I had forgotten that Mark Smith's Virtual Reality books were both set in a world which may very well be part of
the Rainbow Land of his and Jamie Thomson's Duelmaster series. The name of the Palayal River by the city of Godorno suggests
Tekumel, but nothing else about the setting does. The
Forest of Arden features in both, though whether it's Shakespeare's, the one
by the Avon, or some third high-fantasy variant is not clear.
It does feel quite Shakespearean, these books being very strong on atmosphere. That's especially true of Godorno in
Coils of Hate, a city that resembles a nightmarish version of Venice where the walls fairly drip with a dank ambience of distrust and fear. I could ask Mark about the intended setting (possibly it was an unmapped corner of Orb) but it was twenty years ago and he's not likely to remember now.
Mark's titles in the series were
Green Blood (love that title) and
Coils of Hate. They were the nearest to being interactive novels - rather stronger on the novel side than on the interactivity, to be honest. The characters and locations would make a superb role-playing sourcebook, which is one clue that Mark might have taken them from his notes for the Orb campaign. (Which was not, as I never tire of telling people, even remotely Oriental, despite the Way of the Tiger books.)
And these maps..! I challenge any role-player to look at Godorno and not want to spend a few evenings adventuring there. One of Mark's biggest literary influences is
Fritz Leiber Jr, and there's more than a hint of
Lankhmar to those streets and canals. It does no harm to have the maps beautifully rendered by Leo Hartas, too.
Oh, Orb is never Oriental in the true sense of the word. I certainly agree.
ReplyDeleteMy personal interpretation is this: we have very Oriental setting in the islands (samurais, ninjas, etc). A big bulk of the continent Manmarch is like some kind of Oriental setting colonized by Westerners and, hence, integrated part of their culture into its local cultures. Therefore, we have knights and cavalry existing side-by-side with martial monks. Move farther east, and then it's fantasy feudal Europe, as we go to Dragonhold with knights and dragons, elven colonies, dragon overlords, and dark elves.
That's why Orb is interesting to me. In many ways, it is a kitchen sink of fantasy elements, but the other hand, it has a low level of magic with a greater emphasis on martial and military aspects of warfare. Very different from many AD&D-esque high fantasy settings.
All the ninja and samurai were shoe-horned in for the sake of the Way of the Tiger books, though. They were never part of Mark's original conception. This became very clear when Leo Hartas was drawing the Irsmuncast map. He had put in lots of little border decorations of armies clashing and so forth - all traditional Western-looking armies - and then somebody said shouldn't there be some ninja and samurai in there too. It was quickly realized that wouldn't look right at all. That would really be a kitchen sink approach. It's why I'd like to see a "real Orb" RPG or gamebook with no trace of Oriental influences.
DeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteany news when these two books are ready to be published in the Critical IF series?
Somebody would need to edit them first. The flowcharts need a lot of work, especially Coils of Hate. I hope we will get to them as the books are in many ways brilliant - vivid characters, some lovely writing, evocative settings and ideas, great dialogue. But they don't really work as gamebooks in their current form.
DeleteThe oriental elements were there, in the far west, including the Gods like Kwon and Eo. They just weren't a big part of mainland Orb where most of the role playing group played. Orb is a bit Lhankmarian/Hyperborean in the sense that many parts are modelled loosely (or sometimes not so loosely) on historical earth settings. There are flavours of Greek city states, historical earth stuff - classical Greek city states, eastern European states some oriental stuff in the far west, (for D&D Monks and Samurai character classes) but not really a main part of the starting story lines for characters playing in Orb. It wasn't shoe-horned in on a whim! Not sure about the actual NInja character class though, that was probably added in, but there were already places to slot those in (ie Kwon, and the monks of the Scarlet Mantis were there at the beginning.)
ReplyDeleteI was going by what Mark said ("Ironically, the one thing I never included in the original Orb was an Oriental area!") but, as we both know, it's quite likely that Mark forgot his own creation. Many of us forgot a lot of the '80s, after all :-)
DeleteHe probably means the Island of Tranquil Dreams, the home of the 'good ninjas'.
ReplyDeleteI bet I know what he was smoking to bring on those tranquil dreams, too ;-)
DeleteAt the risk of badgering you about something you probably plan to talk about in a later blog post, I'm suddenly spotting a book called 'The Wrong Side of the Galaxy', by Jamie, popping up in the sidebar here >>>. What's that then?
ReplyDeleteClick on the pic, Paul. All will be - well no, *some* will be revealed. More to come ;-)
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