Elfquest RPG

[seneschal]

Elfquest may be the great-grandaddy of BRP psychic powers, but the despite the popularity of the comic book it was based on, the role-playing version doesn't seem to have gotten a lot of love:

 

http://rpggeek.com/thread/687987/what-went-wrong-elfquest-one-authors-comments

 

http://digitalorc.blogspot.com/2013/05/elfquest-official-roleplaying-game.html

 

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/classic/rev_5622.phtml

 

I remember seeing it in game stores and comics shops but since the groups I played with never got into RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, or any of their sister games, I missed out.  There are, however, a few copies around:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Elfquest-The-Official-Roleplaying-Game/dp/B000BYSOPI

 

http://www.amazon.com/Elf-War-Hubward-Adventures-Elfquest/dp/093363532X

 

http://www.waynesbooks.com/elfquest.html

 

Incidentally, at least one of the reviewers assumed the market for an Elfquest game would be pre-teen girls.  As someone who bought and read the original WaRP Graphics origin issue back in the day, I can guarantee that a significant portion of EQ fans were male teens.  It wasn't tweener girls ogling those back cover pinup posters of Cutter's curvaceous wife, Leetah. 

 

Also, despite the cute elves, the World of Two Moons was a rather grim and brutal place.  Elfquest debuted at the beginning of the independent, "comics aren't just for kids anymore" movement, and its complex plot certainly wasn't Disney fare.  Characters died messily (although the Pinis didn't rub it in the reader's face), the setting's history was one of remorseless racial war between elves and humans, and the elvish characters certainly weren't restrained by any sense of Victorian moral values (although, again, the authors kept it tasteful).  Today, of course, young girls read Japanese manga that are far more brutal and graphic than Elfquest ever was, but it wasn't necessarily so in the late '70s.

 

Apparently part of the problem with translating the comic into a game is that Chaosium got the license while authors Wendy and Richard Pini were still introducing the characters and the setting.  It'd be like trying to create a Star Trek role-playing game based only  on the first two or three episodes aired.  As a result, Elfquest the game featured extensive rules derived from RuneQuest but didn't give potential players much to do with them.

[Baron]

At the time, I saw it everywhere, people were playing it, and there was no internet to spread bad reviews around on.

 

I didn't play it, as the comic, which was very popular, held no interest for me. I had a friend or two who suggested we play, but I declined.

 

I suppose it might be fun to play a campaign fresh, as it were, without being bogged down in fandom. Elf campaign, roaming around, doing whatever.

 

Don't know what special rules they may have come up with for this BRP iteration.

[deleriad]

I had a friend who bought Elfquest because we were all Chaosium fanboys and he had all the money so he bought everything. It was dire. If I remember, what happened is that Chaosium had no one to work on it because they were in the middle of all the stress in getting RQ3 developed so they asked Steve Perrin to do it. He took some of the prototype rules for RQ3 and hacked out some world background based on the comics.

 

it was a classic mismatch of rules and setting. You can't blame Steve Perrin for it, he only had one head and two hands so there wasn't time to do anything else. Still they would have been better taking CoC as it was or even Magic World and adapting it. Instead you got detailed simulation rules for melee combat and almost nothing that had anything to do with the comics or world. Elfquest was an early step in my falling out of love with Chaosium products. 

[MatteoN]

Today, of course, young girls read Japanese manga that are far more brutal and graphic than Elfquest ever was, but it wasn't necessarily so in the late '70s.

 

As an aside, I read somewhere that Wendy Pini cited the great old-school mangaka Sanpei Shirato as an influence. Kagemaru, my avatar, is one of Shirato's most famous characters. Shirato's manga are absolutely brutal and utterly awesome, a far cry from today's commercial manga.

[p_clapham]

As a side project I'm going to convert some of those powers from Elfquest that never made it to BRP.

 

Body Shaping

Range: Touch

Duration: Permanent

Power Point Cost:  one power point for every three points of SIZ converted

 

Body shaping allows the character shape flesh and bone as if it were clay, allowing them to bestow mutations onto their target.  The power takes one day for every three points of SIZ converted.  The character gains one minor mutation, and rolls for a adverse mutation.  On a special success the character gains one major mutation, and can choose their adverse mutation.  On a critical the character gains one major mutation and does not have to take a adverse mutation.

[Skunkape]

My campaign world is very much affected by the Elfquest comic and game rules. I modified them a long time ago, but elves are the only ones with psychic powers. While I never really used the game rules completely, they allowed me to modify the RQ rules to include some of the Elfquest world to my world!

[filbanto]

Rich (rdeluc) ran a game for us a couple years ago. We decided that we were playing the "elf-ridden" since our wolves were much better characters than our elves. I think my wolf may actually have been as smart as Spritely (INT 6) was... Rich wisely separated us from our furry friends to make the game more challenging.

 

We played RAW and, to be honest, it wasn't a bad game. There were some pretty squirrelly things with strike ranks as I recall: Spritely had DEX 21 and he could get 3 arrows off in combat turn 1, but after that he was slower than the characters with lower DEX. Damage could be brutal since there was no armor. You didn't have much chance of getting any psychic powers and that was a shame since some of them were really cool looking. Looking at it from a modern perspective it isn't a good game. I'd say it was a transiton game though and it introduced some concepts that were used in later version of the BRP system.

 

I think one of the reasons I have such fond memories of the game was because of the fantastic adventure Rich ran. He blew me away with the description of an underground "forest" intricately carved out of the surrounding stone, complete with birds, squirrels and so forth. Somebody had way too much time on their hands and spent it all on masonry.

[seneschal]

A creative GM often trumps a clunky set of rules.  I think it hilarious that the wolves were more interesting player-characters than the elves.  Glad you had fun.

 

Can't re-release the original game because of license issues (that ship has sailed) but a modern campaign could benefit from streamlined rules (Call of Cthulhu or OpenQuest) and the fact that the entire Elfquest saga is now available in print or on the web to mine ideas from.  Based on what posters have said, I'd make it easier to gain psychic powers since characters in the comic frequently had them.  Elvish PCs should have a better shot at ESP than Traveller spacemen.

[p_clapham]

Off the top of my head the powers from Elfquest that didn't appear in Basic Roleplaying are the following:

 

Anti-Healing

Fire-Starting

Flesh-Shaping

Plant-Shaping

Shape-Change

Animal Bonding

Rock-shaping

Dowsing

Hypnosis

Magic-Feeling

Mind Snare

Sending

Shielding