The Best Sword & Sorcery Stories

The most recent Mind Meld over at SF Signal is on the topic of The Best Sword & Sorcery Stories. Needless to say there's a bunch of great reading suggestions to inspire fantasy gaming. All the genre stalwarts are there, like REH, CAS, CL Moore, Leiber, Moorcock and Vance.

There's also mention of some more recent titles, like Glen Cook's (who I've met) Black Company series, and Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos books. I'm a bit surprised to find Zelazny's Amber books mentioned, but I guess they fit. And I'm glad to see Tanith Lee's books getting recognition. I'd add her Tales of the Flat Earth books to the list even though they cover more genre ground that just S&S.

The only omission I noticed is Andre Norton, who was a member of SAGA and had stories included in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords anthologies. While they might not be S&S in the strictest sense, she also wrote the Witch World series. And as the author of Quag Keep (1979) she has to be included on any list of  fantasy books related to gaming.

Ducks

All the talk today about ducks over at Grognardia has me thinking about RuneQuest.

[Image via Gloranthan Army Miniatures Encyclopedia]

Ducks

This is a race cursed by the gods during the Great Darkness for not joining them versus the forces of Chaos. It is unknown whether they were originally human and became feathered and web-footed, or originally ducks cursed with flightlessness and intelligence. They reside mostly in Duckpoint (in Sartar) and must, due to their small strength, use weapons such as short swords, slings, etc.

For arcane reasons they are allowed to join certain Death Rune cults...

They come in a variety of different colored feathers and are excellent swimmers, though they cannot fly, having arms instead of wings. Most armor is too heavy for them.

Characteristics
STR     2D6+1
CON    2D6+6
SIZ      1D6+1
INT     3D6
POW   3D6
DEX     2D6+6
CHA    2D6

Move  5
Treasure Factor 6

Weapons
Sling; Short sword; Small shield

ARMOR-Cuirboilli body; Composite helm
OTHER SKILLS-Swimming 90%; Hide in Cover 40%

Talislanta promo video

If this promo video for Talislanta doesn't make you want to go adventuring there, nothing will.

Talislanta's roots

In order to know what an RPG is all about, sometimes it helps to know where it came from and what inspired it. Stephan Michael Sechi gives us a good idea of where Talislanta is coming from in the introduction to A Player’s Guide to Talislanta.

The Talislanta milieu evolved over the course of several years, starting with a home-grown D&D campaign that somehow veered deep into uncharted territory, evolved into the Atlantis legends, then somehow took on a life of its own.

The first adventure that ever took place in Talislanta occurred when a Druas NPC (from an Atlantis campaign) led a bunch of (converted D&D) PCs into a strange new world in order to help a wizard hunter track down the reincarnation of an old enemy. That strange new world turned out to be Talislanta, which prior to that adventure had been mentioned once in the three Atlantis books, but never explained-mainly because I had no idea of what Talislanta was at that time.

The real work on Talislanta started after I quit my day job (don’t try this at home, kids), stopped working as a musician, and started putting in 14-hour days writing, taking notes,and drawing hundreds of character and creature sketches. My main objective was to create a fantasy world that was not based on Euorpean mythology, as most other RPGs had done; hence the “No Elves” slogan, which we used in Talislanta ads that we later ran in Dragon Magazine.

I read all of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth books, Lovecraft’s The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath, Marco Polo’s The Travels, and back issues of Heavy Metal magazine (especially Druilette’s Salambo, in which if you look closely enough you might find the inspiration for the Jhangarans). And I confess to partaking of one of Turkey’s fi nest products nightly, which helped inspire most of the visual elements of Talislanta, and some remarkably lucid dreams I had of actually visiting Talislanta.

I wish my dreams were that interesting. Instead I'll have to settle for playing the game.

Talislanta lives!

James Mal notes on his blog today that SMS is making Talislanta available as a free download.

The PDFS on this site are the Intellectual Property of Stephan Michael Sechi (SMS). These may be downloaded for free by anyone who visits the site, but may not be sold or distributed in any other way. You may modify the content of these PDFs if you choose to do so, but only for personal use. Permission is granted by the IP holder to print out one hard copy of any or all of the PDFs on the Talislanta.com website, for personal use only.

There are a few items still to be scanned, but all the main books are available, including a copy of the most recent 5th edition rules. This is great because Talislanta is one of the most unique and exotic fantasy worlds to come out of the gaming community. It ranks alongside Tékumel and Jorune in terms of originality and worlbuilding and has a psychedelic hipness that really makes it stand out. Hopefully this will get the game a bigger audience and we'll see more people playing it.

What old-school looks like...

...in my head.

 Image via RPGnet

 Sorta like a cross between Ralph Bakshi and Roger Dean.

The Colossus of Rhodes

Not only was the Colossus of Rhodes one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it was also a kick-ass movie starring Rory Calhoun.