RPG: Jack Vance’s ‘The Dying Earth’ Coming To Dungeon Crawl Classics
Freshly announced by Goodman Games, Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth series, which spawned D&D’s magic system, is getting its own RPG next year.
If you are familiar at all with playing a wizard, getting into one fight, and then going off to sleep for a while, and then eventually becoming powerful enough that you can handle three fights before you have to go take a nap, you can blame Jack Vance. Or more accurately, you can blame Gary Gygax’ version of Jack Vance’s magic system from the Dying Earth, set in the distant future where magic is real again, and it’s exactly like D&D magic.
In the Dying Earth, wizards use magic primarily by memorizing lengthy formulas for spells, and then activating them by speaking the proper commands. Once cast, the spell formula is instantly forgotten, requiring the wizard to reread and re-memorize them. Because even talented wizards can only memorize and “load” a handful of spells, wizards also have to rely on magical relics and on their other skills and talents to protect them.
Although The Dying Earth came first, which is also why Vecna is an anagram of Vance, in a nod to the creator of the system. Now Vance’s series is getting it’s own RPG from Goodman Games and Dungeon Crawl Classics. Let’s take a look.
via DCC
We are very excited to officially announce DCC Dying Earth, based on the works of Jack Vance. Officially licensed by his estate, the Kickstarter will launch later this year and the product will release in 2021.
DCC Dying Earth is both a sourcebook and a setting for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Role-Playing Game that offers a portal to the singular world of The Dying Earth novels by Jack Vance.
As a sourcebook, it expands DCC RPG core rules and gives players and judges new material inspired by The Dying Earth novels. It also provides a multifarious setting that evokes the distant twilight of the earth as a dim red sun sheds its last life; a world filled with the whimsical and the curious, the evil and monstrous, where magic and science are one and the same.
AdvertisementWithin you will find new classes, creatures, patrons, and spells inspired by The Dying Earth for use in your DCC RPG game. With these tools you can play in Cugel’s and Rhialto’s world, seek the mighty Pandelume, or fall to an indifferent grue while searching for scintillant baubles among the ensorcelled remains of the ancient earth.
The book is due to release on Kickstarter later this year, with a projected 2021 release. So check back for more news as the launch day draws nearer.
Happy Adventuring!
