Rich Morris' Comics - YAFGC and The ComixBlog

Split from here

But misery loves company.

Gord is "Gord the Rogue" from the Gord Series
Abduh is "Abdel Adrian" from the Baldur's Gate series

How to describe Gord. Hmm...
Think of a D&D player describing his latest adventures. Sounds safe? But the PC is a transparent rip off the Grey Mouser, and the player is a rampant munchkin with the slew of exotic backgrounds, etc. Descriptions and storytelling flavour are along the lines "...the orc was wearing +5 plate and had the knockdown feat, but I made my Fort roll and then power attacked him with my +3 dagger...". And they get worse as the series progresses - esp the munchkin factor. While playing the campaign may have been fun, as novels they are painful.

How to describe Abduh...sorry Abdel. Hmm...
Think of the D&D movie...

...and when you have stopped screaming, think of D&D movie set in the plot of the Bhaalspawn saga (BG/SoA/ToB). Now you have your baseline comparison, drop it a few more notches (eg: when the computer sprites in BG had more personality and character than the ones in the book you have problems). Now print it as a novel. And then start screaming again....

And these are novels by Wizards of the Coast, or something else?

A bit of both. Gord is a mixed bag, BG series straight WoTC.

The first few Gord novels (Saga of Old City, Night Arrant, Artifact of Evil) were written by Gary Gygax when he was still at TSR. After the TSR/Gygax split in 1985 he wrote 4 more which were published by New Infinities Productions. The saga was set in the World of Greyhawk.

The Baldur's Gate/Shadows Amn/Throne were published by Wizards in '99-'01. Set in the Forgotten Realms and so on, but you know that. Mention that you liked the (novel) series on a BG gaming site and you may walk out alive - but no guarantees.

As an addendum for clarity, the third series mentioned in the prior threads was by Rose Estes - the Master Wolf..uh...novels. Some people hold this up as 'what killed the Greyhawk setting'. At that point the FR setting was appearing, and while the FR novels were not brilliant, they didn't begin to touch the Wolf novels in awfulness, and combined with the politics of the time (TSR's financial problems, the TSR/Gygax split, etc) Greyhawk was pushed into the bin.

Wether this is factually true or not I do not know, but I dont want to think about them (the novels) too hard so I'll just pop this link in instead about the books- The Oerth Journal

Thanks for the info kind sir!

They're most definitely something else, all right.

While we're on the topic of bad D&D novels, I had the misfortune of reading the Keep on the Borderlands novel they came out with. It was absosmurfly gawdawful. And the worst thing was, it read exactly like a bunch of players going through the module (letting the NPC's take all the lumps, randomly wiping out everything that moved, et cetera).

Although, speaking of Grayhawk novels, has anyone read Andre Norton's Quag Keep? I think it's actually the first novel to be set in Grayhawk.

Pretty much every tie-in novel, whether for games, movies or TV shows, completely blows.