In July 2020 we very successfully revivified the January 2014 Dying Earth Compleat Bundle, a comprehensive offer encompassing the entire product line for The Dying Earth RPG from Pelgrane Press based on the world-famous Dying Earth stories by legendary fantasist Jack Vance.
Jack Vance’s Dying Earth stories portray the exploits of characters ranging from vat-grown beauties to wandering scoundrels to vainglorious magicians, who eat, drink, gamble, explore, and cheat their way through what is widely presumed to be the final era of history. Above them, the sun has reddened and grown spotty with age; all assume it will soon extinguish itself. The cities of the Dying Earth are places of exotic and decadent beauty. Strange foods and bizarre clothing are commonplace. The world is littered with forgotten ruins and plagued by dangerous predators. Only the foolhardy or powerful venture far from the safety of their communities. The latter group is intimately familiar with arcane secrets of magic, which, though wondrous and impressive, are mere shadows of the achievement of previous ages.
Published in 2001, The Dying Earth RPG was the first official tabletop RPG based on Jack Vance’s work and one of the earliest releases from Pelgrane Press, which has since published 13th Age, the GUMSHOE line of games, and many more. Designer Robin D. Laws (Feng Shui, HeroQuest, Hillfolk) captures the essence of Vance’s stories through an ingenious rules system that downplays combat in favor of intricate social rules of persuasion and rebuff. The game text anatomizes elements that mark the Dying Earth stories: odd customs, crafty swindles, heated protests and presumptuous claims, casual cruelty, weird magic, strange vistas, ruined wonders, exotic food, and foppish apparel. Here the importance of a flashing sword is matched by nimble wits, persuasive words, and a fine sense of fashion.
Previously presented in 2014, 2015, and 2017, this Dying Earth Compleat Bundle remains one of our largest offers ever. There were seven titles in this revived offer’s Essentials Collection (retail value $76) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the 192-page DERPG core rulebook, Cugel’s Compendium, The Compendium of Universal Knowledge, The Kaiin Players Guide, The Scaum Valley Gazetteer, The Primer of Practical Magic, and The DE Revivification Folio.
Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price also got this revival’s entire Compleat Collection worth — get this — an additional $121. This bonus level presented the rest of the DERPG line — fifteen more titles — including Turjan’s Tome, Rhialto’s Book of Marvels, Demons of the Dying Earth, Tooth Talon & Pinion, The Day of the Quelo, Gomoshan’s Tomb, The Creep of Inaccuracy, Fields of Silver, the complete five-part campaign “In the Footsteps of Fools” (All’s Fair in Azenomei, Strangers in Saskervoy, Lords of Cil, Beyond the Mountains of Magnatz, And Thence to Almery), and all six issues of the authoritative DERPG magazine The Excellent Prismatic Spray.
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) went to this offer’s pandemic-related charity, Cochrane Reports. Cochrane, a medical information network, has created a Covid-19 working group and published four special collections of pandemic information.
