The Gaming Den

Just started reading "Tales of the Dying Earth". Really surprised I hadn't read it before, like say in high school. Guess I was too busy jacking off to Tanith Lee. Aaaaaanyway...

Just curious what everyone's thoughts were. It's pretty good as the genre goes. As far as the "it has been named after me yet because I just wrote the shit"-ian magic system goes, so far I've seen:

Evard's Black Tentacles: destroys, then rebuilds a city. Literally. Some of the tentacles turn into caulking guns. And probably rape some chicks along the way.

Prismatic Spray: not the "rainbows appear, you catch on fire/go to another plane lol", more like A BUNCH OF FRICKIN' LASERS, Macross missile style.


As far as magic items go, if you are even a minor wizard, you will have bunches of them. And if you do any kind of adventuring, it is expected that you will have some. In Cugel's first story, after being caught by a wizard who offers him 'quest' or 'death', he takes 'quest', but not before asking what magic items he's going to be showered with. Enjoy your "bracelet of turn bricks and old underwear edible" and your "alien parasite of murdering you if you stop your quest +2".

Now, most of the magic items are based around comfort and survival ("flashlight of stabbing"), but some are flat awesome, like the Curator's semi-intelligent magic wand that I have come to call "Ramirez's Baton"... ie, "Wand! Do everything!" It seems that part of being a badass wizard is not just memorizing more spells than the other guy, but mainly having more magical shit attuned to you and/or guarded by magical merry-go-round traps. Though, to be perfectly honest, right from the source even the spell memorization descriptions are awesome. I guess I'm just jaded from years of stupid Gygax's version of this stuff, that the real thing is cool.

Another thing I noticed is that most of the mages can also fight. Well-fed, world-weary young noblemen with swords are more likely to take up studying the mystic arts than some scrawny scholar. They are also more likely to bone some exotic vat-bred chick.

That is all. I'll post more thoughts when I finish the book.

I bought the same collection about a year ago.

JigokuBosatsu wrote:Another thing I noticed is that most of the mages can also fight.

I think that's not true in general, just in a couple of stories in that book near the beginning.

Other AD&D stuff inspired by those stories are ioun stones and the spells Time Stop and Imprisonment (and the reverse, Freedom).

I read the series, but the only take-away lesson I remember was that the heroes kept losing all their magic items all the time.

K wrote:I read the series, but the only take-away lesson I remember was that the heroes kept losing all their magic items all the time.

That appears to be a standby in good literature. If the hero starts with good shit, take it away so he has to resolve the plot with nothing but his bloody flayed skin. If he starts with nothing, the plot resolves around finding cool shit so he doesn't end up as a bloody flayed skin.

See also: Escape from New York

Spike wrote:

K wrote:I read the series, but the only take-away lesson I remember was that the heroes kept losing all their magic items all the time.

That appears to be a standby in good literature. If the hero starts with good shit, take it away so he has to resolve the plot with nothing but his bloody flayed skin. If he starts with nothing, the plot resolves around finding cool shit so he doesn't end up as a bloody flayed skin.

See also: Escape from New York

It's part of the hero's journey. The crux is not losing or gaining the mystic widget, but instead either proving that you're a hero despite the widget, or having to prove you're a hero to get the widget.

K wrote:I read the series, but the only take-away lesson I remember was that the heroes kept losing all their magic items all the time.

It's no different than Conan or Fafhrd + Grey Mouser stories. They have to lose all of their loot/girlfriends/other "plot tokens" in order for the next story to repeat the same formula.

hogarth wrote: It's no different than James Bond stories. They have to lose all of their loot/girlfriends/other "plot tokens" in order for the next story to repeat the same formula.

Yep. It's one of those things... well-written, it's mythic, poorly written it's formula.

I did read a little something on the Dying Earth RPG... it seems they based the different PC power tiers on different characters in Vance, ie the Turjan Level, the Cugel Level. Works great for something based on a preexisting work, would be nice to find a way to implement it more universally (as has been discussed on this board many times).

If you're a fan of DnDish settings, I recommend Perdido Street Station(and if you're a fan of dying earth books, I recommend the Book of the New Sun).

Severian wrote:If you're a fan of DnDish settings, I recommend Perdido Street Station...

That writer reminds me of reading DnD setting books. He can't string together an interesting plot to save his life, but the actual setting is pretty neat.

K wrote: That writer reminds me of reading DnD setting books. He can't string together an interesting plot to save his life, but the actual setting is pretty neat.

I would totally agree about this for Perdido Street Station, but not so for Mieville's other work (at least that I've read). The Scar has a legitimately interesting plot that I found to work very well. The ship-city isn't as interesting a setting as New Crobuzon (sp?) is, but it's still compelling enough. I would say the same for Un Lun Dun and The City and The City. Ironically enough, the setting and writing are still probably strongest in Perdido Street Station, but his other books still do have interesting plots.

On other D&D influences of Vance - "Vecna" is an anagram of "Vance".

I have the Dying Earth RPG somewhere, though in storage currently. I haven't played it, though. The basic system works a bit like Gumshoe (Robin Laws' more recent system) in that stats are just pools of rerolls rather than providing a bonus. It mostly annoys me that all skills will eventually run out when used, plus important contests may mean lots of back-and-forth dice rolling.
From memory the Persuasion rules are perhaps the high point of the system rules-wise, since it differentiates between styles of debate and provides a defensive skill that applies against the games' analogue of Diplomacy.
The book itself largely fails to give much additional setting info over the books - monsters for example have multiple quotes from sages describing conflicting theories of what they are or where they're from, deliberately keeping the background vague.

You're preaching at the choir, Severian. Or should I say Severian the Lame?

Yeah, Mieville was one of those recent finds of mine (past couple of years) that just blew the top of my head off. To be sharing an anthology with him and Alan Moore here pretty soon is just... unreal. Un fucking real.