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I really enjoy Stormbringer and how it poses the central question of what, and how much, players are willing to sacrifice for power. Granted that is mostly expressed by shoving increasingly powerful demons into armor and weapons, an idea clearly inspired by the titular demon sword but brought to lengths that far exceed anything in the source material. I don’t think Moorcock was impressed, but I like it. Fidelity isn’t high on my list of things RPGs should strive for.
And yet, here is Elric! (1993), a game whose stated aim is to hew closer to the source material. The result is lower power. There are fewer demons generally and scarcely any bound to armor. Much more is made of the new allegiance system, which charts a given character’s affinity to Chaos, Law and Balance, which I suppose tamps down on the wanton havoc the earlier system encouraged. Combat, though, seems even more deadly, in line with the tick-tick-boom of Pendragon where after a number of even exchanges, eventually one swordsman is going to roll something that makes the other basically explode. Everything feels configured to make the world darker, deadlier and more desperate. This does feel dialed into the books, but differently. Elric never seemed desperate to me. He sulks, but when pushed, he makes short work of the challenges set in front of him. He is a character out the Stormbringer RPG. Everyone else in the books has a much harder time of it, and most immolate like moths in the flame after a few mentions. Elric! seems to be the game they hail from.
All this aside, I don’t quite understand Elric! as a product. Certainly not the exclamation point. It emphatically states in the introduction that this is a different game than its predecessor and there is a conversion guide in the back, but the back cover is pretty clear that Rogue Mistress, Sorcerers of Pan Tang and a couple other Stormbringer supplements are now suitable for Elric!. A couple years later, Elric! was revised and re-released as the fifth edition of Stormbringer, which makes this all even more confusing. Reviews at the time seem to like it, but anecdotally, folks I’ve talked to seem unimpressed, with Stormbringer 4E held in most hearts as the height of the license.
Because of all this, and because they tend to also be expensive, I’ve generally ignored the game and its derivative products, but last year I stumbled across pretty much the whole line in sequence, all priced reasonably, and how does a guy like me resist that?
In hand, I’m ambivalent about the rules, but adore the presentation. ’93 is right at the edge of terrible downturn in Chaosium’s graphic design aesthetics and you can see the change coming in Elric! products, but it hasn’t quite arrived yet. I love how it is sort of charmingly ugly in a very specifically ’90s way. Some great art, too, particularly Earl Geier’s monsters. I have an endless appetite for illustrations of the monsters of the Elric saga, so any art, even bad art, is going to be welcomed by me. |
