Richard Lee Byers . . . brilliant writer, great with shared world settings. Also, Elaine Cunningham. Excellent writer, brillant at capturing the feel of a setting and making smart, witty characters that are memorable.
Tell me even if you can't imagine yourself reading fiction based on a game. Humor me. Who would get your attention and get you to buy?
--Erik Mona
I'll read about anything George R. R. Martin writes. I believe he has too many projects of his own for something like this, but it would be interesting to see what he would do with your world.
Hey, so how does it work when you commission an author to write a book for you? Is it the same as with traditional publishers i.e. they get an advance and royalties-- or is it different somehow since it's work for hire type stuff?
John Ward
Richard Lee Byers . . . brilliant writer, great with shared world settings. Also, Elaine Cunningham. Excellent writer, brillant at capturing the feel of a setting and making smart, witty characters that are memorable.
Bah . . . I keep thinking of more . . . James Lowder is another excellent shared world author that can write some great stories with memorable characters.
I think I'm done now.
Stephen King.
Charles DeLint.
Lloyd Alexander.
Neil Gaiman.
Alan Moore.
Bill Willingham. (with art!)
Robin Hobb.
-here's where we begin to lose our hold on reality-
Terry Brooks or Alan Dean Foster. (either, circa about 1986-90).
-now, we go off the rails-
S E Hinton or Harper Lee? If we're going all out and talking about people that are still alive (i.e. no Poe, August Derleth, VC Andrews)
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R. A. Salvatore?
Much as he is picked on it would sell. I don't really see he being good a developing a personality for a world though, I was re-reading the Luthien series (forget the name, Luthien's Gamble was the first book) and his writing seem to strike me as more Character Development than World Development. Paizo needs a world development type of writer, IMO.
FH
I know it sounds bad, but I'd avoid some people that are TOO heavily associated with a given world, like Hickman and Weis, RAS, Ed Greenwood, and the like. Its not a lack of talent so much as just being assocated with a given setting that might derail the intent of the book.
Not that RLB, Elaine Cunningham, and James Lowder aren't associated with the Realms, for example, but RLB has written for Warhammer, Elaine for EverQuest, and James has written a ton of stuff including DragonLance and a wide variety of genres.
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Tell me even if you can't imagine yourself reading fiction based on a game. Humor me. Who would get your attention and get you to buy?
--Erik Mona
Neil Gaiman, for starters. I wouldn't mind seeing what Mr. Jacobs could come up with, but I can't see him doing that -and- writing all the adventures without blowing a gasket someplace important.
I'd rather not see a lot of the typical fantasy authors. Martin has his own projects to keep him busy, and a lot of the others seem to get hung up on mechanics over characterization. Or a little overfond of broad sweeping characterization, a flaw I myself have. It makes for good DMing, less so really good writing.
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Bill Willingham. (with art!)
Frickin' A!! Loved Ironwood and I love his current stuff (Fables, Shadowpact)
Kurt Busiak did a good job with the Conan adaptations to comics.I actually quite enjoyed the Paul Kidd Justicar novelizations, but I think Mel Odom is too hit-and-miss, and I thought Ru Emmerson's Against the Giants was, overall, pretty amazingly crappy.
If you are looking for real noveliztion creds, though...
Robert Aspirn and/or Lynn Abbey . . . Loved everything about Thieves World
Terry Bisson is excellent (and a freakin' nice guy, to boot)
Walter Jon Williams (although he's more sci-fi than fantasy, he's is/was a gamer and has written gaming books)
Mike Resnick
Janet Morris
Kevin J Anderson seems a bit to commercial, but he has some real gems
You could really make it . . . ummm, visceral . . . and get Joe Lansdale.
Paul Kidd, P N Elrod, Douglas Niles, and Kristen Britain. I chose people who write well, and with interesting characters and stories. Oh and they are actually available. I'd really love to see what P N Elrod could do with Pathfinder because he can really take a character and make it drive a plot. I enjoy and respect his talent.
I actually quite enjoyed the Paul Kidd Justicar novelizations
Me too. Enjoyed both White plume mountain and Demonweb pits. No matter how stupid the fairy was, the sentient hell hound pelt was great.
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In order top to bottom, and I'm assuming we're really looking at the standard lot of authors, so...
China Mieville
Philip Athans
Richard Lee Byers
James Jacobs (based of his Tyralandi Scrimm character posted on the boards here)
Neil Gaiman
Lisa Smedman
Andrew Turner (OK, I had to try)
George Martin, Ursula K. Le Guin, (I know, not likely)
Is it a stigma to read game fiction? I read more than my fair share...
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If you want world development I think Stephen R Donaldson. His Thomas Covenant series makes you fall in love with the Land, and you sympathize with, even as you hate, the protagonist.
But the star of his books is the Land. His world is a character of its own and it grows with every story.
I could only wish he would write a book or so for Paizo... one can dream...
Douglas Niles. I enjoyed his Darkwalker series.
Trudi Canavan. The "High Lord" series were very nice.
Richard Lee Byers. I was very impressed with his work in the War of the Spider Queen series, the first novel by him really sucked me in. The drow were not namby-pamby, they connived, they backstabbed, they distrusted everybody - just like they should be.
I'm interested in maybe a 300 page paperback, with multiple short stories, as well as a novel.
I agree that whomever is chosen to write the first Pathfinder novel should be someone who isn't overly associated with another D&D game world like Salvatore or Weis & Hickman. I do however disagree with the poster above who said that the writer should be a world-development author rather than a character-development author. Much of the better D&D fiction is something that doesn't depend as much on the world as on the characters who populate that world. The world then builds off the characters.
Not to offend Paizo...George R.R. Martin is too "big-time" of an author, and way too associated with his own Song of Ice and Fire, but he could probably do a Pathfinder novel justice as he is a character-development author first. Another good one would be Steven Brust, he has a certain flair to his writing style, though again he is probably too associated with his own Vlad Taltos novels.
Oh, and for Xenophon...P.N. Elrod is a woman. If you ever get your hands on a copy of Dungeon #1 (I have it :) ), she submitted one of those adventures as Patricia Nead Elrod.
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Ursula K. Le Guin, (I know, not likely
Man, isn't she like a hundred or something now?
It's got to have been around 15 years or more since I read this stuff, but I liked Troy Denning's work on the Avatar series, and I read the first three books or so in the prism pentad...
Between Dark Sun and the whole FR Pantheon Royal Rumble, he seemed quite comfortable re-imagining the "classic" D&D flavor and/or making drastic changes to published worlds.
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Me too. Enjoyed both White plume mountain and Demonweb pits. No matter how stupid the fairy was, the sentient hell hound pelt was great.
I actually quite enjoyed the Paul Kidd Justicar novelizations
And me! Good friendly violent fun, though it could lose the sphinx. I was actually thinking about Kidd when I saw this thread.
Having said that, the man to write the Pathfinder book is Glen Cook.
Love, love, love the under-rated Walter Jon Williams. Night Shade Books is reissuing many of his novels that have been out of print for a long time. I just picked up my copy of Hardwired and reread it. Still holds up.
Of the current crop of D&D writers, I find that Richard Baker, and especially Lisa Smedman are the best. I'm actually surprised to not see them on this list so far.
Who are some of the best shared world writers, right now? Here's my 2 cents worth ....
Don Bassingthwaite
Rich Wulf
Edward Bolme
Matt Forbek
Kevin J. Anderson
Elaine Cunningham
Diane Duane
Peter David
My first choice would be Thomas Harlan, who has contributed to Dragon in the past. I think he bridges gaming and fiction as well as anyone.
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Michael Stackpole would be an excellent choice I think.
Hugh Cook (if he's still around / alive...)
Sean Williams (taking a stand for good Aussie fantasy authors)
Much as I like Neil Gaiman and China Meiville, I'm not sure their styles would be right for what you'd be looking for - but I'd love to see their takes on it!
And I do hear that Richard Pett is an aspiring novelist...
If you could get him on board, Steven Brust - he'd make your fey something to fear ...
more realistically Don Bassingthwaite who did some Eberron novels would be a good choice...
those are my top two ... off the top of my head.. ;-)
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It's funny you mention Hugh Cook. I doubt he'd be interested, but it would be a fascinating choice with utterly bizarre results.
I think it would be cooler to publish "The Walrus and the Warwolf" in the Planet Stories line next year.
Which I'm doing.
--Erik
Oh really? Way, WAY cool!
Only problem is, if that story gets another print run I'll have to stop using Drake Douay, Jon Arabin, Whale Mike et al as NPCs in my games, without my players figuring out where I get them from...
Ramond E. Feist
Not a "D&D" Author so to speak. But his "Rift War Saga" and all that followed have been some of my favorite adventures. I wouldn't mind a team up with Janny Wurts again either! These two have a great way of expressing cultures...
If the roman is not a re-telling of the AP story, but a parallel story that builds on it, I would be interested.
Two good values from the WotC stalls:
1) Paul S. Kemp
2) Richard L. Byers
Paul Kemp is by far my favorite.
Bocklin
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Okay not sure if these names have been mentioned yet but I have a few to share.
1. Robert Jordan....come on even though the poor guy is dieing, no other has created such an indepth world as he.
2. J.R.R. Token....okay so he is dead. But hell the man just published the prequal to the Hobbit from beyond the grave, how cool is that. Yeah yea, so his son had a hand in it.
3. David Eddings....the guy did an amazing job with the Belgariad series.
4. Gary Gygax....never read any of his books, but come on. It's GARY GYGAX! And to those who don't know who he is....read up on your D&D history.
So those are my top four picks. Though I sadly know they'll never write the books.
Another vote for Raymond E. Feist.
I mostly borrow novels from the library these days, but I buy Feist's books. His style would be a very good match for Pathfinder too.
Don Bassingthwaite - The Dragon Below series was excellent.
Bob Mayer - writes under the pseudonym Robert Doherty; all of the "Area 51" books had me plowing through them.
If you wanted to kill the villans, then bring them back, then kill them again and bring them back, then kill them again, you could get R.A Salvatore I suppose.
If you have any necromancers on staff, you could always resurrect Lovecraft and shackle him to a typewriter with infernal energy.
Hmm... might have to bookmark this thread to use as a reading list. :)
Just to throw a couple other names out there, both of these guys have hit it off with their sci fi, but both started off with a love of D&D, so who knows:
Charles Stross
James Alan Gardner (heck, he wrote an entire Planescape novel on spec because he loved the setting so much)
But bottom line, I think "Pathfinder Novel" would get me to buy at least the first one more than any particular author. Now, the quality of that novel would directly impact whether I bought another one in the series. So the right author wouldn't impact the first sale, but would have a huge impact on the second one.
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Someone else beat me to it, but I think Gary Gygax would be an amazing author to chronicle stories of the Pathfinder world. I always enjoyed his Gord the Rogue stories.
I also think Douglas Niles would be a good choice.
Neil Gaiman if you can get him.
I really like the work of Scott Nicholson, although he has only done horror to date. His description is amazing.
James Ward
