Vecna and Jack Vance in Dungeons and Dragons
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2024
- What are the origins of Vecna in Dungeons and Dragons? And what does the name have to do with the magic system in early D&D?
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Background trivia: The "artifact combo of eye-and-hand" most likely came from Michael Moorcock's Corum series from 1971, where the hero (Corum) has to use the Eye of Rhynn and Hand of Kwll to replace his own missing eye and hand. Pretty good series, with a sequel trilogy after the first three, definitely recommend them for any D&D players out there...
Great background info! I need to go find that series. I seem to remember reading The Bull and the Spear in about 1980 but that was all. Time for a revisit. Thanks for this!
@@theoldwarlock I really liked the Corum books. But all of the (original) Eternal Champion books were great.
This video prompted the exact same connection to Corum for me - hard to believe I never saw the anagram Vecna=Vance as I religiously collected every Vance paperback after receiving Cugel’s Saga as a Xmas gift in the early eighties. Thank you for the video and discussion.
Man, I love this channel. Yeah, there’s plenty of grognards on TH-cam, and plenty of younger players as well, but there’s just something so cool about an old schooler passing the methods of play down to a younger generation that makes the channel genuinely awesome!
Thanks! We really appreciate the comment!
I agree; after all, what's the point of sticking around long enough to become a grognard if you're not going to share any of that knowledge or experience? These videos are excellent.
Thank you! Much appreciated.@@LordJazzly
Vance's Cugel the Clever is one of my favorite fantasy characters
Thanks so much for doing a little research and correctly identifying the origins of Vecna in Brian Blume's D&D campaign. Many people erroneously identify Vecna as a character from the Greyhawk setting simply because he was mentioned in the DMG.
Reading Vance's The Dying Earth reveals many things about the influences and origins of D&D.
You're welcome, Jason. Agreed, The Dying Earth gives a great deal of insight into early D&D. If you can find copies, that is.
@@theoldwarlock the omnibus is out of print, but brand new copies can still be found on Amazon & from other booksellers.
Thanks Jason.
It also makes me think of one of Piers Anthony's magic items in Xanth: a salve that allows the user(s) to walk on clouds, but also causes them to do a dastardly deed every time they use it.
Centaur Aisle, my favorite book.
As someone with a missing eye eye of Vecna would be tempting.
I have been playing D&D since the 70's and I never heard of the Vance - Vecna thing, so I enjoyed this video.
And also, yes.
Thanks, Grel. Glad you liked it.
Greetings from an old friend. Your efforts and enthusiasm for DD are contagious, as usual, Jim. What a treat to find you busy and continuing gaming with your son. This takes me back to all those delightful and memorable times we were down in your basement playing. If I'm being honest, I would join you again for an adventure. You were one of the most imaginative and thoughtful Dungeon Masters I've ever encountered Jim. I wish you much success in this endeavor. Thanks, David Lancaster
Dave!! Drop me an e-mail: officialoldwarlock@gmail.com. Would love to get caught up with you! It's been way too many years!
The last 2e game my group played was Die, Vecna, Die! It was set up to be an apocalyptic ending to your game world to transition to 3e, and it elevated Vecna to godhood. By god, still one of my favorite adventures!
This is a test of the Gaming alert system... IF this had been an actual Alert, head to the Bunker and break out Gamma World.
Yes...
I played in a campaign years ago and the GM also had the Foot of Vecna. Our party's stupid MU (by meta gaming) talked our party into chopping off his hand and then his foot. We drew the line at poking out his eye, and ultimately had to PVP kill him before he became the BBEG of the campaign. The GM was laughing all along. Good memories (I guess)
Jack Vance was one of the first science fiction authors I started reading back in the 70's. Thanks for the deep dive!
You bet, Shaun. Glad you liked it.
There is an amazing comic book that came out in the mid 2000's called Vecna: Hand of the Revenant by Modi Thorsson and artist Kevin McCann. If you can find this 64 page painted comic, I heartly suggest you grab a copy. It is a partial origin story and siege of the city Fleeth, a stronghold of the priests of Pholtus.
Vecan is a great villian, and I love having him in the background pulling EVERYONE's strings.
Thanks, I need to find that comic book!
I ran the "Vecna Lives" module back when it came out in 1990 (using AD&D 2nd Edition). It was an okay module, nothing to write home about. Before that, way back in the very early 1980's in my embarrassing pre-teenage "Monty Haul" days my then DM gave my character both The Hand AND The Eye of Vecna... Man those days were embarrassing!
You shouldn't be embarrassed at all. I bet those were some awesomely fun games; ours certainly were back then. We were just getting started and everyone was taking turns DMing. Some of our fondest memories. Even now, from time to time, it's great to just have a fast paced hack-and-slash with traps and treasure everywhere.
@@ECLYPSER42 Thank you for the kind words. They were fun in their own way. I just wouldn't want to repeat those early days of gaming. 🙃
Felt like I'd been on the road for fifty years when I saw the neon VAC_N__E_ sign at DeeDee's Motel. Something about the missing letters was disconcerting, but I pulled up anyway.
There was some poor beachcomber with a bucket of crabs, wearing a wizard hat in the parking lot. Fortunately, before I threw him a couple of dollars, a local warned me if I gave him a dime he'd try to charge me rent on things I already own.
Then I noticed the one-eyed dude I'm talking to is carrying a dismembered hand and it seems like he's speaking backwards, but kinda reversed so it sounded wrong but made sense anyway.
I decided to get back in the rig and drive on out of Greymoor to the Swedish place up the road. I hear they have duck on the menu and if I join their League some stuff is Free.
Frankly I was too scared to look in the rearview. As I said fifty years on the road… it takes its toll on a working class man!
Thanks for the great video, Jim and Alex! It's always interesting to see some meat put on the bones of these old stories...erm, yeah, I couldn't help myself there. I always wondered whether or not Jack Vance realized that his name was used as an anagram for naming a lich.
"Meat on the bones." You're killing us, Matt. Thanks for the comment! But your point is a good one - was Vance pleased, or offended?
It would be great to read some of the jack Vance novels
There's a reprint edition on Amazon Jacob. Reasonable price, too.
Hey guys! Just want to congratulate you on providing this service, the content and best wishes for the kickstarter. I recently listened to all your podcasts (long drive!) and echo/agree with so much of what you’re saying, the origins, the limited homebrew suggestions from earlier magazines. Im in process of preparing for my first campaign (im mid 50s, played as teen, then gap till now), and the world ive created will contain Zhalindor(tortured souls), Pelinore (imagine), Irillian (white dwarf) as well as lots of locations from old modules plus lots of self designed stuff. Would love to hear you dig into the old magazines and pull out your thoughts. What you used etc. Also more about DMing as you appear to have a very good reputation. And interesting thoughts on playing characters. How sessions go, etc. and what tools do you use. Ive run a few sessions now ad a precursor to the campaign. I do all my maps on Inkarnate snd display on tv screen, rubbing out black over lay as they progress. I have all docs prepped in worldanvil, and use background music/noise from one of the free spps. I also use some new and dome very old miniatures. Interested to hear how youve run games . Cheers Phil
Thanks, Phil! We're sorry you subjected yourself to so much of our Directionless Banter all at once. Most people can only take us in small doses. Glad to hear you've jumped back into playing with both feet! We'll be doing more of the things you've suggested in the near future. We've taken time off for the podcasts but plan to get back on track soon. And I need to pick your brain about removing the black overlay in Inkarnate! KYSAF!
Odd synchronicity that i just read the first 3 Dying Earth stories for the first time. The setting and characters are awesome. You can easily read them as "Dying Greyhawk".
Hi Michael - we had someone else say something similar, linking to Greyhawk. A lot of people are showing interest so we're thinking about a video on the series in the fall.
Yes uh huh.......we've read about Raistlin Majere. :)
Good stuff. Subscribed.
Thanks, George!
The hand of Vecna seems like an extreme version of the "hand of glory"--removed from the corpse of a murderer, and supposed to grant powers of stealth.
In a recent AD&D one shot I had a trader, Krazy Kashogie (who was actually Orcus, the arch devil) was selling "The Genuine Hand of Vecna!!" which looks like the actual genuine hand of Vecna. One of the lads bought it for a ludicrously and really obviously low price, but he never used it because he's been playing with me long enough to know that if the eccentric seller keeps calling it the "genuine" hand of Vecna, which made me sad, because what it really did was cast completely random magic user or illusionist spells at 15th to 20th level...occasionally also at random times
Great idea! Sad they've come to know you too well. I suffer the same problem with my group but have found ways to turn their suspicion to my advantage from time to time.
Yes
Very familiar
My 3.5 campaign the PCs are chasing a lich across the multiverse to try to keep him from gaining the eye and hand of Vecna.
Nice video
Thanks, Rivers.
Big fan of Vance. A shame we won’t have anymore dying earth. My own home campaign is essentially dying earth.
Following the KS, signed up for notification on 2/9. Good luck, gents! 🍻
Thank you, sir. We really appreciate it. Cheers!
That magic system does sound familiar...where have I heard of it before?
Hmmmm... I wonder... :)
Yes!
We knew this would happen. :)
I had not made that connection between Vance and the _thief_ class - is that why they get to use magical items?
Also - as vaguely bittersweet as it is seeing this level of definitive, official lore developed for Vecna (he had just enough story implied that people got inspired to make up all sorts of stuff around him in my old gaming groups, and it's sad to see that lost for newer gamers - even as it's cool to see a real proper villain character get a write-up in the 5E era), it's downright _weird_ seeing _Acererak_ getting story notes. My old gaming group used to run challenge modules, inspired by (and sometimes including) Tomb of Horrors, as a competitive thing, to see who could extract the most treasure out of various deathtraps (or sometimes just to see who made it furthest in - not everyone had the same level of self-restraint in designing these things, and so there were some doozies). So for me, Acererak getting written into official lore was like - I don't know, like seeing a BMX track getting adapted as a fantasy novel, or something. An odd moment.
(For anyone reading 'competitive dungeon' and thinking 'Wait, how would you run a competitive dungeon crawl? Surely the players would just turn on one another immediately' - Ah, well they _would,_ except that you weren't just competing against the other players in your party, you were competing against _everyone_ who played that module during its specific event. So there was incentive to work together with your adventuring party, as doing so furthered your own goals relative to the entire gaming group. _Also_ it's a lot more fun to actually _play_ the dungeon you showed up to play, so - to my knowledge no-one ever tried to turn the whole thing into 'grab first treasure object, do five minutes of PVP, abandon game'. We played in person - what else were you going to do for the rest of that game session?)
I totally see your point here. I think there were/are some things that were/are so absolutely iconic and imagination firing for me that someone deciding to make them "official" threatened all the mystique and, for lack of a better term, "charm." I long ago decided to stay away from all that took original ideas, decades after creation, and assigned canon to them. Thanks for the post!
Theives using magic items is also sourced from the Grey Mouser who was a former wizards apprentice and an iconic pulp theif from Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series
Yes!:)
Et Tu Todd? :)
Yes
Yes.
It took 2.08 for the video to actually start.
Matthew 5:29-30 is what the hand and eye of Vecna reminds me of. When I was younger, I assumed that this was the origin.
Had to look this up. I can't believe that there isn't some kind of link in there. Time for more digging. Thanks, 99!
@theoldwarlock I later heard that it's allegorical, but I would imagine Vecna as some cloistered monk, like the guy from the legend of who wrote the Codex Gigas.
I have all of the Vecna modules. I am so glad they didn't use them as the big bad in that horrible movie in 2023.
Matt Damon