Not one but two forthcoming Vance-based games

I’m a big fan of Jack Vance’s fantasy works—in particular, his Lyonesse trilogy and his Dying Earth stories. So I’m quite excited about the Design Mechanism’s forthcoming Mythras-based Lyonesse role-playing game. (For an interesting discussion of the first Lyonesse novel, go here.)

To my amazement, though, I completely missed the announcement a few years ago of another Vance-based role-playing game: namely, one from Goodman Games set in the Dying Earth. Since the original announcement claimed that the game would be available in ‘late 2017’, I was worried that the project had been abandoned. However, this GG post from about two weeks ago (March 12th) indicates that it’s still on the cards.

It looks like the Dying Earth RPG will be based upon the Dungeon Crawl Classics role-playing game. I’ve never played DCCRPG, but based on my reading of the ‘quick start’ rules (which I picked up a couple of years ago), I’m not sure I’m too keen on it. While I quite like old school games—I even contributed to one (Crypts & Things)—the particular interpretation of ‘old school’ offered by DCC (e.g., the ‘funnel’ for 0-level characters; the randomness of the magic system) does not really resonate with me. At the same time, though, I’m open to the possibility that my ‘pre-play’ assessment is off, and I’d be happy to try it someday. And if the DCC system is suitably adapted for the Dying Earth setting, I’ll definitely pick it up and give it a shot!

(Goodman Games has a brief discussion of Vance’s writings here.)