RPG Books?

[Svrtnsse]

I just came across this article: The joy of reading role-playing games | Books | The Guardian

Personally, I pretty much agree with the idea in the article. Reading RPG books can be a pretty cool experience. You get all these little snippets of stories and you learn about the world and those who live in it. It's rare (in my experience) that there are full stories included in RPG books, but there's enough information to tickle the imagination and get stories started in your mind. I love it.

 

[CupofJoe]

One of the reasons I stopped playing Games Workshop games was that the RPG and Games manuals were becoming mostly story [and thinly veiled adverts for all the GW things you needed to buy]...
I objected to paying £20-30-50 for a 64 page rule book and 200+ pages of "Cut scenes".
That said the stories can be magnificent and useful.
I think it is the Serenity/Firefly RPG that uses a single character's story to show you how to develop a character by using a story. You start off with a naciente character and a dream [gotta dance, gotta sing...] and end up with someone knee deep in manure thinking "This could have gone better"...

 

[skip.knox]

I still have all my AD&D (2nd ed) and GURPS books. I revisit them from time to time, not for inspiration or ideas. It's more like bicycling through the old neighborhood.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I find it interesting that he describes manuals as ergodic literature. I've heard of a game where the manual is ergodic literature, but it's pretty different from most manuals. (Though I guess that can be borne out in smaller ways, like Paranoia making it "treason" to metagame and actively use mechanics players aren't supposed to know about.)

 

[ThinkerX]

Well...AD&D certainly 'inspired,' or rather 'dominated' my early fantasy efforts...but even then I detected severe problems combining storytelling and gaming. Still, that didn't stop me from acquiring a large collection of TSR (Wizards of the Coast) novels. Most of those were not very good (which is why I retain only a few) but a lot of fantasy writers did get their first publishing break with those books. I still have large tottering piles of AD&D stuff scattered about my work area, and there are a bare handful I still consult now and again, mostly as sources of names for people and objects, and as starting points for magic and deity concepts. A few modules and handbooks, greatly modified made it into my worlds as settings, some larger (regions), some smaller (castles).

'War Hammer Fantasy Role Play' intrigued me for a very long while. The combat system was more realistic (instantly lethal even for powerful characters) than AD&D and the magic point system more plausible than continually rememorizing spells as per AD&D. But, even so, it had too many limitations to translate smoothly into storytelling. As with AD&D, though I still consult a couple of the books and modules for names and base ideas.