Erik Van Lustbader's Sunset Warrior, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Clan Of The Cave Bear, Shardik.

I finished reading that one Necromancer book from ages ago part of a bigger series, really generic, would not recommend. Read a vampire book. There were like- 3 Lesbian vampires stories in there, all mundane, and one with a neat if not violently Gay rights america age about a vain twink who becomes symbiotically linked to this vampiric statue, some other stuff had some dead good vampire variant material, and another used the word Demogogron- book was pretty old, a page has fallen out of the biding, one story FELT physically Jewish by nature, as it is revealed in the end that Dracula is this fucking obese, flatulent Jabba the Hutt vampire who'd been fucking the shit out of Queen Victoria in horrible depressing Ugly fat-guy ways, and it ends in her Majesty's suicide, but in general there was something about that that felt like a Jew wrote it. Some were short stories and others preludes to other Novella.

Neat stuff- if pretty trashy.

I

>>425930

>one story FELT physically Jewish by nature

Anon, autistic Nazi synesthesia can be a symptom of sudden onset brain loss. Have you consulted a doctor? You may be retarded and be too retarded to know it.

Walter Jon Williams. Including nanobots without "derp it's magic".

>>418979

I read Elric of Melnibone a while back. I don't read a lot, but was delving a bit into old fantasy to learn about the origins of D&D. Apologies if this is non-specific... It was sometime last year I did this, and so some details have faded.

I found the first bit to be horribly cliche and eye-rolling by modern eyes. Elric felt very much like a drow PC, the world established felt really high fantasy and edgy in a way I didn't like, and magic just sort of -happened-

But I powered through, because I figured... It's old so these ideas were not cliche at the time. And then, it started getting really compelling, really fast.

The section where Elric invades with the help of fire and water, leading a squad of blind soldiers, was the turning point where I went from "This is a cliche and edgy fantasy novel" to "Oh hey, this is good." Then, when he goes to another plane and it suddenly becomes an adventure through the abyss, I was legitimately really into it. This kind of stuff was showing me what these planar adventures -were- in a way I vaguely knew about, but never understood. And I was significantly more connected to this section than the proceedings...

I've been proceeding with it, very periodically, since

As a whole, when I read these old books... I feel like it's opening my eyes to D&D's origins, and thus the origins of all modern RPGs and fantasy. Stuff starts to 'click' that I always assumed was pure game-ism. I think that strong connection to RPGs attracts me to all this classic stuff... Like I can relate more to it than other fantasy.

Of course, I also follow a lot of isekais so maybe there's just a lot of transference there

>>426091

Oh, I'm sorry, I assumed you had a brain in the first place. Your misuse of greentext indicates you were born decerebrate.

>>426100

Maybe you should move to twitter, you wouldn't have to worry about such complicated features as greentext. The userbase would be more to your liking too, they see bad guys at every corner too. Also, you throw big words around, yet your thinking seems glandular rather than cerebral.

>>426110

The way my vocabulary intimidates you suggests that you have neither cerebrum nor glands.

>>426138

newfag

>>426136

I read the paper dictionary cover to cover before there was such a thing as the internet.

Hope you didn't get a nosebleed coming up with a three syllable word, It must be tough typing on a phone.

>>426145

>I read the paper dictionary cover to cover before there was such a thing as the internet.

I buggered thy mother before thou were even a seed in thy father's testes, knave.