THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => ENJOY => Topic started by: TheViscount on 23 Feb 2009, 17:56
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Least favorite or favorite book in Forgotten realms, and why you enjoyed/disliked it.
Go.
I hated Maiden of Pain. This should remind FG not to publish open calls. Apparently France exists in Forgotten Realms, and everyone is a puppet attached to strings which are attached to more strings and somehow everything falls right into place, even though it seriously could not have, making absolutely no logical sense. Oh and the main character walks around in a suit of armor without any consequence. Nope, silent and super acrobatic, and kills clerics level 15 or higher with a quick single shot of a broken spear head. Garbage that should have never been published.
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You know I actually read a D&D novel once. R.A. Salvatore. I think it was a Drizzt book collection.
It was pretty awful, and given that Salvatore's one of the more acclaimed (prolific?) D&D novelists out there I don't hold out much hope for the rest of the genre.
But you know what, I wanted to play Baldur's Gate 2 so bad I sat down and I read all three of those collected novels. It was sort of like breakup sex in that I felt pretty skeezy afterward, but unlike breakup sex in that I did not get my rocks off at any point in the span of the days I was reading it.
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You know I actually read a D&D novel once. R.A. Salvatore. I think it was a Drizzt book collection.
It was pretty awful, and given that Salvatore's one of the more acclaimed (prolific?) D&D novelists out there I don't hold out much hope for the rest of the genre.
But you know what, I wanted to play Baldur's Gate 2 so bad I sat down and I read all three of those collected novels. It was sort of like breakup sex in that I felt pretty skeezy afterward, but unlike breakup sex in that I did not get my rocks off at any point in the span of the days I was reading it.
That's too bad, I've only read Homeland and Exile and I liked them both, except Homeland was a bit on the boring side for me. Drizzt is kind of old, the genre changes it's style as time goes by. But I suppose if you're not into the whole fantasy genre there's not much you can do about liking them though.
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Trust me, you can be totally into the fantasy genre and still be skeeved out by Salvatore. I have a Drizzt compilation laying around somewhere that I picked up on the cheap, but I never really managed to get very far. While he thankfully isn't very flowery, the dude still somehow manages to include a few descriptions per page that border upon the oxymoronic or redundant. He's the kind of guy who who'll happily crap out a description like "tooth-filled maw" and play it straight. I've read worse though; some of the Robert E. Howard homages produced in the '60s are just unreasonably bad.
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Trust me, you can be totally into the fantasy genre and still be skeeved out by Salvatore. I have a Drizzt compilation laying around somewhere that I picked up on the cheap, but I never really managed to get very far. While he thankfully isn't very flowery, the dude still somehow manages to include a few descriptions per page that border upon the oxymoronic or redundant. He's the kind of guy who who'll happily crap out a description like "tooth-filled maw" and play it straight. I've read worse though; some of the Robert E. Howard homages produced in the '60s are just unreasonably bad.
Honestly I don't remember any of that from Exile, but it could be the answer as to why Homeland was so boring, other than the uneventfulness. I think the novelty of a dark elf renegade with two cool looking swords with names is the reason why he is popular in the first place- to the `cool appeal` fans of fantasy. Hey, nothing wrong with that though. I suppose that's why his Cleric Quintet never really caught on. Edit: Oh yeah, that and the really old 'Save the world from evil' plot.
Salvatore: But it's cool guys! It's like... retro or something!
But hey, I still like Drizzt, he's a cool character.
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Ed Greenwood is by FAR the shittiest FR author.
Shandril gets attacked by about 50 dracoliches and a horde of cultists every few pages and then slaughters them all with her magical powers = the plot of an entire trilogy.
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Ed Greenwood is by FAR the shittiest FR author.
Shandril gets attacked by about 50 dracoliches and a horde of cultists every few pages and then slaughters them all with her magical powers = the plot of an entire trilogy.
It's called being an ex-PCDM with an inflated ego.
I've experienced one or two myself. It's kind of like god-moding, only it gets published by a major organization.
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the entirety of forgotten realms is fucking terrible. It's stupid full of Mary Sue plot armor characters. Drizzt is the most irritating because of the shitheads who want to play their own CG Drow Ranger, and the story of Elminster is just plain retarded. How the butts do you make a character who literally cannot die and can do anything to anyone who isn't a greater diety interesting? (protip: having him live for a couple years as a woman isn't how you do it right.)
^^^ ed greenwood is the king of the mary sue self-insert.
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the entirety of forgotten realms is fucking terrible. It's stupid full of Mary Sue plot armor characters. Drizzt is the most irritating because of the shitheads who want to play their own CG Drow Ranger, and the story of Elminster is just plain retarded. How the butts do you make a character who literally cannot die and can do anything to anyone who isn't a greater diety interesting? (protip: having him live for a couple years as a woman isn't how you do it right.)
^^^ ed greenwood is the king of the mary sue self-insert.
Sounds kind of angry? Do you play EQ2? I'm not being sarcastic.
Hm, I don't know about that. The main character of a story USUALLY does not die, and a story does not have to involve the death of the main character. I never read Elminster, so I can't give you any feedback on that.
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No, a lot of D&D players, usually the ones who were playing through 2nd ed and farther back but not always, don't really like FR at all. And their arguments have some merit. For one thing magic in FR is totally ridiculous. FR is like a comic book continuity now - it has a little bit of everything, with room for still more, and just about anything that could happen has happened. Gods are all over the place. Epic characters are numerous. Don't even try making sense of world timelines. And that's useful to a lot of DMs - it allows a lot of room for improvisation and connection to the gameworld at large without running much risk of totally fucking things up, since cataclysmic events seem to always be on the verge of occurrence - but it's still pretty fuckin' outrageous.
The only reason I like it is because I have become steeped in it via some excellent CRPGs. And so my warm feelings toward the setting have primarily to do with Wizards' canny marketing of the setting.
All that said, give me back Planescape, or better yet Ravenloft, any day.
As for Drizzt, he is very obviously a Mary Sue character (from wiki, emphasis mine - "a pejorative term used to describe a fictional character who plays a major role in the plot and is particularly characterized by overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, or having too many, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as "Mary Sues" is that they are too ostentatious for the audience's taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly.")
I have no doubt that sometime back in the late 70's-early 80's somebody actually rolled and played through a game as Drizzt Do'urden, but the reason he has become, rather undeniably, the single biggest hero in D&D fiction is that he, as a character, cheaply plays on all sorts of tired tropes and the sensibilities of the hardcore nerds who play D&D. He is a good character from an evil race, turning away from his evil destiny and the temptations of power and yadda yadda. He is an unparalleled fighter who fights with two swords and he has a pet panther. But he also has a sensitive and quiet soul and is good at heart. Most tellingly he's socially shunned for being different but only a righteous few are able to see his true worth. It's easy to see why so many people are drawn to the character, he's the sort of intellectualized badass that nerds wish they could be, he's exotic and mysterious and formidable and feared. The reasons why he's so beloved are the same reasons the internet won't shut the fuck up about ninjas. Same principle.
That's not getting into the still-cheaper ways that Drizzt is an exploitative character, like the hyper-sexualization of the Drow (which ties into the rather conservative sexual politics of D&D as a whole)
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Sounds kind of angry? Do you play EQ2? I'm not being sarcastic.
Hm, I don't know about that. The main character of a story USUALLY does not die, and a story does not have to involve the death of the main character. I never read Elminster, so I can't give you any feedback on that.
no, i haven't ever played EQ.
elminster has contingencies in place to prevent: death, sudden death, negative energy drain, soul trapping, and if all that fails, Mystara will just bring him back immediately. I know the main character doesn't usually die, but I've never read another book where the main character auto-rezzes. it's like reading a video game.
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I have heard a lot of talk about the Drizzit character. I've read all of the books, simply because they are entertaining. It's easy entertainment, you don't get much sympathy with the characters or deeper meaning out of the books. It's tales of mighty warriors doing might warrior things, it's completely ridiculous in it's simpleness, yes. But the books are still well written. Hell, I've never seen fantasy battles written as well anywhere else. Don't ask for more then entertainment from the Drizzit novels, that's all you'll get. If you don't like the easy fantasy thing that though, there's not much to gain from the Drizzit novels.
A point though: one of the big points in the Dark elf trilogy is how badass Drizzit is when he manages to make up a better counter for the "double low thrust". I fence, and know that if you are stupid enough to use two equally long swords in the first place, you'll never ever put both your swords down low and thrust. your opponent will swat them aside and turn your face into something resembling a mosh pit gone wrong. I can buy that a two handed war hammer and no armour could work in combination with superhuman strength, but when the whole plot line falls because the writer is getting to advanced on stuff he knows nothing about, it's rather sad.
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As for Drizzt, he is very obviously a Mary Sue character (from wiki, emphasis mine - "a pejorative term used to describe a fictional character who plays a major role in the plot and is particularly characterized by overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, or having too many, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers. Perhaps the single underlying feature of all characters described as "Mary Sues" is that they are too ostentatious for the audience's taste, or that the author seems to favor the character too highly.")
I have no doubt that sometime back in the late 70's-early 80's somebody actually rolled and played through a game as Drizzt Do'urden, but the reason he has become, rather undeniably, the single biggest hero in D&D fiction is that he, as a character, cheaply plays on all sorts of tired tropes and the sensibilities of the hardcore nerds who play D&D. He is a good character from an evil race, turning away from his evil destiny and the temptations of power and yadda yadda. He is an unparalleled fighter who fights with two swords and he has a pet panther. But he also has a sensitive and quiet soul and is good at heart. Most tellingly he's socially shunned for being different but only a righteous few are able to see his true worth. It's easy to see why so many people are drawn to the character, he's the sort of intellectualized badass that nerds wish they could be, he's exotic and mysterious and formidable and feared. The reasons why he's so beloved are the same reasons the internet won't shut the fuck up about ninjas. Same principle.
That's not getting into the still-cheaper ways that Drizzt is an exploitative character, like the hyper-sexualization of the Drow (which ties into the rather conservative sexual politics of D&D as a whole)
Now, I know people have the ability to lie and all, but to give Salvatore the benefit of the doubt, I don't believe Drizzt started off like that. He said Drizzt was created off a whim when his editor told him that they couldn't use Wulfgar's side-kick, and so he made him off the spot during a meeting. To call him a Mary-Sue is a bit much though. He deals a lot with race, intergration, mercy and loneliness. I don't think his appeal is directly associated with people who 'are socially shunned for being different but only a righteous few are able to see their true worth'. I had a hard time picking up the Drizzt books at first, because of all the fandom and Dark-elf drooling that i've lived to hear and see through out my MMO ages. Dark elves themselves are considered the badass, exotic and mysterious race on their own, and if they fancy that, very well then. I don't think Drizzt is a mary-sue, but I do think he's some sort of spawn of Goku from Dragon Ball Z. Goku basically deals with, almost the same things as Drizzt, prevelantly mercy. Drizzt is often shown giving into people surrendering after his little 'The Hunter' arc, just as Goku always lets his enemies a chance to survive, and hopes to fight them again someday. This probably sounds a lot worst than it is; comparing Drizzt and Goku, but it makes the most sense for where his inspiration might have come from.
Conservative sexual politics? Heh.
The Drow are a matriarchal society, I think the only 'Mary-sue'-like thing that relates to the 'sexuality of the Drow' is that all men graduate from their schools after having intercourse with a mistress...Hm...
Drizzt in comparison to Goku and Drow sexuality. I don't think things can get much nerdier.