The Fantastic Fiction of Raymond Feist

...and Other Authors Who Play The Game
Midkemia is a game world and the setting for Raymond Feist's Riftwar Saga and other fiction. Fantastic tales inspired the creators of White Box and continue to provide inspiration to players. Players of White Box and other versions of fantasy role-play have occasionally been inspired to write fantastic fiction which brings the cycle full circle. Paizo, Wizards of the Coast and before them TSR all publish books written about the fictional worlds described in their role-play aids. Perhaps the best known of these books are the Dragon Lance series by Laura and Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis. One of my favorite game inspired series is Raymond Feist's Riftwar Saga novels.
The Riftwar Saga consists of four central novels, although other novels are set in the same setting and involve some of the same characters. The original novels are Magician (often split into Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master), Silverthorn and A Darkness At Sethanon. According to gamer legend, the author, Raymond Feist, was introduced to the world of Midkemia through role-play and chose to make it the setting for his novels. Many of the characters are people of importance to the politics of Midkemia, princes, Dukes, etc. other characters seem more RPG stock personalities, thieves, pirates, bards and mercenaries who go on great adventures with the aristocrats and are instrumental in the fight for good verses evil. Encounters with dwarves, elves and goblins, undead and dragons lend an atmosphere of game table challenges to the narrative. Several of the central characters can easily be imagined as statted-out game PCs. The overlap between game world and novel setting seems obvious.
This is not to take anything away from the Riftwar Saga novels as literature. I find all the novels a good read and they compare favorably with novels written with no game connection at all. The characters are engaging and well developed along literary lines and the plots seem plausible within the fantastic setting. Mr. Feist is a very accessible author and his prose is easy to read and he keeps things moving along nicely. The first two novels deal in depth with an alternative planet setting linked to Midkemia by a rift or gate through time and space. The alternate planet of Kelewan is much different from Midkemia and through the main magician character the reader is exposed to the Tsurani of Kelewan, an alien people far advanced in magic. Whether Mr. Feist was inspired by the game Empire of the Petal Throne when writing about the Tsurani or not, I personally find myself making the comparison.
Stories told about "what my characters did in the last campaign we played" can be boring to others, but occasionally those at-the-game-table experiences can inspire a good writer to create stories well worth reading. Mr. Feist is one of the better authors to take inspiration from a game world and turn it into material for several good fantasy novels. Over the years there have been several Midkemia play aids created by the world's originators, Midkemia Press, including Cities, The City of Carse, Tulan of the Isles, and Jonril Gateway to the Sunken Lands. I find the ongoing cycle of creative inspiration fascinating.