Good Bad Fantasy

Among Orwell's best essays is a gem from 1945 titled “Good Bad Books”. In it, he talks at length about various low or middle brow “bad” books that are “the kind of book that has no literary pretensions but which remains readable when more serious productions have perished.”

He targets many of them as being frankly about escape: “They form pleasant patches in one's memory, quiet corners where the mind can browse at odd moments, but they hardly pretend to have anything to do with real life.”

Orwell goes on to spend sometime drifting over the brilliant clumisness or trainwreck reasoning of this or that early 20^th century writer before hitting on an essential truth about the durability of this kind of writing: “The existence of good bad literature—the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one's intellect simply refuses to take seriously—is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration. I imagine that by any test that could be devised, Carlyle would be found to be a more intelligent man than Trollope. Yet Trollope has remained readable and Carlyle has not: with all his cleverness he had not even the wit to write in plain straightforward English.”

I could write you a river about all the good bad books in my life--all the rough-edged punk rawk travel monologues of Aaron Cometbus or the savory manly-man cliches and tropes of Bernard Cornwell—but in a short on-and-off again series I patiently queued up I'd like to explore that rather obvious good bad heavyweight contender in our D&D-loving lives: the fantasy novel and how it influences our gaming. 


We are not talking your literary over-achievers here: no Lord Dunsany, no Eddison, no Gene Wolfe, and lord knows no Tolkien. 

Let's take one of the heaviest of the heavies for starters: Robert E. Howard.

Howard was by every definition of the phrase a hack writer. Paid by the word, he churned out an endless stream of them before the flash of his revolver cut it all short. And to be sure a good chunk of it like many of his boxing stories were just plain bad bad. But the Conan stories were something of a pinnacle of good bad pulp fantasy.

I could fill up several blog posts on how the stories influence this or that bit of my thinking as a GM--the effective description, for instance, of adventure setting dress whether it's ages-lost ruins, a bejeweled tower, or a dusty exotic caravan city—but how about a focus on one biggie: action pacing.

During sessions I often write in my ever-present spiral notebook a few “stage notes” about how to improve my performance as a GM. A few months back I scrawled in the margin “describe action and combat more like REH” (that thought launched this ship). Given the abstract nature of D&D combat, a good GM is invariably looking for ways to flesh out the narrative bits, I am certainly no exception.

In lieu of me continuing to hurl quotes at you to build my case, indulge me with this little exercise. Pick up any collection of Howard's Conan stories you have available—if your hand is on one of those cheeseball post-humous collections not written by REH put your hand down, you are disqualified—if you don't have any on hand scoot over to Gutenberg to read “Red Nails” here.

Skim along until you find the first battle, chase, or other scene filled with danger. Read it aloud, let it along your tongue. Read it again or proceed over to the next.

How's that? Hit a good bad nerve? A little embarrassing, yet satisfying? Come back and tell me about it. Now channel that kind of terse pacing—and violence—into your next session.

Friends and not-so friends, what's the good bad fantasy book taking up space in your life? Why? What piece of that author's work can you see playing a direct influence in upping your game?