THERE ARE THIRTY-FOUR BOOKS. YOU ARE NOT GOING TO REMEMBER ALL THIS.

Gor is easy to remember in broad strokes.

Counter-Earth. Swords. Tarns. Priest-Kings. Kurii. City-states. Castes. Slavery. Silk. Steel. People expressing surprisingly firm opinions about the correct way to serve wine.

Remembering which caste wears which colour, where a particular city sits, what a sleen actually is, which coin is worth what, how kaissa works, which tribe lives where and whether that obscure Gorean word refers to a musical instrument, a drink or something capable of eating your leg is another matter.

John Norman’s Gorean Cycle accumulated an enormous quantity of worldbuilding across dozens of novels.

World of Gor: Gorean Encyclopaedia puts it somewhere you can actually find it.

Created as the setting companion to Tales of Gor: Gorean Roleplaying, this approximately 200-page reference book gathers the peoples, places, cultures, creatures, institutions, customs and terminology of the Counter-Earth into a single organised volume.

You do not need to play the RPG to use it.

If you read Gor, write Gorean fiction, roleplay online, run a tabletop campaign or have simply reached the point where opening six different novels to answer one question is becoming tiresome, this is the book intended to sit beside you.

THE WORLD BEHIND THE REPUTATION

Gor is famous for one thing.

Unfortunately, it contains several thousand other things.

The sexual politics, slavery and master/slave relationships of Norman’s novels became so notorious that they have often swallowed the rest of the setting in public discussion. Whatever one thinks of those aspects, the Counter-Earth itself is an unusually elaborate piece of pulp science fantasy.

Gor is a world deliberately held at a low technological level by vastly more advanced powers.

Its human civilisation is divided into fiercely independent city-states, tribes and cultures. Warriors settle disputes with blades while spacecraft move above the atmosphere. Merchants conduct trade over enormous distances. Nomads cross plains and deserts. Pirates raid the coasts. Assassins possess their own caste. Slavers have laws, customs and institutions. Builders, physicians, scribes, initiates and craftsmen occupy defined places within a complicated social hierarchy.

Above and behind all of this lies another conflict entirely.

The Priest-Kings, hidden in the Sardar Mountains, possess technology vastly beyond that available to ordinary Goreans and enforce restrictions intended to prevent humanity from advancing beyond carefully imposed limits.

Opposing them are the Kurii, huge predatory extraterrestrials engaged in a hidden struggle for influence over both Gor and Earth.

That gives the setting its peculiar flavour: ancient and medieval social structures existing beneath an invisible layer of advanced science fiction.

People ride monstrous birds between cities while aliens conduct a cold war over the planet.

Perfectly normal.

FIRST: THIRTY-FOUR NOVELS MADE MANAGEABLE

Before the main encyclopaedia begins, World of Gor provides concise summaries of the thirty-four Gorean novels that had been published when the book was compiled.

That immediately makes the volume useful even if no dice are ever rolled.

The Gorean series has recurring characters, political changes, wars, occupations, shifting alliances and developments in the conflict between the Priest-Kings and Kurii. Material established in one book may become relevant several novels later.

The summaries provide a way to orient yourself without having to reread several thousand pages every time you return to the series.

They are especially handy if you remember that something happened in one of the books with a ship on the cover but have no earthly idea which one.

After that overview, the book moves into the encyclopaedia proper.

A TO Z, BECAUSE THAT IS HOW AN ENCYCLOPAEDIA SHOULD BLOODY WORK

The main body is arranged in strict alphabetical order.

Not by chapter theme.

Not through an ingenious organisational system requiring you to understand the author's brain before locating the thing you came for.

Alphabetically.

A contemporary reviewer specifically praised this organisation and the ease with which material could be found during reading and play.

The reference material reaches considerably further than the obvious headline subjects. Among the material covered are:

• People, cities, regions, tribes and cultures; Gorean castes and occupations; animals and plants; food and drink; currencies and trade; clothing and social customs; law, warfare and slavery; weapons and technology; diseases and medicine; religions and beliefs; musical instruments; games and entertainments; the Priest-Kings and Kurii; the Gorean Tarot; kaissa; and a Gorean calendar appendix.

Entries are accompanied where appropriate by relevant quotations from Norman’s books, tying the reference material back to the source rather than leaving it floating free as second-hand fandom lore.

That distinction matters in a setting which has been roleplayed online for decades and has consequently accumulated an extraordinary amount of material people confidently insist is “Gorean” despite it never appearing in a novel.

This book goes back to the books.

IT ACTUALLY EXPLAINS THINGS

There is a difference between mentioning lore and making it usable.

One contemporary RPGNow reviewer singled this out in particular.

The caste system is an obvious example. Saying that Gor has castes tells you almost nothing useful. The encyclopaedia gives individual entries explaining professions, dress and place within society, making something potentially daunting much easier to present at the table.

The same reviewer pointed to kaissa, Gor’s chess-like strategy game. It could easily have received a sentence saying “Goreans play this”.

Instead, the book gives enough information to understand the game rather than merely recognise the word.

That reviewer called the content “phenomenal”, said the book would remain useful beside the novels for quick reference and concluded that, for a Gor RPG player, “this is a must!”

That is really the purpose of the whole volume.

Gor contains a lot of detail.

Here it is.

In one place.

A REFERENCE BOOK EVEN IF YOU NEVER ROLL A DIE

World of Gor was produced alongside Tales of Gor: Gorean Roleplaying, but the rules are deliberately elsewhere.

The encyclopaedia is about the setting.

That makes it useful to several overlapping audiences.

A Games Master can look up a city before running a session, check a caste when an NPC appears or find an animal without searching a stack of novels.

A player can research the culture their character comes from.

Someone roleplaying Gor online can check source material rather than relying on whatever has become conventional on a particular server.

A fan-fiction writer can verify terminology and customs.

A reader can keep it beside the novels and answer the inevitable “Who the hell was that again?” without conducting an archaeological expedition through the series.

One early reviewer explicitly said the book was worth having even without playing the RPG, because it replaced repeated searches through websites and multiple Norman novels.

That may actually be the strongest argument for owning it.

The RPG gave the encyclopaedia a reason to exist.

It did not limit its usefulness to gamers.

MICHAEL MANNING DRAWS GOR

The book is illustrated throughout with original black-and-white artwork by Michael Manning, the fetish and comic-book artist behind works including The Spider Garden and Tranceptor.

That is an unusually appropriate match of artist and subject.

Manning brings a strong pen-and-ink style to the setting, interpreting Gorean characters, creatures and cultures without trying to turn the book into a parade of generic fantasy clip art.

A contemporary review praised the drawings for capturing the exotic quality of the setting and particularly picked out the illustrations of Gorean animals.

Another reviewer described Manning’s work as having something of a comic-book take on Aubrey Beardsley, with heavy black-and-white contrast.

The book contains artistic nudity, as one would reasonably expect from both the source material and the artist.

This is a reference book for an adult setting, not an attempt to disguise Gor sufficiently to sneak it into a school library.

YES, THERE IS SLAVERY

Quite a lot of it.

A Gorean encyclopaedia which danced nervously around slavery would be a very poor Gorean encyclopaedia.

Slavery is built into the setting’s economy, law, sexuality, warfare and social structure. The novels examine it repeatedly and at considerable length, and it therefore appears throughout the reference material rather than being quarantined in one apologetic paragraph marked CONTROVERSIAL BIT.

The same is true of Gorean attitudes towards sex and gender.

The book documents the fictional world.

It does not require your campaign to approve of every institution within that world, any more than a Roman sourcebook requires the players to support crucifixion.

Indeed, presenting the setting clearly gives a group considerably more room to decide what they want to do with it.

Play conventional Gorean characters.

Play outsiders.

Play rebels.

Fight slavers.

Be slavers.

Get caught between cities.

Become involved in the Kurii conspiracy.

Spend three sessions arguing about trade.

This remains a roleplaying setting.

The encyclopaedia tells you what is there.

What you do about it remains your problem.

GOR IS STRANGER THAN THE MEMES

The sexual material gets the attention.

The rest of the setting can be delightfully odd.

There are enormous riding birds.

Predatory sleen.

City-states whose citizens define themselves through Home Stones and caste colours.

Nomadic cultures scattered across plains and deserts.

Pirates.

Assassins with an organised professional caste.

A hidden insectoid civilisation.

Alien predators.

Longevity treatments.

Controlled technological development.

Elaborate merchant practices.

Local food, drink, clothing and entertainment.

Board games with sufficient detail to become subjects in their own right.

The further you dig into Gor, the less adequate the description “BDSM John Carter” becomes.

It is certainly in there.

It simply has a lot of company.

That density is precisely what makes an encyclopaedia useful.

THE REVIEWS HAVE BEEN RATHER KIND

World of Gor received strong responses from people actually using it.

The RPGNow review already mentioned praised the organisation, detail and practical utility, particularly for explaining complicated pieces of the setting to players.

Another lengthy contemporary review called the encyclopaedia a “hefty compendium of easily digestible background entries”, and particularly enjoyed the occasional in-character observations scattered through the reference material.

A current StoryGraph review gives the book five stars and calls it an “excellent reproduction” of Norman’s wonderfully deranged pulp science-fantasy setting.

That reviewer does have one practical criticism: they would have liked bookmarks in the PDF.

Fair.

An encyclopaedia is precisely the sort of PDF where bookmarks would be useful.

Fortunately, Ctrl-F remains one of civilisation’s greater accomplishments.

OFFICIALLY AUTHORISED

This is not an unofficial Gorean wiki scraped into a PDF.

John Norman’s works are used by permission of the author and his agents, Richard Curtis Associates, Inc.

The book was produced as part of the officially authorised Tales of Gor roleplaying line and builds its reference material from Norman’s published Gorean Cycle.

That gives it a rather different status from the enormous quantity of fan-created Gorean material which has accumulated across forums, chat rooms, websites and virtual worlds.

For a setting with this much fandom archaeology, knowing where the information came from is useful.

PDF, PAPERBACK OR HARDBACK

This product is the digital PDF edition of World of Gor: Gorean Encyclopaedia, approximately 200 pages in English.

For people who prefer a physical reference book, there are two options.

The original paperback edition remains available from Lulu. It is 200 pages, A4, perfect bound, with a black-and-white interior and ISBN 978-0-244-30554-3.

Buy World of Gor: Gorean Encyclopaedia in paperback from Lulu

There is also a hardback edition available directly from Postmortem Studios for people who expect to spend enough time consulting the thing that a sturdier binding starts looking attractive.

Buy World of Gor: Gorean Encyclopaedia – Hardback Edition from Postmortem Studios

And if you want to actually play rather than merely know an unhealthy amount about Gorean beverages, castes and dangerous wildlife:

Buy Tales of Gor: Gorean Roleplaying

The encyclopaedia provides the world.

Tales of Gor provides the roleplaying rules.

OPEN THE COUNTER-EARTH

Thirty-four novels produce a lot of nouns.

A lot of cities.

A lot of people.

A lot of customs.

A disturbing number of things capable of killing you.

World of Gor: Gorean Encyclopaedia exists so you do not have to keep all of them in your head.

It gathers the setting into one substantial reference volume: the novel summaries first, then the people, cultures, castes, creatures, politics, technology, games, customs, religions, food, warfare, slavery and accumulated oddities of Norman’s Counter-Earth in an A–Z format designed to be used rather than admired from a distance.

Keep it next to the novels.

Keep it behind the Games Master’s screen.

Keep it open while writing or roleplaying.

And the next time somebody asks what colour a particular caste wears, what a particular beast eats or precisely how complicated Gorean chess is, you can answer immediately.

Which is considerably easier than reading thirty-four novels again.