I forgot that one of the
Classics of Fantasy columns covered Clark Ashton Smith:
A writer like Smith, who could throw off ideas like a flaming pinwheel, has proved a godsend to DMs and RPG designers over the years: his works were full of monsters, characters, ideas, and motifs that could be sprung on unsuspecting players who had never read the original tales, as relatively few have. The first RPG product based on his work, Tom Moldvay's excellent Chateau d'Ambreville (a.k.a. X2. Castle Amber, 1981) was not only an exceptional D&D adventure in itself that enabled PCs to play through the four major Averoigne stories ("The Colossus of Ylourgne", "The Enchantress of Sylaire", "The Beast of Averoigne", "The Holiness of Azedarac"), it also provided the template for one of the most famous of all AD&D modules, I6. Ravenloft, and the Ravenloft campaign setting that followed. The original stand-alone module was further developed by products like Gaz 3. The Principalities of Glantri (1987), eventually becoming a major part of the D&D "Known World"/ AD&D Mystara setting -- cf. the Glantri boxed set by Monte Cook and the audio-CD adventure Mark of Amber (both 1995).
In addition, Smith's work has not only inspired a number of D&D monsters but also has set the tone and thus had a major impact on the treatment of necromancy as it has appeared in roleplaying games, in such products as The Complete Book of Necromancers (1995), the Al-Qadim setting's Cities of Bone (1994), Return to the Tomb of Horrors (1998), and Secret College of Necromancers (2002). Surprisingly enough, his stories have had little impact on the Lovecraftian Call of Cthulhu game, being represented only by a very few scenarios -- e.g., a single encounter in Trail of Tsathoggua (Chaosium, 1984), a markedly un-Smithian use of the sorcerer Eibon in Spawn of Azathoth (Chaosium, 1986), the Great Old One Mordiggian hovering ineffectually in the background of The Realm of Shadows (1997, probably Pagan Publishing's weakest CoC release), and the like. Gamers who are admirers of Smith's work are better off creating their own scenarios around his ideas. Zothique, his end-of-time setting for some of his best stories, is probably too bleak for an ongoing campaign, though very effective for self-contained scenarios inserted into a pre-existing game (e.g., in Pelgrane Press's The Dying Earth RPG). But Averoigne is perfect for fans of both D&D and Call of Cthulhu: It combines the medieval sensibilities and possibilities for heroic adventures of the one with the eerie horror, lurking menace, and overwhelming terror of the other. (I am myself currently running a d20 Call of Cthulhu campaign set in Smith's Averoigne and can testify to its effectiveness as a setting.) Considering its historical links with the development of the whole "Land of Mist" concept underlying Ravenloft, the domain of Averoigne can easily be into a Ravenloft campaign; Averoigne is also an apt setting for a Vampire: the Dark Ages scenario (it even already has its resident vampires, "A Rendezvous in Averoigne"'s Sieur Huge du Malinbois and his wife Agathe).
