Dungeons & Dragons (novels)

Dungeons & Dragons novels are works of fantasy fiction that are based upon campaign settings released for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.

The first novel based on the Dungeons & Dragons game was Quag Keep (1978) by Andre Norton. Based upon Norton's first experience at playing the Dungeons & Dragons game, it told the story of seven gamers who were drawn into a fantasy setting. The sequel, Return to Quag Keep (2006), was published after Norton had died in 2005.

A series of authorized novels began in the early 1980s with a survey of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons players. The feedback indicated that the players wanted more dragons in the media products from TSR, Inc. In May, 1983, TSR commissioned Tracy Hickman to produce a new campaign setting that would be called Dragonlance. For marketing purposes, TSR also decided to release a series of books based in the same setting. The first three books became the highly successful Dragonlance Chronicles Trilogy.

As the time and cost needed to develop a commercial role-playing game are rarely matched by the profits made from selling the end product, the rulesbooks are primarily sold to create a market for the sale of related products. TSR found a lucrative market when they released a series spinoff novels based on the Dragonlance and Dark Sun campaign settings. These novels stood on their own and did not require knowledge of the game rules, making them accessible by a more general audience. TSR published several gamebook series, such as Endless Quest, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Gamebooks, Fantasy Forest, and HeartQuest, which were based on the D&D settings.

...
Wikipedia