sha-Arthan Appendix N (Part II)

In Part I of this post, I shared the four authors whose stories and settings have most influenced my development of Secrets of sha-Arthan. In this part, I'd like to share the four roleplaying games I'd single out as having played a similar role.

Empire of the Petal Throne: This one should be obvious. The mere fact that I've spent the last nine years refereeing my House of Worms campaign pretty much guaranteed EPT would be included in this list, since it's the RPG I've played the most and most consistently since my youth. However, the game shares so many elements in common with sha-Arthan – secret science fiction, ancient history, baroque societies, weird monsters – that, on some level, it'd be completely accurate to call sha-Arthan "my Tékumel." Of course, sha-Arthan isn't just that, but it owes a huge debt to Tékumel, which is one of my favorite fictional settings of all time.

Skyrealms of Jorune: This is another important secret science fiction game and one whose influence over sha-Arthan is important to acknowledge. Though I never owned, let alone played the game when it was first released, I was entranced by the ads for it that ran in the pages of Dragon magazine. Replete with the evocative artwork of Miles Teves, Jorune had a wonderfully exotic setting in the form of the titular planet, where "magic" of a sort is possible, thanks to peculiar physical laws. Likewise, its many unusual – and completely non-terrestrial – intelligent aliens and lifeforms have served as inspirations as I imagined their counterparts on sha-Arthan. Amazing stuff!

RuneQuest: Right behind Tékumel is Glorantha when it comes to my favorite fictional settings. The main things I took from RQ was its non-medieval, more Bronze Age setting and its emphasis on the importance of culture and religious cults. Indeed, the alignment system of Secrets of sha-Arthan is directly inspired by the cults of Glorantha. I've likewise borrowed a couple of other elements from the game that I thought would fit in well with the setting I was creating for my own game. Beyond that, RuneQuest impresses me with its ability to take itself seriously but not too seriously and that's something that a lesson than an old stick in the mud like me needs to be reminded of often.

Bushido: This is another RPG that stresses the importance of culture and religious beliefs and thus inspired me as I developed Secrets of sha-Arthan. While there's not much of feudal Japan's DNA in the True World, there is something of Bushido's rules in my own game, in particular those covering "downtime." Characters in Secrets of sha-Arthan can engage in training, research, intrigue, and social climbing when not traveling or exploring ancient ruins and vaults. The inclusion of these options was inspired by Bushido, which is the first game I recall having rules for these kinds of activities. While other RPGs have subsequently included them, Bushido is the game from which I first learned them.

And there you have it: the four roleplaying games whose settings and/or rules influenced me in my own work. As Picasso is reputed to have said, "Good artists borrow; great artists steal." I make no claim to being a great artist, but I thought it only right to let you know from whom I've stolen, if only so that you might be introduced to some really terrific roleplaying games well worth your time.

Elementary Particles

I can't quite recall when I first encountered the notion of the four elements. I suspect it was quite early, probably through my reading of classical mythological stories, though it's possible I learned about it from some other source. However, I vividly recall that, when I cracked open the Monster Manual for the first time in early 1980, I was almost instantly enamored of elementals. There was something powerfully, if you'll forgive the term, primal about beings composed solely of a single substance. Also, the existence of elementals and indeed the entire conception of the four elements served as a useful reminder that I wasn't in Kansas anymore. Dungeons & Dragons takes place in a pre-modern world, one not merely operating according to different laws than our own but one whose inhabitants conceive of it in a different way than we do ours.

Over the years, my interest in the elements and elementals has endured. I remember when I first read about other elemental systems, like those of the great civilizations of Asia. What particularly struck me about the latter was that many of them included a fifth element, a concept not unknown in ancient and medieval European thought but less well known in popular presentations of them. I was likewise struck by the fact that many of these non-European elemental systems included different elements, like wood or metal. As a younger person, this was eye-opening and helped me to realize that there was room for variation within the broader notion of fundamental elements.

Lately, I've been working on a science fantasy setting rooted in Burroughs, Kirby, Wolfe, Zothique, and The Dying Earth – a formerly high-tech setting brought low to the point it appears to be a weird and/or exotic fantasy world. Think Jorune or Tékumel but more immediately accessible than either. As I began to work in earnest, one of my earliest thoughts was its elemental system, which I wanted to be unique and interesting but also intelligible. The result of my cogitations is depicted in the crude image above. While I need to give it some additional thought, I'm quite pleased with the results, especially the way it interacts with the psychic powers and sorcery of the setting. If nothing else, it's different from the usual fantasy presentation of the elements and their relationships, which pleases me. 

The Ads of Dragon: Jorune

Issue #87 (July 1984) had the following ad in its pages:

While not nearly as evocative as later advertisements for Jorune, this one was nevertheless quite effective in getting me to wonder, "What the heck is Jorune?" Of course, since I didn't attend GenCon 17, I never got the chance to see a copy of the game itself, a situation I wasn't able to rectify until quite some years after it was published, by which point my initial fascination with it had subsided. Having finally read Jorune (or Skyrealms of Jorune, as it's actually titled), I'm not sure I'd have ever played the game back in the day even if I had been able to obtain a copy in 1984, but I'd have enjoyed reading it back then, too. It's a unique and fascinating setting for a "fantasy" RPG -- indeed one of the best.

Retrospective: Skyrealms of Jorune

Chances are good that, if you read Dragon during the Silver Age, you remember Skyrealms of Jorune. You never played it, of course -- I'm not sure anyone ever did -- but you certainly remember it, because it was advertised heavily in the pages of the magazine and those ads were really intriguing. I myself never even saw a copy of Jorune until sometime in the mid-90s, well after the game was first published (in 1985, I believe). When I finally did see it, I immediately understood both why the game seemed so intriguing in those ads and why I'd never met anyone who'd actually played it: an exotic, imaginative setting that employed a few too many made-up words to describe itself mated to an uninspired, clunky rules system -- a story all too common in the annals of the hobby.

By most accounts, Skyrealms of Jorune began its existence as a hack of Metamorphosis Alpha, the precursor to Gamma World. I can certainly see the connection, although the published version of Jorune presented a much more complex setting than did its source material. Jorune is the name of the first extrasolar planet humanity discovered, home to a variety of strange creatures, including the intelligent shanthas. The shanthas were at a Stone Age technological level when humanity first arrived to explore the world. The two species nevertheless negotiated treaties to allow for limited colonization by mankind. When a cataclysmic war cut the human colonists off from Earth and its supplies, possibly forever, they abrogated their treaties with the shanthas and seized more of Jorune and its resources than they were allowed by treaty. The shanthas retaliated by using a powerful force known as isho -- a strange energy field that permeates Jorune, amplified by its crystal core and which some races can tap into to create "magical" effects. Together, the humans and shanthas nearly destroyed one another and devastated the planet, leading to a millenia-long dark age that saw technology and society collapse.

The game takes place long after the war, once humanity has dragged itself back up to Medieval/Renaissance level of technology and social structure. The PCs are assumed to be humans (or one of two descendant races), seeking to become citizens of the main human state, called Burdoth. To become a citizen, one must impress enough current citizens in order to get them to sponsor you -- and one impresses them by doing all manner of errands for them, thus creating a good excuse for adventures. Jorune provides a good basis for many types of adventures, from seeking out lost Earth technology to exploring the wilderness to learning how to better manipulate isho and more. It's all very well done in my opinion, hampered somewhat by its presentation and by the fact that there's just so much going on that one can easily lose the forest for the trees.

Rules-wise, Skyrealms of Jorune was very much in keeping with Sliver Age sensibilities. It combined aspects of random rolls with player choice (such as swapping ability scores, for example) and used skills rather than character classes. Combat was complex, as were the mechanics of wielding isho. There were lots of charts and tables to consult, which contributed to the sense that Jorune was a fiddly, unnecessarily complicated game. The irony is that, while its rules were clunky, the designers seemed to expect that the game would focus more on "social" conflicts and exploration rather than combat and magical duels, if the referee's advice in the Sholari Guide is any indication.

In retrospect, Skyrealms of Jorune reminds me a lot of Empire of the Petal Throne, a game I've grown to like a great deal as I've had more exposure to it. Both focus on human descendants of interplanetary colonists whose civilization has regressed technologically and now must contend with an alien world populated by dangerous creatures and where "magic" is possible. Both even assume the PCs are unlettered bumpkins seeking citizenship as the framing device for adventuring. And both are hampered in the eyes of many by their detail and use of unfamiliar terms/languages to present their setting. I think this is a pity in both cases, but especially so in the case of Jorune, which seems not be as widely recognized for its creativity as is Professor Barker's creation. For all its faults, Skyrealms of Jorune is a memorable example of Silver Age RPG design and it deserves to be remembered.