In August 2024 we presented the all-new DCC Dying Earth Bundle featuring the 2022 Goodman Games adaptation for the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG of the world-famous Dying Earth stories by legendary fantasist Jack Vance. This offer includes an exclusive debut, the DCC Dying Earth supplement Casebook of Arcane Apocrypha.
Funded in a June 2021 Kickstarter campaign, DCC Dying Earth is the newest licensed RPG version of Vance’s setting. This version is different from the 2001 Pelgrane Press Dying Earth RPG, which we’ve presented five times. The titles in this new offer all require the Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG rulebook, which is not included in this offer – but check our DCC Essentials Starter Pack in the Bundle Store!
DCC Dying Earth is 100% compatible with DCC RPG. Parties can jump from Aereth to the Purple Planet to the dim twilight of the 21st Aeon, where magic and science are one and the same – even back through time to the sorcerous age of Grand Motholam or doomed Ampridatvir. There are four new classes (magician, wayfarer, witch, and vat-thing), dozens of new spells, new monsters, and more. Grudge tokens, an optional rule, track the pervasive mutability of fortune in the setting. Any time a player fails with a roll of 1, they receive a grudge token, “representing their growing pique at the vacillating nature of the universe. At any point during play, a player may choose to discard a grudge token to cause another player – or the judge – to re-roll a successful roll.” All this material can fit any era and expand any judge’s setting.
DCC Dying Earth is set in the last days of our world, a place so ancient its history has long been lost; where the weak sun casts a wan gloom over the unpeopled wildernesses and crumbling remnants of the past, and the nights are dark and empty since the moon long ago departed the sky. There is a fallow antiquity to the lands and places, rich with the weight of events that have come before and a weariness for what comes next. Querulous sorcerers vie for knowledge with their rivals, feuding endlessly and fueling grudges that last millennia. Covens of witches gather for rituals to speak with demons and other foul creatures, seeking powerful entities to unleash their dark magic. The world has seen innumerable kingdoms rise and fall, and all of history has happened several times over.
The DCC line has always accorded great respect to Vance and the other “Appendix N” writers Gary Gygax praised in the DMG 1E. (See the Adventures in Fiction blog entries about Vance.) “Readers not familiar with the stories of the Dying Earth are encouraged to seek out for themselves the tales of Guyal, Turjan, and Rhialto as an inspirational source for their Dying Earth games,” project lead Marc Bruner writes in the introduction to the Player’s Libram of the DCC DE core set. “These are grand adventures that have helped shape the stories we have been creating at our tables since the very beginning of our shared hobby.” That said, Bruner also hints at this DCC campaign set’s distinctive thematic approach: “Some readers may especially find the depictions of Cugel’s misadventures (his less-than-ethical exploits, in particular) offensive or problematic.” This, as much as the voluminous gazetteers, grimoires, equipment lists, and stat blocks that fill the 278 pages of the DCC DE core set, points up the contrast between the Pelgrane Press and Goodman lines.
The Pelgrane scenarios focus mainly on rascals like Vance’s Cugel the Clever, and their scrabble to survive in a languid world devoid of ambition. The picaresque Cugel-level situations strand the hapless rogues in isolated communities with odd customs, exotic food, and foppish apparel; through exigency they might compete in a cooking contest, say, or herd animals, or join some noble’s hunt; inevitably (as their Persuasion and Rebuff dice pools wane) they’re ensnared in some crafty swindle, against which their heated protests prove ineffectual; once their pools refresh (often through the exercise of a characteristic vice), the characters escape through craft and cleverness, leaving chaos in their wake.
By contrast, the Goodman Dying Earth modules mostly downplay the serene amorality of Vance’s later Dying Earth stories. Like mainline DCC modules, these scenarios emphasize genuine goals, real rewards, player agency, and wonder and weirdness akin to the early stories “Turjan of Miir” and “Liane the Wayfarer” – and even the high-power wizardry seen in Rhialto the Marvellous. In House on the Island (designed by venerable D&D artist Erol Otus) the characters rescue a water-witch’s son from a living house. Searching a crystal-topped mound for the legendary ring of revivification, the heroes confront and free the Phantoms of the Ectoplasmic Cotillion. Mind-Weft of the Moonstone Palace pits the characters against the arch-mage Mael Lel Laio; they journey into the distant past to discover objects that can defeat him. In Penumbra of the Polar Ape they ride gossamer flyers into the sky to explore a moon-egg in search of Opsall the Irredeemable.
In his long and illustrious career Jack Vance told stories of many kinds. Game designers can model the aspects of his work that interest them and their audience. DCC Dying Earth presents a respectful and enthusiastic interpretation of the stories that made the Dying Earth famous.
This all-new DCC Dying Earth Bundle had everything you need to begin adventuring in the 21st Aeon. There were four titles in our Starter Collection (retail value $61) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including the complete DCC Dying Earth core set and three low-level modules: Dying Earth #0: The Black Obelisk, #1 Laughing Idol of Lar-Shann, and #2 Sorcerer’s Tower of Sanguine Slant.
Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price also got our entire Bonus Collection with seven more titles worth an additional $67. The centerpiece of this bonus collection was the brand-new Casebook of Arcane Apocrypha, a collection of stretch goals from the DCC Dying Earth Kickstarter campaign that debuted exclusively in this offer and is not yet available anywhere else. Arcane Apocrypha is a 128-page grab-bag of new spells, patrons, notable persons, location guides, magician manses, talismans, amulets, instruments, and much more. And this Bonus Collection also added six more DCC Dying Earth modules: #3 Magnific Machinations at the Grand Exposition, #4 Mind Weft of the Moonstone Palace, #5 Penumbra of the Polar Ape, #6 The Great Visp Hunt, #7 Phantoms of the Ectoplasmic Cotillion, and #8 The House on the Island.
Ten percent of each purchase (after gateway fees) went to the charity designated by Goodman Games publisher Joseph Goodman, the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank. For more than 30 years the SF-Marin Food Bank has worked to end hunger in the San Francisco Bay Area, where one in four are at risk. Every week, 30,000 households count on the Food Bank for assistance.
