"Classic Old School Dungeoncrawl books?" Topic

I'm thinking of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Leiber type stuff, not "epic we're saving the world" fantasy. More of a few people trying to make a living stealing from the dead, or whomever, by raiding their dungeon, which was a D&D idea before Indiana Jones. :)

Leiber epitomizes what I'm thinking.

Some of the Conan stuff can be that style. The Tower of the Elephant and Red Nails come to mind as examples.

Yes, but Conan is "epic". He's not just trying to make a living.

Parallel example: "Firefly" is a ship trying to make a living. "Star Wars" is a small group of rebels trying to save the universe.

I'm interested in a "Firefly" style of adventure.

Hesse: Have you read original Conan? It's the furthest thing from epic.

The first couple of Gotrek and Felix books would be great for you… "TrollSlayer" and "Skaven Slayer" are gritty and non-epic…. though as the series grows… they become more epic. (They also have one of the greatest villains of all time… Grand Seer Thanquol… when he is not emitting the musk of fear!… which is not often).

Joe Collins

Go read "Tomb of Horrors" based on the classic D&D modules.
link

Or White Plume Mountain
link

Both are a fun read.

Faf and the Mouser are a damn fine place to start.

I'll second Conan (but only Howard's original stories) and Gotrek and Felix (but only the first two or three books; love Thanquol!).

I'll add Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories: link

The first two Thieves' World anthologies are also excellent, but after that they go rapidly downhill: link

Karl Edward Wagner's Kane is an excellent, gritty anti-hero. Wagner wrote a half-dozen books featuring Kane; here's one of them: link

Wagner also wrote one of the better non-Howard Conan pastiches, The Road of Kings: link

That should be more than enough to get you started.

You should absolutely read the original Howard Conan stories, and Vance's Dying Earth. The Tower of the Elephant is a straightforward dungeoncrawl (well, towercrawl. towerclimb?) and it's one of the best Conan stories – also one of the earliest chronologically, with Conan being far younger than in some of the stories. Should be online somewhere.* Elric's good, if you haven't read it.

If you ignore everything else in this post, at least read Dying Earth! It's amazing – the two Cugel the Clever books are the most relevant to your request, but the others are great.

* Ah! link

I heartily endorse the Jack Vance Cugel the Clever reccomendations and add Michael Shea's very similar Nifft the Lean stories (OOP I think) to the list. I also agree the the early Conan stories are anything but epic. The Kane stories are also very good.

You might also wish to check out the series of books which starts with the Lies of Locke Lamora. I believe it's the Gentleman Bastards series. Anything by Joe Abernathy is also very good.

The middle volume of the Earthsea trilogy has poor old Ged in a dungeon for almost the entire book.

It's modern, but Andy McDermott has a series of books which usually end up in dungeon crawls. They're fun and silly, and follow the usual conventions – there's always time for a bad one-liner, if he introduces an interesting vehicle (whether a giant truck in an african diamond mine or a racing car) it will be involved in a chase or explosion, and so on.

The main characters are an archaeologist and her ex-SAS partner. They do Archaeology!, in the way that mad scientists do Science! rather than science. Often in ancient tombs and crypts! And after the first couple of times, they've stopped being surprised when the ancient, unmaintained deathtraps do seem to still work… sometimes. Other times, the last poor sod to try and raid the tomb set them off, or they've jammed over the centuries, or just fallen to pieces. Still, though, there's usually something still dangerous.

There's proper, "boring" archaeology too, with characters getting excited at the opportunity to spend months digging away with a toothbrush to search for fragments of pottery, but that usually doesn't last once a sinister billionaire shows up.

wow, some great stuff I've never heard of! I dunno, I can't see Conan as anything but epic – in the end, he becomes the Gubernator, hardly a guy just struggling to get by. :)

Have you ever read Conan? Even the film* isn't epic. Conan is pretty much trying to get by in most of his stories – even the ones where he's conquered a kingdom and become king, he's not fighting to save the world or going on epic quests. His "epic quests" tend to involve loot or survival.

You have a really weird definition of epic if it includes Conan.

* They only made two – the first one was great, and I haven't seen the recent sequel with Momoa playing Conan yet.

Special thanks to all – got a 4-volume complete Dying Earth by Jack Vance and it's just what I wanted! Plenty of inspriation to get me thru my nostalgic re-encounter with The Fantasy Trip! So far, just Melee and DeathTest 1, took 4 attempts to get a party of 4 thru alive.

"Special thanks to all – got a 4-volume complete Dying Earth by Jack Vance and it's just what I wanted!"

This thread is a glorious success!

Huzzah! You can't go wrong with the Dying Earth.

Simon R. Green: The Hawk and Fisher books

great thread! I'm going to have to take a look at some Jack Vance, been hearing about him for years now…

Same here – I know a lot of stuff in Gygax's original D&D books were inspired by Vance but I never got around to him. . .