Greetings gamers! This week we celebrate the life and work of Jack Vance (August 28, 1916 – May 26, 2013), an award-winning American sci-fi and fantasy author. While Vance was responsible for the creation of a sizable corpus of literary works in the mystery, fantasy, and science fiction genres, it was his Dying Earth series that provided the inspiration for core elements of the original Dungeons and Dragons TTRPG. The Dying Earth series is a collection of science fantasy stories set in the last days of Earth, under the blood-red light of the dying sun. These are stories of wizards and rogues, seeking to advance their amoral agendas in a fantastic and cynical world on the cusp of annihilation. Of Vance’s many fans was Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons, who was heavily influenced by Vance’s Dying Earth stories. Many of the classes, items, spells, and even the nature of magic in D&D, are a direct consequence of Vance’s influence on Gygax. If you are a D&D fan and are unfamiliar with the Dying Earth series or the work of Jack Vance more generally, I strongly encourage you to read the Dying Earth series. Not only are they quality tales that are highly enjoyable for their own sake, but they are also a foundational piece of TTRPG history.
The Dying Earth and D&D
Up until about eight months ago, I had (inexplicably) never heard of Jack Vance. It was during a conversation with Eric about the foundational elements of D&D, that he recommended I read the Dying Earth series. Soon after, I had purchased the entire Dying Earth collection in a single volume, titled Tales of the Dying Earth. Immediately, I felt at home with Vance’s stilted, semi-formal prose, which reminded me of the authors and stories I loved as a child: the works of Lord Dunsany, H.P. Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle, and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series. While Vance’s writing style was inviting and familiar to me, it was the world his words conjured that had me hooked. As the name implies, the Dying Earth series is set in the far future during the final days of our planet. Vance concisely encapsulates the series’ setting in The Dying Earth, the first collection of stories in the series, where he writes,
“Once it was a tall world of cloudy mountains and bright rivers, and the sun was a white blazing ball. Ages of rain and wind have beaten and rounded the granite, and the sun is feeble and red. The continents have sunk and risen. A million cities have lifted towers, have fallen to dust. In place of the old peoples a few thousand souls live. There is evil on Earth, evil distilled by time…Earth is dying and in its twilight.”
I was captivated by Vance’s vision of a worn and ancient Earth in its final days. The world Vance envisioned is one of magic and mystery, with both haunting beauty and treacherous denizens, where the inhabitants of one of the last cities on Earth celebrate the coming extinguishing of the sun and the eternal night that follows. Vance’s characters could easily be mistaken for pilgrims in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. While some of Vance’s characters seek love and beauty in Earth’s final days, most are engaged in the amoral pursuit of power or wealth. The characters’ attempt to achieve their aims in the strange and fantastic ancient Earth lend the Dying Earth stories the aesthetic of a post-apocalyptic fairy tale.
Of course, the world Vance articulated is not bound by the conventional constraints of scientific realism. Magic is a powerful force in the Dying Earth series and those who wield it are respected and feared. It is in Vance’s conception of magic that we most clearly see his influence on D&D. In the Dying Earth stories, magic is a sort of living knowledge that is stored in ancient tomes. When studied, this knowledge takes up residence in the mind of the caster. By articulating the syllables of a spell, the knowledge is released into the world, creating a magical effect as the spell fades from the caster’s memory. While spells vary in potency, even the most devoted practitioner can hold only a handful of spells in mind at one time. Vancian magic, as it has come to be known, is the basis for the spellcasting of the D&D wizard. Spells in the Dying Earth series have colorful names, some of which, such as ‘The Excellent Prismatic Spray’, will be familiar to D&D fans. Beyond spellcasting, the Dying Earth stories often feature magic items and artifacts with equally colorful names such as ‘Laccodel’s Rune’ and ‘Ioun Stones’ (an item which will be familiar to D&D fans). The convention of using evocative names for magic spells and items was adopted by Gygax and remain a staple of D&D to this day.
While Gygax borrowed names and ideas from the Dying Earth stories in creating D&D, he also wanted to incorporate the tone and tenor of the Dying Earth series into the classic TTRPG. In an essay titled Jack Vance and the D&D Game, Gygax writes,
“Aside from ideas and specific things, the very manner in which Jack Vance portrays a fantasy environment, the interaction of characters with that environment, and with each other, is so captivating that wherever I could manage it, I attempted to include the ‘feel’ he brings to his fantasy tales in the AD&D game. My feeble ability likely managed to convey but little of this, but in all I do believe that a not a little of what fans consider to be the ‘soul’ of the game stems from that attempt.”
Like myself, Gygax was captivated by the compelling fantasy world of the Dying Earth Series. While Gygax drew on a number of literary sources for inspiration when creating D&D, he considered Jack Vance to be the best author of imaginative fiction and sought to include elements of Vance’s ancient Earth in the DNA of Dungeons and Dragons. After reading the Dying Earth series, it is difficult not to see Vance’s fingerprints on the classic TTRPG. From the original thief class to magic items and spells, Vance’s influence is readily apparent to those familiar with the Dying Earth stories. If you have not read the Dying Earth series you definitely should, and, if you are so inclined, raise a glass in honor of Mr. Vance’s birthday and his contribution to TTRPG history.
Until next time, happy gaming!