What Ho, Jack Vance!

Rather than stretch the term "pulp fantasy" beyond the point of credulity, this week's literary post won't formally be part of my Pulp Fantasy Library series but rather a stand-alone musing. It was occasioned by my reading of several old interviews with Jack Vance in which he talked about the authors who most influenced him. Often, it's been claimed, not without plausibility, that Clark Ashton Smith was one of these influences, but I've never read anywhere in which Vance acknowledges such an influence. Instead, Vance has consistently named three (sometimes four) authors as his literary "mentors:" Jeffery Farnol, L. Frank Baum, and P.G. Wodehouse (with Burroughs being the fourth).

Of these influences, the one that stands out as the odd is P.G. Wodehouse. Baum wrote fantasies (as did Burroughs) and Farnol, though largely forgotten nowadays, was a popular writer of swashbuckling tales in the first half of the 20th century, so there's a clear connection to Vance's own work. But what of Wodehouse, a comic writer best known for having created the character of Reginald Jeeves, a gentleman's gentleman whose very name is now synonymous with knowledgeable and perspicacious manservants? What sort of influence could he have had over Vance?

I'm actually a devotee of Wodehouse, whose Jeeves stories I am now in the midst of re-reading (which is what occasioned this post). In doing so, the connection between the two writers has quickly become apparent. First and foremost, Wodehouse displays a remarkable facility with the English language, one that humorously combines sophisticated banter with the then-contemporary slang of London partygoers. The combination is often dizzying, taking some time to understand, but, once one gets the hang of it, Wodehouse's dialog reveals surprising depths. Reading the words of Cugel the Clever, you can hear echoes of Wodehouse. Wodehouse's characters likewise show many commonalities with those in Vance's works too. Whether they're foolish authority figures, puffed-up aristcrats, or zany eccentrics, many of them would, without too much effort, fit right into Vance's fantasy and science fiction tales.

Of course, Vance's tales have a decidedly "darker" edge to them. Their humor is often of a black sort and Vance's characters generally possess a venal streak beneath their buffoonery. Still, the influence is quite clear once you begin to look for it. I've amused myself while re-reading the Jeeves stories by picking out little bits of dialog that remind of something said in "The Dying Earth" stories. I fear that this practice has carried over into my gaming as well. My NPCs were always of a somewhat whimsical sort to begin with, but my immersion in Wodehouse these last few days has only stoked my whimsy further. The spoon-fancying priest of Typhon, Saidon, is probably one of my more Wodehousian creations and his reappearance in a recent Dwimmermount session gave me the opportunity to indulge myself yet again.

Wodehouse, like Vance, is likely an acquired taste and I can sympathize with anyone who doesn't find his writing as appealing as I do. Still, if you like well crafted dialog and eccentric characters, you could do worse than reading a story or two by the man. If nothing else, you might end up, as I did, naming an alchemist Marmaduke and enjoying the look on your players' faces when you first say the name to them.

Jack the Clever

I honestly can't recall the first time I saw the adjective "Vancian" used to describe the magic system of Dungeons & Dragons. It might have been in the pages of Dragon, but I can't be certain. Wherever it was, I was initially baffled by it, because I didn't read any of Vance's work until after I had started playing RPGs. When I first picked it up, I associated D&D with Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age, Fritz Leiber's Nehwon, and J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. The influence of any one of these authors on the game seemed so much more obvious to me at the time, but Jack Vance? Who was he?

Fortunately for my literary education, I eventually picked up a copy of Cugel's Saga and soon fell in love with its arresting combination of "high" vocabulary, picaresque adventures, and wondrous setting. Vance was an unexpected surprise to me at the time. I'd read several authors whose works contained elements I'd also found in Vance – such as Clark Ashton Smith's penchant for archaisms – but I'd never found them all in those of a single author before. So impressed was I that I immediately sought out first its follow-up, The Eyes of the Overworld and then The Dying Earth, both of which likewise impressed me, sending me on a quest to read everything by Vance I could get my hands on.

I bring all this up because today is the 105th anniversary of the birth of John Holbrook Vance. Born in San Francisco in 1916, Vance led a remarkable life. During the Great Depression, he took up a variety of menial jobs to support himself and his mother, during which time he also attended university, eventually graduating in 1942. During World War II, he joined the Merchant Marine, an experience that led his lifelong love of sailing and the sea. Throughout this time, he made his first efforts at published writing in science fiction and fantasy, genres he had loved since he was a teenager. By the end of the 1940s, Vance started to achieve success as a writer, which encouraged him to devote himself to the craft fulltime. The rest, as they say, is history.

There's a great deal that could be said about Jack Vance and his influence on fantasy, science fiction, and the hobby of roleplaying. Rather than do that at this time, I will instead urge you to read one of his many stories. Whether you choose one of his Dying Earth tales, the Lyonesse trilogy, the Planet of Adventure series, or almost any other with his byline, you'll find joyful stories tinged with melancholy and wild, unpredictable imagination presented through singular prose. Vance is truly one of the Giants of fantasy fiction and he deserves to celebrated by all who appreciate superb writing and creativity. 

Happy Birthday, Mr Vance. 

Vance on CAS and HPL

A comment to yesterday's post reminded me of a longstanding mystery: the influence, if any, of the works of Clark Ashton Smith on those of Jack Vance. Purely on the basis of subject matter and style, I'd long assumed that Vance's tales of The Dying Earth had been influenced by Smith's own tales of Zothique. I eventually read something – I cannot recall precisely where – that addressed the matter, claiming that Vance had not in fact read Smith and, therefore, any resemblance between the two mordantly witty writers was purely coincidental.

The aforementioned comment, however, spurred me to look into the question once again. In doing so, I discovered a new piece of information, new to me at any rate. The May 2005 issue of Cosmopolis reprints an old interview with Jack Vance from September 1981. The interview is fascinating for a number of reasons, but it's what Vance has to say about Clark Ashton Smith (and H.P. Lovecraft) that is of most immediate interest. The relevant section begins with the interviewer, Charles Platt, referencing Smith:

I mention that Don Herron, a critic who contributed to a symposium on Vance, deduced that Vance had been heavily influenced by the work of Clark Ashton Smith. 

"That's true. Can't help it; Smith is one of the people I read when I was a kid. But it only influenced The Dying Earth.

"I was one of those precocious, highly intelligent kids, old beyond my years. I had lots of brothers and sisters, but I was isolated from them in a certain kind of way. I just read and read and read. One of the things I read was the old Weird Tales pulp magazine, which published Clark Ashton Smith. He was one of the generative geniuses of fantasy. The others, Lovecraft, for instance, were ridiculous. Lovecraft couldn't write his way out of a wet paper sack. Smith is a little clumsy at times, but at least his prose is always readable.

"When I wrote my first fantasies, I was no longer aware of Smith – it had sunk so far into my subconscious. But when it was pointed out to me, I could very readily see the influence."

Leaving aside Vance's, I think, unfairly harsh assessment of Lovecraft, I find it strangely vindicating to see him admit to the influence of Smith on his own work. That's not something I'd ever seen acknowledged previously, though, as it now appears, Don Herron correctly surmised it more than four decades ago. Regardless, a longstanding mystery over I'd puzzled for years has been resolved.

Pulp Science Fiction Library: Demon Princes

The trouble with Muses is that, ultimately, they're in control, not you. As I continue to work on the second edition of Thousand Suns – the draft is now close to half complete – my mind has been wandering ever farther away from the more well-known varieties of fantasy. Of course, as I recently argued, there's still lots of overlap between these two genres and not merely in terms of content. Many of the most talented and influential writers of the past tried their hands at both and succeeded brilliantly.

A good case in point is Jack Vance. Vance is a paladin of Appendix N, being one of only a handful of writers Gary Gygax singled out as being one of the "most immediate influences" upon his vision of Dungeon & Dragons. Of course, Gygax did so for Vance's tales of the Dying Earth, whose magic system he adopted for the game, and not for his science fiction tales, of which there are a great many – indeed, far more than his fantasy stories. 

Among the most celebrated of Vance's sci-fi works is his "Demon Princes" series, the first of which, Star King, was serialized in the December 1963 and February 1964 issues of Galaxy Magazine before being published by Berkeley Books later in '64. The first three books in the five-book series appeared fairly quickly, with The Killing Machine also appearing in 1964 and The Palace of Love in 1967. The fourth and fifth books, The Face and The Book of Dreams, did not appear until more than a decade later, in 1979 and 1981 respectively, which was right around the time I first entered the hobby of roleplaying. 

However, I wouldn't take much note of any of these books until several years into my introduction to Traveller. That places it somewhere in the vicinity of 1982 or '83, depending on when it was that I first acquired Citizens of the Imperium. That supplement, along with 1001 Characters, is notable for having included Traveller stats for a selection of literary SF characters, ranging from John Carter of Mars to Slippery Jim diGriz to Dominic Flandry. At the time, I already knew many of these names from novels and stories I'd read. Others, though, were new to me and they sent me off to the local public library on a quest. 

Among those unfamiliar names would be that of Kirth Gersen. Citizens of the Imperium associates him specifically with the second book in the series, The Killing Machine, but also mentions it as part of a five-book "Demon Princes" series. To my youthful mind, "Demon Princes" didn't sound like the title for a science fiction series, so I was initially confused as to why it was included alongside more well-known pillars of SF. Likewise, I had not yet read any of Vance's space operas, so my confusion was only heightened. Fortunately for me, I eventually got around to tracking down Star King and its four sequels. I enjoyed them so much that I sought out more of Vance's science fiction and the rest is history.

The titular Demon Princes of the series are not supernatural entities by five interstellar crime bosses, against whom Gersen wishes to exact revenge for their past in bringing ruin upon his home planet. Having been trained by his grandfather for this purpose, Gersen dedicates his life to hunting down them down so that justice may be done. Each of the five novels follows his pursuit of one of these Demon Princes. Though the novels include plenty of action, one of the things that's most interesting about them – or at least is to me – is how much investigation and infiltration they include. Gersen's efforts to locate his quarry, some of whom have gone to great efforts to conceal their identities, is every bit as central to Vance's stories as is dealing with them once they've been found.

Though linked, each novel presents a largely self-contained exploration of a different world or culture, often shaped by the personality of the Demon Prince Gersen is presently seeking. Consequently, the series, like so much of Vance's oeuvre, is a picaresque adventure through strange societies with elaborate social codes and fragmented political systems where justice is personal rather than institutional. That makes Gersen’s quest more than just a hunt for enemies; it becomes an extended engagement with questions of identity, culture, and obsession in the far future, all of which play to Vance's strengths as a writer and storyteller.

Prior to writing this post, it had been decades since I last read any of the Demon Princes novels and that's a shame. Like so many of the books that inspired Traveller, they're fast-paced, pulpy adventures filled with quirky and memorable characters and equally quirky and memorable situations. They're not deep scientific speculations about a possible future and that's OK. Sometimes, you just want to read a fun, engaging novel about one man's quest to bring justice to some bad guys who deserve what's coming to them. In that respect, the Demon Princes series delivers and does so enjoyably.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Rhialto the Marvellous

1984's Rhialto the Marvellous is the fourth -- and final -- book of Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" series. Though called a novel, it's really a collection of three different stories of varying length, each of which focuses on the titular character, a magician of the 21st Aeon who belongs to "a group of magicians who have formed an association the better to protect their interests." The book is of particular interest to players of Dungeons & Dragons for two reasons, the first of which is its foreword, which describes spells thusly:

A spell in essence corresponds to a code, or set of instructions, inserted into the sensorium of an entity which is able and not unwilling to alter the environment in accordance with the message conveyed by the spell.

Vance likewise states that "Magic is a practical science, or, more properly, a craft, since emphasis is placed on utility, rather than basic understanding." Taken together, these comments provide additional fuel for the fire of discussion regarding the meaning of "Vancian" spellcasting and its relationship (or not) to D&D's magic rules.

The second reason gamers might be interested in this book is the third story in this collection -- and the best, in my opinion -- is the origin of Ioun Stones. The story in question, "Morreion," was originally published in 1973, in a collection called Flashing Swords! 1, edited by Lin Carter and enjoyed by Gary Gygax. By his own admission, he was so taken with both the story and the magical stones it described (which Vance always spells in all capital letters as "IOUN stones") that he imported them into Dungeons & Dragons, an importation to which Vance in fact gave his kind permission.

The first story of Rhialto the Marvellous is entitled "The Murthe" and concerns a powerful female magic-user from the past, after whose title the story is named. In the past, there was a "War of Wizards and Witches," in which the witches were victorious. However, a few surviving wizards created a cabal to strike back against their feminine foes. In this endeavor they succeeded and the Murthe was exiled "to a far star." Alas for the wizards, the Murthe proved wilier than expected and, rather than go in peace, she discovered a means to travel into the future, which is to say, Rhialto's present to exact her revenge by transforming her enemies into women under her own control. Only Rhialto and his friend Ildefonse escape the Murthe's magic and, together, they must find a means to stop her and reverse her spells.

The second story, "Fader's Waft," is lengthy and could easily stand on its own as a novella. Its plot centers on Rhialto's censure by his fellow wizards, the penalty for which is being stripped of most of his magical possessions, including his collection of IOUN stones. Rhialto becomes convinced that the events that led to his reprimand are the result of a nefarious plot against him by agents unknown and, with the aid of an unruly sandestin (are there any other kind?), he travels back in time to unravel the mystery of just what has transpired and why. Of course, things aren't as simple as that and, through the course of the story, Rhialto must contend with several temporally-based plots and counter-plots in order to get to the bottom of it all.

The final story, the aforementioned "Morreion," is a terrific story that involves the journey of Rhialto and his fellows to the literal edge of the universe in search of a former colleague who disappeared some time ago while seeking out the source of the much-coveted IOUN stones. Though a good story in itself, what makes it stand out is Vance's fanciful conception of magical space travel, in which the wizards use their powers to transport an entire palace into the outer dark. Part whimsy, part brilliance, the third story of Rhialto the Marvellous presents a vision of extraterrestrial exploration that I find very compelling and one that I can't help but wish D&D had adopted more fully. You can see glimmers of it in Gygax's conception of the Astral Plane, I think, and there's even a touch of it in -- believe it or not -- Spelljammer but neither really quite does justice to what Vance has concocted in "Morreion."

Overall, I have mixed feelings about Rhialto the Marvellous. There's no doubt that it contains some of Vance's best and most humorous prose. The interactions between the immensely powerful and self-absorbed wizards is priceless and almost worth the price of admission alone. With the exception of "Morreion," though, I can't say that the stories themselves particularly engaged me, with "Fader's Waft" being notably tedious at times. But perhaps the stories themselves aren't the point so much as Vance's luxurious prose and skill in producing dialog at once beautiful and vapid. If nothing else, the book is great inspiration for a campaign involving powerful magic-users in a decadent and dying world.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Dying Earth

Caricatures of my position to the contrary, I don't believe there's a single "key" to understanding Dungeons & Dragons, especially in its original (1974) form. The game's inspirations are diverse and it is, in many ways, more than the sum of its parts. That said, it's hard for me not to look upon Jack Vance's 1950 short story collection The Dying Earth as a significant part of the foundation upon which Dave Arneson and (especially) Gary Gygax built their game more than 35 years ago. I'm not just referring to D&D's spell system, which is sometimes called "Vancian," often by those who've never bothered to read a word of Vance. No, the influence of this collection goes far beyond its quasi-scientific approach to magic and recognizing that is, I think, an important step in understanding what D&D was like at its inception.

The Dying Earth contains six short stories that share a common setting and a few characters. The setting is our world untold millennia in the future, when the sun hangs large and red in the sky, and human civilization has risen and fallen many times, leaving behind a decaying, decadent remnant of its former glory. In this time, magic exists in the form of a hundred spells -- formerly a thousand or more -- that generations of wizards have researched and perfected into a canon of sorcery. These spells work reliably; despite their arcane names, they're effectively a kind of technology. But they're a technology the knowledge of whose principles are slowly fading from the world, as fewer and fewer people, even mages, truly understand magic. Unsurprisingly, seeking out the eldritch knowledge and treasures of bygone ages is a significant pastime for latter day sorcerers and their companions.

The Dying Earth is written in a "high" voice, echoes of which you can certainly hear in Gary Gygax's own style. Vance uses well-chosen vocabulary to impart both awe and pomposity to his far-future setting. I also think it lends a fairy tale quality to the short stories in this collection, which only further enhances its charm. Consequently, some will no doubt find these stories stilted at times, with protagonists that veer toward being primarily archetypes rather than fully-fleshed out characters. I think that's a fair criticism, especially when one compares The Dying Earth to some of Vance's later work, but, at the same time, I'm certain that Vance wrote these stories in this fashion with a definite goal in mind. He intended them to have an almost formal feel to them; it's a clever way of elevating what are, at base, just rousing good pulp fantasies, a fact Vance himself subtly acknowledges through his trenchant use of humor throughout.

But, in the end, what remains most entrancing about The Dying Earth is not so much the specifics of its characters, plots, or even setting, though all of them are fascinating. Rather, it's that this book represents an example of mainstream pre-Tolkienian fantasy. This book predates the release of The Lord of the Rings, a novel that had such a profound impact on nearly everything that followed in its wake that one really must divide the history of the literary genre into "pre-Tolkien" and "post-Tolkien" ages. (Yes, I am well aware that The Hobbit was released in 1937, but its influence on later literature was negligible, unlike its successor.)

The kind of fantasy we see here -- whimsical, picaresque, weird -- is something we don't see much of anymore, whereas, once upon a time, it was the default assumption. The kind of wild and woolly approach to fantasy that The Dying Earth evinces is what D&D has always done well, whereas the more serious, elegaic tone of Tolkien isn't in my opinion a particularly good fit with the game. If you read through the LBBs, certainly there are references to Tolkien; indeed, I suspect he's the author whose actual name is used most throughout. Nevertheless, I think the "soul" of the game is more likely to be found in Jack Vance's The Dying Earth, a setting where the venal and heroic alike venture forth into ancient sites and otherworldly realms in search of wealth, knowledge, power, and, occasionally, often in spite of themselves, something even more meaningful -- just like a good D&D campaign.

A Challenge

My namesake over at Lamentations of the Flame Princess has issued a challenge to "name the primary influences in your personal game, so we get a flavor not of what set of rules you decide to use, but what kind of game people can expect to play with you!" I think this is a really excellent idea. One of the problems with many gaming blogs nowadays, this one included, is that they're too theoretical. There's not enough discussion of playing these games we all love so much. Don't get me wrong: I think theory is very important and I think (obviously) the history of the hobby is even more important. At the same time, we are talking about entertainments here and philosophizing about games without actually playing them is about as pointlessly decadent as I can imagine. No wonder Howard thought civilization made us soft and weak.

So, without further ado, here's a listing of the media that have had the most influence on the games I run.

1. Jack Vance's The Dying Earth series: I'd say that Vance is probably the single biggest influence on me nowadays, particular the original book and The Eyes of the Overworld (I wasn't very fond of the Rhialto the Marvelous). There are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, the books are very much in the pulp fantasy tradition. However, Vance ably modified the tradition, giving us wizards who did more than just brood in crumbling towers but who were roguish adventurers seeking gold and glory as well as knowledge. At the same time, these stories don't shy away from the notion that magic -- and knowledge generally -- comes with a cost, often a high one and it's this dark interpretation of wizardry that I find very appealing. Secondly, Vance is a terrific wordsmith, with a remarkable talent for creating a sense of the eldritch and otherworldly, mixed in with wry humor. I try very hard to create a similar atmosphere and humor is an important part of my campaigns.

2. Robert E. Howard: I'm a big fan of Howard's writings and especially of his Hyborian Age, which I have come to see as the perfect gaming setting and a model for anyone hoping to create their own swords & sorcery world. Put simply, Howard knew how to spin a good yarn. His supporting characters and antagonists are not always very well fleshed out (though they often are), but the central plots of his stories are almost uniformly engaging. Like the Hyborian Age, they're good models for how to spin dross into gold. It's that talent that I've tried to learn and employ in my own games.

3. Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar series: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are about as proto-typical a pair of "adventurers" as any in fantasy literature. Believably drawn and personally attractive, these rogues are exactly what I think of when I think of player characters. Like Howard, Leiber could spin a good yarn but his stories have a psychological complexity often lacking in Howard
and they share with Vance a sardonic and sometimes bawdy humor that is a necessary leaven for the general darkness of his setting. I'm actually fairly uncomfortable with bawdiness, so such things rarely appear in my games, but I have to admit that I wish it were otherwise, not because I want to appeal to my inner 15 year-old, but because I think it's an integral part of pulp fantasy. I look to Leiber for inspiration in this regard, even though I haven't yet figured out how to incorporate this genre element into my own games in a way that feels suitable as my element rather than someone else's.

4. Clark Ashton Smith: Smith is one of my favorite authors. I am very fond of his Averoigne and Zothique cycles, both of which combine romanticism, melancholy, and dark humor to amazing effect. As I get older, I find my love for Smith grows more and more and, though subtle, many of his themes, particularly laments for the past, have started to find their way into my games.

5. Westerns: The Western is the quintessential American myth, so it's little wonder that it has had an influence over the development of fantasy roleplaying. The idea of a party of rootless wanderers who defend civilization despite the fact -- or perhaps because -- they cannot be a part of it is a powerful one. The "necessary barbarian" embodied in the gunslinger archetype is the default for many campaigns and it's certainly one to which I turn again and again. Conan, of course, was such a character and Howard's "Beyond the Black River" is a Western in everything but name.

6. H.P. Lovecraft: I'm a huge Lovecraft geek and I've been known to say that I think he'd have met with more success as a writer if he'd have used his Cthulhu Mythos as the basis for pulp fantasies than for modern day weird tales. I know very well why Lovecraft didn't do this, but I can't shake the feeling that the combination of sword & sorcery and eldritch horror is a winning one. So, while I call Lovecraft an influence, most of what I take from him is his skill at creating ancient terrors and Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. I'm not sure anything I've ever done in my games is truly Lovecraftian in an academic sense, but he was often in the back of my mind and I must acknowledge that debt.

7. Gary Gygax: I would be remiss if I didn't list the Dungeon Master himself as an influence on my games. There's really no way to judge how large Gary looms in my imagination and almost all of the influences I've already listed are things I discovered because of him and the glorious Appendix N of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide. My games are full of Gygaxian flourishes, from names to quasi-historical pedantry to gleeful theft of any idea adaptable to fantasy no matter what its origin. And of course Gygax taught me how to have fun with RPGs, a lesson I hope everyone of my games has taken to heart.

I'll have the first of several posts about art later.

Pulp Fantasy Library: The Eyes of the Overworld

I've always strongly associated the works of Jack Vance with those of Gary Gygax. Not only did D&D's co-creator readily admit to the huge debt the game owed to those works, but I hear Vancian echoes in the cadences of High Gygaxian. Gary was flattered by such comparisons, given his great regard for the author of The Dying Earth, but felt his own unique writing style couldn't hold a candle to that of Vance. Even so, these two writers had many points of commonality, not least of all their liking for roguish characters and appreciation for sardonic humor (a trait they also shared with Clark Ashton Smith).

These points of commonality are particularly in evidence in The Eyes of the Overworld, the 1966 novel that introduces Cugel the Clever, perhaps the best known character from The Dying Earth series. Cugel is a silver-tongued thief, who fancies himself a member of the natural aristocracy, a man whose intellect and refinements are far above those of most other men, thereby entitling him to anything his wits can win, regardless of the means by which they do so. Of course, Cugel is no such thing, being at best a semi-successful con man, brigand, and philanderer who falls prey to the wiles of others at least as often as the reverse. And therein lies the character's charm -- his fallibility. Cugel is certainly far from a hero, as his often despicable actions make plain, but neither is he an admirable anti-hero, a character whom we respect precisely because he challenges the status quo. Cugel is, in my opinion, a very human character and his vicissitudes are generally self-inflicted, brought on by a combination of bravado and concupiscence; he suffers as much as he benefits from his trickery. To call him a "lovable rogue" is not to do him proper justice, but the phrase will have to suffice as short hand for describing just why I was attracted to rather than repulsed by Cugel.

The Eyes of the Overworld is a Picaresque novel that follows Cugel on a quest to find an item called an Eye of the Overworld. The Eye is a magical purple gemstone that, when worn as part of a pair, provides the wearer with a sublime vision of the world, one that turns shacks into mansions and hags into goddesses. Cugel must find the Eye as part of a bargain with the powerful wizard Iucounu, into whose home he had broken and by whom he'd been caught. Rather than slay the would-be burglar, Iucounu places an alien being inside Cugel's body. This creature, called Firx, possesses many hook-like appendages with which he can internally "encourage" Cugel to keep his mind on his appointed task. The wizard then sends Cugel to a far-away land and the main plot of the novel begins, with Cugel simultaneously trying to undertake his mission and extricate himself from it. While doing so, he encounters many amusing characters, strange sights, and demonstrates again and again that he is neither respectable nor trustworthy -- nor as clever as he believes himself to be.

Cugel, along with the Gray Mouser, was almost certainly one of the inspirations behind the thief character class. Reading this book gives one a slightly different perspective on the thief. Cugel may be a lovable in some sense, but Vance never lets the reader forget that he's also a selfish, lying coward whose greed, lust, and general viciousness rain misfortune down upon him as much as those he swindles. The Eyes of the Overworld is too humorous to merit being called "dark" and yet there is more than a touch of darkness to it, as there often is with Vance's best works. I think that's part of its appeal: it superbly juxtaposes wit and moral turpitude in ways that provide genuine insight into the baser natures of human beings, all the while never forgetting that it's a fantasy adventure story whose primary purpose is to entertain. It's rare to find an author able to produce a novel of this sort, especially one that isn't "heavy" or didactic, while being humorous, but Vance has done so and I appreciate it greatly.

Wyst: Alastor 1716

Though Jack Vance is probably best known among fans of roleplaying games for his works of fantasy, such as his The Dying Earth and its sequels, his works of science fiction are every bit as remarkable, filled with the same memorable characters, imaginative locales, and wild reversals of fortune that are the hallmarks of his long career as a writer.  

During the 1970s, Vance wrote three science fiction novels set in an area of human-colonized space known as the Alastor Cluster. The third of these, Wyst: Alastor 1716, follows the travels of a restless young man who enters and wins an art contest, the prize for which gives him a round-trip ticket to any world in the Cluster he chooses, along with some spending money. The young man chooses Wyst, whose society is governed by the philosophy of "egalism" that decrees that every person is equal to every other – with somewhat predictable results. Like so many of Vance's works, Wyst is thus equal parts adventure story and satire.

I mention this all because Sword Fish Islands, the company behind the excellent Hot Springs Island, has published an illustrated, fine press version of Wyst: Alastor 1716 in cooperation with Spatterlight Press, which preserves and promotes Jack Vance's literary legacy. Sword Fish Islands very kindly asked me to write the afterword to this edition, which touches on, among other things, the role Vance's stories played in inspiring many of the earliest creators of roleplaying games, particularly Gary Gygax.

If you're a fan of well made, limited editions of classic literature, you might find this lovely new edition of Wyst to your liking.  

Pulp Fantasy Library: Nifft the Lean

Michael Shea first came to the attention of the world of fantasy literature in 1974, when he wrote A Quest for Simbilis, a novel that began its existence as a pastiche of The Eyes of the Overworld but was actually granted status as an authorized sequel by Jack Vance himself. Though eventually displaced and de-canonized by the appearance of Cugel's Saga, A Quest for Simbilis was nevertheless well received, establishing Shea as a master of description and mood. Despite this early success, aside from a few short stories, Shea didn't produce another novel for nearly a decade, until Nifft the Lean appeared in 1982.

Nifft the Lean is not set in the Dying Earth, but there's no denying that there are more than a few connections between it and Vance's famous setting. For one, it's setting seems to be a world that may or may not be a future version of the Earth, eons after the fall of our current civilization, after magic, gods, and demons -- or at least seemingly magical, god-like, and demon-like things -- have returned. For another, the book's eponymous protagonist is a ne'er-do-well on the make. Also like The Dying Earth, Nifft the Lean isn't really a novel so much as a collection of four short stories. Granted, each of these short stories features Nifft in another adventure, but each can be read independently of the others and there is no overarching story connecting them.

I suppose one could make the argument that the book is really a picaresque novel, especially since Shea presents these short stories as a series of reminiscences by a friend of Nifft, a scholar by the name of Shag Margold. Margold speaks in a pedantic, persnickety fashion as befits his role and reports to the reader that Nifft is dead and thus the stories that follow are his recollections of his friend's adventures, as told to him by Nifft himself and others, which is why they are told in the first person. This admission allows Shea to spin what might very well be tall tales rather than the unalloyed truth, which, given the nature of a couple of the book's integral stories, would explain a lot. Furthermore, Margold stresses that he was not present during any of these adventures and has had to rely solely on others for accounts of what occurred.

The first story in the collection concerns Nifft's attempt to bring a living man into the underworld at the behest of the spirit of the lover whom the man has betrayed. In return, Nifft has been promised the key to a wizard's mansion, where untold wealth is said to lie. To win his reward is no easy task. The second story involves a journey into a dangerous swamp in order to harvest black swamp pearls that grow on the bodies of deadly polyps native to the morass. Naturally, Nifft has a plan designed to make acquiring the pearls easier for him. The third story sees Nifft and his companion being falsely arrested and, in order to escape the penalties imposed on them for their "crimes," must rescue son of a rich man, who has been abducted by an inhabitant of the Demon Sea. This story is by far the longest in the book and it shows, dragging on to the point of tedium in places. The fourth and final story involves Nifft in an attempt to save a city from the collapse of a nearby mountain whose foundations have been weakened due to over-mining.

Nifft the Lean is an uneven book, but it's still a fairly engaging one. As I noted above, Michael Shea possesses a superb command of description and mood. His characters and, to a lesser extent, his plots are a bit shallow, or at least more straightforward than one might expect of an author whose debut novel was a sequel to The Eyes of the Overworld. Shea is no Vance but I think he can favorably be compared to Clark Ashton Smith, whose best tales achieve their brilliance more by the evocation of a mood than by tight plotting or deep characterization. That's not to say that Nifft the Lean is purely an exercise in mood creation, because all of its integral stories are fairly satisfying pulp tales, despite their flaws. Moreover, Shea has a very vivid imagination: his inhuman monsters and otherworlds are memorably weird, which makes this book well worth a read by any fan of fantasy literature. Shea may be no Vance but he nevertheless offers more of interest than many more well known fantasy authors, particularly if your tastes tend toward the dark and outré.

sha-Arthan Appendix N (Part I)

Last week, I pointed out a "problem" with Gary Gygax's Appendix N, namely, it's just a list without any explanatory apparatus, unlike its counterpart in the original RuneQuest. As I explained in that post, this is far from a damning criticism – Appendix N remains an invaluable guide to excellent fantasy and science fiction stories – but it does limit its utility in trying to understand Gygax's own thought processes as he created both D&D and AD&D. 

That's why I decided I'd do things differently in Secrets of sha-Arthan. Rather than simply include a lengthy list of all the books (and games) that had had even the tiniest influence over my own work on SoS, I'd instead present a smaller, more focused list, along with commentary on precisely what I'd taken from each source. The goal is not merely to honor my inspirations, but also to aid anyone who picks up the game in understanding where I'm coming from. 

The list, like the game itself, is still in a state of low-level flux. I've purposefully narrowed the list to just four authors, each of which wrote a series of multiple stories within those series. By keeping the list focused on those whose influence is strongest and most clear, I hope that I'll do a better job than Gygax of "showing my cards," creatively speaking. Obviously, other authors and books have inspired me, too, but their inspiration has been more limited. Rather than muddy the waters, I've stuck only with whose influence is most clear.

Burroughs, Edgar Rice: The influence of Edgar Rice Burroughs over the subsequent history of fantasy cannot be underestimated. His Barsoom novels in particular have played a huge role in establishing the broad outlines of that genre and the stories and characters that inhabit it. Everything from building a unique setting, with its own history and geography to populating it with all manner of exotic cultures and beasts to even presenting an alien vocabulary, it's all there in A Princess of Mars, a book not much read today but that I have come to love more the older I get.

In creating sha-Arthan, I often looked to Barsoom and Amtor for inspiration, particularly in my conception of the creatures that dwell upon it. Furthermore, the Ironian language is intended to be reminiscent of the Martian tongue as invented by Burroughs. I also imagine adventures in the True World to be swashbuckling affairs, filled with perilous danger, narrow escapes, and feats of derring-do, just like the delightful novels of ERB.

Smith, Clark Ashton: Of all the writers whose work graced the pages of Weird Tales during the Golden Age of the Pulps, Clark Ashton Smith remains my favorite by far. His examination of the dangers of egotism and the ever-present risk of divine punishment combine with his black humor and imaginative dreamscapes to produce some of the most inventive – and often terrifying – fiction of the first half of the 20th century. Though I am fond of all his story cycles, it's those set in Zothique, Earth's last continent untold eons in the future, that I find most compelling.

There's more than a little of Zothique in sha-Arthan. Its ancient history, selfish sorcerers, and otherworldly daimons are all directly inspired by CAS. Smith's baroque and archaic vocabulary have likewise influenced the nomenclature and general tone of my writing about the setting. Though sha-Arthan is not as dark (or darkly humorous) as Zothique, it does possess some of the latter's world-weariness,

Tierney, Richard L.: Secrets of sha-Arthan takes a lot of inspiration from the late Hellenistic and early Roman eras. That's a period of history that's always fascinated me, so that's no surprise. It's also the time period covered by the Simon of Gitta historical fantasies of Richard L. Tierney, some of whose stories I've discussed in the past.   

Tierney's stories deftly combine real world history and beliefs, particularly those relating to Gnosticism, with an unusual interpretation of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and swashbuckling adventure. This combination of elements is both unique and appealing to someone of my interests, which is why I consider the Simon of Gitta tales to be among the most important influences on my development of sha-Arthan as a RPG setting. 

Vance, Jack: Rounding out this quartet of inspirational authors is Jack Vance, creator of The Dying Earth and its sequels, all of which have, to varying degrees, influenced sha-Arthan, though the original 1950 fix-up novel remains the most important. Like Smith's Zothique stories, I've looked to Vance for ideas about ancient, forgotten history, venal wizards, and cruel, otherworldly beings. However, the single most significant idea I've taken from Vance is that of secret science fiction, which is to say, an ostensibly fantasy setting that is, beneath the surface, based on scientific (or pseudo-scientific) principles. That's a big part of sha-Arthan and its eponymous secrets. 

In Part II, I'll talk about the other roleplaying games that have influenced the development of Secrets of sha-Arthan. For obvious historical reasons, this is something Gygax could never have done. However, I've played enough RPGs over the years that there's no question they've had as much of an impact on my thoughts about sha-Arthan as has fantasy literature. Revealing just what I've taken from them is, I think, every bit as important as revealing my literary inspirations.

White Dwarf: Issue #74

Issue #74 of White Dwarf (February 1986) sports a cover by American conic book artist, Frank Brunner, who's probably best known for his work on Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella, as well as his covers for Marvel's Savage Sword of Conan and Red Sonja. The issue also marks the point where Ian Livingstone hands over day-to-day editorial duties to Ian Marsh. Livingstone states that he is not "deserting the magazine" and will still "be keeping a benevolent eye on the progress of [his] eight-year-old love-child" in his new capacity as Editor-in-Chief. Despite his reassurances, this nevertheless feels like a turning point in the history of White Dwarf.

Case in point: the issue kicks off with "Superpower" by Bruce Hollands, which is an extensive look at the Games Workshop-published boardgame of the same name. Like the look at Warrior Knights from the previous issue, this article, while informative, nevertheless feels more like an extended advertisement for a GW product than a "real" article. That may be an unfair judgment on my part, but reading it convinced me that the oft-discussed transformation of White Dwarf into a full-on house organ of Games Workshop was not far in the future.

Countering that worry is "Open Box," which only reviewed one GW product this issue, the Call of Cthulhu scenario Night in Norway, which scores 7 out of 10. Also reviewed is Dragon Warriors and two of its supplements (The Way of Wizardry and The Elven Crystals), which collectively earn 9 out of 10. After all these years, I've still never read Dragon Warriors, which people whose opinions I respect tell me is well worth a look. The historical RuneQuest supplement Vikings gets 8 out of 10, while Oriental Adventures for AD&D receives 9 out of 10. The Pendragon Campaign, the predecessor to the well regarded The Boy King, is similarly well regarded, earning 9 out of 10. The column wraps up with a look at two different scenarios for use with FASA's Star Trek, The Outcasts and Termination 1456, both of which are judged perfect (10 out of 10). 

Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" generally vexes me, but this issue's column at least looks at a few books I know and have read, like Jack Vance's Planet of Adventure series. Langford quite correctly recognizes the value of these books and of Vance more generally

The good stuff lies in Tschai's rich scents and colours, and in elaboration of style. No Vance villain would say 'I'll get you for that.' Instead: 'Low-grade assassins will drown you in cattle excrement! Twenty pariahs will drub your corpse! A cur will drag your head along the street by your tongue!'

Langford's byline reappears under "The Power of the Frog," a science fiction short story about a human junior military officer held prisoner by an alien race. Like all of Langford's previous short stories, this one is both brief and amusing. It's clear the man has talent, which is why I sometimes feel bad at the lack of interest his book review column elicits. Truthfully, I wish he had contributed more fiction to White Dwarf. 

"Terror at Trollmarsh" is an AD&D adventure for 4th–5th-level characters by Peter and Janet Vialls. I really enjoyed this one, which takes the form of a murder mystery with fantasy/horror elements. A monster is stalking the halls of Baron Uther Torgrim, killing his servants, and it's up to the players to figure out just what is really going on. While the overall concept is a standard, even clichéd one, the authors handle it well, giving the referee an interesting, well mapped out environment, an array of compelling NPCs, and a culprit with clear, understandable motives. "Terror at Trollmarsh" is nothing revolutionary, but, like all good scenarios, it gives players lots of "moving parts" with which to interact as they grapple with its central mystery.

"A Company of Wolves" by Peter Blanchard looks at lycanthropy in AD&D from both a game and folkloric perspective. The article doesn't offer much in the way of new rules mechanics, which I appreciate, focusing instead on "social" aspects of this magical curse, which is to say, how it might function in a fantasy setting, including its advantages and drawbacks. "The Hide of the Ancestor" by Chris Watson is a short RuneQuest scenario about the recovery of a relic holy to the twenty-six tribes of the Ithillian-Fane, a race of lion-centaurs. I find it oddly refreshing to read a RQ adventure set in Glorantha whose author feels comfortable enough with the setting to his own creations, like the Ithillian-Fane to it. Too often settings like Glorantha – and Tékumel and Hârn and ... – are treated as inviolable to the point that no one is even willing to play in them, lest they "do it wrong." That's nonsense in my opinion, which is why I delight in scenarios like "The Hide of the Ancestor."

"Gentlemen and Players" by Richard Edwards and Chris Elliott is nice little article about creating British characters for use with Call of Cthulhu. As its title suggests, the article focuses on the creation of "gentlemen" (or aristocratic amateurs) and "players" (professional sportsmen). "Hitting the Right Note" by Ian Berridge presents information on musical instruments, their use, and the how to learn to play them for use with AD&D. Articles like this are godsends to those whose campaigns would benefit from such fine details – and absolutely useless to those whose campaigns wouldn't. 

"Alternative Origins" by Ian Thomson is a collection of random tables for use with Games Workshop's Golden Heroes. The tables are intended to replace those presented in the game for character generation in order to produce more "convincing" heroes whose powers are an incompatible jumble. This makes good sense to me, but then I haven't looked at a copy of Golden Heroes in decades, so it's hard for me to judge how useful this article would be. Elsewhere, Joe Dever offers part three of his look at "Dioramas," accompanied by some lovely – though non-diorama – photographs of painted miniatures.

The issue also includes more "Thrud the Barbarian," a full-page "Gobbledigook," and "The Travellers," which continues its Shadows-inspired plotline. I particularly enjoyed the latter, especially this bit:

Of course, I've always been fond of the way that "The Travellers" blends Traveller-specific humor with more general lampoonery of roleplaying games, so I may be biased. In any case, it's nice to see that one of my favorite comics remains as amusing ever, even if White Dwarf as a whole looks to be on the verge of some monumental – and not entirely pleasing – changes.

Jack Vance in the New York Times

Thanks to everyone who pointed me toward this article about Jack Vance from the New York Times. The article includes both an assessment of his work by other authors and critics and an interview with Vance himself, all of which is quite fascinating, especially if you're a fan of his work, as I am. Once I finish up my current reading, I think I'll be re-reading all of his tales of The Dying Earth, since it's been a while since I did so.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Cugel's Saga

Jack Vance's sequel to 1966's The Eyes of the Overworld was published in 1983 -- too late for Gary Gygax to have included it in Appendix N. Nevertheless, there's little doubt that Cugel's Saga, like its predecessors, is a "D&D novel," which is to say, a novel whose characters and plot, such as it is, reflect the rambling picaresque nature I strongly associate with the campaigns of my youth. Granted, Vance's characterizations, to say nothing of his dialog, far exceed anything I ever created in those bygone days, but the fact remains that, of all the Dying Earth books, this is the one that reminds me most of the perpetually down on their luck ne'er-do-wells that populated games of yore, not just in my own campaigns but in those of my friends.

Cugel's Saga has a vaguely Sisyphean quality to it, as the title character begins the novel trying once again to make his way home to Almery after having been outwitted by Iucounu the Laughing Magician -- exactly the same predicament in which found himself in The Eyes of the Overworld. This time, though, Cugel seems even more determined to exact his revenge upon Iucounu, along the way acquiring both items and accomplices that he hopes will enable him to achieve his ultimate goal. Consequently, this novel feels somewhat different than its predecessor, even though the overall plot -- more like a collection of vignettes really -- is roughly identical.

To my mind, Cugel's Saga feels somewhat dark, though not nearly as dark as The Dying Earth. Part of that may be because his failures do not sit well with Cugel, making him ever more intent on giving Iucouno his comeuppance. Consequently, Cugel comes across, to me anyway, as a bit more despicable and self-interested than he was in The Eyes of the Overworld -- a fairly impressive feat. He's still amusingly foppish, vain, and convinced of his own natural superiority, but there's a single-mindedness to him now that casts some of his actions in deeper shadow. That's not to say the novel is not humorous, since it is, uproariously so in places. Rather, I wish to point out that, just as The Eyes of the Overworld has a different literary "texture" than does The Dying Earth, despite being set in the same world, so too does Cugel's Saga feel different than The Eyes of the Overworld, despite focusing on the same character.

Nevertheless, Cugel's Saga offers nearly everything you'd expect from Jack Vance at the height of his powers. If the book has a weakness, it's the ending, but then one doesn't read picaresques like this one for the ending; it's the journey along the way that's the true story.

Appendix N 2.0

Appendix N gets a lot of play round here, as I consider it an important key to understanding Gary Gygax's vision of Dungeons & Dragons. Recently, I've been reading Gary's Mythus RPG, with special attention given to volume 2 of that game, Mythus Magick (possession of which I owe to Norman Harman -- thank you). In the end of that weighty tome, Gygax included a section of the bibliography entitled "General Fantasy Fiction Reading by Author," which lists the "author's favorite authors or inspirational sources."

This list is slightly different than the one included in the Dungeon Masters Guide, being somewhat more extensive. It's also noteworthy in that Gygax includes one or more asterisks after several authors' names, An asterisk denotes "a particularly high recommendation," with more asterisks indicating greater fondness than those with fewer (or no) asterisks. Let's take a look at the authors included in the Mythus Magick list (which dates from 1992, thirteen years after the publication of the DMG). Bolded entries indicate authors not found in the DMG list. Asterisks are as presented in Mythus Magick.

• Abbey, Lynn
• Anderson, Poul ****
• Anthony, Piers ****
• Asprin, Robert
• Barker, M.A.R.
• Bellairs, John
• Brackett, Leigh
• Brooks, Terry
• Burroughs, Edgar Rice
• Carter, Lin
• Chalker, Jack L.
• Cherryh, C.J.
• de Camp, L. Sprague
• de Camp, L. Sprague & Pratt, Fletcher ****
• Eddings, David
• Farmer, Phillip J.
• Fox, Gardner
• Gardner, Craig Shaw
• Gygax, Gary
  
• Haggard, H. Rider ***
• Hambly, Barbara
• Hickman, Tracy & Weiss, Margaret
• Howard, Robert E. *****
  
• Lanier, Sterling ***
• Leiber, Fritz ***
• McCaffrey, Anne
• Merritt, A. *****
• Moore, C.L.
• Moorcock, Michael ****
• Offutt, Andrew J.
• Pratchett, Terry
• Saberhagen, Fred ****
• St. Clair, Margaret
• Sims, John
• Springer, Nancy
• Stasheff, Christopher
• Stewart, Mary
• Tolkien, J.R.R.
• Vance, Jack ****
• Wagner, Karl
• Weinbaum, Stanley
• Williamson, Jack
• Weiss, Margaret
• Zelazny, Roger ****

Comparing the two lists is an interesting exercise. The 1992 list includes a great many more -- mostly lesser, in my opinion -- authors but most of those authors seem to have had little influence on Gygax. In the DMG, he claims that "the most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, REH, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, HPL, and A. Merritt." In the new list, de Camp & Pratt (who are always linked), REH, Leiber, Vance, and Merritt all still rank highly in his estimation, while Lovecraft is entirely absent (an oversight perhaps?), along with Frederic Brown, August Derleth, Lord Dunsany, Andre Norton, and Manly Wade Wellman.

On the other hand, Poul Anderson, Piers Anthony, H. Rider Haggard, Sterling Lanier, Michael Moorcock, Fred Saberhagen, and Roger Zelazny have all been elevated to the level of significant influences on him. Some of these names make sense to me. I have always felt that Anderson's influence was overlooked, in part becaue Moorcock's reformulation of his Law vs. Chaos scheme is more widely known among gamers. Likewise, I grow ever more convinced that H. Rider Haggard and other Victorian adventure writers were a seminal and unacknowledged influence on D&D. The others strike me as a bit odd but Gygax has been consistent in naming them as influences, so perhaps I'm merely missing obvious points of contact between their literary output and Gygax's fantasies.

The only name missing from the 1992 list that I expected to be there is Glen Cook, whom Gygax had championed as providing a terrific literary model for D&D since his Black Company appeared in 1984. Like Lovecraft, I suspect this is an oversight rather than a deliberate omission. It's also worth noting that Gygax includes his own name along with those other fantasy authors, which can be interpreted as arrogance, a wry joke, or even a commentary on the extent to which Gygax, like D&D itself, came to be chasing his own tail when it came to creativity.

Pulp Fantasy Library: City of the Chasch

Reflecting on the primary literary inspirations of Dungeons & Dragons, one does not often hear Jack Vance's "Planet of Adventure" series mentioned. This is odd, as Gary Gygax frequently made mention of these stories in his recollections of his Greyhawk campaign. Indeed, he makes explicit reference to the stories in the Dungeon Masters Guide and notes that they could be used as models for adventures by the enterprising referee in his own campaign. The series began in 1968 with the novel, City of the Chasch, and continued through three more books published between '68 and 1970.

City of the Chasch tells the tale of two scouts sent from Earth to investigate a mysterious signal sent from a world some 200 light years away. When the scouts arrive at their destination, their spacecraft is attacked by a torpedo from the planet's surface. The scouts, named Adam Reith and Paul Waunder, escape the destruction of their craft in a smaller vessel, which is itself damaged in the attack. Nevertheless, they manage to eject from the smaller vessel and land in a forest on the world below.

To their surprise, Reith and Waunder discover that the planet is inhabited by humans of a primitive sort, some of whom are attracted to the crash site. While stuck in a tree and unable to get down, Reith watches these humans arrive and kill Waunder, as well as the arrival of not one but two other groups of human, both of which seem to be slaves of different alien races, the blue-skinned Chasch and the tall, thin Dirdir. The wreckage of his ship hauled away by the Chasch and their "Chaschmen" slaves, Reith is eventually "rescued" by Onmale Traz, whose own tribe of humans makes him a slave.

While among this tribe, Reith learns a little more about this strange planet, which is called Tschai. Tschai is home to several alien species, each of which uses humans as slaves in their seemingly-eternal war against one another for dominance. Reith becomes convinced that these humans had been kidnapped from Earth some time in the distant past and, therefore, the aliens pose a threat to his home. Fortunately for him, Traz comes to like and trust him and aids him in escaping the tribe before its magician-leaders castrate him as punishment for his lack of docility.

Once free, Reith and Traz join a caravan that is traveling across Tschai, going from city to city. This enables the pair to visit many strange locales and meet many people, thereby pushing the story forward, as Reith attempts to find his stolen ship, repair it, and escape from Tschai. Of course, things are not quite so simple, as Reith soon learns, and it will in fact take several more books his adventures are resolved. Of course, like most Jack Vance stories, City of the Chasch is a picaresque; the journey is more important than the destination. And also like most Jack Vance stories, the tale is told engagingly, filled with exotic vista, bizarre situations, and fascinatingly quirky characters. It's a very fun read that reminiscent of many earlier sword-and-planet stories and yet still possessed of its own unique flavor. I heartily recommend it and its sequels if you've never had the chance to read them.

My Top 10 Favorite D&D Magic Items (Part II)

Part I is here. 

5. Portable Hole

One of the strengths of Dungeons & Dragons is that its conception of fantasy is quite broad, drawing not merely on the works of pulp fantasy, but also, in the words of Gary Gygax, on "countless hundreds of comic books ... [s]cience fiction, fantasy, and horror movies ... fairy tales ... books of mythology ... bestiaries ... compilations of the myths of various peoples" – and, if the portable hole is any indication, Looney Tunes cartoons as well! This is a terrific example of a magic item that is both genuinely useful and fun and I wish there were more like it in the game.

4. Wand of Wonder

I love a little bit of randomness and unpredictability in my games. The wand of wonder brings them in spades. Every time this magic item is used, percentile dice are rolled to determine which of nearly twenty different effects occur: anything from summoning a rhino (or a mouse) to a stream of 600 butterflies pouring forth to a fireball – and more. This is another fun item, one that I've enjoyed seeing used in play many, many times over the years. 

3. Ioun Stones

This is a double cheat, I suppose, since it's both a collection of related items and not original to Dungeons & Dragons, since ioun stones first appeared in the work of Jack Vance. Of course, these facts are a big part of why I so love ioun stones. Like figurines of wondrous power, the variety of the stones is a point in their favor. The same is true of their Vancian origins, since Vance is one of my favorite Appendix N authors (and Gygax's too). Consequently, I've included numerous ioun stones in my campaigns over the years and imagine I will continue to do so in the future.

2. Bag of Holding

I almost placed this in my number 1 spot, since it's one of those magic items that has appeared in nearly every D&D campaign I've run or played in since 1979. The reason I didn't is that the bag of holding is a thoroughly gamey magic item, one that exists almost entirely to circumvent a very common problem, namely, how to lug around large amounts of gold and other treasure without becoming encumbered. There's nothing wrong with that. D&D is a game, after all, but I generally like my magic items (and monsters and spells ...) to exist largely, if not solely, for setting reasons rather than game reasons. Still, this is a great and iconic magic item and deserves to be on this list.

1. Deck of Many Things

Depending on your point of view, the deck of many things is either the most entertaining magic item in all of D&D or a Killer DM's dream come true. In my opinion, it's both, at least potentially so – and that's why I've given it the top spot on my list. I can think of no other magic item that simultaneously elicits both greed and terror in players. The potential rewards for drawing a "good" card are great, as are the dangers of drawing a "bad" one. The discovery of a deck of many things in a treasure hoard is practically an adventure unto itself, as players tie themselves into knots trying to decide whether or not their characters should risk picking a card (or four). This is everything a good magic item should be – wondrous, dangerous, capricious.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Three Hearts and Three Lions

Appendix N includes just shy of thirty different authors whom Gary Gygax considered to have been "of particular inspiration" to him creating Dungeons & Dragons. Of these, Gygax singles out a handle for special mention: DeCamp & Pratt, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H.P. Lovecraft, and Merritt. I think it would be difficult for any fair-minded person to find fault with his selection of these authors; their direct influence on D&D (and on the wider fantasy genre) is undeniable. 

Nevertheless, there is one Appendix N author not listed among "the most direct influences upon AD&D" that I feel ought to be there – and, no, I'm not talking about J.R.R. Tolkien. That author is Poul Anderson, particularly with reference to his 1961 novel, Three Hearts and Three Lions. Anderson is generally seen as a science fiction author and understandably so, given his output in that genre, which might explain why he's often overlooked compared to Howard or Leiber or Vance when it comes to seminal D&D inspirations. If you look more closely at his fantasy works, however, I think it becomes harder to deny his direct influence on the game.

More than a decade ago, I wrote a very brief post about Three Hearts and Three Lions. While that post references many of the novel's major connections to Dungeons & Dragons, I thought it worthwhile to return to it at greater length in this post, focusing not just on those connections but on more of the details of its story. Like many older works of fantasy, starting with Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars, Three Hearts and Three Lions is presented as "true" account of the adventures of its protagonist, as told to the author of the book. In this case, the protagonist is a Danish engineer named Holger Carlsen, who had come to the United States as a university student sometime before World War II. Though enamored of America and intending to stay there, the invasion of his homeland by the Nazis in 1940 awakened in him a patriotic fervor that, within a year, resulted in his returning to Europe to join the resistance in Denmark. 

Carlsen fought in the resistance for a couple of years, evading capture and dealing significant blows to the Nazi war effort. In 1943, he helped Niels Bohr to escape to Sweden and, ultimately, to safety. This endeavor, however, brought him face to face with the Nazis, who shoot him in the head. He blacks out and awakens some time later in a place that is at once familiar but not. Like John Carter, Carlsen is naked, but it doesn't take him long to find some attire. An immense, friendly stallion (named Papillon, according to the engraving on his headstall) approached him, bearing medieval armor and weapons. The armor fits him perfectly – too perfectly – as if it were made specifically for him. His shield bears three hearts and three lions upon it, heraldry very similar to that of the coat of arms of Denmark, which has nine hearts and three lions. 

Carlsen is completely confused and begins to wonder if he is mad or dreaming. Over the course of the next several short chapters – the novel is arranged more or less as a series of vignettes – he comes to realize that, against all logic, he has somehow been transported to Denmark during the reign of Charlemagne. Even so, Carlsen is determined to find some way to return to the 20th century and enlists the aid of multiple magical beings to aid him in this. The first is Hugi the dwarf, but he is soon joined by Alianora the swanmay as well. From them, he learns much about the world to which he has been transported and it's this that is of great interest to players of D&D.

Holger got the idea that a perpetual struggle went on between primeval forces of Law and Chaos. No, not forces exactly. Modes of existence? A terrestrial reflection of the spiritual conflict between heaven and hell? In any case, humans were the chief agents on earth of Law, though most of them were so only unconsciously and some, witches and warlocks and evildoers, had sold out to Chaos. A few nonhuman beings also stood for Chaos. Ranged against them was almost the whole Middle World, which seemed to include realms like Faerie, Trollheim, and the Giants – an actual creation of Chaos. Wars among men, such as the long-drawn struggle between the Saracens and the Holy Empire, aided Chaos' under Law all men would live in peace and order and that liberty which only Law could give meaning. But this was so alien to Middle Worlders that they were forever working to prevent it and to extend their shadowy dominion.

This passage and others like it are the ultimate origins of Chainmail's alignment system, which, in turn, would become the basis for that in D&D. They're also, not coincidentally, the origins of Moorcock's own takes on Law versus Chaos from his Eternal Champion stories. Regardless of what one thinks about D&D's use of this idea, it's hard not to find Anderson's version quite compelling. Had D&D done a better job of grounding alignment in a larger, cosmic struggle, I suspect that many, if not most, of the objections to alignment in the game would evaporate (though gamers, being a querulous bunch, would still find ways to complain about it).

As the trio travel across medieval Denmark, they encounter all manner of fantastical creatures, such as elves, a giant, a dragon, and a werewolf. They also make the acquaintance of a Saracen named Carahue and a wizard called Martinus Trismegistus, both of whom provide them with aid. Throughout the story, Carlsen begins to have increasing flashes of memory. He remembers more and more about this fairytale Denmark, as if he'd been here before. In time, he realizes that he's in fact from this time and place originally and that he is in fact Holger Danske, the legendary Ogier le Danois of the Matter of France who was destined to return when Denmark most needed him. 

Three Hearts and Three Lions is a quick read, being about 150 pages in most editions. It's engagingly written and filled with lots of interesting characters and ideas. Aside from the aforementioned presentation of alignment and the swanmay, there's also the first instance of the regenerating troll in fantasy literature and Holger himself, who is a paladin both within the story and as the inspiration for the character class of the same name. There's much to enjoy here, both for fans of classic fantasy literature and archeologists of roleplaying. I wish more people were familiar with this novel.

Pulp Fantasy Library: Flashing Swords! #1

The pulp fantasy revival of the late 1960s and early 1970s is the background against which our hobby arose. It's important to remember this for a number of reasons, chief among them being that the content and style of those pulp fantasies were quite different than the latter-day fantasies that followed in their wake. The historical amnesia of this fact has, in my opinion, made it much harder for gamers not immersed in that culture to understand the early days of the hobby and the RPGs it produced.

As a genre, pulp fantasy is distinguished from other types of fantasy by its format as well as its content. The short story, the novelette, and the novella are the preferred forms of pulp fantasy fiction. While there are novels in the genre, they're fewer in number and are often little more than a collection of smaller works strung together by linking material, which is why they often have picaresque qualities that set them apart from the epics many nowadays tend to associate with fantasy. These qualities are the ones that, in my opinion, early gamers seized upon when crafting their own games and campaigns and it's the rejection of the same that led to the decline of the Old Ways.

Whatever his merits as an author in his own right, Lin Carter was one of the most important and influential editors during the pulp fantasy revival. He put together numerous collections of swords-and-sorcery literature, including the Flashing Swords! series, which ran from 1973 to 1981 and ultimately encompassed five volumes. The series included contributions from many of the prominent members of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a literary group dedicated to the promotion and popularization of the S&S genre. During its existence, the Guild presented a Gandalf Award for contributions to "heroic fantasy," which just goes to show that, at the time, the fine distinctions guys like me make weren't recognized and writers like J.R.R. Tolkien were considered as part of "the club," despite the clear difference in their content and style from authors like Leiber or Vance.

Flashing Swords! #1 consists of four novelettes. The first is a story of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser entitled "The Sadness of the Executioner." The story itself concerns Death, his role in Nehwon, and how Lankhmar's most famous pair of adventurers fit into his plans. It's a terrific story that, I think, nicely exemplifies the pulp fantasy ethos, on both a personal and a "cosmic" level. "Morreion" by Jack Vance is a tale from his "Dying Earth" series, which would later re-appear in his 1984 book, Rhialto the Marvellous. "Morreion" is particularly of interest of fantasy gamers looking for one possible way to represent "space" travel. Ioun Stones are also prominently on display here. Poul Anderson's "The Mermaid's Children" is another installment in his fantastic medieval quasi-series that includes books such as Three Hearts and Three Lions and The Broken Sword. It's just as good as its predecessors and as suffused with sadness. Rounding out the book is Lin Carter's own "The Higher Heresies of Oolimar," which is by far the weakest piece in the whole thing. If ever there were any question that Carter had no shame, it's fully on display in this silly piece, which comes across as exceedingly amateurish.

Regardless, Flashing Swords! #1 is well worth a read if you can find it. Its four stories -- yes, including Carter's -- are a very good encapsulation of the pulp fantasy revival: three-quarters genius and one-quarter hack-work. Come to think of it, that description might fit the old school movement too ...