What Game Has The Best Fiction

[Reynard]

Lots of games have supporting fiction lines (either licensed or developed in house).

What game,in your opinion, has the best supporting fiction? What books would you recommend? What books would you suggest folks avoid?

As an aside, what game do you wish had more or even any supporting fiction?

Note that this question is mostly about written fiction (novels and comics) but if a game has great TV, movies, music or slam poetry, I'm excited to hear about it.

Note also that this thread is not about fiction universes with licensed RPGs. I don't want to hear about your favorite Star Wars novels, even if WEG's game lore informed a lot of the EU.

 

[MGibster]

Obviously old school Vampire has the hit television series Kindred the Embraced which starred C. Thomas Howell. I don't think it gets much better than that. I hear there was a series of books based on the Dragonlance AD&D campaign setting, but I haven't read any of them.

 

[Mad_Jack]

Obviously old school Vampire has the hit television series Kindred the Embraced which starred C. Thomas Howell. I don't think it gets much better than that. I hear there was a series of books based on the Dragonlance AD&D campaign setting, but I haven't read any of them.

Shortly after Tracy Hickman came to TSR, he started developing a series of dragon-based adventures, which, right from the start, would have novels based on them, and the whole story line was written out completely before either the modules or the novels were created so it was essentially just one big project. Margaret Weiss was assigned as his editor.
The novels aren't exactly great literature, but they're a fun read.

 

[payn]

Cheeky answer is none of them as genre fiction is not often great. Though, I do enjoy Battletech fiction. Mostly becasue I really want to get a screen treatment for the amazing visuals this game could offer. The Warrior trilogy has a lot of potential as it involves a lot of the main players in the BT universe. Its also a great set up for the incoming clan invasion. Lots of political intrigue and battlemech combat! Just need to work on that dialogue and characterization...

 

[TheHand]

Seconding the BattleTech novels, particularly the earlier Stackpole ones. He does a good job of bringing intrigue and politics to a universe otherwise about stompy robots lasting each other. His novels even do a serviceable job of bouncing around the different factions, giving us different perspectives of the conflict.

 

[Smackpixi]

I don’t have an answer, but only an opinion, that the best universe, the best supporting fiction is an ever expanding universe with rough edges where every new addition expands the known but adds more possibilities of the unknown. The most well drawn map, the most complete fiction, is a dead place. In fantasy and sci-fi there must always be unsatisfied boundaries of there be dragons.

 

[Tonguez]

Lord of the Rings? Heh

Warhammer 40K has some good ones

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Warhammer 40K has some good ones

Monkeys, typewriters! 40K does have like, a few good novels. Because it has like 300+ novels!

But the vast majority are drivel, absolutely including Dan Abnett, and whilst they have got better, overall, the odds of any given novel being good or even really fun are... low. Plus the very best 40K novels are like, about as good as middling other SF novels.

Which is to say that in fact it probably does have the best game-based fiction, goddamn it. But only by volume and because the others are so bad.

Re: Battletech I feel like there's a lot of rose-tinting going on. I loved the Battletech novels back in the day, but I was a child. I tried re-reading one in my 30s and it was... bad. Real bad.

There was of course Defiance, a TV series associated with an MMORPG, where what happened in the MMORPG was supposed to influence the TV series. Both were really low-budget and not very good though.

 

[trappedslider]

Cyberpunk 2020

 

[Bedrockgames]

I liked Knight of the Black Rose for Ravenloft and the Dragonlance Legends Trilogy