LibriumArcana.Games

Just what the title says. My friend who is moving to Victoria for law school returned a mass of books to his book pimp (me). On returning Jack Vance's Dying Earth Omnibus (with the Dying Earth, Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga, and Rhialto the Marvelous) he said he "couldn't get into it".

Swine! How dare he call himself a gamer and not like Jack Vance! It's an outrage!

Cugel's Saga is the only one I've read, and it was fucking awesome.

Eyes of the Overworld deals with the events that preceed Cugel's saga. Cugel gets greedy, breaks into the home of the Laughing Magician, gets caught, gets sent on a mission, and is sent far away. He comes back through all sorts of adventures to get revenge. At the end he screws up and thus we have the beginning of Cugel's Saga.

I have the RPG BTW.

Cynical Cat wrote:I have the RPG BTW.

There's an RPG?

I love Jack Vance's writing style. It's such a bizarre world, with quirky characters, and the prose is real high brow and descriptive but without the boring ploddiness of LOTR.

I treat Cugel's Saga as a guidemap for Rogue PCs in a typical D&D game. If you read something like LOTR you get a good sense of how to play a Ranger, Fighter, Wizard, Elf, Dwarf, or Halfling, but not a Rogue (unless you count Gollum but really, who does?). In fact, something like Thomas Covenant is better at depicting those archetypes - fighter, wizard, monk - especially in regards to adventuring (I'm thinking of Lord Foul's Bane in particular). But none of them get the rogue down. Cugel's Saga does. (there's also another book that has a dynamic duo of sorts with a Barbarian and mousey Rogue who team up and become thieves, but I forget the title, something Grey Mouser or something)

There is an RPG. It's produced by a small RPG house called Pelgrane Press (after the flying monster). In their gaming magazine The Exellent Prismatic Spray, there is an article by Gygax about all the influences The Dying Earth hand on D&D. Besides IOUN stones and the spell system (and the robe of eyes), the thief class is heavily based on Cugel.

The Dying Earth RPG

What can I say Cynical next time he comes around you break out the blades and I will grab the golf bag filled with various blunt instruments.