I’ve long been a great fan of Clark Ashton Smith’s fiction, especially his fantasy stories set in Hyperborea, Averoigne, and Zothique. Indeed, on balance I would rank his work to be at least as innovative and compelling as that of his “pulp” peers, H. P. Lovecraft and R. E. Howard. Unfortunately, despite his influence on a few later authors – most notably, Jack Vance – CAS’s writings are not especially well-known.
So I naturally was intrigued when I learned about a kickstarter to produce an illustrated omnibus of CAS’s Zothique stories, as well as role-playing adaptations of the setting. The latter consist of: The Zothique RPG Campaign Guide (the gazetteer and rules for the setting), The Denizens of the Dying Sun (essentially a “monster manual” for Zothique), and Litanies of the Dead: A Trilogy of Doomed Adventures (three adventures).
Unfortunately, the role-playing systems in question are 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Shadowdark. I’m not really interested in any of these systems. The possible exception is Shadowdark, which I think is fine but nothing special. (I’m a little puzzled by its current popularity, to be honest. I have nothing against it, but for this kind of “rules-lite-ish, deadly, low magic” game, I regard Dragonbane to be a superior alternative. Nonetheless, unlike 5e D&D, I would be happy to try out Shadowdark some time. But enough of this tangent…)
I plan to get the omnibus. CAS’s short stories are available for free online (at Eldritch Dark). But it would be nice to have them all collected into a sturdy, attractive physical tome. I’m going to skip the RPG adaptations, but perhaps others might find them of interest.
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