Stormbringer

Does anyone still love, play and or want to shoot the breeze about it?

I just broke out my 1st edition that has yellow pages and is smelling of moth balls.... God I love this game....

My perfect Stormbringer RPG edition would be 1st edition rules with the Unmapped East magic spheres, 4th ed/Elric!Spells, MRQ- background skills,

Please share what you loved or disliked and experienced?

Bump 24 views I guess people really didn't enjoy it yikes.

Bump 24 views I guess people really didn't enjoy it yikes.

Not so! It's probably my favourite iteration of the BRP system: playable and fun, with very little crunch (but just enough).

Ah, it's good to see that box cover! I confess, though, that I haven't played it for ages. I ran SB for our group in the early-mid '80s, and at university from '86-'87 I played a Yurit barbarian in a splendid campaign written and run by my long-lost friend Dave, inspired by this Rodney Matthews painting:

The Sundial campaign was one of the two or three best roleplaying experiences I've ever had. Good times.

I have played the 1/2 Melnibonean merc and an Eshmirian warrior-priest (fav char)

I haven't played in the setting so far, but have bought a copy of all the Stormbringer books Chaosium had in their "Stormbringer sale", together with a copy of Elric!

SGL.

Love SB1 - my brother and I ran it a LOT in the early to mid eighties and it is the reason BRP is my go to system of choice. Not sure I'd run it as is now - I actually really like SB5 / Elric!, or the baseline BRP of the Big Gold Book. But SB is the only game (besides Chaosium's RQII/III) which I have "collected" to the point of having a copy of every edition - and only Elric! and SB1 did I bother to get multiple copies to make sure I had a good / complete set, as it were.

And the SB1 version of the Young Kingdoms / Elric saga is still the one I prefer (none of the later eighties / nineties additions to the saga, Bakshaan is a seaport etc etc...)

Nick

I GM'd Stormbringer for my group and we played a lot of plane hopping stuff in my homebrew campaign. It was fun but not very Moorcockian.

The last thing we played was about 3/4 of the Rogue Mistress campaign.

I was becoming disheartened by the published scenarios.

I can live with the 'unbalanced' chargen as it makes interesting characters and npc.

The one thing I think is missing, is some sort of Chaos v Law highlevel minigame to see how the outcome of scenarios affects the fate of the world. I see the Multiverse as a near infinite chess game between Law & Chaos. Agents of the Balance have a hand in skewing the results evenly too.

I would have liked to see a scenario design element where endings are ipen ended and depending on the outcome, scores are adjusted either way. Maybe just me then.

When I ran the YK's Elric will just be another weak emperor of Melnibone, although I set my games in Sadric's time. My players are the real powers in the world and the embodiment of the EC. That way, no clash with dogma and no 'we're all doomed anyway' thing that some critic's raise.

I love it, but right now, I've got writers block.

Saying that, I did run it last year as I was designing a one shot. The system is simple and fast. I loved it.

Stormbringer is distilled awesome. It's Moorcock translated through Metal album cover art. I find it to be a great deal of fun, but I would only use it for one shots or a strung together series of one shots. Like Nick, I far prefer how Elric!/SB5 holds together and use it as my BRP default.

The one thing I think is missing, is some sort of Chaos v Law highlevel minigame to see how the outcome of scenarios affects the fate of the world. I see the Multiverse as a near infinite chess game between Law & Chaos. Agents of the Balance have a hand in skewing the results evenly too.

Interesting. I think there's a lot of room to expand in this area.

Love SB1 - my brother and I ran it a LOT in the early to mid eighties and it is the reason BRP is my go to system of choice. Not sure I'd run it as is now - I actually really like SB5 / Elric!, or the baseline BRP of the Big Gold Book. But SB is the only game (besides Chaosium's RQII/III) which I have "collected" to the point of having a copy of every edition - and only Elric! and SB1 did I bother to get multiple copies to make sure I had a good / complete set, as it were.

And the SB1 version of the Young Kingdoms / Elric saga is still the one I prefer (none of the later eighties / nineties additions to the saga, Bakshaan is a seaport etc etc...)

Nick

Right on brother! 1st edition is still the best in my eyes as well!

I am gm/playing Stormbringer fifth edition. Works fine for me.

John Wick plays dirty with Stormbringer;D:Play Dirty: The Dirty Dungeon

smurf lol

Nest Item : the Blessing of Law ( in the Sad Giants Shield/Stormbringer) ... it was when Moonglum"s weapons was inscribed and blessed with the charm of law.... would it be acceptable to use that type of rune spell to simulate the old 1st ed Virtues of Law ( Attack and Defense) what I ws think was a hybrid Rune Magic from Bronze Grimorie and the effects of the virtues..... for weapons and Armor. The Golem mentioned in Wierd of the white wolf would be a high level animation spell (another example the Mechanical bird).

I am very impressed by Elric!/SB5e. I especially like Elric!/SB5e + Corum. The Corum supplement from Darcsyde is superb, and I prefer the Corum stories to the Elric ones as well.

Sadly, the only Eternal Champions game that I ever actually ran was a 1e Hawkmoon campaign, a couple of decades ago. Hopefully I will get to run Elric! someday...

I never actually played SB (or Elric!) in any edition. But I do feel very strongly that the BRP rules were best presented in Elric! - at least for the way I want to play the game. I've tracked down most of the Elric!/SB5 books and I'm delighted to have them. I also dig the Corum supplement quite a bit. And these books will continue to fuel my usage of BRP.

All that said, as much as I love Moorcock, I don't think I could ever run (or play in) a game set in any of his worlds. I'm just not the kind of guy who likes to play in a pre-defined setting. I never have been. A great chunk of the joy of RPGs for me for the past 30 years has been in creating my own settings and worlds.

Still, Elric!/SB5 are some damned fine rules. I can't speak to earlier editions, since I don't think I've ever even seen one in person. But I hear they have their high points as well.

All that said, as much as I love Moorcock, I don't think I could ever run (or play in) a game set in any of his worlds. I'm just not the kind of guy who likes to play in a pre-defined setting. I never have been. A great chunk of the joy of RPGs for me for the past 30 years has been in creating my own settings and worlds.

I would say that the YK or even the 15 planes are defined in any way by a long shot.

You don't have to go with canon. Hell I encourage you not to. Just make it your own. I find that many of my players have not read as much Moorcock as I have and some won't even have heard of Elric, Hawkmoon or Corum. They then feel intimidated as they do not think theyl fit in. It doesn't matter, just fly with your own version of the world and play as if it was a sand box you just made up.

Nest Item : the Blessing of Law ( in the Sad Giants Shield/Stormbringer) ... it was when Moonglum"s weapons was inscribed and blessed with the charm of law.... would it be acceptable to use that type of rune spell to simulate the old 1st ed Virtues of Law ( Attack and Defense) what I ws think was a hybrid Rune Magic from Bronze Grimorie and the effects of the virtues..... for weapons and Armor. The Golem mentioned in Wierd of the white wolf would be a high level animation spell (another example the Mechanical bird).

Have you seen the 'Gods of Law' monograph by our very own Charles Green?

Check out the downloads section and soon to be up on www.stormbringerrpg.com

I haven't digested the 112 page document yet

I would say that the YK or even the 15 planes are defined in any way by a long shot.

You don't have to go with canon. Hell I encourage you not to. Just make it your own. I find that many of my players have not read as much Moorcock as I have and some won't even have heard of Elric, Hawkmoon or Corum. They then feel intimidated as they do not think theyl fit in. It doesn't matter, just fly with your own version of the world and play as if it was a sand box you just made up.

It's really the YK specifically that feel defined to me - mostly that whole "the world ends" stuff In any case, for the bulk of 30 years now neither I nor my core group of players have ever really been happy when we've dabbled with established (which might be a better word than pre-defined) setting. I make no claim that what we've done is always original and groundbreaking (quite the opposite, in fact, I'm sure), but we just like to be in our own sandbox doing our own thing without the long shadows of the known protagonists looming over us (or waiting just around the corner). This applies to everything from Elric to LotR to Star Wars and Star Trek. It also aplies to official RPG properties like Glorantha, The Imperium, Greyhawk and so on. We're just bloody-minded independents

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if the Arabian Nights-esque game I'm running using BRP (very Elric! in selection of rules and supplemented by things like the Bronze Grimoire) doesn't evolve to be tied to the 15 planes somehow. There's just something about those settings that draws you in no matter how much you seek to resist

Oh, and to the point about players not knowing Moorcock, I'm not so lucky. The guys I've been playing with (many for the entirety of that 30 odds years I keep mentioning) cut their teeth on Elric, Hawkmoon, and Corum. That's handy in a lot of ways, but it's a challenge in others.

Late-night ramblings:

You don't have to go with canon. Hell I encourage you not to. Just make it your own.

Agreed. I think one of the strengths of the Young Kingdoms as an RPG setting is its looseness and flexibility. The GM can put pretty much anything pretty much anywhere and it's not likely to upset the balance of the world. Most of the Stormbringer games I was involved in as GM or player were as near to being sandbox as makes no odds. Certainly nobody ever bumped into Elric or Theleb K'aarna. What tied it all together (and to Moorcock) was, firstly, the sorcery, and, secondly, the whole crazy New Wave-meets-pulp, 1960s/70s, Heavy Metal/Hawkwindy feel of the thing.

The Sundial campaign I mentioned earlier took place largely "off the map" although I do recall not one but two disastrous expeditions to Pan Tang. On the first, we hadn't even made landfall before our ship was attacked by clakars and the party's Melnibonean sorcerer managed, through an atrocious series of dice rolls, to let loose an angry and powerful demon of combat to add to the fun. We ended up floating home on bits of wreckage, in Asterix-pirates fashion:

That campaign also had demon doorbells. I've not read the Elric books for twenty-odd years, but I suspect those aren't strictly canonical either.

When my buddies and I played it took only few brushes with Elric to make it clear you didn't want him around. My Eshmirian warrior-priest was an unwitting victim of Stormbringer. It was after that we played god and changed the fate of the young kingdoms. Elric returns boots Yyrkoon, again, kills Yyrkoon after he allies with Jagreen Lern in an epic battle at sea , this neutralizing the Pan Tangian march to doom and returning some stability to the Young Kingdoms. The Bright Empire is revitalized to a minor extent (- Sorcerer's Island returns to Imrryrian control).

The idea was to give greater breathing space to for characters to develop without the end of the world ruining the journey.

As soon as I hook up my Fantasy Grounds II Software ( I am getting the mega pack) I am going to start hosting online tabletop games. Let me know next month if you are interested.

It's my favorite iteration of BRP, in any form.

We played a ton of it. Had awesome times. Made some of the most munchkin-esque characters the world has ever seen.

I remember playing a Melnibonean Warrior-Noble with all of the demon summonings. I had a demon of travel/teleportation in ring form, with a DEX 1. He'd teleport his enemies 20-30 feet into the air, and let them risk the DEX x 3% chance of avoiding a teleportation mishap.

As soon as I hook up my Fantasy Grounds II Software ( I am getting the mega pack) I am going to start hosting online tabletop games. Let me know next month if you are interested.

So what time zone are you in ? Are you thinking of using voice as well ?

EST and well chat... didn't know FGII had voice

As soon as I hook up my Fantasy Grounds II Software ( I am getting the mega pack) I am going to start hosting online tabletop games. Let me know next month if you are interested.

This sentence may as well be written in 'pande for all the sense I can make of it! It appears to refer to some arcane computery thingumajig. I don't know nuthin' about that, I'm afraid. In fact, in order to communicate on this forum at all, I have to write in biro on the screen of an old Etch-A-Sketch connected by crocodile clips and copper wires to the Telex.

LOL

I will send you and invite so you can hook up ... pande' by the way is much more lyrical I think