Perpend! In January 2024 we revivified (for a fourth time!) the January 2014 Pelgrane Dying Earth Bundle featuring the original 2001 Dying Earth FRPG by Robin D. Laws from Pelgrane Press. This comprehensive offer encompassed the entire Pelgrane DERPG line based on the world-famous Dying Earth stories by legendary fantasist Jack Vance.
[Note: This is the first Dying Earth RPG, published by Pelgrane Press in 2001 through 2012, and not the recent Goodman Games Dying Earth campaign setting for Dungeon Crawl Classics.]
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 (The Yellow King RPG, Cthulhu Confidential, Feng Shui) 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.
This was one of our largest offers ever. There were seven titles in this revived offer’s Essentials Collection (retail value $115) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks, including Pelgrane’s 192-page Dying Earth 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 Compleat Collection with the rest of the Pelgrane DERPG line – nineteen more titles worth an additional $123, 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 purchase (after gateway fees) went to this Pelgrane Dying Earth revival’s designated charity, Cancer Research UK. Cancer Research UK is a cancer research and awareness charity in the United Kingdom that funds more than half of the UK”s cancer research, including the life-saving work of over 4,000 scientists, doctors, and nurses fighting cancer on all fronts.
