Need book examples

[aishabintjamil]

I'm working up a little presentation on what works or doesn't work when trying to take an FRP game and turn it into fiction. I'm looking for examples, good and bad, or other people doing this, so I'm not talking about just my own books. I'm sure there are lots of folks on my friends list here who can make suggestions.

I'd like to exclude things like the Dragonlance books, that are explicit, licensed spin-offs of popular FRP modules. I think those are a different category of fiction than the book that grew out of a game the author played with his friends. I'm more interested in the latter.

Off the top of my head, I know Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos books started out as an FRP game, and I'd definitely put them in the success column. I think I recall reading somewhere that Steven Erikson's books were at least in part an outgrowth of an FRP game. I'm sure there are more that I'm not thinking of.

What should I add to my list?

Comments

[gabrielsknife.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, now I'm not sure about order (as in which one came first) but I've read a few table-top RPG books.

There's Spelljammer books that were (might have been, I dunno) popular. Forgotten Realms has some popular books, I know (like R.A. Salvador's Drow books, the Spiderqueen books, "Clericquintette", ect.) Whitewolf put out books for their Werewolf the Apocalypse and Vampire the Masquerade that were both pretty good. WotC has books for the Legend of the Five Rings/Rokugan setting that are worth a look. And "Record of the Lodoss War" was an anime based on the Japanese D&D setting. It was popular enough to have an OVA, a full series, and something of a spin-off.

If I'm not entirely mistaken, a good chunk of the Dragonlance books (at least those written by Margarette Weis and Tracy Hickman) were based on games they played. I remember an article about how they created (either for table-top, or an early computer game) the character Rastlin Majere from a character Weis created for the game. He started to take on a personality of his own, they started coming up with a story for him, and the rest is history. I think they're what made the Krynn setting popular, and ended up dividing it from Greyhawke.

Hope some of that helps ^_^ !