D&D's major literary influence is...

[endersdouble]

D&D.

I've heard everyone talking about Conan and Vance and Moorcock and whatever. Those aren't the biggest influences on D&D (anymore.) Let's face it, D&D is old enough to be considered source material for an RPG, and at this point, every modification to D&D is aimed at making it like, well, D&D. D&D has its own tropes and setting rules, and they're different from a lot of fantasy, and that's fine.

Yes, the systems for D&D don't (really) work, and certainly no one but Gygax's corpse wants to go back to Mother-may-I DMs with fuck-you traps and groveling PCs. But while that may be how D&D plays it's not how anyone thinks of it. In fact, I think that there's a relatively consistent set of literary rules for how the idealized D&D campaign runs, and we (could) build a game system around those precepts. And I'm not sure the Tomes--though they perhaps describe a more interesting world--describe that world.

[Doom]

I didn't even know Conan wrote books...I'd sure as hell read them, I bet he has a thing or two to say about knife fighting.

[shau]

I'm sure he meant Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

[PhoneLobster]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

He was just a character in a book written by Tarzan.

[tzor]

I think Leiber was a strong influence especially in the save or die mentality, but the implications of role play gaming as being a offset varient of war gaming cannot be easily dismissed. A lot of role playing aka the Gygax model basically stemed from taking a nice logical predictable model like war gaming and inverting it so you answer the question "how can I keep the players on the edges of their seats and constantly interested in what is happening?"

[Josh_Kablack]

D&D's major literary influence is...D&D.
....
I think that there's a relatively consistent set of literary rules for how the idealized D&D campaign runs, and we (could) build a game system around those precepts

Not sure I fully agree, but for the sake of argument let's run with that.

What are some decent fantasy works that are clearly set in a D&D game - and which of those are worth emulating in a game.

Off the top of my head:

• Dragonlance maybe worth emulating, maybe not
• Other licensed books (Drizzt, Curse of the Azure Bonds, etc) - largely total crap.
• the Thraxas books - surprisingly awesome, I can't help but think this is the setting Eberron wanted to be.
• Slayers anime - at times awesome, but maybe not quite enough within classic D&D idioms to count
• Lodoss War anime - never seen it, but people say it's right out of D&D
• a bunch of other anime - remember the question here is not merely "fantasy" but "D&D". Legend of Crystania with it's live action polyhedral dice opening counts - Bleach is nowhere near.

[tzor]

Yes, the systems for D&D don't (really) work, and certainly no one but Gygax's corpse wants to go back to Mother-may-I DMs with fuck-you traps and groveling PCs.

Yes I do. I want to die, again, and again in pointless horror and agony. Unfortunately Gygax doesn't do it for me, he was too nice, not over the top enough. I want to play PARINOIA!

[Hegemonic]

First and Second edition had some Jack Vance in there. All those flighty, elaborate spell names, spells that really weren't useful but were still interesting, a fairly heartless death mechanic...Tales from the Dying Eart reads like a bad D&D campaign..."You're walking along and you come across a town next to a large, deep lake with a single watchtower at the center of the town, what do you do?"...random magic items that could end the campaign with a single die roll. I kind of liked that world, but I'd be lying if I thought it was frequently fair to the players.

[bosssmiley]

Inspirational material for Gygaxian D&D: Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, Jack Vance, Fritz Leiber, E.R.Burroughs, R.E.Howard, Klarkash-ton, Tolkien.

IM for 2E: Pern, Shannara, Eddings' copypaste-verse, Vald Taltos (multi-volume frilly shirt coffee klatch fantasy).
IM for 3E: TSR D&D + Diablo
IM for 4e: reaction against 3e, plus WoWCraft and (arguably) Final Fantasy VII - XII

It's quite remarkable how each edition is manifestly a pop-culture artefact of the decade *preceding* its publication. Practically a time capsule of geek obsessionsof the time.