June 13, 2012

The Dying Earth Revivification Folio Now Available For Pre-Order

In Jack Vance’s stories of the Dying Earth, the sun, and thus life itself, is universally thought to be mere moments from a sad, smoldering demise. Yet inexplicably it continues to shine, allowing the world's hyper-verbal denizens to go on swindling and pettifogging one another. This is faster and more fun than ever before with the Dying Earth Revivification Folio now available for pre-order from Pelgrane Press.

My brief with this book was to create what was in effect a new edition of the game, bringing it the improvements to the basic system we built into Skulduggery, the streamlined, generic game based on the original DERPG core rules. The goal however was not to render your purchase of the original game obsolete, but to serve as a booster kit for it. It is neither game nor supplement, then, but rather a gupplement.

Wait. That’s terrible. Forget I said that.

When you think about it, really what’s happening is that DERF is now the game, and has also retroactively turned DERPG into a supplement.

Wait, never mind that either. Semantics are the cutlass of the pettifogger.

We are sometimes told that DERPG is a buyer’s favorite game he can’t get his players to try. The Revivification Folio solves that problem for you by adopting the super-fast, card-based character generation system first presented in Skulduggery. Players can jump right in without undergoing the more traditionally detailed character creation process mooted in the original book. Within minutes they are decisively ensnared.

The quick and deadly combat system is now quicker and just as unforgiving.

Magic is simplified so that the spells you wield appear on cards. In true Vancian fashion, you play the card and have used up the spell. Enchanted items can be used multiple times but are likewise presented in easy-to-use card format.

The book comes with cards to generate your first six PCs, and with notes on replacing them when they succumb to the cruelties of a decadent world.

Also included are your first three scenarios: one in which our picaresque heroes find themselves unwillingly indentured to a hotelier-slash-arch-magician, another in which they serve as guardians to a tomb-raiding expedition, and another in which they finally secure sinecures as officials in a bucolic rural village. Nothing could possibly go wrong!