Dragaera

Comfort and Guilt Books

Joshua Kronengold mneme at io.com
Mon Jul 22 12:59:29 PDT 2002

David Dyer-Bennet writes:
>Joshua Kronengold <mneme at io.com> writes:
>> The other unfortunate thing is that Riftwar is apparently based on
>> Feist's home campaign, which apparently had heavy EPT/Tekumel
>> inclusions, which Fiest refuses to acknowledge despite their
>> obviousness to anyone who has read the Barker books (which are, in any
>> case, far better than any of the Fiest books except -maybe- the
>> "Mistress of the Empire" (etc) trilogy).
>I think it's one step further away -- it wasn't Feist's *own*
>campaign, and when he was in it he didn't know that many elements
>derived from EPT.

Sorry -- by "home campaign" I meant "a campaign he played in", not "a
campaign he ran".

>have to say that the Barker book was far inferior.  But neither was
>much to my taste, either.  I think Barker was working much harder on
>the world- and culture-building, but he was so *totally* hopeless on
>the characters....

Um...you were reading _Flamesong_, not _Man of Gold_, right?
_Flamesong_ is, IMO, far inferior -- it's basically a travelouge with
a plot, and (very) flat characters.  _Man of Gold_ is much more of a
romp, and has an interesting convoluted plot and at least -some-
characters worth the name.

>A bunch of friends locally have been (maybe still are) involved in
>Barker's own Tekumel campaign.  I hear that if the player characters
>weren't going to do what the gamesmaster expected, it could
>get...interesting. 

Sounds interesting, at least.

-- 
     Joshua Kronengold (mneme at io.com) "I've been teaching |\      _,,,--,,_  ,)
--^--him...to live, to breathe, to walk, to sample the   /,`.-'`'   -,  ;-;;'  
  /\\joy on each road, and the sorrow at each turning.   |,4-  ) )-,_ ) /\     
/-\\\I'm sorry if I kept him out too late"--Vlad Taltos '---''(_/--' (_/-'