Tuesday 25 May 2021

[Reviews] Lyonesse RPG, The Gaean Reach RPG, and D&D

[The Lyonesse RPG costs £59.99 in print+PDF and is 512 pages long. The Gaean Reach RPG  costs £6.95 in PDF and is 108 pages. Dungeons & Dragons is available in various formats, and from various publishers.]

Emulating Vance has been a central element of RPGs since their inception; arguably, he is the most important single literary influence on D&D, and the sheer range and popularity of his novels has inspired RPG designers for decades. Two recent examples are the Lyonesse RPG and The Gaean Reach RPG, which between them neatly demonstrate the pitfalls confronting designers hoping to imitate or emulate Vance's fiction. 

The Gaean Reach is the biggest sinner of the two. I must confess that I am not in general a fan of Robin D Laws' game design, and I particularly disliked his Dying Earth RPG (which also, of course, tries to imitate Vance). So my review is clearly coloured by my own personal preference. But with that said, I think there is something fundamentally misguided about the premise of the game, which it seems to me seeks only to achieve a thin, superficial pastiche of a small category of Vance's fiction in RPG form. Rather than drawing from what I would take to be the real joy of reading the Gaean Reach books - which is the way Vance glories in the sheer variety of the worlds he creates, and the variety of stories they allow him to tell (mystery, thriller, romance, space opera, revenge travelogue, picaresque, action) - the game instead, in true storygameish fashion, tightly focuses on providing the tools to just tell and re-tell a narrow and rather boring sub-Demon Princes tale of vengeance. We don't get the means to create a great interstellar sandbox to explore, with Vancian themes (more below). Instead we just get a way to randomly generate a bad guy ('Quandos Vorn') who the players are supposed to go out and revenge themselves upon. It's all very, to use that RonEdwardsism, "coherent". 

In other words, we what the game provides is ultimately simply a way to artificially create a replica of the plot of a Demon Princes novel with our friends, together with the kind of overblown, pseudo-Vancian 'witty' prose which so marred The Dying Earth RPG. Reading it is like eating fish and chips in an 'English' themed pub in Tokyo: not as good as real fish and chips, and you don't really eat fish and chips in a pub to begin with.

If the problem with The Gaean Reach is its laser-like focus on pastiching The Star King, the flaw in the Lyonesse RPG is that it sits at the opposite end of the spectrum: it simply faithfully presents the setting of Lyonesse as a typical, bog-standard fantasy world - the kind of gazetteer that was ten a penny in the fantasy gaming scene during the 80s and 90s. Shorn of Vance's prose, ideas, and themes (again, more on that below), Lyonesse just isn't particularly interesting or different as fantasy settings go - and a rather detailed overview of it (combined with some rules) is all the book really provides. Are you interested in the five crimes that are punishable by death in each of the Ten Kingdoms? Do you really need to know that Blaloc is a 'sleepy, inconsequential kingdom'? Does it matter to you that 'richly coloured fabrics' are readily available in Port Posedel? Perhaps so, but I have to confess that reading the novels seems a more enjoyable and valuable activity - not to mention a better way of getting to know Lyonesse - and D&D a perfectly suitable system in which to run a game set there afterwards. If all I'm getting is a rather ordinary fantasy continent in which to set a campaign, £59.99 seems a steep price to pay. The book looks great, no doubt about it. But does it feel like Lyonesse? Not really.

But that brings me to my main point, which is that, for all people might endeavour to design RPGs set in Vancian worlds and emulate Vancian fiction, in actual practice it is 'old school' D&D which - at the table - captures the tenor, tone, and philosophy of Vance's work most perfectly. Whether by accident or design, what really happens when people sit down to play OD&D is that Vance's themes organically emerge. The sense of slightly arch and ironic detachment, oddly reminiscent of pre-modern fiction, eschewing interior monologue, or indeed the interior world of the characters, except obliquely. The sudden shifts in tone, from comedy to tragedy, from the sublime to the ridiculous. The matter-of-factness of violence and danger, which is always and everywhere underdramatised and all the more dramatic for it. The slight sense of gleeful schadenfreude that accompanies unfortunate events, particularly where the proud are brought low. The methodological individualism of Vance's worlds, where it is actions that matter and everyone is ultimately a master of their own fate. The fact that everybody, from the lowest shopkeeper to the mightiest villain, has motives, desires and interests of their own, rigorously pursued. Emulating Vance is about emulating those qualities of his fiction - the themes which he returns to in every novel, working and reworking endlessly into new and more interesting shapes - and D&D in my experience somehow manages it again and again at the table when the spirit of the original rules are adhered to. It's not, in the end, about aping Vance's plots and language, as The Gaean Reach RPG does, or simply using his furniture, as in The Lyonesse RPG. It's about a way of approaching the fiction that unfolds in play - and it's D&D that does that best. 

15 comments:

  1. Really appreciate this. Too bad about Lyonesse. I had been mulling a purchase, but that price tag ....

    I've always wondered about that French version of Lyonesse that came out years ago. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyonesse_(jeu_de_r%C3%B4les)

    Too bad I don't read French. Cool art though.

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    1. Yeah, I’m glad I (legally) had access to a free version and didn’t have to pay.

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  2. I just noticed this post, and commented about Gaean Reach below your previous one. I concur about both games (as well as Vance's themes, more or less). The first tries for genre emulation, but lacks both substance and genuine stakes (this is something D&D can provide through messier and less "coherent" methods). This is what striving for "coherence" does: it narrows down a rich experience until to the level of caricature. Lyonesse, in contrast, is very much an "inventory", and a heavy one at that - I could not imagine carrying this unwieldy book around in a briefcase, nor reading it comfortably. More broadly, it gives us statistics and fine detail about King Casmir, Aillas et al. - things we don't need in our own Lyonesse campaign - and not the essential soul/structures of the setting and the novels. Both books are missed opportunities, although Lyonesse, at least, is pretty.

    With respect to Vance's themes being recaptured in D&D, I agree that they can be, and D&D is much better suited for the purpose than it is given credit for. However, I would caution that this requires the right sensibilities from both the GM and the players. As it exists across a myriad game tables in the world, D&D is not what you describe here - it is modern "quest fantasy" with heroic backstories and epic destinies. The picaresque element is still there, but it is well and truly buried. I am doubtful even most old-school D&D tables followed this style.

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    1. Yes, you’re probably right about that last point. Maybe the best way of putting it is that only with D&D do you really have a fighting chance of those themes coming to the fore.

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    2. Classic D&D, maybe, just maybe... but honestly just about any "nuts & bolts" system will do nicely if the players (that includes the GM) have the right spirit. Which few players under 30 do, they've never read Vance and modern D&D doesn't exactly steer them in that direction either.

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  3. I am a huge fan of Vance's work, and I agree the footprint of Vance on D&D is significant, but I regard D&D as too mercilessly bloody to truly capture the whimsey of Vance. I know of low-level D&D where your players do not begin by exterminating at least one tribe of marauding Orcs but this is an exception rather then the rule.

    Any scene in Lyonesse where its just the protagonist wandering through the country-side and encountering various one-off supernatural menaces, or the classic Vancian OverPriced-Inn is VERY D&D.

    I regard Lyonesse as a superior, non-drab Game of Thrones.

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    1. I have made that comparison as well, and think it holds up fine. Same general building blocks, but what a difference in the resulting buildings!

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    2. I reread the entire Game of Thrones series (or whatever real title) in 2012 when the last book came out. I was waiting for a real big moment where a bunch of characters perished and it never came and I realized it had actually occurred in one of the Lyonesse books. Martin is a huge fan of Vance and it shows though his works are bit more leaden in comparison.

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    3. t never occurred to me to draw parallels between the two but it totally makes sense now.

      The other point to make about the comparison is that Vance actually finished Lyonesse.....

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    4. Though, of course, Vances books get shorter as the series continues! Not as much as the Araminta Station series but still noticeable. He had a hard time with the doorstop size SF/F book era.

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  4. Yeah, I miss the picaresque element of D&D. I see it in works like Ultraviolet Grasslands (which I’d love to see your review of, or did you already write one?)

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    1. I've never read that one. I've got some of the Hydra Cooperative stuff. I might add it to the list!

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  5. I always thought the Wilderlands of High Fantasy was the perfect Vancian setting, so it's ironic that Bob Bledsaw snr apparently never read Vance. As a ruleset, OD&D, B/X D&D & their retroclones (Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord et al) give the strongest Vancian feel - "Save or Die" is a beautifully Vancian mechanic.

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  6. I'm not sure I agree with your conclusions regarding D&D, and also note that if that happens, there's more to happenstance than through guidance of the rules.

    That being said, I think you have nailed why I who so longed for a Gaean Reach rpg have not managed to really get enthusiastic about that one game made for that setting. Actually, I have to remind me I had read it, and did not really remembered it much. It's too focused on one thing, and miss that wild splendour in its analytical focus.

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