Thot

Surprisingly many are not, or so it seems.

"Stormbringer 6", err, I mean, Magic World uses no hit locations, has fixed base skills, the ever fun random armor... it is not just "essentially" the old Stormbringer 5, but literally, down to many sentences of the rules and much of the art in the books.

I just wish they would have called it more fortunately, to make the relationship to Stormbringer clear. "Stormsinger" or "Wormbringer" or something like that.

1 hour ago, Archivist said:

What would be a good system for running this today but keeping it simple? For example, I don't think Mythras would be your first choice, as its crunchier

I am going to use Mythras from the day after tomorrow on, when the campaign starts. But that's mostly because it's available in German, and I want to support that by using it. If that wasn't a consideration, I'd just use Magic World, because it is (except for a few lacking spells) Stormbringer 6, so to speak.

13 hours ago, Nick J. said:

Sure, but if I was going to do that, then I'd just run Elric! or Stormbringer.

That's the point. If you are using Magic World in Moorcock's worlds, you are.

7 hours ago, Nick J. said:

For inspiration and tone, think Ralph Bakshi's "Wizards, & "Fire & Ice," or Ridley Scott's "Legend." Also, books like Roger Zelzany's Amber novels, Le Guin's Earthsea stories, or even Jack Vance's Lyonesse novels.

There is also this British author who wrote about a concept called The Eternal Champion....

5 minutes ago, Matt_E said:

[...] The higher score in the skill indicates the amount of time the magician has put into studying; why shouldn't that correlate with learning more spells?  How can you say it is much harder to learn a spell than to buy equipment when you haven't named a price? [...]

Why should it correlate with any spells at all? The system does handle learning spells separate from the skill, and rightly so.  Why drop that distinction just for character generation?

We do know that learning a new sorcery spell takes 5 XP and a month of your time. There is no piece of armor or weapon or other gear that is that hard to get, especially given how adventurers tend to accumulate money more quickly than regular people.

1 hour ago, Matt_E said:

 

Well, I think you could make that same argument for other things, too...  You pick a culture and a career, you get access to some Professional skills, but not others.  If that career is magical, so be it; you get access to magic spells/abilities because they are the only "tools" that make the profession and its Professional Skills worth getting. To me it seems like complaining that a warrior would get good armor and a shield for free at chargen, whereas someone else would have to pay real money for it later.  I am mixing XP and SP here, and skills and spells and equipment, but I think you see what I mean.  Viewed through the prism of "natural consequences of choosing a career", I think these ideas are quite comparable.

Except the magic-user gets not only access to spells, but a certain number of spells, based on how good he is with the skill he will need to use them!

Access to spells makes sense, sure. But an ability worth 20 skill points or 5 XP for free? Seems a bit much.

I don't believe the equipment comparison works here. Items can be lost; knowledge rarely is. Moreover, it is much, much, much easier to buy new stuff than to learn a spell.

Quote

My other thought is, who said everything must be balanced down to the last penny? 

It doesn't have to be, a bit more balance is just the way I like it more. And in my experience, so do most players.

Sure, balancing everything "down to the last penny" is futile - GURPS for instance is over the top there. But gross imbalances do bother people. And a very simple adjustment like the above can make things so much... cleaner.

My concern is balance. Not every character has access to magical skills and spells, so giving some who get that ability stuff for free on top of that just doesn't ring well with me - it makes those who do have access more powerful as a reward for being more powerful.

After all, if it costs experience points later in the game, why should it not equally cost a resource at character generation?

1. Being part of a multiverse.

2. Ambiguous view on sorcery in the game world .

3. Fantasy tech; not higher than renaissance, not lower than early iron age.

4. Various intelligent, playable species.

5. Seafaring!

You could have chosen no better. Uhrwerk is maybe THE most professional and quality-oriented RPG publisher in Germany.

Mythras assigns starting spells via concluding them from a character's magic skills, or some of them.

That's odd, because later on, you buy them with experience points like everything else. So why don't the rules do the same for spells on character creation? I'd propose 15 points cost for folk spells, 20 points for everything else (because that's about the equivalent of the XP they would cost).

As spells are then no longer free at character creation, I'd give everybody 60 to 100 extra points to compensate. That would offer everybody a few more choices, while keeping overall power level roughly the same..

Yes. I have decided to stick with that scale, and just explain Elric's fast travel times with magic and herbs that he fed his horses.

After having looked at travel times in the stories, I must say the above map grossly overestimates distances. It seems that the Young Kingdoms are more comparable in scale to the Eastern Mediterranean than to the whole of Europe.

It certainly is helpful! Thank you!

Found this:

http://www.multiverse.org/index.php?title=Sorcerers'_Isle

What do we know about the Sorcerer's Isle?

We do know that several solitary sorcerers live there (as Moorcock mentions this in the novel Stormbringer), where Elric decides to ask the "solitary practioners of the White Arts". on that island for advice, in order to be able to contact the lords of Law.

We also know from the maps that it is about the size of Ireland or Britain. Which is quite large.

We can conclude from its position next to Melniboné itself that it must have been part of the Bright Empire many centuries ago, and from its name that it is home to powerful magic.

Anything else? Any books, novels, remarks, or even RP supplements, that I am not aware of?

None? A pity.

I guess I'll go with Willpower rolls. While that does reduce the system's granularity a bit, it catches the intention behind those rolls best, I believe.

I am preparing a campaign that will use Mythras as its ruleset (because it is available in German for my players), but uses Magic World's sorcery (and possibly other magic systems from MW) as the magic system.

One thing I have encountered when thinking about this: Magic World uses the concept of the resistance table where Mythras goes with competing rolls. In order to no confuse my players, I want to use Mythras's method as much as possible. For POW vs POW, and magic points vs magic points rolls, I could simply use Willpower, or I could have them compute quintuples of POW and current magic points and use those for the competing roll.

Or I could just go with Mythras' general theme and introduce a skill named "sorcery" that does all these things. Now, in Magic World, spell success is usually automatic (unless resisted), so that seems kind of like a big leap. Also, in the case of magic points vs. magic points rolls, the intention is clearly to weaken the sorcerer as he spends more of his power, and that would get lost in translation with both the Willpower and the Sorcery Skill solutions.

Or I could just use the resistance table.

But neither of these solutions strikes me as particularly elegant. Does anyone else have experience with this particular BRP-related problem? Any opinions would be appreciated.

I'll be doing it! Not using Stormbringer, but Mythras, with the Elric/Magic World magic system.I've got three players already, but am still looking for more... So if you know anyone in central Germany who might be interested... point them here!

Oh, good information. I had thought they were OOP already.

Magic World's default setting does not strike me as particularly Moorcock'ish. You?

Stormbringer 6 should be done. If necessary, create a world for it that captures the general mood of Moorcock's writings without plagiarizing him.

That's... actually a lot more interesting than what I thought it was like.

4 hours ago, Stoatbringer said:

I thought that  the events of Stormbringer took place in a multiverse. I'm sure that Moorcock wrote a comic that has an Elric that escapes the destruction of the Young Kingdoms[...]

Moorcock's multiverse doesn't work that way - there is only one version of each world in his stories.

Of course, there are various ways to play it nevertheless. For example, by interpreting the text as subjective, rather than objective recount of the events.  Maybe Elric was just on a drug-induced dream the whole time when he thought he fought the lords of chaos, and put himself into his sword.

Or simply by inventing stuff that was not explicitly said in the novels. The novel "Stormbringer" actually leaves plenty of room for that.

3 hours ago, NickMiddleton said:

A genuinely new setting, inspired by Moorcock's ideas and themes but which has its own actually innovative ideas  might get better traction - but I'd guess NuChaosium would be wary, if only because they are attempting to repair their relations with Moorcock (and others) and they also have other irons in the Fantasy RPG fire; so why stir up these potential  issues.

A genuinely new setting that just adds vague references so that players might find themselves transfering their characters from a previous campaign, without spelling out what that old world was like is the whole point of the proposal.