D&D book noob

Dr_Keenbean

So I've been on a reading binge lately. I've been reading the Warcraft books lately as I have discovered that I am more interested in the lore than I am in the games themselves.

This is a breakthrough for me, reading fantasy 'trash' as opposed to the highbrow intellectual shit I used to gravitate towards. I'm loving it.

However, I have never touched a D&D book, ever.

Basically, what are some must-haves? Where should I begin?

KalTorak

Might as well do some Salvatore - a lot of people don't like Drizzt, but Entreri and Jarlaxle can't be missed. Start with the Icewind Dale Trilogy.

The original DragonLance books are pretty good too - start with Dragons of Autumn Twilight.

reddog

DEFINITELY do some Salvatore. The Icewindale Trilogy's good. I'm taking a break from it right now. I absolutely LOVED the Cleric Quintet. Awesome books.

supabeast

If you do read Salvatore, stick with the older (pre-2000) stuff. It was already redundant and derivative before 2000, but since then it's gone from good pulp fiction to bad mush.

The original six Dragonlance novels—The Chronicles and Legends series—are classics of gaming fiction. If nothing else you should read them to understand the way this genre evolved from knocking off Tolkein to knocking off Dragonlance.

The first five or six of WotC's Urza/Mishra books are also worth tracking down, because WotC used the really good TSR writers for them.

Check out Dan Abnett's stuff from Games Workshop. He's like Salvatore with a high IQ; he recently did a book that parodied the Iraq war while simultaneously paying homage to Lovecraft and Ghostbusters. Start with his Eisenhorn omnibus and go from there. GW also publishes Ben Counter; his work is like a dumbed-down version of Salvatore with no moral compass whatsoever, it's great if you're into daemons and crazy violence.

Dr_Keenbean

supabeast wrote:

If you do read Salvatore, stick with the older (pre-2000) stuff. It was already redundant and derivative before 2000, but since then it's gone from good pulp fiction to bad mush.

The original six Dragonlance novels—The Chronicles and Legends series—are classics of gaming fiction. If nothing else you should read them to understand the way this genre evolved from knocking off Tolkein to knocking off Dragonlance.

The first five or six of WotC's Urza/Mishra books are also worth tracking down, because WotC used the really good TSR writers for them.

Check out Dan Abnett's stuff from Games Workshop. He's like Salvatore with a high IQ; he recently did a book that parodied the Iraq war while simultaneously paying homage to Lovecraft and Ghostbusters. Start with his Eisenhorn omnibus and go from there. GW also publishes Ben Counter; his work is like a dumbed-down version of Salvatore with no moral compass whatsoever, it's great if you're into daemons and crazy violence.

I love demons. I love crazy violence. And I am totally gay for Warhammer.

40K specifically. These are good, keep em coming. Make my Barnes & noble membership pay for itself!

Jimmy King

If you can find them, many of the "The Harpers" series (part of the Forgotten Realms D&D setting) are good books, too. It's a huge series and many of the books are no longer in print, but for the most part they are stand alone books, and so it won't keep what you can find from making sense. I think many of these may be being printed now under a different series name. I know this is being done with the ones by Elaine Cunningham, which were some of my favorites, as the series "Song and Swords".