Andrzej Sapkowski, the legendary author behind The Witcher series, once put his pen to a tabletop RPG game called The Eye of Yrrhedes. While Sapkowski’s books may have inspired video games and a television show, The Witcher itself may have taken some inspiration from RPG board games.

Sapkowski has famously stated that he doesn’t play any sort of games. When asked to compare The Witcher games to his novels, he stated that he can’t, because he’s never played a video game. He then went on to say that comparing the two is like comparing “spaghetti carbonara with a bicycle.”

On the other hand, Sapkowski had an interest in a completely different type of game: tabletop RPGs. He often states that he has no time to play them, but has admitted to enjoying games written by Steve Jackson, presumably The Generic Universal RolePlaying System.

Sapkowski’s approach to RPGs was more of an outward interest in design than an urge to play the games themselves. This is likely what drove him to write his own RPG in The Eye of Yrrhedes, a game that was designed for RPG beginners and a more casual audience.

The Eye of Yrrhedes is unique in the fact that it mostly relies on player imagination rather than a strict set of rules and scenarios. Sapkowski explained that the game’s design was inspired by the experience that he had in watching others play tabletop RPGs, in that he didn’t necessarily know what was going on but was still able to imagine it for himself.

Of course, there is a loose layout put in place for the sake of giving The Eye of Yrrhedes a point. A leader of the game is chosen, called the Game Master, who chooses the reality of the game. The other players must then react to that reality and navigate their way through the game. Much of it is open to player interpretation, but the game still contains some interesting information on various elements of its world.

The Eye of Yrrhedes supposedly lists stats for Yennefer, and includes a few other hints to The Witcher as well. The two are clearly not meant to be based on one another, but one could easily assume that Sapkowski’s time studying RPGs could have certainly influenced the writing decisions he made within The Witcher books.

Source: enworld.org

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