Our party started from some of the Glen Cook novel's regarding the Black Company. The series (around 10 books) was quite a good adventure, if I say so myself!
In about 3 years we almost got halfway through the first book. It's rather slow going!
Recently we've delved into the Greyhawk campaign, one of Gary Gygax's first and more successful "campaigns". We're working on turning it into a novel of our own actually. A spinoff, if you will.
Edit:
A highly recommended imaginative simulation of violence, treachery and debauchery.
Depending on how good of a story teller your DM is, of course. You can get as detailed and bloodthirsty, or as vague and mysterious, as necessary.
There's so much f***ing detail in these games, it's crazy.
The way it went, Gygax decided (after some playthrough) to make Greyhawk an actual game. He added where
he started off, and a thousand years of history before it.
Then he said "play" The rest is up to the players and the DM. My Greyhawk campaign is totally different from Gygax's, but it's the
exact same time, same place, same major characters.
I haven't played lately, but we had a really good campaign going while we were stuck in Okinawa for 6 months. I'm partial to the Forgotten Realms setting (and books).
Our campaigns tend to lean towards realism and low-fantasy; blood, gore, pillaging and stab wounds, over fairies, fireballs, and other realms.
These things exist, but our regiment is about maintaining order during civil war; politics, rivalry and the like.
One of the armies of undead
is led by an animus, and he's got his super-cool geo-political crap figured out.
It's a nice mix. There's just the right amount of fantasy involved to make it interesting, but not too much that the aspects of fantasy take away from genuine problem-solving.
Instead of, say, using magic to open a door or pull a lever, we might have to solve a puzzle, remove some traps, or simply knock.
I get to use my brain to do things, instead of being the fighter that says "enemy? I punch him!" or the mage, "enemies? Magic missile!"