From D&D to Fantasy Author

So a couple of months ago, I caught a podcast on the web, "The Secrets of Writing Podcast" which was a GREAT find for an aspiring speculative fiction writer like myself. He's a topselling NY Best Seller and he's a fantasy author, which are two things i can really admire in an author. While I really do care about the insight this man has for novice writers, I can't help but notice the trend when I did look into the man's history. Not unlike Ed Greenwood and R. A. Salvadore, Stackpole's inital thrust into the biz was through dungeons and dragons. He, no doubt, played it and eventually got around to designing it. From what i've read of his biography, it became a natural instinct to transfer his worlds onto paper. Thus I stumbled upon the aforementioned "trend". Fantasy authors whose only main thrust into the genra was through the table-top board game.

It got me to thinking. In a couple of years from now will there be a boost in the number of great fantasy authors out there? (besides me *blush*) The similarities are unmistable. D&D had heroic stories of saving the world and defeating the monsters. Diablo 2 had that. D&D had limitless worlds one could explores and live you could lose yourself in. MMORPGs have that. And while some may argue that it is not the same, graphic designers tell you otherwise. How many of us read through that World of Warcraft booklet? How many of us sifted through those game-inspired novelizations in the bookstore?

If you read through Stackpole's work, there's an undenyable feeling of the table-top board game. There's a quest, there's an exploration and there's confrontation. He's more of a plot-centric author, or so he says. His stories are based more on worlds than characters. (although he has great characterization) But does this really translate?


Unlike D&D, MMORPGs are not based on the imaginations of the player. Sure, games like Ultima Online were essentially D&D on the computer, but games have far surpassed that these days. These days, you can see the riffles of the leaves on the tree, every scale on that dragon and you can hear the foosteps of the incoming orge from the comfort of your own home. There's no dungeon master that's speaking in tongues, making the world alive, but RAM converting data into images. One could even say, epic fantasy is dead; that fantasy is left to Harry Potter and Eragon. The naysayers will tell you a plain and simple fact, that video games do not entice the player to interact with the world as much as D&D did.

I never did play the table-top game, despite numerous attempts to join a game. It felt too bland to me. And, in some ways, so does it feel to the reading public. There has to be a reason why G.R.R. Martain does so well or how authors tend to suceed more when writing outside the Forgotten Realms and so forth. Fantasy is still in its inception. Sure, LOTR's myths in itself, can define the genra, but even still ... there has to be more to it. The market is still there for great heroes with swords, of mages who cast spells and of monsters lurking in the darkness. I see it every time I logged (past tense HINT HINT) on World of Warcraft, I see it whenever I hear about the excitement around a new fantasy game and I feel it every time I discover that new author who breaks the boundries of what is and what is not fantasy.

I am not the D&D fantasy generation. I can only hope that I am the next.

-Longbow


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R.I.P Gary Gygax

July 27, 1938 - March 4, 2008