Mythras/Lyonesse: Coddefut's Stipule, Now Available!

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Loz

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The Design Mechanism is delighted to bring you our inaugural release for Lyonesse: 'Coddefut's Stipule'. This self-contained scenario introduces you to the Elder Isles, and concerns the distressing disappearance of fishermen while plying their trade off Dahaut's eastern coast. Press-ganged by a peevish burghermeister, the pre-generated characters must sail out to the disused tower of Coddefut the Magician to investigate. It may not end well; and for some, it may not end at all.

Fully playable with the Mythras rules, 'Coddefut's Stipule' contains 6 pre-generated characters representing the kinds of personalities encountered in Jack Vance's Lyonesse stories: a preening nobleman; a wily trickster; a cunning thief; a feisty huntress; a weary hedge witch; and a priest who may not be all he seems. But that is not all: special rules taken from the Lyonesse RPG (due in 2020) help everyone bring the flavour (quite literally: food figures highly in the scenario) of a Vancian story to the gaming table. A little taste of the magic system is also on offer, with two of the characters possessing fairy cantraps.

So, for the modest sum of $9.99 for the POD & PDF (or $4.99 if you wish to avoid the death of trees), you can take your first steps into the marvellously irreverent world of Jack Vance's Lyonesse saga. Available from DrivethruRPG and The Design Mechanism store at the below links:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/280201/Coddefuts-Stipule--TDM700

http://thedesignmechanism.com/store.php#!/Lyonesse/c/36165487
 

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I've wanted to read Lyonesse but it's not available for my kindle and I can't read paper anymore.
 
I've wanted to read Lyonesse but it's not available for my kindle and I can't read paper anymore.
The audio books are quite good and unabridged. I bought and listened to it on a long field work trip last spring, as I didn't much care for the idea of lugging around my OOP omnibus edition to re-read it.
 
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I need to break out my hardbacks to freshen up on it now the game seems to be near completion.
 
The audio books are quite good and unabridged. I bought and listened to it on a long field work trip last spring, as I didn't much care for the idea of lugging around my OOP omnibus edition to re-read it.
The shitty thing is that all the Lyonesse books are available for digital format in Amazon UK, but it's region-locked. You can get French and German Lyonesse in the US Amazon but not English.

Anyway, I read through this adventure today. Overall, I really liked it, although it starts off with some heavy-handed railroading. That may be OK, though, because it is just to get things started, and the adventure feels a bit like a one-shot or introduction to Lyonesse. There's a bit of silliness at the start about avoiding the burgher's popping waistcoat buttons; some will be amused but it wasn't my jam.

There are a lot of Vancian prose speckled throughout the adventure. Some of it is in the right places - character sheets and dialog - while some of it is in less right places, like GM text and read-alouds. But obviously they're really trying to immerse everyone in Vance's Lyonesse, so I'll let it slide. There's a terrific chapter called "Vancian charts" which provides tables for generation the names of towns and inns, as well as interesting innkeepers, but the real crown jewels are four pages of tables for generating a detailed feast!

What's a bit less forgivable is that the text can be very dense for location descriptions. Finding the relevant information would probably require a bit of pausing and parsing at the game table. Stats for NPCs are all grouped together in a table towards the end, instead of alongside the places where they will be encountered. Not an uncommon convention, but annoying to me.

The best news is that the adventure itself is pretty cool. It consists of exploring the small islet that belonged to a wizard who has since departed. It's not gonzo or flashy, but it's a good small adventure with an interesting problem and room for a pretty wide array of outcomes. Even though the text is a bit wordy, it's not hard to absorb all the important points after a read-through, so the impact is reduced.

The pre-generated PCs are great and flavorful, with baked in motivations for participating in the adventure and personality quirks that are suited to the situation at hand. They're a good representation of Vance's florid schemers and ne'er-do-wells. A couple of them know some minor spells that have appropriately baroque names.

You can easily adapt this adventure to a different setting or game, which is something that I always look for. The art was pretty sparse but well-drawn black-and-white pieces, and maps were clear and usable. If this is representative of the entire Lyonesse project, I'm very interested. I'm familiar enough with Vance to say that they captured something that I recognize, even if I haven't read Lyonesse itself. I was perusing the promotional literature for the project, and I'm excited to learn that Dave Morris of Dragon Warriors fame will be participating.

tl;dr A good adventure with a strong Vancian flavor. There were some minor issues for me but nothing I couldn't easily correct in play. Worth the $5 price tag for sure.
 
Thanks for the capsule review, Edgewise! Much appreciated.

The adventure was actually written for UK Games Expo this year, and run by Dirk the Dice of Grognardia. The railroading at the start is deliberate to establish the mood and help players unfamiliar with either Lyonesse or Vance, get into the mindset quickly. A typical Vance story involves an odious protagonist, food, and a fait a complis - not always in that order - and it certainly worked extremely well in my play tests, with none of my group having any experience of Vance at all.
 
I haven't read Vance since the eighties. Seems I need to refresh myself in preperation for the coming release.
 
A typical Vance story involves an odious protagonist, food, and a fait a complis - not always in that order - and it certainly worked extremely well in my play tests, with none of my group having any experience of Vance at all.
Yeah, it definitely gives it an intro/one-shot vibe, which is entirely appropriate. I'm not a fan of railroading but things open up immediately after the beginning, so I totally get it.
 
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A bit off topic, but I know there was a French language Tschai RPG Kickstarter last year. Which may get translated to an English version, but who knows. No chance Design Mechanism could get the rights to an english version of Tschai?
 
We've had a brief discussion with the guys behind the Tschai game, and I think they're using PbtA (but could be wrong; it could be DCC, which I think is also being used for Goodman's licensing of The Dying Earth). We haven't discussed licensing, but I do love the Tschai stories, so you never know.
 
Thanks for the response, Loz.

I said 'Kickstarter', but actually it was a European version of that called, Ulule. I probably would have tried to get in on it but only found out about it earlier this year, long after the funding had ended. I get the impression they took a lot of art from the French comic book series based on the Tschai books to include in their Tschai RPG. Those comics are another thing I'd love to see get an English translation.

In the meantime, I do have the GURPS Planet of Adventure book, all the books in audio format, and a converted character sheet from the OpenQuest based River of Heaven RPG. Having more art and a slightly different take on a Tschai RPG would be nice though.
 
I didn't realise that Lyonesse had the same type of magic system (in concept) as that found in The Dying Earth series. I've read The Dying Earth (some of them anyway) and was aware of Cantrips and Sandestins from those books. I haven't read the Lyonnesse books, but made the assumption that it was based on Authorian myth, primarily, but this changes the tone substantially - more comedic.

So, quick questions which may have been answered before, but is it standalone or do you need the core rules? Do magic using types form the core of the experience? How do you envisage the game in it's relationship to Mythic Britain - totally separate or complimentary? What support is planned for it? I'm flicking through the PDF currently.
 
Yeah Pete and Loz are very particular with their work and if shows! Just wish they would get Mythic Greece out :/)
Yep, this has been the one frustrating thing - as of yet, no Mythic Greece. Without dismissing any of the great books they have done for other settings, including other Mythic Earth titles, the one setting that screamed out to be made after reading through the game was Mythic Greece. The manner in which combat works, the magic systems and the organisation of Cults and Guilds all just seem built for something like Mythic Greece. I've been waiting for it from about 2012.

Oh, and I wish they had made Luther Arkwright fully standalone, including the Mysticism rules all in one place. But that is another story.
 
Yep, this has been the one frustrating thing - as of yet, no Mythic Greece. Without dismissing any of the great books they have done for other settings, including other Mythic Earth titles, the one setting that screamed out to be made after reading through the game was Mythic Greece. The manner in which combat works, the magic systems and the organisation of Cults and Guilds all just seem built for something like Mythic Greece. I've been waiting for it from about 2012.

Oh, and I wish they had made Luther Arkwright fully standalone, including the Mysticism rules all in one place. But that is another story.
Yeah I have been waiting on it since I heard about it in 2015. Hopefully it will come out soon.
 
I didn't realise that Lyonesse had the same type of magic system (in concept) as that found in The Dying Earth series. I've read The Dying Earth (some of them anyway) and was aware of Cantrips and Sandestins from those books. I haven't read the Lyonnesse books, but made the assumption that it was based on Authorian myth, primarily, but this changes the tone substantially - more comedic.

So, quick questions which may have been answered before, but is it standalone or do you need the core rules? Do magic using types form the core of the experience? How do you envisage the game in it's relationship to Mythic Britain - totally separate or complimentary? What support is planned for it? I'm flicking through the PDF currently.
I'm not Pete or Loz, but I've been following this with interest since it was first announced.

As far as we know, the game will be stand-alone, but based on the Mythras rules. I wouldn't expect "magic-y" types to form the core of the experience; wizards and the like form a very small cadre of folks in the books, but where would the fun be if you couldn't be one of these select few? Additionally, I would envisage almost no connection to Mythic Britain. Vance's Lyonesse stories may borrow heavily from the Matters of Britain and France (moreso the former than the latter) but, not the quasi-historical setting of MB. You noted Vance alludes to mythology and magic of the Dying Earth; some of the characters in the Lyonesse stories even make sojourns into parallel universes reminiscent to the events of Rhialto The Marvellous. As for the rest, I'm only guessing but support probably very much depends on the sales of the game.
 
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I think the official announcement has some of this

Jack Vance’s high fantasy masterpiece, Lyonesse, is to be brought to life in a new roleplaying game by The Design Mechanism. Licensed and approved by Spatterlight Press, Lyonesse is a standalone game based on the acclaimed Mythras system.

The Lyonesse trilogy – Suldrun’s Garden, The Green Pearl, and Madouc – tells the story of the Elder Isles, and the ambitions of King Casmir of Lyonesse to bring its fractious kingdoms under his sole rule. Lyonesse is a setting of high chivalry and low cunning. Noble knights rub shoulders with self-serving tricksters, while capricious fairies and child-eating ogres haunt the dense expanse of the Forest of Tantrevalles. Itinerant magicians peddle charms and potions at the Goblin Fair, while kings hoard magical treasures such as the prophetic mirror Persilian. Great armies clash in fierce battles, while the navies of Lyonesse and Troicinet seek to outwit each other on the coastal seas. The new religion of Christianity coexists with the older gods of Hybras, such as Lug of the Sun, Matrona the Moon, Sheah the Graceful, and innumerable parochial half-gods.

Using The Design Mechanism’s Mythras mechanics, the Lyonesse roleplaying game is presented as a standalone game with all the rules necessary for play. The book will provide a detailed overview of the Elder Isles and its history, its kingdoms and politics, and, of course, its movers and shakers, from King Casmir to the arch mage Murgen; from Shimrod to his nemesis Faude Carfilhiot; from villains such as Visbhume and Torqual, to heroes like Aillas, Dhrun and Madouc.

Click on the picture to the left to download the complete press release. Keep an eye on this website for more news and insights as the game progresses, and don't forget our social media sites: Design Mechanism Forum, Facebook, G+ Community, and our new MeWe Group.
 
Lyonesse is a standalone game, complete in one book.

It has no relationship with Mythic Britain, and nor will we engineer one; they occupy parallel universes.

While there will be access to magic for player characters, the magic systems (Fairy and Sandestin) are designed to replicate what happens in the books, which means that magic is extremely powerful. There are spells that will whip a mage from one end of Hybras to the other in the blink of an eye. There are spells that can be used to turn someone into an iron spike and hammered into the summit of a mountain. This means that playing a magician will be a very different experience (and on a very different level) from playing a standard character. But it will also be a lot of fun - if played in the right way.

It's going to be a fun game.
 
Yeah Pete and Loz are very particular with their work and if shows! Just wish they would get Mythic Greece out :/)
I'm fine with "when it's done":smile:. That probably has something to do with the size of my library...

Lyonesse is a standalone game, complete in one book.

It has no relationship with Mythic Britain, and nor will we engineer one; they occupy parallel universes.

While there will be access to magic for player characters, the magic systems (Fairy and Sandestin) are designed to replicate what happens in the books, which means that magic is extremely powerful. There are spells that will whip a mage from one end of Hybras to the other in the blink of an eye. There are spells that can be used to turn someone into an iron spike and hammered into the summit of a mountain. This means that playing a magician will be a very different experience (and on a very different level) from playing a standard character. But it will also be a lot of fun - if played in the right way.

It's going to be a fun game.
So is playing a magician going to be like a different tier of play, preferably in a different campaign from non-magic-using characters:wink:?
 
So is playing a magician going to be like a different tier of play, preferably in a different campaign from non-magic-using characters?

I think it will be, depending on the player and the type of magician. Someone with a couple of fairy cantraps won't unbalance the group, but someone with two or three sandestins under their control could do, if the player doesn't exhibit some restraint (and the GM enforce it). And with half a dozen sandestins and cantraps, then you're straying into the realms of the great arch mages like Murgen and Tamurello. A campaign where all the players are at that level could be a lot of fun: and that's how Vance treats them in the Lyonesse novels. The struggle between Murgen, Tamurello, Shimrod, Desmei, Carfilhiot and Melancthe are played as parallel plot strands to the business of the mundane characters - much in the same way the magicians in his Rhialto stories spend all their time sniping at each other.
 
I didn't realise that Lyonesse had the same type of magic system (in concept) as that found in The Dying Earth series. I've read The Dying Earth (some of them anyway) and was aware of Cantrips and Sandestins from those books.

I think this comes as a surprise to quite a few people, and in trying to explain how sandestin magic works, we've actively referenced some of the Dying Earth stories, which is where Vance (sort of) explains what sandestins are, and how spells really work. Essentially, it isn't the magician who performs the magic at all; the 'spells' he or she casts are really very complex, very precise instructions for summoning and commanding a sandestin (which is an inherently magical entity, not unlike a demon) to work the desired effect. The more complex spells combine sandestins, and because sandestins are fickle, truculent and obstinate, degree of control and precision of instruction are paramount. Because sandestins work almost instantly, the effect appears to originate with the magician and to be a function of the 'spell' he's just cast.

So when D&D players and GMs talk about 'Vancian Magic', they're not really grasping the full nature of it. While its true that a magician can only hold a finite number of instructions in his or her mind at any given time (and may have to erase some to make room for others), true Vancian magic is really based on the magician/sandestin relationship.
 
Well this Lyonesse setting is really going to set Mythras apart from RuneQuest's Glorantha, which is a great thing!

It means people who love BRP mechanics will likely support both companies as the settings will be quite different and a good draw card to each version of the BRP system
 
I think this comes as a surprise to quite a few people, and in trying to explain how sandestin magic works, we've actively referenced some of the Dying Earth stories, which is where Vance (sort of) explains what sandestins are, and how spells really work. Essentially, it isn't the magician who performs the magic at all; the 'spells' he or she casts are really very complex, very precise instructions for summoning and commanding a sandestin (which is an inherently magical entity, not unlike a demon) to work the desired effect. The more complex spells combine sandestins, and because sandestins are fickle, truculent and obstinate, degree of control and precision of instruction are paramount. Because sandestins work almost instantly, the effect appears to originate with the magician and to be a function of the 'spell' he's just cast.

So when D&D players and GMs talk about 'Vancian Magic', they're not really grasping the full nature of it. While its true that a magician can only hold a finite number of instructions in his or her mind at any given time (and may have to erase some to make room for others), true Vancian magic is really based on the magician/sandestin relationship.
Are there going to be mechanics for the relationship with your sandestins:devil:?
 
I think this comes as a surprise to quite a few people, and in trying to explain how sandestin magic works, we've actively referenced some of the Dying Earth stories, which is where Vance (sort of) explains what sandestins are, and how spells really work. Essentially, it isn't the magician who performs the magic at all; the 'spells' he or she casts are really very complex, very precise instructions for summoning and commanding a sandestin (which is an inherently magical entity, not unlike a demon) to work the desired effect. The more complex spells combine sandestins, and because sandestins are fickle, truculent and obstinate, degree of control and precision of instruction are paramount. Because sandestins work almost instantly, the effect appears to originate with the magician and to be a function of the 'spell' he's just cast.

So when D&D players and GMs talk about 'Vancian Magic', they're not really grasping the full nature of it. While its true that a magician can only hold a finite number of instructions in his or her mind at any given time (and may have to erase some to make room for others), true Vancian magic is really based on the magician/sandestin relationship.
Reminds me a little of the work you did writing Elric of Melnibone, specifically the demon summoning rules... Will this be similar?
 
Are there going to be mechanics for the relationship with your sandestins:devil:?

They're kind of rolled into the sandestin magic rules. They're not detailed, but a lot of the sandestin effects have suggestions for what variations a sandestin might introduce if it has an especially fractious relationship with its commander.
 
Reminds me a little of the work you did writing Elric of Melnibone, specifically the demon summoning rules... Will this be similar?

Not really. There are no Pacts. The spell matrix includes the summoning and commanding, so you don't have to go through the Elric-like process of summoning, commanding, and/or binding. And the effects are pretty wide ranging, too. There are 100 detailed, and effects can be combined and varied, so the permutations of magical effects can be truly staggering.
 
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