 Goto [ Index ] |
Some Words of Non-Specific Introdution
The Demons of the Dying Earth provides a more adventurous and dangerous background for Dying Earth games than any of the material published to date. It is aimed in particular at Turjan-level play and provides suitable opponents for a demon-hunting game, motivated either by altruism or the mage’s thirst for dangerous knowledge. Readers interested in Turjan-level play are directed to my review of Turjan’s Tome of Beauty & Horror, located elsewhere in this archive.(1)
A Disclaimer for the Cynical
I received this publication for free (along with Turjan’s Tome of Beauty & Horror) for the purposes of this review.
It is worth pointing out that this is the manner in which reviews are administered the world over – Did John Ruskin pay to go to all those art galleries? Was Kenneth Tynan charged for his seat at all those Olivier plays? Did T S Eliot actually buy all those volumes of poetry? Assuredly not! And yet, no one accuses them of temporisation or chicanery, indeed they are regarded as men of wit and distinction.
Anyone who believes this natural order of graft and grandstanding compromises the reviewer’s integrity (more seriously, THIS reviewer’s integrity) is invited to absent themselves from this review at once, and satisfy themselves with the sour ramblings of disappointed fan boys to be found elsewhere in this archive. Those who crave professional punditry from professional pedants are invited to read on!(2)
Necessary Notes on Material Matters
The Demons of the Dying Earth is a 128 page, black & white soft cover, printed on matte, uncoated paper. At £19.95 ($29.95 in foreign currency) some may consider this page count to be somewhat on the short side. It is not my place to judge the parsimony of potential purchasers or the penny pinching of publishers, and certainly one cannot judge a publication by page count alone(3) but I point out that Turjan’s Tome of Beauty & Horror offers an extra fifty pages for the same price.
Detailed Analysis for the Curious Pedant
Let us waste no more time with dithering and doubletalk, but get straight to the point. Here follows a description of the contents, chapter by chapter.
Introduction
The book begins with a brief discussion of the methodology used in its compilation. It reminds us that information on demons in The Dying Earth series is fragmentary at best, and for this reason the author has had to provide details to fill gaps in the background or logic.
Chapter One – The Demons of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth
These few pages reveal all that can be gleaned of demons from The Dying Earth stories themselves. Its brevity – three pages – is an indication of the paucity of information that the author has had to work with, and even here information is brought in from previous Dying Earth RPG products. The presence of page references to the stories, and the consideration given to how these disparate incidences of demonic activity interrelate verges at times on literary criticism, and would probably provide some interest for admirers of Vance as much as to role players.
Chapter Two – Demonology
Here we begin in earnest with the crunchy rulestuff, beginning with demonic taint, a more active discouragement from trafficking with demons than the Sympathy Points system introduced in the main rulebook. Characters that insist on following The Dark Path will eventually find themselves irrevocably corrupted and removed from play. I can see this system interacting interestingly with the Goals introduced in Turjan’s Tome if the GM can introduce the correct inducements. Although no player will lightly take on demonic taint, can they resist the lure of powerful demonic magics?
One of the most important aspects of this chapter is the listing of demons for players to encounter and, hopefully, defeat. Demons are classified in two ways. Presented first is the in-game reference Thrupp’s Almanac of Demonic Entities, a typically unreliable codex with its own system of classifications based numbers and colours. This provides a way for GMs to introduce information on demons for PCs, as untrustworthy as it might be.
The second classification is more for the mechanical benefit of the GM, and represents a typical pyramid of demonic power. At the top are the Demonic Centralities, enormously powerful and unique creatures that embody the evil of a demonic realm. These are not given game statistics, as they are more likely to be defeated by a plot device rather than traditional smiting (the example given is the destruction of Blikdak in “Guyal of Sfere”, where the ideal artifact to defeat the demon is discovered in the Museum of Man). Next come Greater Demons, powerful entities – some unique, others members of demonic races – that will provide tough opponents for Turjan-level parties. Lesser Demons serve as cannon fodder or opponents for Cugel-level adventurers. The selection is rounded out by “Other Demonic Entities” – Demonkin (the fauna of subworlds), and Demonspawn (various entities created by demons). This provides plenty of variety for a GM to work with, and is backed up with advice on tailoring these creatures to the specific necessities of your games, demonic motivations and role playing interactions with demonkind using their resistances.
Rounding the chapter off are 35 new spells aimed at Diabolists, Witches and Witch-Finder, new character types introduced in Chapter Six.
Chapter Three – Demons Abroad in the Dying Earth
This chapter provides more detail on the interaction between humans and demons. There are extensive notes on demon cults, including Sabbaths, motivations for cultists and details on demons of Lumarth (encountered by Cugel in Cugel’s Saga) and the Kaiin Witch Cult. I wasn’t entirely convinced that the darker material of demon cults worked well with the essentially comedic Players’ Guide to Kaiin, and the suggested cultists would require a degree of manipulation of their characters as described in the Guide to make them credible threats to Turjan-level parties. Admittedly, Pasfane the witch, detailed in the Personages section of Chapter Seven of this vlume, provides a deadlier opponent, but I would have liked to have seen more detail on merging the witch cult with the existing information presented in The Player’s Guide to Kaiin. Elements of the Witch cult of Kaiin are expanded on in the adventure outlines in Chapter Seven, but don’t really resolve the essential clash of tone.
Detailed rules are given for summoning and binding demons. Given that this is a big no-no in terms of accumulating demon taint, the detail presented here may encourage players with over-active imaginations to consider demon summoning as a good idea. Perhaps this knowledge could be used by demon hunters, but if only GMCs are really expected to summon demons then I think that a bit of judicious hand-waving, or at most some purely abstract discussion of summoners and summonees matching Magic ratings would have been sufficient.
This is something I see fairly often in role playing game supplements – “This is the most wicked thing that can ever be done and should never be attempted by player characters. In the meantime, here are comprehensive rules to cover the situation should it ever come up…” In my opinion it is often better to take such things out of the rule system and give GMs advice on using them as plot devices. But enough about me…
A lengthy article in this chapter considers the interaction between demons and Dying Earth magic, which spells will affect them and which will not (the use of sandestins to dispel them or otherwise interfere with their business is perversely considered later in Chapter Seven). This seems to be sound stuff, and should be concealed from players (unless they do adequate research) as they will get pleasantly nasty surprises when their spells do not work as they expect (or in many cases, not at all). The subsequent discussion regarding the efficacy of magic resisting items against demons will alarm player characters even more. The stated purpose here is to ensure that demons remain a dark and mysterious threat (in a world where dark and mysterious threats are common) and the advice here is useful and well considered.
Chapter Four – The Demon Realms
Eleven subworlds are described here in outline, probably sufficient for a creative GM to use as the basis for his game, but the focus of this chapter is on more nuts and bolts matters. Solid information is provided on using spells cantraps and sandestins in the subworlds, and once again there will be surprises for unprepared PCs. More general information is presented on subworld ecologies, creating your own subworlds and methods of egress and exit. This chapter is rounded off by 24 spells for the use of demons and their human servants.
This is an excellent chapter with numerous clever ideas and neat twists. I was particularly pleased that the sample subworlds are described as worlds in themselves, rather than treated as plot hooks, as in the equivalent chapter in Turjan’s Tome.
Chapter Five – Demonic Artifacts
This chapter provides twenty-odd items for the use of demons and those who oppose them. Notable inclusions here are Adaktran’s Elemental Node, which Turjan steals from Kandive the Golden in the story “Turjan of Miir” and the Eyes of the Overworld, which are the object of Cugel’s quest in the novel of the same name.
The Elemental Node is very powerful protective amulet, as one might expect from its description in the story, but the description runs into difficulties in the “Present location” subhead. Frankly, the events described are hard to credit, in particular the loss of the item in a card game by the larcenous archevault that purportedly stole it from Pandelum. These elements from various stages of the Dying Earth series don’t sit comfortably together, in my opinion, with the bathetic card game, in particular, ill-suiting the dark tone of demonic adventures.
Problems such as this infest all licensed games: how does one integrate diverse, often contradictory elements in a way that does not break the sense of continuity in an series of games? What is the place of the players in the game, both in terms of interrelationship with existing characters and within the time line of the fiction? I would prefer to stick with one of the options outlined in Turjan’s Tome, and suggest that for each level of play, the other levels do not exist. The only necessary constants are the faltering sun and Vance’s rich style, and for this reason logic like that presented here jars for me.(4)
Chapter Six – Other Rules and Revelations
This grab bag of a chapter combines a number of elements typical to other DERPG supplements too short to be given their own chapter, and miscellaneous pieces of rules and information. New player character types who will have the skills and motivation to deal with the horrors outlined here are Diabolists (non-evil mages who research demon kind) and Witch-Finders (those who work to destroy witch cults).
GMC enemies are covered by the introduction of Witches (those who traffic with demons) and Necrophages (a necromancer who invests dead bodies with the sprits of demons), although once more the amount information presented will surely tempt players with weak-willed GMs to give these a try. There is a thorough and welcome treatment of the undead of the Dying Earth, enumerating game statistics for ghosts, ghouls, animated corpses and skeletons – plus a paragraph warning against clichéd use of these FRP staples – for use with Necrophage opponents.
A selection of demonically themed tweaks is presented, and there is some discussion of using other abilities in the subworlds and using Persuade and Rebuff against demons. This latter subject possibly deserved more space, as the Persuade/Rebuff mechanic is one of the features that really differentiates The Dying Earth RPG from other role playing games and must, I think, be used in all games if you really want to play to the system’s strengths. These don’t necessarily have to be comedic battles of will, but could cover, eg, exorcisms and banishments.
The information given on vat creatures with demonic taint is a little simplistic, and I’d like to have seen guidelines for including demonic taint in player-created vat creatures – this could be a legitimate course for Diabolists, for instance. I am pleased to see that minimal space was given over to taglines for reasons covered in more depth in my review of Turjan’s Tome of Beauty & Horror.
Chapter Seven – Running Demonic Adventures
Given the high standards set by the main rulebook and Turjan’s Tome, this section is a little disappointing. It is mostly concerned with describing GMCs and adventure outlines, with only a couple of pages given over to the design considerations of different levels of play, and no analysis of the elements of demonic adventures in the style of the previous supplements. On the plus side, the adventure outlines are very thorough, considerably better than the rumours provided in Turjan’s Tome.
A selection of personages – some from the novels, others new to this volume – provides some worthy adversaries or acquaintances, although some of the extrapolation concerning Derwe Coreme invites problems similar to those discussed in relation to Adaktran’s Elemental Node. In effect she has been turned into a completely different character from how she was portrayed in The Eyes of the Overworld and one wonders whether an original character wouldn’t have served just as well. There is a lengthy discussion of the Green Legion of Valdaran the Just, who make a brief but memorable appearance in the story “T’sais” provides plenty of scope for adventure, and is an example of extrapolation done right (although with so much less to work on, there is less chance of knocking against the reader’s pre-conceived notions).
A “Bonus Article” describes demonic cantraps in two pages. It’s a bit fluffy, designed (I suspect) to fill pages left unexpectedly empty, but a welcome expansion of the cantrap concept.
Matters of Style and Production
The layout is DERPG standard, continuing the typefaces used in the main rulebook and previous supplements, with the text anchored between a decorative header and a heavy rule at the bottom. It pains me to say so, but The Demons of the Dying Earth is badly in need of a thorough copy edit and proof read. Although the “page XX” problem is cleverly avoided by referring to numbered sections rather than actual pages, there are numerous instances of wonky grammar and sentences that don’t quite make sense, some obviously victims of incomplete last-minute amendment. More worryingly, some of the crunchy bits are not entirely clear due to clumsy phrasing, and these matters should have been clarified before publication. In addition, the unindented paragraphs from Turjan’s Tome have made their way into this publication as well. Elsewhere, leading problems produce ugly uneven column lengths, and some of the rules are not even. I think someone needs to work a little on their Quark-fu.
On the other hand, the art is more consistent than that in Turjan’s Tome, and the contributions of Shaun Thomas are brilliantly evocative – his seated demon on page six (and half-screened on the back cover) is particularly striking. The stark monochrome work of Carrie Walters doesn’t always hit its mark, but has an expressionistic power when it does. Once again, good use is made of copyright-free images, particularly the demonic visions of Goya.
Taking A Broad General View
Although the presentation is sometimes disappointing, there is enough material here to provide Dying Earth RPG GMs with plenty to challenge their players. There is maybe less here for the non-Dying Earth GM than in previous products in this line (one of this game’s great strengths in my eyes has been the applicability of much of its commentary to other FRPGs), although the consideration given to demons and demonic planes is very different to that in a recent vile volume released for another popular FRP.
A curious point is the absence of player-led material as in previous supplements. Perhaps the nature of the demonic means that such an approach is inappropriate, but being an idle fellow keen to offload as much labour onto others as possible, I was disappointed that this element was not pursued.
Much of the material here will not be suitable for Cugel-level games, although Cugel does meet demons and so some of the lower-powered creatures and items will be of use. For Rhialto-level games, I guess anything is possible, and so the usefulness of this volume will vary from GM to GM. Plenty of guidance is provided to guide GMs playing at these levels, but the book really comes into its own at Turjan-level, and anyone wanting to play at this level will want to purchase Turjan’s Tome of Beauty & Horror either before or simultaneously to this volume. While I don’t think this volume is necessary for Turjan-level play, it will certainly add another strong element of adventure and danger to these campaigns and I would not hesitate to recommend it for this purpose. ______________________________________________________________
1. In this other review I also make some broader points regarding the Dying Earth Role Playing Game that may be of interest to the critically minded. In the interests of brevity, I will not rehearse these points here.
2. The attentive may notice this disclaimer is also appended to my review of Turjan’s Tome of Beauty & Horror. Rather than cavil at the repetition, why not revel in the opportunity to enjoy the text again?
3. By which measure the telephone book would be the greatest classic of world literature.
4. These considerations are why I’m not generally a fan of licensed games, The Dying Earth RPG being a notable exception. In this case, I think that one can happily ignore the action of the books and just get on with your own game inspired by the original rather than being tied to it.
Help support RPGnet by purchasing this item through DriveThruRPG.
