#res-qa

Not an odd question at all! While I am a Steve Jackson fan, I wasn't aware of the Sorcery! books when I was developing Carillon, but I can definitely see the commonalities. The primary inspiration for Carillon's navigational system was MUDs and text adventure games, and Sorcery! was a direct analog parallel to those.

As for Carillon's battle mechanics, those mostly came from IRL experience as a fencer. The rock/paper/scissors of attack/parry/feint always struck me as good material for a game mechanic, and I'd been experimenting with it for a while (an early 2p version had players placing their actions on a tic-tac-toe grid). The fencing game Nidhogg was the other major influence, which I think shows a bit more in the original 2018 build of Carillon:

From what I read from it... The world's screwed, or just about close. When the Carillion stopped ringing, the sun burned everything and potentially did something horrific to anything that lived. The Carillion itself is falling apart without its garrison and maintenance.

I like to imagine that even after the end of Carillon, there's yet hope for the wanderer and her world.

When the Star first usurped the sun, the remnants of civilization labored desperately to survive. The Grand Carillon was one product of their labor, designed to shelter a single territory from the worst of the Star's influence. And though the bell lords ultimately failed in that endeavor, in other dark places, through measures more and less benign, the research carries on.