''Darksword Adventures'' is a book by

Margaret Weis Margaret Edith Weis (; born March 16, 1948) is an American fantasy and science fiction author, of dozens of novels and short stories. At TSR, Inc., she teamed with Tracy Hickman to create the ''Dragonlance'' role-playing game (RPG) world. She is ...

and

Tracy Hickman Tracy Raye Hickman (born November 26, 1955) is an American fantasy author. He wrote the ''Dragonlance'' novels with Margaret Weis. He also wrote role playing game material while working for TSR and has cowritten novels with his wife, Laura Hick ...

that was published by Bantam/Spectra in 1988. It describes the world of Thimhallen, the setting the '' Darksword'' trilogy written by Weis and Hickman. Most of the book describes the world and its history. The final chapter, "Phantasia", describes a fantasy role-playing game that is set in Thimhallen.

Description

''Darksword Adventures'' is a book that describes a role-playing game set in Thimhallen, the world of

and

's '' Darksword'' novels. The rules for the game are largely found in the final chapter of the book, while the previous chapters give an in-depth background of the world: * The first chapter describes the universe as well as a travelogue of Thimhallen. * The second chapters provides a detailed chronology of Thimhallen's history, including events of the ''Darksword'' trilogy. * The third chapter describes magic and its economic and social repercussions. * The fourth chapter describes the "mysteries", the abilities that new

player characters A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not control ...

will have. The final part of the book, titled "Phantasia", contains the rules to a fantasy role-playing system. Characters are defined by only five "mysteries": Combat, Prowess, Information, Shape, and Life. The game includes rules for movement, combat, and magic; statistics for important characters from the novels; and scenarios written in story form. The resolution mechanics are based on a hand-signal system. This system measures success according to a scale named for the in-universe game of Tarok: Total, Almost, Reasonable, Off, Canceled.

Publication history

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman wrote the popular ''Darksword'' fantasy trilogy in 1987 and 1988. They then released a fourth book, ''Darksword Adventures'', a mass market paperback published by Bantam/Spectra in 1988 that featured cover art by

Larry Elmore Larry Elmore (born August 5, 1948) is an American fantasy artist whose work includes creating illustrations for video games, comics, magazines, and fantasy books. His list of work includes illustrations for ''Dungeons & Dragons'', ''Dragonlance'', ...

and interior art by Stephen D. Sullivan.

Reception

In his 1990 book '' The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games'', game critic

Rick Swan Rick Swan is a game designer and author who worked for TSR. His work for TSR, mostly for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, appeared from 1989 to 1995. Swan also wrote ''The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games'' (1990), published by St. Martin's Pr ...

wondered at the concept behind the role-playing game, since "The rules are so closely tied to the novels that adapting the material to other systems such as ''

AD&D In insurance, accidental death and dismemberment (AD&D) is a policy that pays benefits to the beneficiary if the cause of death is an accident. This is a limited form of life insurance which is generally less expensive, or in some cases is an add ...

'' or ''

RuneQuest ''RuneQuest'' (commonly abbreviated as RQ) is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game originally designed by Steve Perrin, Ray Turney, Steve Henderson, and Warren James, and set in Greg Stafford's mythical world of Glorantha. It was first publis ...

'' is all but impossible. Worse, they're so detailed and jargon-heavy that role-playing novices won't know where to begin." Swan was extremely critical of what he saw as an unnecessary invention of new words to describe ordinary concepts, using as an example the word for distance. "Movement rates are given in ''mila'' per hour; a ''mila'' is about the same as a mile, so why the new word?" Swan noted that "when all the verbiage is cleared away, 'Phantasia' is a pretty good little RPG ... featuring an especially nice magic system." Swan concluded by giving the game a rating of 2.5 out of 4, saying that by linking the game so closely to the novels, "they've limited the game's appeal to a very narrow group; namely, advanced role-players who've thoroughly digested all three of the novels and are willing to learn a difficult game system that's essentially useless in any setting other then the ''Darksword'' universe."

References

{{reflist Fantasy role-playing games Role-playing games based on novels Role-playing games introduced in 1988