OSSR like you mean it: Stormbringer

[DrPraetor]

STORMBRINGER Copyright 1981 by Chaosium Inc. All rights reserved

Okay, I'm not that old. I played the functionally-similar 3rd edition which came out in 1987. That book, while better produced in some respects, was a glued-together faux hardcover and Mom threw it out during one of our many moves back and forth across the US.

I should finish the Rifts: South America: II, Ley Line Walker in the Hood review at some point, but in the interim, let me show you young whipper snippers what an old school sourcebook review looks like.

For sake of comparison, this is what else came out in 1981:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category: ... ed_in_1981

Unrelated to the book itself, but derived from my terrifying hipster lifestyle, the drink is Altes ale from the gastropub around the corner, and I'm listening to Pete Seeger sing along with a children's choir.... no, that won't do. The song, I'm afraid, must be 1980's Black Blade, by Blue Öyster Cult.

The book opens with a map of the Young Kingdoms, which are both the setting for the Elric novels, and (spoiler alert!), our own Earth, before Elric of Melnibone blows the Horn of Roland, triggering the last battle which is won by Law, who in turn create our present universe.

But that's later! The map the former-empire island nation of Melnibone - which is a metaphor for England, but Japanese people also really love these novels for some mysterious reason - in the middle, and a mix of nations and adventuring locations on the outside. Avalon hill repurposed the map for their Elric board game which I also owned as a child:


Not, I think, a bad way to set the scene.

Then, because this was 1981 and printing was expensive, we jump straight into
1. WELCOME TO THE YOUNG KINGDOMS
1.1 WHAT IS FANTASY ROLE-PLAYING?

No one uses the abbreviation FRP for "Fantasy Roleplaying" but other than that, it gets the basic concepts across in a (by moderns standards remarkably succinct) 3/4ths of a page.

Side note:

Poul Anderson coined Law and Chaos for Good and Evil, although his were markedly more Christian/Satanic than Moorcock, whose notion of Chaos is much more like what you get in Warhammer (although with fewer mutants.)

Then, there's a full two page essay on how awesome Michael Moorcock is. While this isn't a suprise for someone who sat down and wrote an Elric RPG, it's not quality product for the purpose, because very little in this section is relevant to playing the damn game.
Especially, because you won't be playing Elric unless you roll really well.

1.2 OVERVIEW OF THE YOUNG KINGDOMS

Now we're going to cover some background material about Elric's world - things you will need to know about history, economics, social customs, politics, etc., in order to simulate a complex fantasy environment

That's better. RPG (FRP?) designers, take note!

What follows is a reasonably evocative description of several countries on the above map, with the understanding that you might create a character from one of these places. They are sorted by how ubermench they are:
[*] Melniboneans are elves. Elric is one. They're better than you.
[*] The Mabden of Pan Tang are the villains of the Corum novels. They're humans who have stat bonuses but still lots of Elf envy?
[*] The Myrrhyn are people with eagle wings. Elric banged one in one of the novels, that's why they're in here.
[*] The various human nations are about as differentiated as German Lander.
[*] The barbarian nations of Org, Oin and Yu are subhuman, but we'll get to that in the next section.

Then you get a bunch of countries full of what are basically feudal European humans; the fact is, the human countries in Moorcock's novels were pretty interchangeable background dressing for Elric to adventure in, so there's not a whole lot here? This is a weakness of the novels as a source of material for an RPG; there might not be much interesting to say about Jharkor and Shazaar but it's absolutely the right decision to tell you something about the nationalities you might be expected to play!

Now, the author of this book does add some stuff (inevitably) that isn't in the very thin novels. In particular, he likes to add Gods of Law, which is a favorite gripe of people, but is is understandable (because there's a shortage of them). It's also not the highest priority when you might want to introduce some culture to distinguish the mostly rather bland countries where people will be from, instead?

There are "adventure here" suggestions for the map locations which aren't inhabited by playable types.

1.3 MONEY IN THE YOUNG KINGDOMS

Now that you have a fairly good idea of the geography and politics of the Young Kingdoms in Elric's Time, there is only one more thing to explain before you are ready to create your first player character - money.

While I admire the mission statement of staying on message, much of this section is about the physical coinage. Let me summarize: the Large Bronze Coin (LB) is explicitly valued at $1 USD in 1981, which is why a private hotel room costs 40LB/night and a gallon of milk costs 0.5LB or fifty cents.

The prices for weapons and such are down in section 3.3.1. but for some reason the value of gems and treasure is given here? Along with descriptions of super-rare melnobean dragon coins and stuff. That's backwards, since "I want my guy to have (insert weapon)" is, in fact, one of the first things you might have for a character conception in this game, while the dragon coins aren't going to come into it until you wander off and loot a temple.

So that's a minor design fail but, in the terse spirit of the times, it only uses up a page.

1.4 SOME CONVENTIONS OF FRP GAMING
Did you know that you could program a computer to roll dice for you? This was 1981 and Ken St. Andre needed to point this out.
Anyway, we explain how to roll percentile dice and that's how tests are mostly resolved, which is good to include but actually a bit vague for my tastes.
They mention you can use miniatures, they mention you're about to roll stats for your characters but that this isn't Rolemaster and you don't roll your hair color.

1.5 CONCLUSION

When you have read the whole book you should have enough information to create a whole world of FRP adventure.

It's 140 pages, including art and suchnot but excluding the Index. This is page 19, although the text started on page 6. So 9 more of these if I maintain this pace; I might speed through some of the interior sections, though.

EDIT: Reminder for later, a human character with the right occupation has only a http://anydice.com/program/b6 0.4% of being capable of sorcery.

[Josh_Kablack]

Then, there's a full two page essay on how awesome Michael Moorcock is. While this isn't a suprise for someone who sat down and wrote an Elric RPG, it's not quality product for the purpose, because very little in this section is relevant to playing the damn game.

Michael Moorcock is so awesome that he fucking forgot he had sold **all** the gaming rights to the Elric stuff to Chaosium in perpetuity when Joe's company thought they were buying the rights to do a Stormbringer CCG in the mid-90s.

[Whipstitch]

In fairness to Mike, he used to hang out with Hawkwind a lot and was probably tripping balls just by association.

[hogarth]

We had the Stormbringer RPG boxed set and the Ringworld RPG boxed set when I was a kid. Say what you will about Chaosium, but they had some pretty cool licensed products!

[DrPraetor]

2. CHARACTER GENERATION

This is what's on page 20:


That's a good character concept. Can you play one?
You can, in fact, play a hot topless priestess of Law who rides on a living metal bird. But, in order to do so, you need to roll:
- a native of Shazaar (9%), Tarkesh (5%), Vilmir (8%), Ilmiora (7%), The Island of Purple Towns* (7%), Argimiliar (7%)* or Filkhar (6%) = 49%.

* But you would be a prietess of Goldar, so suicide is preferable.

- A Priestess, 5% chance.
- Then, you either need to roll an 18 on both Int and Pow (to start at the second rank - < 0.01% chance), or you need to start at Age (61 - INT - POW) - which would put you in your 30s or 40s on average - to start as a second rank sorceress. If you're willing to start at Rank 1 and work your way up to the metal bird, it's a generous 0.4% of getting an INT+POW of 32 to start (and then you can be younger than 25, but see below.)

This gives you a sense of the character generation system in this game. It's actually way better than Call of Cthulhu or Runequest, because you sometimes get interesting or competent characters! But often, you get screwed over and have to play a beggar (Beggars in this game are still more competent than Call of Cthulhu characters, as I'll explain.)



So Stormbringer starts with St. Andre's Runequest house rules, which replace Runequest's tire fire (incredibly fiddly: you get this many % in different skills per year depending on your occupation) with a fixed package of character class skills, from a shorter list, at higher %s. The net effect of having a higher % in skills from a shorter list of skills is that you are reasonably competent. Would the world be a better place if CoC and Runequest had been better games this entire time? I'm not sure, it might have choked off a number of still-superior alternatives. I mean, this game is still a train wreck.

But, credit where credit is due: this is both substantially faster and substantially better than any other "basic roleplaying" (Chaosium) character generation system...


2.1 ATTRIBUTES
Are STR CON SIZ INT POW DEX and CHA

In reality, it \[CHA\] is the least important attribute

Glad you didn't lie to us.

Because it totally isn't a D&D hack, Runequest has Power instead of Wisdom (which is luck and spell points as well as resistance to mind control) and Size as an additional attribute.

The Size section has a very long aside (2.1.3.2) on character build (like, in the sense of bone width or whatever)? It's a page, like half the section on attributes is devoted to this. Your build doesn't change your stats, but if you are lighter or heavier than your build indicates, this gives stat mods, which I will reproduce in full because seriously, what the fuck?
Light Build + Slightly Heavy (33%) -> +1 CON
Light Build + Very Heavy (16%) -> +2 CON, -1 DEX
Medium Build + Light (30%) -> +1 DEX, -1 CON
Medium BUild + Heavy (30%) -> -1 DEX, +1 CON
Heavy Build + Light (30%) -> +1 DEX
Heavy Build + Very Heavy (30%) -> +1 CON, -2 DEX
This was the 80s, and games were full of weird subsystems like this.



2.2 CHARACTER NATIONALITIES
You roll % dice on a table, and you really want to roll low.

2.2.2 MELNIBONE 2% chance

You want to be this guy
You are automatically both a Noble and a Warrior, you get +3 SIZ, +1D10 INT and +2D6 POW.
We'll get to what Noble+Warrior means in the next section, but it's a good start.
The stat bonuses mean that instead of a 6D6>=32 -> 0.4% of starting with magic, you have an 8D6+1D10>=32 -> 64%.

2.2.3 PAN TANG 3% chance

You are +1 SIZ, +1D8 INT and +1D8 POW.
If 6D6+2D8 >= 32 (39%), you are a Priest, and magic, with 20% of being also a Noble.
The other 61% of the time, you are a Warrior, and not magic, with 20% of being also a Noble.
Either way, you are swarthy and hunnic.

2.2.4 MYRRHYN 3% chance

If you are a dude, you are winged and bald. If you are female, you are winged and smoking hot.
Elric bangs a Myrrhyn chick (although she is a wingless; if you've played Dominions you know how this works) in one of the stories, because of course.
You are -2 SIZ (unless it's <=9 already), +1D6 INT and +1D6 POW; and, +1D6 CHA if female.
You have an 8D6 >= 32 (24%) chance of being magic.
You can't be a Sailor, Thief or Beggar - you are a Warrior instead.
You can fly but not while wearing armor or carrying "more than two weapons". Will there be real rules for flight in this game? I actually don't remember!

PLACE YOUR BETS: WILL THERE BE FLIGHT RULES OF ANY KIND?

2.2.13 ESHMIR 3% chance

That dude's magic and knows kung fu, right?
People from Eshmir are asian but have red or light brown hair.
You are -2 SIZ (unless it's <=9 already), +1D4 INT and +1D6 POW.
If 7D6+1D4>=32 (17%), you are a priest and magic. If you are also Str >=13 (17% * 26% = 4%) you are a Warrior Priest of Chaos, which means you have magic and kung fu.

2.2.12 WEEPING WASTE 7% chance

Automatically both a Hunter and a Warrior (that's some decent skills.)
+1D6 STR, +1D4 DEX, +1D6 CON, -1D4 CHA, -1 SIZ (if >= 10).
If you aren't going to be an elf wizard, at least be one of these guys so you are good at being a dude with a sword.


2.2.5 through 2.2.9, Dharijor through Ilmiora
2.2.14 through 2.2.18, Isle of Purple Towns through Filkhar 75% chance

He's the top google image search for "some guy", so he's asking for it
The different flavors of white people are not exactly the same. They get stat mods that very from Lormyr (-1D4 INT) to Isle of the Purple Towns (+1D4 STR, +1D6 CON).
Furthermore, you have different builds, and slight differences in % chance to be sailors or merchants or whatever.
But compared to being an elf wizard, it's pretty bland stuff.

2.2.11 Nadsokor 5%

-1D6 CON, -1D6 CHA, and you are automatically a beggar.
That still makes you better than a Call of Cthulhu character.

2.2.19 Oin 3%
2.2.20 Yu 2%
2.2.21 Org 1%

Apparently, there's a kinda cool comic book called "subhuman".
There are three flavors of hairy subhuman dwarf with large penalties to most stats but a CON bonus, and a tendency to be farmers or hunters instead of something good.
These are pretty offensive so I'm glossing over it, but yes, this was really in the game.

2.3 CHARACTER CLASSES AND SKILLS
Runequest skills are a function of bookkeeping and profound disappointment, highly dependent on age.

There is some ugly Runequest residue showing through, but mostly this game is just highly random. If you are below 25, all of your skills are -5% per year. If you are over 25 (up to 39), all of your skills are +1% per year; and, starting at 32 or something is generally considered cheezy.

You get 1D6+2 skills of your choice at (1D100)/2+modifiers. That's extremely random but it's O(112) skill points off the bat, while Call of Cthulhu characters get about 400, last I checked - BUT - Call of Cthulhu has a lot more skills.

Skill points vary tremendously among classes, but the Beggar gets Persuade 60%, See 60%, Search 25% and Pick Lock 50%. With skills of choice, that's less than 300% total, but compares well with a CoC character: since there are way fewer skills your actual level of competence is markedly higher.

2.3.2 Warrior 16% chance
2.3.2.1 Assassin 4% chance

Yeah, that guy.
Warriors get three weapon skills and ride.
Assassins are better, and also get poison and stealth skills.
It's unclear if Noble-Warriors and Priest-Warriors and such can also check to be Asassins?

2.3.3 Merchant - Trader 7% chance
2.3.3 Merchant - Shopkeeper 3% chance

The one in the middle.
You get a weapon skill; if you are a shopkeeper instead of a trader, your free weapon skill is halved, at no benefit.
You get Persuasion and some treasure skills.

2.3.4 Sailor 15% chance

No, unfortunately.
A weapon, swim, tie knot, climb and balance.
You have a 10% subchance of being a mate, which comes with navigation and +5% to your skills.
You have a 10% subchance of being a captain, which comes with navigation and +10% to your skills.

2.3.5 Hunter 15% chance
A weapon, self bow, some wilderness skills.

2.3.7 Priest 5% chance
Languages, dagger, medical and social skills.
If you start over age 25, you add (age - 25) to POW. This can take you over the 32 point threshold to start with magic.
So Priests will do that a lot.
Incidentally, you have (POW + CHA)/10% of starting as the high priest of your cult. This is only funny if you are ugly and incompetent, because the 2% still applies?
Actually, in my example above, I was mistaken. At least in this edition, you can worship whatever deity you want (but are strongly advised to stick to the national deities listed in 2.3.7.2).

2.3.8 Noble 5% chance

You get some weapons and the credit skill - more to the point, a legitimately huge pile of money.
If your Int >= 13 you roll again and get a second class. Obviously, that's the best. If your int is below 13, you're pretty useless though (see picture.)
It's unclear if a Noble-Warrior has a further chance of being a Noble-Warrior-Assassin - but lots of things are unclear about this game.

2.3.8 Thief 10% chance

Thieves are weird in this game. You start with 13 skills - 7 of which have a base value of 1D100%. No other class does that.
If you roll well you are hands-down more competent than these other chucklefucks (except maybe the Asassin, or anyone who knows magic of course.)

2.3.6 Farmer 5% chance
2.3.10 Beggar 5% chance
2.3.11 Craftsman 10% chance

I'm back...
All of these are pretty worthless. The beggar gets the best skills but no money or gear, and roll 1D4 afflictions out of 20, which include things like mental retardation and missing limbs.
The Craftsman gets just a craft skill but +3 Dex for some reason.

2.4 OTHER SKILLS
This section is where it tells you to roll 1D100/2% for the 1D6+2 skills I was talking about.
One thing that isn't clear - does your age apply to these skills or not?

2.5 ABILITY BONUSES
The skills are divided into eight categories, each category has attributes associated with it - more or less, you get +1% per point above 12 or -1% per point below 9.
2.5.3 is damage modifiers which has hard thresholds instead. If you're STR+SIZ is >=25, you do an extra die of damage. Otherwise you don't. You get a second bonus die of damage at 41, but you'll notice that normal humans top out at 36 so that doesn't happen unless you're something exotic and also cheat on your die rolls.
I'll talk more about this when we get to the skills chapter.

2.6 PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
St. Andre has been generating a sample character as we go through this chapter, who is an Assassin but otherwise so uninteresting that I keep forgetting his name when I open the laptop.

2.7 IMPROVING THE ATTRIBUTES
Why is this in the character generation chapter?
Anyway, this is being contrasted against the 1970s Runequest build that St. Andre's houserules forked from, but if you care - at the end of any adventure where you make an attribute savings roll (organizational failure compounded - I only vaguely recall what those are and a new reader would have no clue), you have a 1/6 chance of getting +1 to the attribute and a 1/36 chance of getting -1. Enjoy.

2.8 SUMMARY

If still puzzled, you might consult chapter 2 in RuneQuest for further clarification of the processes of character creation.

No, don't do that. I assume this was orphan text from a previous draft in which this was more of a Runequest supplement and less of a standalone game? Because this isn't how RuneQuest character gen works at all, guy.

So all of that was really random! There's a (rather small) chance you get to play one of the decent archetypes from Moorcock's novels, most of whom are included explicitly (for example, the Eshmiri Warrior-Priests of Chaos), otherwise you are some guy. At the least, though, you will tend to have several useful skills at a high enough % that you'd willingly use them? That puts you head and shoulders above Runequest, and the shorter skill list saves you from many of the problems of CoC.

But a major weakness of this game, it really doesn't support creating your own new, heroic archetypes and having them hang out with Elric or in Elric's world. Does Lormyr have Paladins, and are they super bad ass? I guess not, or if they do, you certainly can't play one.

There's some cool stuff in later chapters, IMO, but this is the basic flaw of the game.

[hogarth]

Runequest skills are a function of bookkeeping and profound disappointment, highly dependent on age.

There is some ugly Runequest residue showing through, but mostly this game is just highly random. If you are below 25, all of your skills are -5% per year. If you are over 25 (up to 39), all of your skills are +1% per year; and, starting at 32 or something is generally considered cheezy.

The Ringworld RPG was even sillier, since your age could range from 13 (an adult kzin) to 300+ (for a human on boosterspice)!

[Blicero]

Has anyone here actually played this? If so, did you obey the randomized character creation rules?

[Username17]

Has anyone here actually played this? If so, did you obey the randomized character creation rules?

Back in the beforetime, random chargen was completely normal. Sometimes you got to be a Paladin, sometimes you were stuck being a Fighter. I'm not even sure it's bad, because it's still true that saying something is special doesn't make it special.



Certainly we see in 4th Edition D&D how making everyone "powerful from 1st level" doesn't actually make anyone powerful at all. The baseline simply moves. Further, we see that if you only get a single magic sword it doesn't feel special at all - it's just the sword you happen to have. Finding worse swords is a requirement to have the better swords be better. You have to be better than something to be "better" at all. A thing on its own is simply its own baseline, neither better nor worse than anything else.

That being said, Stormbringer was the crazy end of the pool even in the early 80s. There's no reason or excuse to have two starting characters be BMX Bandit and Angel Summoner, and Stormbringer goes further than that - a random Shopkeeper from podunkville is significantly worse than BMX Bandit, while a winged archpriestess of Law probably is literally Angel Summoner. That kind of spread doesn't make Angel Summoner feel special, it makes Rando the Shopkeeper ask the DM politely why his character is supposed to be here.

-Username17

[hogarth]

Has anyone here actually played this? If so, did you obey the randomized character creation rules?

We played some one-off sessions of it. Yes, we used the randomized character creation rules, although we might have missed some of them (for instance, I don't remember the rules about various body builds).

If you're just going out and killing orc-equivalents (like olabs or whatever), then there isn't really a huge variation in terms of effectiveness for most characters: you're a human with armor and a weapon. Since you get to pick a handful of skills, you'll presumably end up picking a weapon skill if you don't have one already.

The only problem comes in with magic-using characters, because then you get one PC having demon-bound armor that makes him completely immune to non-demon-bound weapons, say.

[talozin]

St. Andre has been generating a sample character as we go through this chapter, who is an Assassin but otherwise so uninteresting that I keep forgetting his name when I open the laptop.

Merak Gren, the Assassin from ArgimilarfuckIdon'trememberhowtospellit?

But yeah. Exactly that uninteresting.

Has anyone here actually played this? If so, did you obey the randomized character creation rules?

Of course. And also Warhammer FRP, which has randomized character generation that is pretty much the same (in that you can end up as a leprous beggar, a drunken laborer or a badass bounty hunter -- although to give Games Workshop the minimal credit it deserves, the difference in power between optimal starting characters is slightly less absurd than in Stormbringer).

Games with random character creation can be a lot of fun, but if you approach them the same way you would a point-buy 3.x game, you're gonna have a bad time. More importantly, if the GM approaches them that way, you're gonna have a very bad time.

[Harshax]

But a major weakness of this game, it really doesn't support creating your own new, heroic archetypes and having them hang out with Elric or in Elric's world.

While I think there is a fair bit of criticism to level at Stormbringer, I find this one to be the weakest. I've never heard any player voice a desire to hang out with Elric in the Young Kingdoms, or Conan in Hyperboria, or Gandalf in Middle Earth.

In my experience, players either: (a) flat out refuse to play in a world where they'll never feature as prominently as the major characters in source material (b) will only play during eras that do not coincide with or are shadowed by events in the source material, or (c) only want to play major characters from source material if there are enough major characters to go around and only if the character the player wants to play is available and the fight over who gets which character isn't so huge that it causes all the players to rage-quit before the first encountered is even described.

With Stormbringer, A and B is the most common choice for the players I've met. Elric not only kills every single person who ever travels with him, but he also destroys the world as we know it. None of my players have ever wanted to be in a situation where their character might randomly get angst-slayed by an emo-twink wielding a soul prison. I've even had players explicitly request they *never* meet Elric for this very reason.

So, seriously: How common is it to want to play a game where you rub elbows with major characters from source material?

PS - We never used the random tables. We either played all Melniboneans or all humans.

[Judging__Eagle]

So, seriously: How common is it to want to play a game where you rub elbows with major characters from source material?

It wasn't when my gaming group was playing the Wheel of Time d20 game. Mostly b/c the WoT characters have to carry author-mandated, and genre-approved, idiot-balls.

Also, b/c players can do totally logical/moral things that would undermine what had been presented in the core setting. Such as playing a male magic user who regularly brought up the fact that they were "Raised by Owlbears Trollocs", and began to recruit Trolloc survivors of the encounters with the party into "The Free Trolloc Army" via a combination of combat, magic, and diplomacy.

[Blicero]

Of course. And also Warhammer FRP, which has randomized character generation that is pretty much the same (in that you can end up as a leprous beggar, a drunken laborer or a badass bounty hunter -- although to give Games Workshop the minimal credit it deserves, the difference in power between optimal starting characters is slightly less absurd than in Stormbringer).

Games with random character creation can be a lot of fun, but if you approach them the same way you would a point-buy 3.x game, you're gonna have a bad time. More importantly, if the GM approaches them that way, you're gonna have a very bad time.

Yeah, I've had a lot of fun with retroclones where starting characters have wildly variable initial ability. But you're supposed to go into LotFP or WFRP with an attitude of "hey, my character could totally suck, but that just means they'll have a hilarious death at some point", and then you reroll and hope you do better.

Unlike Warhammer or OD&D, the Elric stories I've read all seem pretty SRS BSNESS. So even by the standards of the Bad Olde Days, it seems weird to take a setting known for a single badass dude with a badass sword and turn it into a game where starting characters have a not-insignificant chance of being peons.

[hogarth]

Games with random character creation can be a lot of fun, but if you approach them the same way you would a point-buy 3.x game, you're gonna have a bad time.

One more thing came to mind about random character creation:

In ye olde days, D&D was an outlier in terms of having characters grow (fairly) rapidly in power. In many other games of that era, there wasn't much difference between a PC that had been played once and a PC that had been played a dozen times -- maybe you'd have slightly better equipment or skills, but you probably wouldn't have five times as many hit points like you would if you compared a 1st level D&D PC to a 5th level PC. So if that's the case, then why wouldn't you make new PCs every time you play? After all, rolling up a new PC is half the fun. Then you can laugh when you end up rolling a beggar with no arms because it's only going to last for one game anyways.

Unlike Warhammer or OD&D, the Elric stories I've read all seem pretty SRS BSNESS.

In my experience, the Chaosium system did a pretty poor job at simulating Elric stories. It did a decent job at Call of Cthulhu where you're supposed to be relatively fragile and helpless, though.

[talozin]

Unlike Warhammer or OD&D, the Elric stories I've read all seem pretty SRS BSNESS. So even by the standards of the Bad Olde Days, it seems weird to take a setting known for a single badass dude with a badass sword and turn it into a game where starting characters have a not-insignificant chance of being peons.

Chaosium in the 1980s was a company that had one round hole, and spent the entire decade pounding square pegs into it. I suspect (though I've never played it) that Superworld was an even worse fit than Stormbringer was.

[hogarth]

I suspect (though I've never played it) that Superworld was an even worse fit than Stormbringer was.

Superworld was a (mostly) point buy system and PCs weren't nearly as fragile. (I'm not an expert though -- most of my knowledge comes from dual-statted Champions modules.)

[DrPraetor]

But a major weakness of this game, it really doesn't support creating your own new, heroic archetypes and having them hang out with Elric or in Elric's world.

While I think there is a fair bit of criticism to level at Stormbringer, I find this one to be the weakest. I've never heard any player voice a desire to hang out with Elric in the Young Kingdoms, or Conan in Hyperboria, or Gandalf in Middle Earth.

Emphasis added.

My criticism is not:
[*] This game does not support hanging out with Elric.

It does, his stats are in the back, along with stats for his flunkies, several of whom are roughly starting PCs. If you wanted to substitute your character for Smiorgan Baldhead and redo the novels, this game would support that. You are right, that I don't think anyone wants to do so.

Now, the support for hanging out in Elric's world is thinner, because it's a short book and has a very limited Gazetteer. For the length of the book, and weaknesses of the source material though, it isn't bad.

My criticm is:
[*] This game supports play of characters who are just-like Rackhir the Red Archer (former warrior priest of chaos), Shaarilla (the wingless Myyrrhn) and so on.
[*] However, all of those are one-offs customized to be heroes in their own right. This game doesn't support creating similar characters, because a similar character wouldn't be "yet another warrior-priest of Eshmir" it would be a creepy child from Vilmir who had been made telepathic by experiments secretly conducted by the lizard-aliens who are meddling in the Church of Law.
[*] Put another way, in Moorcock's novels, the various major characters all get customized back stories to make them cool. There's very little customization in this game, and none of it is fantastic in any way.

Unlike Warhammer or OD&D, the Elric stories I've read all seem pretty SRS BSNESS. So even by the standards of the Bad Olde Days, it seems weird to take a setting known for a single badass dude with a badass sword and turn it into a game where starting characters have a not-insignificant chance of being peons.

Chaosium in the 1980s was a company that had one round hole, and spent the entire decade pounding square pegs into it. I suspect (though I've never played it) that Superworld was an even worse fit than Stormbringer was.

I heartily endorse both of these sentiments. I'm told that Elfquest:

was actually the best of them but I've never read the book and apparently it was a commercial failure.
Also, the board filters homophobic slurs, so I couldn't give this book a proper review here.


This chapter opens with a repeat of the cover.

3. MOVEMENT, COMBAT AND DAMAGE

3.1 CHARACTER MOVEMENT
There's a table that gives decent reference values for long distance travel, and specifies 5m strategic turns and 12s tactical turns (which are both just called "turns", because fuck you?)


You move 200 ft. in a tactical turn (12 mph, reasonable), but this is halved by engageable enemies or other obstacles; in principle this might offer a form fo ZOC but I never interpreted it that way as a kid.

GMs and players should try to let themselves be guided more by common sense than by average movement rates. Stormbringer characters do not have a speed rating, but characters with SIZs greater than their STR ratings will tend to be a bit slower than average, while those who have SIZs smaller than their STR ratings will have extra quickness. Plate armor slows anyone with a STR less than 15 to 2/3 normal movement.

That's obviously a design failure because it isn't design at all - figure this out yourself, fuck you very much.
I find this particularly irritating because of all the space given to how much characters weigh and whether being over and underweight modifiers their CON and DEX by a point in one or another direction.
It's also got a mysterious hard breakpoint for STR.


3.2 COMBAT PROCEDURE
Now that I look, 3.2.1 seems to imply that engaged fighters can't move at all. So maybe this game is meant to have strong ZOC?
Anyway, you declare actions in ascending order of Dex, then resolve attacks in descending order of Dex, then movement and sorcery happens.

Usually a player-character is allowed only one attack per weapon during a combat round.

It's very D&D. Shields count as weapons, so you get a shield bash if you don't use them to parry. You can parry with non-shield weapons and still attack with them, though.

Now, the actual procedures for attacking and parrying are in the next subsection, titled:
3.3 WEAPON SKILLS
3.3.1 GAINING ADDITIONAL WEAPON SKILLS Including this material in chapter 3 is a design fail I wish to highlight; the experience rules in this game are an important failure point but I'm saving that to the next chapter.

3.3.2 DETERMINING ATTACK RESULTS You roll your weapon skill. There are situational modifiers which we will get to, but if none apply, that's it.
Then, 3.3.3 they can try to parry (or 3.3.4 dodge, but you don't get to attack if you dodge.) Shields can parry arrows - since you can use any weapon to parry, this seems to be the only advantage of shields. Each parry after the first is at -20%.

So the math hammering is, the chance to do damage is (attack) * (1 - parry); for matched fighters, this maxes out at at a 25% of hitting when attack+parrty are both 50%, and is only a 9% chance of hitting when attack+parry are either 10% or 90%.


Now 3.3.5 critical hits happen 10% of your combat skill of the time, and either do double damage ignoring armor (which basically kills you), or breaks your opponents weapon if parried. So a 90% vs. 90% fight is as likely to break a weapon as score a hit on any attack action. You 3.3.6 fumble 1%-2% of the time which results in a rather short table.

3.3.7 Weapon Mastery is something you really want, and requires 90% attack and parry in the same weapon. There are some more experience rules in this section (weapon masters can teach), but more to the point, when a weapon master parries, they get a bonus attack. For each attack you make, you are -20% to hit, though.

3.4 TACTICAL NOTES
There are special rules, which have some notable failure points.

3.4.2.1 AMBUSHES are brutal, lasting 1D4-1 rounds if the Ambush skill rolls are successful, and requiring the ambushed party to make See skill rolls even if the Ambush fails or lose a round. The real problem is that players are encouraged to constantly remind the GM that they are on the alert to be ambushed, because that's the only time you get a POW vs POW test against the Ambush leader to avoid being ambushed entirely. Why a POW vs POW test and not another skill roll? Because it's the 80s and everything has a weird subsystem.

3.4.2.2 INITIATIVE Is the rule for being attacked "unexpectedly"; that is, by someone previously non-hostile. This is not nearly as bad as being ambushed, you are only allowed to Dodge if you lose a 1D10+Dex roll off which is unique to this subsystem. Not as crazy as the ambush rules but still a design failure.

NOTE: A GOOGLE SEARCH FOR "SLEEPING FOE" RETURNS IMAGES OF SLEEPING BABIES. WTF, GOOGLE?!?!?!

3.4.3.1 A HELPLESS ENEMY is the infamous sleeping ogre rule - the ogre avoids death by rolling <POW on a % die. 3.4.3.2 AN UNAWARE ENEMY doubles your attack skill and chance to critical hit - it's completely unclear from the rules whether ambushees from 3.4.2.1 are also unaware or not - but the example given is that someone fighting another party member is "unaware" if you walk up and hit them from behind. 3.4.3.3 FROM A DISTANCE Reminds you that missile weapons enable you to fight from range, and 3.4.3.5 NARROW POSITIONS reminds you that you can be the Spartans in 300. 3.4.3.4 FORTIFICATIONS Reduce the attackers skill by "as much as half" - why/when it might reduce the skill by less is not at all explained. 3.4.3.6 HEIGHT, which includes fighting from horseback, makes the lower person -5% on attack and parry.



3.5 WEAPONS
Weapons have STR and DEX requirements, the penalties (3.5.3) for not meeting them are severe.

There's a bunch of weapons, which have other statistics besides damage, STR and DEX requirements that do not, as far as I can tell matter. Ranged weapons have a range.

Assuming you are reasonably big and strong (so +1D6 damage), your basic choices are:
[*] A Lormyrian Axe (3D6+1D6), which is good if you have Mastery because then your Ripostes are better.
[*] Two Battle axes (1D8+1D6+2) x 2, which is slightly less damage actually (because most foes have some armor) but two independent chances to hit, so possibly better on balance.
[*] A Battle axe (1D8+1D6+2) and a Shield of some kind, which you could theoretically bash with but really just lets you parry arrows at half-rating. Not so hot, frankly - although, technically, as soon as you close to melee you could start parrying with your axe and then still get shield bashes (1D6+1D6+2 for a tower shield) in?

Now, Stormbringer has a relative short weapon list, but you still have two weapon skills for each of these weapons and that is going to be a problem. Does Frank like this rule?


He does not. This becomes a bigger issue in Stormbringer because Demon Weapons can only be made using human sacrifice. So most PCs are not going to want to make them even if they know how (also it's horrendously dangerous). Therefore you will be fighting with a captured demon weapon and you will likely not be skilled with it. This is a comedic fail.

3.6 EQUIPPING CHARACTERS WITH WEAPONS
This section is mostly redundant with previous sections that told you what weapons you got, except that it was poorly edited and sometimes conflicts. So this is another design fail.

3.7 ARMOR
Armor reduces incoming damage by 1D6-1 (for leather), 1D8-1 (for half-plate or barbarian laquer armor), 1D10-1 (for plate) or 1D10+2 (for plate and helm). Plate and helm inflicts an awareness penalty that might encourage the GM to use the brutastic surprise rules above.

3.7.4 You can swim just fine in leather (side note - then why don't Sailor characters wear it?), but not in plate.
3.7.5 tells you that being hit "three times in a row" may destroy your armor at the end of combat, if Mister Cavern decides to be a dick. Another design fail.
3.7.6 tells you that this game doesn't have Encumbrance rules, but encourages you to to consult whatever edition of Runequest.

One a side note, Michael Moorcock spent a lot of time hanging out at ren faires and mentioned in the Corum novels that Axes and Hammers were intended to bypass plate armor. You can make a pretty compelling weapon vs. armor minigame using a combination of accuracy, reach and damage modifiers (the Dominions video game series does a good job of this, actually; as does Crawl, my 2nd favorite Roguelike) but this game is not it.

3.8 MAGICAL WEAPONS AND ARMOR

have powers and abilities that make ordinary weapons and armor insignificant

Good thing we devoted all those pages to the difference between a Lormyrian Axe and a Sea Axe, then.
This is just a pointer to the magic section.

3.9 COMBAT WOUNDS AND OTHER DAMAGE

Running out of hit points kills you, every 4 points of damage you take causes a wound penalty of -1 DEX. If you take half your hit points in a single blow, you lose half your DEX until you heal, and you suffer a major wound with permanent injuries that escalate if you don't get medical attention.
Being stabbed in this game sucks. This is already being discussed by the peanut gallery above.
3.9.4.1 DAMAGE FROM FIRE is 1D100 if you fail your save - is that a typo? Anyway, if you fail your save it kills you. There are some permanent injury rolls for catching fire but this makes fire elementals really nasty.
3.9.4.2 DAMAGE FROM FALLING OR BEING THROWN is 1D6/10 ft. which means falling any appreciable distance kills you.
3.9.4.4 DAMAGE FROM DISEASE is mostly a permanent CON reduction if not death, and is just the GM being a dick again.

3.10 MASS CONFLICTS

Boo hiss, this section is bad.
The characters explicitly cannot influence the course of any battle in which they participate, and your chance of escaping unwounded is purely a POW attribute test with no function of anything about your character except his armor mattering otherwise.
It's disempowering as well as being capricious and arbitrary.

3.11 NAVAL CONFLICTS

For some reason, naval conflicts get resolution rules while land battles don't.
Actually, I know why - the Young Kingdoms (this is discussed above) are mostly late-midevil in technology level but they all have Greco-Roman trireme navies and there are several major naval battles in the books, with triremes having multiple banks of rows ramming eachother and suchnot.
It's just a single die roll involving navigation skill and POW attributes, and then a suggestion that you use the naval combat rules from the Elric *board game* (see map from previous post.)

All told, this chapter is:
1) Clearly a product of it's era.
and
2) One of the weakest in this particular game/product, with many cringe-inducing errors and oversights even for the time.

[GâtFromKI]

Has anyone here actually played this? If so, did you obey the randomized character creation rules?

No choice if there's not other creation rule. Or everyone would play a melnibonean assassin/noble/warrior with magic powers.

The standard way of generating a character was suicide. You roll, if you don't like what you get, your character commits suicide. He's your character, you can do whatever you want with him, why not a suicide?

So you rerolled until you got something playable and you were bored enough not to reroll once more. So everyone got a playable character, but not everyone played a melnibonean assassin/noble/warrior with magic powers.

Sometime, a smartass MC tried to enforce a "no reroll, no suicide" rule. His game never went anywhere: most of the characters were taking a lot stupid decisions, as if they were willing to die. Maybe because they were? Either the smartass MC killed the characters (and thus allowed a reroll... then another... and another...), either the game became toons with every problem solved in the most silly possible way.

A more mature solution is not to play the game. I rolled a mud farmer, this guy has nothing to do in an adventure, he stays home and farm mud. The end, now let's start a new game with another character. It's not very different from suicide-chargen, but it outlines the absurdity of random character generation with stupid possible outcome.

While I think there is a fair bit of criticism to level at Stormbringer, I find this one to be the weakest. I've never heard any player voice a desire to hang out with Elric in the Young Kingdoms, or Conan in Hyperboria, or Gandalf in Middle Earth.

In my experience, player don't want to play Stormbringer or MERP at all. Some players may want to play Star Wars, until they discover another scifi RPG.

The main problem is: the source material presents awesome characters doing awesome stuffs, and you end up playing a random mud farmer who's threatened by random college bullies. You never feel you live an adventure "like the source material". Playing a mud farmer may work with Vance (Lyonesse contains many badass characters, but also many anecdotes about mud farmers who have to deal with faeries and trolls and wizards), it doesn't work with Conan, LotR, Elric, Star Wars...

So players play Stormbringer once. They discover they play mud farmer in a generic fantasy world instead of an Elric adventure; and they can't even have any meaningful influence in the story, since the story is already written and Elric destroy the world at the end. They see D&D is superior in every way. They don't want to play Stormbringer ever again. The same with Conan, MERP, etc. Star Wars was a bit more popular since there wasn't any "standard reference" for generic scifi(/fantasy) RPG.

So the math hammering is, the chance to do damage is (attack) * (1 - parry); for matched fighters, this maxes out at at a 25% of hitting when attack+parrty are both 50%, and is only a 9% chance of hitting when attack+parry are either 10% or 90%.

This shit was quite standard at the time.

Actually, D&D was one of the only game featuring fast combat. Roll with a meaningful chance of hitting, deal a meaningful amount of damages. Other games either featured a attack/parry system where combat resumes to "i roll. I fail. His turn. He rolls. He fails. My turn."x20, either featured low damages vs high HP (MERP). Endless fights was another reason people didn't want to play Stormbringer/MERP/whatever.

In the other hand, everything was to invent, I can understand some people though it was a great idea to roll attack and parry. What I can't understand is why this kind of shit is still flying right now (warning, the link is in french. Could be a great OSSR material, although it's not OS per se).