FUN WITH FANTASY

FANTASY THOUGHTS
By Alex Ness
June 29, 2026

Hi there, with my many posts featuring comics, I thought I'd blow a kiss to fun fantasy works.

RPG GAMES THAT ARE NOT DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: BUT I HAVE PLAYED THESE

When I cover RPGs I often include Dungeons and Dragons, TSR. It has a specific reason, I played it, and played it often. I tried to play as many games to gain a familiarity with game mechanics and taste the flavor of the settings and the actual play. I recently received an email asking me to consider non TSR products since I give them 99% of my attention. I am hereby addressing if briefly non TSR games, but it isn't an altogether accurate point that I give TSR all my attention.

Tunnels & Trolls, Runequest, Gurps, Pathfinder, and Chivalry and Sorcery offered a difference. Each has their own qualities and strengths. Most of the particular quality found in the games, were in the settings and additional modules. Runequest is silly in ways, has a different setting flavor, but the game system is smooth. Tunnels & Trolls has wonderful game play, but I know it more for the solitaire possibilities. Gurps is a system that works, and the flexibility is a strength. But while I am aware of that, it isn't as well thought of, for a kind of bland flavor overall. The additional uses are what brings it to a shine. Chivalry and Sorcery was a system that worked for the ideas within the system, but in my game play, players aren't able to capture their own characters bound by the limits of the system. Pathfinder is a good system in as much as it borrows so heavily from Dungeons and Dragons. But the system is big on rules, lighter on flavor.

QUALITY READING: A fun adventure with fun to watch characters

Brian Haberlin and Geirrod van Dyke

I really viscerally enjoyed this book. It followed a path that was fun, exciting and beautiful. I know others are less moved by an adventure that is simply "fun". I read it eagerly and felt like it was a story that actually felt like an adventure, with Russ and Todd, Jonathan and Spanky. Therefore, it was a particularly interesting and worthwhile book especially for me. One might read fantasy to escape. One might read fantasy to live, vicariously, through the eyes and actions of others. The road of enjoying fantasy for me in life came from non fiction, in the stories of the Viking era. Thereafter I began reading and was taken with King Arthur legends and tales, and when reading my brother's Conan the Barbarian works, it lit a fire inside of me. Calling The Last Barbarian fun, might feel like I was saying it was a work without substance. But it had substance, if not the sort some serious fans might enjoy. As for me, I preferred the tone, the humor, story and characters. If it seems like I am damning a work with feint praise, it should not. 

However, if you wish to suggest I am not serious myself, that would not be accurate. I read most of the Michael Moorcock Elric stories. They were incredibly well written, but had almost zero characters I liked. As the stories moved forward, they became more dark and even more unpleasant. Moorcock's Hawkmoon and Corum were both far easier to enjoy, and still weren't a typical fantasy works. I have read many Moorcock stories, and I read them to understand the workings inside them. I own Elric books, the cover art is fantastic.

Editorial/Publisher description:

"In a world where your guild means classless Sylv is labeled a Barbarian. She’s a jack of all trades who can fight, pick most pockets, and cast a spell or two. But without official membership to a guild she’s barred from having adventures. No adventures mean no money, and no money makes it awfully hard to support herself and her 7-foot-tall disabled brother. But when an underhanded cleric says he’s got the quest of a lifetime for her, she can’t really say no (even if she knows she should). It’ll take every skill she’s got to stay alive, save a child, prevent the fabric of the universe from being ripped apart, and prove that being multiskilled isn't totally barbaric."

THESE ARE RARE, R.A. Salvatore's DARK ELF CYCLE

In 1988 or 1989 I began reading the tales of R.A. Salvatore, and found them elegant, humorous at the right moments, and explored something like racism, in that the lead character was a outsider from an evil society. The world above ground, in the daylight, distrusted Drow elves, for all the evil acts many had followed. But Drizz't was different. He was enormously skilled and highly charismatic, but he was also moral, and tried to correct whenever he encountered ongoing moral wrongs. The society he left was one where selfish acts, violent acts, and treasonous acts were traits to be praised. I am showing the 4 omnibuses from TSR that are now highly sought after. I don't plan to sell them. 

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