RPGnet : The Inside Scoop on Gaming

In an industry pockmarked with publishers doing their best to stretch out vital game materials over whole libraries of high-style, low-substance books, Chaosium has consistently published some of THE most generous rulebooks on the market. Elric! is no exception.

Elric! is Chaosium's second game set in fantasy author Michael Moorcock's Young Kingdoms, the first being Stormbringer. Having never played the latter, I can't speak to the improvements made in this incarnation… but I can tell you that this is one fantastic game.

THE SETTING

For those poor, lost souls out there who don't know, Elric is the last emperor of the Melniboneans, an elf-like race so decadent as to make Babylon 5's Centauri seem like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The Melniboneans once ruled the known world through their mighty sorceries and terrible dragons, but their empire is quickly fading and humans are now the ascendant race.

Elric is also an incarnation of the Eternal Champion, a being reincarnated time and again throughout the multiverse for no apparent reason other than to fight. He's an antihero in every sense of the word, a man who tends to slay at least as many loved ones as enemies. This is largely due to Stormbringer, Elric's demonic soul-eating runesword that offers its strength to bolster his sickly albino body.

The world of Elric! is a place of very dark fantasy over which the gods of Law and Chaos struggle for supremacy. While most humans consider Law to be good and Chaos evil, the truth is that neither side has humanity's best interests at heart. In the middle is the Cosmic Balance, an enigmatic force that created the multiverse but is seldom followed. Moral relativism and situational ethics are order of the day -characters are rarely sure if they're "doing the right thing". Don't expect to see hordes of beasties rampaging across the countryside or guarding subterranean piles of treasure. There are monsters and demons aplenty, but the focus of the game is on struggling with moral dilemmas rather than horrors.

Ironically, the fact that Moorcock's concepts have been tapped by fantasy RPGs all the way back to D&D and used extensively in such games as RuneQuest and Warhammer FRP may make some of the setting elements - particularly the war between Law and Chaos - seem overused. You may need to remind your players (and yourself) that Moorcock was the innovator, not the imitator.

Chaosium had their work cut out for them in making the Young Kingdoms "hang together" - the Elric short stories, which were often written out of order and which often contradict themselves, do not offer as solid a sense of continuity as do Tolkien's works, for example. For the most part they were at least as successful as they were at making a coherent whole out of the Cthulhu Mythos; however, I still didn't get as good a feel for the place as I'd have liked. Certainly, there's enough here for one unfamiliar with Moorcock's work to run with, but not quite enough to make the prospect appealing. Of course, considering the amount of information squeezed into this book, not everything could be handled in depth.

THE RULES

Elric! makes good use of Chaosium's percentile-based house system with a few choice modifications.

The most obvious of these changes appear at character creation. For one thing, skill sets based on worldview are added to the skills a character receives from his chosen profession and personal interests. For another, characters are far more competent than those in RuneQuest or Call of Cthulhu; in fact, the rules encourage players to give their characters combat skills of over 100%. This isn't as munchkinesque as it might sound, since NPCs are likely to be equally skilled. These high skill levels also work well with Elric's combat system, as I'll explain below.

The character creation process itself is VERY fast, taking about 30 minutes. The vast majority of characters will be human. It's possible to play a Melnibonean or a Myrrhn (a race of avian humans), but both of these races are MUCH more powerful than are humans. GMs are wisely advised to use caution if allowing them. Such characters might work well for solo adventurers or for very small groups.

Another big change is the addition of alignments. Now, before you D&D haters run screaming into the night, these aren't your father's alignments. In Elric!, alignments -- called "allegiances" -- don't tell you what your character can do, but rather what he has done. Allegiance is rated in points. At character creation, characters taking allegiance points in Chaos may start the game with spells, those taking points in Law get additional skill points, and those taking points in Balance can raise their lowest attribute. From there, characters can gain or loose points in Chaos, Law and Balance, based upon their actions. These have no real game affect until one of the three surpasses the others by 20 points, at which point the character has gained an allegiance. Such a character gains allegiance-related benefits at the cost of certain behavioral restrictions. Eventually, the character may become a Champion. That's when things really get interesting…

Combat in Elric! is fast and brutal. RuneQuest's realistic but slow hit locations are abandoned in favor of a nasty critical hit system. As in RuneQuest, combatants with skills greater than 100% may divide their attacks. Defenders can now parry or dodge as much as they'd like, provided they still have any points left after subtracting 30 points from each attempt. Varying levels of success on attacks and defenses have different effects; for example, an impaling hit (a roll of 1 with an impaling weapon) can be avoided by a critical parry but cannot be dodged. As a result, combats tend be dramatic, swashbuckling affairs that end quickly as one combatant finds an opening in his opponent's defenses and dishes out a crippling wound.

Magic is divided into cast spells, summonings, invocations and enchantments. The cast spells, which use the same system as does Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest (for spirit magic), tend to be little more than unusually powerful cantrips. My players found that they were seldom worth the round it takes to cast them, although they sometimes came in handy. Summonings of demons and elementals are much more powerful - the mage decides on the power level and, in the case of demons, the abilities of the creature summoned and binds the creature into servitude. A demon could be made into a bodyguard in its natural form, or it could be bound into a wand from which the mage can utilize the demon's flame attack at will. Invocations are basically cries for help to the gods and are unlikely to succeed unless the character is a powerful servant of his allegiance. Enchantments don't really have a system - they are powerful magic items left over from times when magic was even stronger than at the time of the game.

THE BOOK

Elric! has the same basic look as Call of Cthulhu 5th edition. The layout looks a bit cluttered in some places, but overall the organization is top-notch. The art is of good quality and consistency; it doesn't really stand out at any one place, but it enhances the mood and content of the text throughout. Numerous useful charts summarize game mechanics and are repeated at the back of the book. The game includes a quick tour of the Young Kingdoms, extensive write-ups of characters from the Elric stories, summoned creatures, and monsters, six pre-generated characters, a list of terms and pronunciations, and two adventures.

The first adventure is little more than a quick firsthand introduction to the concepts of Law, Chaos, and Balance, and it left my players feeling a bit let down. The second is also short but is much more of a complete and enjoyable adventure. I'd suggest running both in the same night, if possible. They're short enough, and your players will find their first session much more satisfying.

Finally, like most Chaosium books, Elric! features the common courtesy of a comprehensive index.

If you like your fantasy dark, your mechanics simple, and your supplements inexpensive and comprehensive, this game is a fantastic buy.

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Elric!
Author: Lynn Willis, Richard Watts, Mark Morrison, Jimmie W. Pursell Jr., Sam Shirley, Joshua Shaw Category: game Company/Publisher: Chaosium Cost: 19.95 Page count: 160 ISBN: 0-933635-98-2 Playtest Review by Dan Davenport on 10/21/98. Genre tags: Fantasy	In an industry pockmarked with publishers doing their best to stretch out vital game materials over whole libraries of high-style, low-substance books, Chaosium has consistently published some of THE most generous rulebooks on the market. Elric! is no exception. Elric! is Chaosium's second game set in fantasy author Michael Moorcock's Young Kingdoms, the first being Stormbringer. Having never played the latter, I can't speak to the improvements made in this incarnation… but I can tell you that this is one fantastic game. THE SETTING For those poor, lost souls out there who don't know, Elric is the last emperor of the Melniboneans, an elf-like race so decadent as to make Babylon 5's Centauri seem like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. The Melniboneans once ruled the known world through their mighty sorceries and terrible dragons, but their empire is quickly fading and humans are now the ascendant race. Elric is also an incarnation of the Eternal Champion, a being reincarnated time and again throughout the multiverse for no apparent reason other than to fight. He's an antihero in every sense of the word, a man who tends to slay at least as many loved ones as enemies. This is largely due to Stormbringer, Elric's demonic soul-eating runesword that offers its strength to bolster his sickly albino body. The world of Elric! is a place of very dark fantasy over which the gods of Law and Chaos struggle for supremacy. While most humans consider Law to be good and Chaos evil, the truth is that neither side has humanity's best interests at heart. In the middle is the Cosmic Balance, an enigmatic force that created the multiverse but is seldom followed. Moral relativism and situational ethics are order of the day -characters are rarely sure if they're "doing the right thing". Don't expect to see hordes of beasties rampaging across the countryside or guarding subterranean piles of treasure. There are monsters and demons aplenty, but the focus of the game is on struggling with moral dilemmas rather than horrors. Ironically, the fact that Moorcock's concepts have been tapped by fantasy RPGs all the way back to D&D and used extensively in such games as RuneQuest and Warhammer FRP may make some of the setting elements - particularly the war between Law and Chaos - seem overused. You may need to remind your players (and yourself) that Moorcock was the innovator, not the imitator. Chaosium had their work cut out for them in making the Young Kingdoms "hang together" - the Elric short stories, which were often written out of order and which often contradict themselves, do not offer as solid a sense of continuity as do Tolkien's works, for example. For the most part they were at least as successful as they were at making a coherent whole out of the Cthulhu Mythos; however, I still didn't get as good a feel for the place as I'd have liked. Certainly, there's enough here for one unfamiliar with Moorcock's work to run with, but not quite enough to make the prospect appealing. Of course, considering the amount of information squeezed into this book, not everything could be handled in depth. THE RULES Elric! makes good use of Chaosium's percentile-based house system with a few choice modifications. The most obvious of these changes appear at character creation. For one thing, skill sets based on worldview are added to the skills a character receives from his chosen profession and personal interests. For another, characters are far more competent than those in RuneQuest or Call of Cthulhu; in fact, the rules encourage players to give their characters combat skills of over 100%. This isn't as munchkinesque as it might sound, since NPCs are likely to be equally skilled. These high skill levels also work well with Elric's combat system, as I'll explain below. The character creation process itself is VERY fast, taking about 30 minutes. The vast majority of characters will be human. It's possible to play a Melnibonean or a Myrrhn (a race of avian humans), but both of these races are MUCH more powerful than are humans. GMs are wisely advised to use caution if allowing them. Such characters might work well for solo adventurers or for very small groups. Another big change is the addition of alignments. Now, before you D&D haters run screaming into the night, these aren't your father's alignments. In Elric!, alignments -- called "allegiances" -- don't tell you what your character can do, but rather what he has done. Allegiance is rated in points. At character creation, characters taking allegiance points in Chaos may start the game with spells, those taking points in Law get additional skill points, and those taking points in Balance can raise their lowest attribute. From there, characters can gain or loose points in Chaos, Law and Balance, based upon their actions. These have no real game affect until one of the three surpasses the others by 20 points, at which point the character has gained an allegiance. Such a character gains allegiance-related benefits at the cost of certain behavioral restrictions. Eventually, the character may become a Champion. That's when things really get interesting… Combat in Elric! is fast and brutal. RuneQuest's realistic but slow hit locations are abandoned in favor of a nasty critical hit system. As in RuneQuest, combatants with skills greater than 100% may divide their attacks. Defenders can now parry or dodge as much as they'd like, provided they still have any points left after subtracting 30 points from each attempt. Varying levels of success on attacks and defenses have different effects; for example, an impaling hit (a roll of 1 with an impaling weapon) can be avoided by a critical parry but cannot be dodged. As a result, combats tend be dramatic, swashbuckling affairs that end quickly as one combatant finds an opening in his opponent's defenses and dishes out a crippling wound. Magic is divided into cast spells, summonings, invocations and enchantments. The cast spells, which use the same system as does Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest (for spirit magic), tend to be little more than unusually powerful cantrips. My players found that they were seldom worth the round it takes to cast them, although they sometimes came in handy. Summonings of demons and elementals are much more powerful - the mage decides on the power level and, in the case of demons, the abilities of the creature summoned and binds the creature into servitude. A demon could be made into a bodyguard in its natural form, or it could be bound into a wand from which the mage can utilize the demon's flame attack at will. Invocations are basically cries for help to the gods and are unlikely to succeed unless the character is a powerful servant of his allegiance. Enchantments don't really have a system - they are powerful magic items left over from times when magic was even stronger than at the time of the game. THE BOOK Elric! has the same basic look as Call of Cthulhu 5th edition. The layout looks a bit cluttered in some places, but overall the organization is top-notch. The art is of good quality and consistency; it doesn't really stand out at any one place, but it enhances the mood and content of the text throughout. Numerous useful charts summarize game mechanics and are repeated at the back of the book. The game includes a quick tour of the Young Kingdoms, extensive write-ups of characters from the Elric stories, summoned creatures, and monsters, six pre-generated characters, a list of terms and pronunciations, and two adventures. The first adventure is little more than a quick firsthand introduction to the concepts of Law, Chaos, and Balance, and it left my players feeling a bit let down. The second is also short but is much more of a complete and enjoyable adventure. I'd suggest running both in the same night, if possible. They're short enough, and your players will find their first session much more satisfying. Finally, like most Chaosium books, Elric! features the common courtesy of a comprehensive index. If you like your fantasy dark, your mechanics simple, and your supplements inexpensive and comprehensive, this game is a fantastic buy. Style: 5 (Excellent!) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)