City of Sorcery by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Rare is the time when I’ve read a book with more titles and subtitles. I think this is just ‘City of Sorcery’, written by Marion Zimmer Bradely, but it’s also got the Darkover trade dress and under that The Renunciates (Free Amazons).

This copy is from 1984 and comes in at $5.99. I’m sure most paperbacks these days easily hit the $9.99 mark. I bought it from Half-Priced books, off of the dollar spinner racks. It was well worth the dollar. Looking over Amazon, it’s only available from third party sellers at this time, with no Kindle version. Now that’s a shame as one of the things I’d love to see e-books used for, is the restoration of so much of the ‘lost’ fantasy books that fail to stay in print.             

If you’re looking for a fantasy book with some science fiction elements, the Darkover book should hold your attention. If you’re looking for a fantasy book with a lot of strong female characters, City ofSorcery again has you covered.

I haven’t read any of the Darkover books in easily twenty years. I was never a huge fan to begin with but do remember reading a few of them and just never getting into it or keeping up with it. For its time I assume it was successful due to the sheer number of books in the series.

The majority of the novel tackles exploration of the ‘Hellers’, an unexplored region of Darkover. This exploration takes the form of fighting the elements, fighting against fatigue, fighting against altitude, fighting against a village where strangers are welcomed, and then drugged to make the murder of them easier.

Depending on the game system you’re playing, this could be a fun thing or a terrible thing. One of the things I loved about 3^rd edition, and the OLG, is that it allowed settings like Midnight from FFG, to flourish. There were a lot of fantastic elements in the dark fantasy game, and fighting against the elements just for survival was high on the list.

But that was my least favorite aspect of the game. I didn’t want to take subdual damage or have to keep track of it or have to keep making saving throws or customize my character just to survive the wilds.

On the other hand, games like The One Ring, do a fantastic job of providing some penalties for failure to make a ‘travel’ skill check. It uses a few roles that have to be filled and these checks can be complicated by failure or rolling the ‘eye’ on the d12. The results of failure vary but can include losing health to encountering monsters to added travel time.

This matches well with the movies where the journey is often one of the more dangerous aspects of the characters trails. In City of Sorcery, there is a ‘big bad’ at the end, but her powers and abilities rely on having those around her to carry out her will in addition to her own knowledge base and powers. While she’s a danger to the characters, she’s not necessarily as terrible as the trials that got the characters to the location to begin with.

I find that 4^th edition Dungeons and Dragons, with its skill check system, also allows a great deal of ability to customize the travel times as well as the meetings between characters and leaders of towns.  This is another strength of The One Ring where important meetings between the characters and NPCs to gather information is easy to play out.

 City of Sorcery is not heavy on action, is not heavy on sword and sorcery, but is heavy on character and exploration.

Cooks Illustrated August 2012 Number 117

"The route is a series of twists and turns and requires a sharp memory. The problem was, as soon as we got high up, we found that loggers had clear-cut the mountaintop and the landscape appeared ragged and unfamiliar. After leading our horses trough a large field of felled tress and swamp, I set out searching for the way forward. At one point, I got within a few yards of the trail but turned back, thinking it was a dead end. Eventually, we trotted home, disappointed and bone tired." The editorial by Christopher Kimball.

When I read that bit in the new Cook's Illustrated, I had to share. You see, in the dreaded 'real world', someone I know recently suffered a terrible loss of a loved one in the woods. The police were unable to find the loved one but a search party did and not that far from where the police, with dogs were searching.

When taken out of the familiar, well, EVERYTHING is different. Directions no longer matter. West and near west and landmarks and old familiar terrain are gone.

Even a quick travel through the woods can turn into something disastrous and its not something that springs from fiction or fantasy but the fact that outside a certain comfort zone, those who are not trained in specific wilderness survival skill survive only through those who have it.

If dealing with some 'city folk' style players, have their caravan ambushed or destroyed in the deep woods and see how long the players can survive.

Mind you, this only works if you're going for a change of pace. If you're running a dark and gritty campaign like the old Fantasy Flight Midnight Setting, well, its an easy standard to abuse. "Make an Endurance check! You're freezing to death!" It's a good way to showcase how a setting is different, how its more dangerous, how it doesn't follow the standards, but if your idea of adding atmosphere is making skill checks and ability score checks and saving throws versus the elements without any of the drama that goes with them, we'll, we're roleplaying differently.

Christopher then suggests the Searcher and Lonesome Dove, so I think I'm off to see what Netflix has to say about these movies.