Quag Keep

One of the first fiction novels written about a role-playing game, but this is no LitRPG. More inter-party conflict than external conflict - if your game is like this, find another. The ending is also rather sudden...

Andre Norton wrote this after participating in a session of D&D with Gary Gygax in 1976. His home setting of Greyhawk was not published until later, roughly the same time as the book - and the Greyhawk shown in this novel is nothing like that setting. It also has some strange features - a swamp in the middle of a desert? - but those *could* be explained as "magic" I suppose.

This party really is thrown together, and it makes sense that the characters didn't interact much. That part feels a lot like a game. The dual-world aspect was underutilized, not playing a part in the story until the very abrupt ending (and even then, pretty minimal).

For that matter, the story reminds me very much of the 2002 film The Gamers. My recommendation - see the film and skip the book. In the early 2000s, Andre Norton began to collaborate on a sequel with Jean Rabe. That novel was published after Norton's death and is apparently pretty bad.