smiorgan

In the meantime we had 2 Stormbringer sessions... VERY MINOR SPOILERS BELOW: One was quite short due to technical problems - but it was graced with the meeting with two notable interplanar travellers Prince Rorn of the Vadhagh and his relative Count Manuin (new player character!). They had seen the hulking shadowy figure of the Sword Ruler Arioch deep in the woods and were quite terrified. But Saran Sheik, the Arioch priest PC was quite elated, instead. He decided to leave the party to go on a pilgrimage in search of his god. While Saran entered the foggy wood, the other arrived in Tormesh to contend with demon doors until a Dharzi attack caused a major disruption. The other session was the one-of-one play of the side quest of Saran Sheik. In his dream-quest the priest contended with beastmen faithful to Xiombarg ending up stealing their reptile-pulled chariot, mercilessly killed an injured Goffanon, stealing the Horn of Kerenos (or some incarnation of it), revived key moments of Melnibonean history, became friends with dragoness Lady Scarsnout and rode her to battle against Dharzi mounted on flying crocs. Miraculously Saran, who has only 8 HP (!!), did not die in the process, met briefly with Arioch, and reappeared near Tormesh having gained a ton of Elan, a supposedly magic horn and a suit of Melnibonean plate. Oh, I love Stormbringer! With the next session we approach the scenario showdown and the end of the mini-campaign.

The Revolution d100 rules: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/199093/Revolution-D100?src=hottest_filtered The basic rules can be found in this free quickstart scenario (very Moorcockian in flavor): https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/287848/Revolution-D100-Quickstart-The-Conspiracy-Theory?src=newest The conflict rules are on page 7 of the basic rules. My port to Stormbringer was very basic and all you need to replicate it is on that page. In using the table substitute the term "advantage" in the table with "critical" if you are using Stormbringer's levels of success. Have fun! Smiorgan

Yes. I'm still looking forward to a new edition of Mythic Iceland.

For direct conversion, I'd use: https://www.chaosium.com/classic-fantasy-pdf/ And the big gold book: https://www.chaosium.com/basic-roleplaying-softcover/ Or you can go the Mythras way: http://thedesignmechanism.com/Classic-Fantasy.php My preferred option, however, would be adapting the campaign to a BRP fantasy ruleset that I like. And you have a lot of choice: Magic World: https://www.chaosium.com/magic-world/ (softcover on sale at 10 dollars!) Toxandria: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/321297/Toxandria (very good third party fantasy BRP ruleset) Classic RQ: https://www.chaosium.com/runequest-classic-softcover-pod/ And you should definitely get the Gateway Bestiary with it: https://www.chaosium.com/gateway-bestiary-softcover-pod/ Or, why not? Use the current RQ ruleset: https://www.chaosium.com/runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-hardcover/ I know, I know. It's for Glorantha. But I don't think Jeff will come to your place to arrest you.

Thank you Chaosium! You made my day. I ordered Trollpak (Yay!) adding Gateway Bestiary on top of that. Very tempted to order Big Rubble (not Pavis because I have the original boxed set) and maybe even Griffin Mountain. I do have the excellent Griffin Mountain Gloranthan Classic (and my old copy of the RQ3 Griffin Island box), but you never have enough Griffin Mountain! You really deserve all the success you are having and more! As things develop with the various game lines they get better and better. Edit: When I ordered my copy of the Griffin Mountain Gloranthan Classic from @Rick Meints many, many years ago I wouldn't have ever imagined such a Chaosium Renaissance.

After almost three months of "summer break" our Stormbringer roll20 game is up and running again! Last night we had the usual short but sweet session. The ingredients were: brutal combat, a cursed puzzle to solve and a magic item to risk your soul for... The player characters were quick to dispatch the Dharzi stranded trooper and his monstrous mount. I experimented, for the first time ever, with a by-the-book Stormbringer rule I had NEVER used: -1 DEX every 4 HP of damage. It is fiddly but satisfying in making the round more dynamic. It contributes to making combats even more brutal. The wounded party risks being hit a second time before attacking again. To emulate an exotic Dharzi magic item I adapted RQ2 rules for magic crystal attunement. The poor merchant-sorceress Marlissa failed to "attune"/"rebind" the violet Dharzi Scarab and lost POW as a consequence. I had made the POW loss a bit less brutal (1D4-2 instead of the RQ2 table), but she lost 2 POW and that was sufficient to make her an ex-sorceress.

I've used several of them. Currently, for my Stormbringer game I'm trying to use the original Stormbringer system, which is subtly different from the one in Elric!

It's great to have the Gateway Bestiary available via POD. It's among those I'm surely getting (Trollpak, however, is top of the list!)

Wow! Sounds like a lot of work! But if this is what sails your pirate ship, go for it! Personally, I would never do that. First, because I love Rogue Mistress as it is. Second, because the entire cosmology behind RM is very Moorcockian and - in my opinion - very un-Gloranthan. Third, because I'm a lazy guy and it is a lot of work. I wish you a lot of fun with your conversion!

Fair enough. That's probably why I'm not that interested in CF. Its design goal does not appeal to me. I like the idea of a BRP game that takes some thematic inspiration from D&D, that you can use to run the kind of fantasy adventures you run in D&D, even containing some nods to D&D mechanics, but not a fully fledged d100 D&D emulator. At that point, I just prefer to play D&D. So, in the end it's just that Toxandria is closer to my preferences than CF.

I love the softcover format. They look like the late '80s softcover reprints of old CoC boxed sets! An artifact from an alternate history where AH RQ3 never happens and Chaosium reprints RQ2 titles around 1989...

It's official. It's done by the people at Raven, who are Chaosium's licensees for the Italian editions of Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest Glorantha (forthcoming, but the quickstart is already out).

There's also a short adventure: "Barrow of the Warrior Prince". It's really a little thing, but nicely put together. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/322028/Barrow-of-the-Warrior-Prince--A-Toxandria-Adventure?term=toxandria

The game is comparable to Classic Fantasy (I mean the original BRP edition, not the Mythras one) and to Magic World. And my first impression is that, for my tastes, it compares favorably to both. It has definitely some D&D in its heritage, but does not go overboard to emulate D&D in BRP as Classic Fantasy did. As for Magic World, Toxandria has better layout, and manages to be its own thing, while MW was lost somewhere on the way from a hack of Stormbringer and RQ to a game with its own personality. Ironically, with its skill based magic system, Toxandria is closer to the original BRP Magic World.

Purchased! Looks great.

Ehm... Can we all keep it relaxed? I don't want to feel bad for raising this issue 😁.

Absolutely. No war. Let us keep it relaxed. True. CoC 7 introduced explicit Keeper advice on this issue, which I do not remember reading in earlier editions. Also the pushing rolls mechanic addresses a related issue: the possibility of re-rolling a failed skill check.

My reaction to the "problem" when it was first exposed to me was exactly that Gumshoes largely created a problem for themselves to solve - which is probably the oldest trick in the marketer's book. I would tend to agree that, to the extent that this problem exists, it's a "bad Keeper problem". Not just because a good GM can work around the limitations of the system, but because a good GM can make the features of the system shine. And I do think that rolling skills and failing can be a feature and part of the fun and tension of the game, if properly handled. So, in the end, the point where I disagree is the core idea that "randomly failing to get information is never fun". Letting the players face setbacks - even random and "unfair" ones - is not the same as grinding the game to a halt. But, probably, that shows my age and my old school aesthetic!

I do no know whether I am beating a dead horse, or touching a taboo topic, please feel free to close the thread if this is the case. Recently I have recconnected with a friend with whom I played lots of rpgs back in the day, including CoC. Now, he says he wouldn't play CoC anymore because of the investigative skills problem, which Gumshoe solves. I have nothing against Gumshoe: my friend is running me through a game of Cthulhu Confidential and I am having great fun. But I do not recall that investigative skills were such a problem in our games back in the day. Were/ are they a problem in your games? I see that CoC 7 provides more tools for playing with skill failure (pushing rolls) and embraces a fail forward mentality. Personally, I find it very satisfying from a narrative viewpoint. Do you see that as a "solution" to the investigative skills problem? I'd be particularly intrigued by hearing actual play experiences.

Well, not exactly last night but last Thursday night. We had a great Stormbringer session. I'll try to say something without spoilering the Stolen Moments scenario too much. SPOILERS AHEAD BEWARE The characters investigated a Melnibonean necropolis on top of a seaside cliff. They tried to summon a gnome to clear a caved in passage to enter a burial mound. They fumbled, angering Grome for disturbing the burial of the dead. It was enormously fun to narrate the angry earth elemental made of earth, bones and tombstones wandering about menacingly. They also used a rune - pilfered from Mongoose Elric - to summon the spirit of a Half-Melnibonean girl dead a millennium before. They learned something about a curse. But that did not help them too much. And they all ended up in the past... END SPOILERS Players are having fun. Like a LOT of fun. I'm increasingly comfortable with the Stormbringer 4 system. It works. And it works great if you think it is a old school game and that you are supposed to supply GM's rulings from time to time. I do use minor house rules here and there and very occasional magicks ported from other versions of the game (but ad hoc summonings and incantations have been a thing in the game since the first edition). While I do like random chargen, I've come to think it could be interesting to use Stormbringer (1-4) for different kinds of thematic games by pre-selecting nationalities and/or classes. A Lankhmar-like game where characters are all thieves, beggars and assassins. An all-Melnibonean game. A Pan-Tang game or a Purple-Towns game, which are explicitly targeted by the respective Stormbringer 4 supplements. Another idea is a sort of "high-powered" game where all start play as "Agents". You could just run normal random chargen and then state that each of them had sacrificed 1 POW to some cosmic force and mysteriously had been accepted as a champion of that god. They would have some interesting powers (as per the Agents rules), but they would not be super-heroes but very normal guys that mysteriously have been chosen by the gods to act as important pawns in the cosmic struggle.

Yes! I love some Nehwon in my Elric! Cthulhu pastiche! Who was the antagonist in your campaign?

Good to see people doing something with this license! I really look forward to this.

I love the Dreaming Stone! So, I'd love to see it redeveloped/ expanded for 7th edition.

Just in case you were in doubt, our Roll 20 Stormbringer games continues. They characters stayed one week in Hrolford where they started to rebuild the destitute and desperate village and save it from the encroaching Dinner of Dust. For that I used a variant of Revolution d100 conflict rules (outdebating the Vilmirian Inquisition was a high point of the conflict!). They also summoned a hand-demon for Nadjana who had lost her hand due to a major wound. After a week Avan Astran grew impatient. They left for Doom Point, which they reached after 4 days on the backs of their trusty ponies. (continues in the next post - with spoilers)

Pretty amazing cover indeed.