A lot of text has been processed regarding the influence that Vance's Dying Earth stories have had on D&D and fantasy, and I'm not going to particularly try to add to that here. If you'd like to know more about the stories, this is a pretty good overview of them. This is about the 2001 Pelgrane Press RPG.
0: Cover through Credits
You can see the cover above. It's nice art, but I don't think it sets the proper tone.
Page 1 is an excerpt from Cugel's Saga, overlaid on a picturesque landscape presumably depicting the River Isk, mentioned in the excerpt. The text is one of Cugel's humorous misadventures, notable for omitting any sense of his competence. I mean, Cugel is mostly just an ordinary fuck-up, but this story is about him failing at a minimum-wage job so badly that an angry mob drives him out of town.
Page 2 is a picture of a couple of not-quite-cows in front of a ruined keep which has a giant telescope and also a satellite dish. That's a very nice visual to demonstrate the quiet strangeness and far-future-fantasy of the world. It's part of a spread with Page 3, which reiterates the title and main credits, and adds copyright info.
Page 4 has a grainy picture of a grumpy-looking Jack Vance on it, next to three paragraphs which are a jumble of biography, bibliography, flattery, and shilling for the game. That is either bad editing or the best editing, because its incoherence has a distinctly Vancian-roguish-blather flavor to it.
At the bottom of the page are the authorial credits. Robin Laws is principal designer, who calls out his work on Feng Shui, Glorantha: Hero Wars, and Pantheon. John Snead did the magic rules, and his other credits are on Trinity, Aberrant, and the ST:TNG RPG, so hopes are not high. Peter Freeman apparently contributed all of three sidebars and still gets his name on the cover, so I'll keep an eye out and see if they're any good.
Page 5 is contents and complete credits. Vance is listed as 'consultation and inspiration,' so apparently they at least talked to him. There's one name under 'editing' and two names under 'magic rules editing,' which compounds my concerns about Snead's contributions. Nine names under 'additional material,' presumably contributing less than three sidebars each and so not making the cover. Big pile of playtester credits, although I refuse to believe that 'David Burckle' and 'David Burckley' are distinct people.
1: Getting Started
Ostensibly 'a rules overview for novices and veterans alike. Essential for cogent discussion, yet perforce cursory and plagued by a rebarbative generality,' this chapter is, in reality, a mess. It attempts to introduce general RPG concepts to new players, and specific-to-this-game concepts to veteran players, and is not good at either.
The framing scenario for the rule examples starts first, like a weird start-of-chapter flash fiction, except that all the proper nouns are bolded like these are important names to know instead of meaningless test dummies. Then the meta-level scenario where your friend Alex is GMing you through the framing scenario is introduced, and that's completely backwards for an introduction to RPGs. First you meet the GM, then they explain some important game terms, then the intro scenario is narrated for you to engage with now that you have some goddamn idea what's going on.
You want an idea of how user-unfriendly this chapter is? Check this out. 'You will play this character, Kurnio.'
That is far too much crap to drop on a newby before explaining what any of it might mean. Not to be unfair, the book does immediately pick up after that with a decent explanation, but the order that information is presented in matters. It's the difference between a novice feeling prepped and engaged, and feeling like they're playing catch-up in a baffling ordeal. One of those does not make you want to keep reading.Kurnio
Persuade (Eloquent) 8, Rebuff
(Contrary) 8, Attack (Finesse) 8,
Defense (Sure-Footedness) 8,
Health 6, Appraisal 2, Athletics 3,
Concealment 3, Etiquette 2,
Gambling 6, Living Rough 2,
Pedantry 2, Perception 4, Quick
Fingers 2, Scuttlebutt 1, Stealth 2
Possessions: Amulet of
Virtuous Shielding 4, feathered
tricorn hat 2, rapier 3, deck of
cards (marked) 1, loaded dice 1
Temptations: Indolence 3,
Rakishness 6, Gourmandism 2
We also get an intro to the resolution mechanic, and hoo boy. You try a thing, and roll 1d6. 1 is a crit-fail, 2-3 are regular fail, 3-4 are regular success, 6 is a crit success. If you don't like your roll and have points in an appropriate ability, you can spend a point to re-roll, or 3 points if a critical was involved. Getting a crit success also adds 2 points to the relevant ability's point pool (not the permanent rating).
Opposed tests are a little more involved. A successful roll against you can be negated with a successful defense roll, but the attacker can spend ability points to re-roll, essentially starting the attack/defense procedure over again. This is going to turn any significant opposed action into a draggy pile of rerolls. I can see it maybe making combat go slightly faster because you're essentially doing a giant pile of attack/defense actions at once without putting any combat round accounting in the middle, but for any other situation it's needlessly slow.
Taglines are also apparently a thing in this game. The idea is that the GM hands you some prewritten Vance-style lines at the start of the session, and you get extra XP if you use them amusingly during the session. It's not the worst idea for injecting some of the more elaborate wordplay that's a signature of the series, although I'd have gone with a reward like an ability pool refresh instead, because XP awards are going to lead to disparate character power and/or players spending more brainpower on this minor aspect of the game than it merits.
Here's another thing that's half-assed and annoying. There's a list of four 'Important Matters to Forget,' things you may be expecting from other RPG experiences, but which aren't part of this game. It seems like a good thing to include, to set appropriate expectations. Except that the list is actually of things to remember, not to forget. Colin Beaver edited this, and he rolled 3 or lower.
The list, by the way, is this:
• Fighting is a mistake, run now, cowardly revenge later.
• Characters are all pretty much the same.
• Killing is discouraged.
• Try to enjoy your character's screw-ups.
There's a lot of implication that the game is about the kind of activities seen in the excerpt on page 1: disreputable people fucking up in humorous ways (which might explain the amount of TOON in the resolution system). So far, it's not explicit, which is a problem, because if that's the intended core experience, it really needed to be unambiguously communicated in the introductory chapter. It's definitely an experience a lot of people are interested in, but it's also an experience a lot of people are not going to be interested in.
On the other hand, if that isn't the intended core experience, there's no indication what might be instead. You can read the front, back, and first chapter of this book and not have any idea what you're supposed to do in the game except 'pratfall, maybe?'
Compare the very first sentences from the D&D 3e PHB:
Boom. Premise established.
This has not been a good start. Up next is Characters.