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Dying Earth on Earth Day
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As gamers celebrate Earth Day, it’s worth pausing to consider a different kind of earth that strongly influenced fantasy role-playing games: Dying Earth.
.jpg) Courtesy Pelgrane Press |
Jack Vance's Dying Earth is set in the far future, with the sun nearly extinguished, the moon missing, and magic resurgent. Civilization has collapsed and monsters roam the world. Dying Earth gave us many things that Gary Gygax borrowed wholesale for Dungeons & Dragons.
Vance invented the fire-and-forget spell system, coined "Vancian Magic" after its namesake. Vancian Magic involves memorizing a limited number of spells; when the caster releases them, the spells are gone until he can rest again. This particular form of magic is striking in that it provides a rigid form of game balance for spellcasters, but is uniquely reflective of Vance's universe -- most sources of fantasy fiction have a looser magic system that isn't so rigidly tied to spell memorization.
Vance created ioun stones. These floating gemstones zip around a wizard’s head and bestow magical powers. They were originally called IOUN stones.
Vance invented grues. In Tales of the Dying Earth, the wizard Follinense’s casebook describes Grues as “man, ocular bat, the unusual hoon,” whatever that means. The name was taken by the creators of Zork to represent a light-hating beast that immediately ate any player who ventured into the darkness. Grues then propagated from there throughout all forms of gaming.
If you’re still not convinced, there’s one other piece of evidence that indisputably shows the hand of Vance on all things Dungeons & Dragons: Vecna. That's right, the evil, insane lich missing his hand and eye who once dominated Ravenloft and then went on to become an evil god of magic is actually an anagram of “Vance.”
For more info: Pelgrane Press produced a Dying Earth role-playing game. All Dying Earth products are 50 percent off until May 1, 2009, after which they will be discontinued. There’s also a Jack Vance museum.
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