DCC Empire of the East Is Copyright © 2020 Goodman Games LLC
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EMPIRE OF THE EAST A POST-APOCALYPTIC SCIENCE FANTASY SETTING FOR DCC RPG Based on the EMPIRE OF THE EAST book series by Fred Saberhagen Sample file EMPIRE OF THE EAST A POST-APOCALYPTIC SCIENCE FANTASY SETTING FOR DCC RPG Based on the EMPIRE OF THE EAST book series by Fred Saberhagen Empire of the East book series created and written by Fred Saberhagen • Adapted and written by Jason Vey • Additional writing: Jim Wampler and Harley Stroh • Editor: Rev. Dak J. Ultimak • Additional editing and proofreading: Jen Brinkman • Cover art: Ian Miller • Cartography: William McAusland and Stefan Poag • Interior art: Chris Arneson, Fred Dailey, Cliff Kurowski, Doug Kovacs, William McAusland, Bradley McDevitt, Ian Miller, Jesse Mohn, Peter Mullen, Russ Nicholson and Stefan Poag • Art direction: Joseph Goodman & Harley Stroh • Art direction & layout: Matt Hildebrand DCC Empire of the East is copyright © 2020 Goodman Games LLC. Empire of the East book series is copyright JSS Literary Productions LLC. Dungeon Crawl Classics is a trademark of Goodman Games LLC. DCC RPG is published under the Open Game License. Refer to the OGL in this work for additional information. www.goodman-games.com Sample file Characters CHAPTER ONE PAGE 8 Magic CHAPTER TWO PAGE 14 Monsters CHAPTER THREE PAGE 42 Personalities of the Changeling Earth CHAPTER FOUR PAGE 50 Science, Technology and Magic CHAPTER FIVE PAGE 66 Adventures CHAPTER SIX PAGE 72 Character Sheets SamplePAGE 85 file CHAPTER ONE CHARACTERS Mewick was there, thrusting with a long dagger, swinging a war-hatchet that looked like some peasants’ tool save for its swordlike basket hilt.Sample Even with one of the barracks cleaned file out, the Free Folk inside the stockade were still outnumbered. Yelling, Thomas led his own squad charging to Mewick’s aid. Sample file magical creatures. Swords and spells may win the day, INTRODUCTION but possession of an atomic tank or the backing of a shag- gy demi-god born of the past holocaust can sometimes ar out in the reaches of the wastelands and glow trump both. deserts is an unmapped territory known only as Fthe “soft lands.” Stumble into it, and you’ll soon lose all sight of familiar landmarks, as well as your sense RUNNING DCC: EMPIRE OF of direction. Without warning, a dust storm will blow up out of nowhere, the gusting sand-winds will change direc- THE EAST tion by greater than 90 degrees, and if you stare at your s is true of nearly all setting books, running suc- barely visible feet you will see that you are now stand- cessful role playing sessions of DCC: Empire of ing on sands of a slightly different color. That’s when you the East will require the prepared judge to also know. You have been displaced in space, and perhaps A have access to the DCC RPG rulebook. Rule and setting even time, to a parallel world similar to your own, but variations presented here are, by their very nature, de- with bizarre differences and strange physical laws with pendent upon the rules and settings from which they which you are unfamiliar. vary. Thus it is that you and your traveling companions might That said, as a judge and players, there are no hard and find yourselves journeying from one post-apocalyptic fast guidelines on how much or how little of the infor- world to another —to a new kind of broken land. mation presented in this book you should use. You can, Welcome to the Empire of the East. of course, use the entirety of what is contained herein to run a full-fledged Empire of the East campaign set in EMPIRE OF THE EAST the fabulous world of the Changeling Earth depicted by Fred Saberhagen. Alternatively, player characters may mpire of the East is the collective name for a tetral- stumble into this world by virtue of planar travel, a mis- ogy of books written by Fred Saberhagen. Some- step in the soft lands, or other extraordinary means. Or times referred to as The Ardneh Sequence, these you may simply wish to take portions of the men, mon- E sters, magic, and machinery in DCC: Empire of the East books include The Broken Lands (1968), The Black Moun- tains (1971), Changeling Earth (1973; later re-titled Ardneh’s and import them into your existing DCC campaigns to World), and Ardneh’s Sword (2006). This sourcebook covers spice things up. the first three of these books, the original Empire of the East A gentle word of caution: though mixing and matching trilogy. The fourth book, which takes place centuries later, game mechanics in role playing games is a do-it-yourself does not figure into the setting of the Changeling Earth, as tradition as old as the hobby itself, careful consideration it takes place following the Second Change at the end of should always be given to doing so. The variances of set- Changeling Earth/Ardneh’s World. ting and game rules presented in this tome have been thoughtfully engineered both to create verisimilitude Well-read gamers will recognize Saberhagen’s Changeling with the works of Fred Saberhagen and to facilitate bal- Earth for its prominent place in Gary Gygax’s famed Ap- anced and fun game play therein. One could, for exam- pendix N list of works in the original Dungeon Masters ple, use the spell enervation rules in Guide. Diehard fans of Fred Saberhagen’s works will also DCC: Empire of the know that the post-apocalyptic Empire of the East series East to replace the spell corruption rules in DCC RPG also serves as a prequel to his later Swords Trilogy and with only a small impact to expected gameplay. On the subsequent works set in that milieu. other hand, importing the entirety of wizard, elf, and cleric spells into DCC: Empire of the East could quite eas- Furthermore, Saberhagen’s eclectic and heady mixture ily break the setting, and thereby result in diminished of post-apocalyptic setting, science fiction precepts, and play value for you and your players. swords and sorcery in many ways anticipated the Ralph Likewise, many of the spells herein may not precisely Bakshi movie Wizards (1977). This movie is itself a cited in- fluence upon the first post-apocalyptic role-playing game balance with similar spells found in the DCC RPG rules. If you are running standard DCC RPG, you may need to by James M. Ward and Gary Jaquet, Gamma World. And so the strange loop of influences and confluences tightens. make certain adjustments to the mechanics and specific effects in order to maintain play balance. This is largely In Dungeon Crawl Classics: Empire of the East you will find because the roles of demons, elementals and djinn are a post-apocalyptic setting in which magic and technol- far more prominent and quite different in the Change- ogy Samplelay in uneasy opposition to each other, and rarer still, ling Earth than they are in fileyour typical DCC game, so sometimes existing in an occasional alliance. Wizards and those wishing to use these versions of creatures should warriors struggle against both demons and super-intel- think carefully about the effects they might have upon ligent AIs. It is a world inhabited by both mutated and the game. Page 6.