smiorgan

Oh, knowledgeable noble sirs and ladies, I'm thinking of going back to Pendragon soon-ish... I've got the 4th edition of the game - the big softcover with Celtic magic etc. and several supplements for 3e and 4e. I also have the GPC for 5e, which seems mostly useable with 4e and bits of the Boy King for chargen. Should I upgrade to the 5th edition? What am I missing? What are the differences between 5.0 (Arthouse), 5.1 (Nocturnal) and 5.2 (Nocturnal/ Chaosium)? They have different covers, but apart from that? Is a 6th edition coming out anytime soon? Your humble squire, Smiorgan Baldhead,

Afternoon Stormbringer session today. The adventurers started their journey with Duke Avan Astran. I am running an "enhanced" version of the scenario "Stolen Moments" from "Perils of the Young Kingdoms". So some SPOILERS ahead... GRAVE SPOILERS, BEWARE! Inspired by dreams and old manuscripts as well as by the prospect of holding a fief on behalf of the Duke they departed from Old Hrolmar riding stout Weeping Waste ponies provided by the duke. Actually, Saran Sheik the Black Abbot and Morgainen the devotee of Hionhurn were on a little cart as they are heavily wounded - same for Nadjana who lost her right hand to the Frog Demon. As they left behind the immediate interior of Hrolmar they signs of the drought became apparent on the dusty roads of Vilmir. First stop Hrolford a hamlet on the border of the Duchy of Jadmar, which the characters hope to hold as ducal administrators once they help the Duke recovering the "Melnibonean treasure" hidden at Doom Point. As they approached Hrolford they were ambushed by Dervil's gang of desperate peasants. Despite 2 rounds of surprise Dervil's crew proved desperately ineffective. Khaleb T'aarna, the Pantangian outcast, was unhorsed but managed to parry critically Dervil's shortsword and then attacked again critically with his demon falchion. At the end of round three the would be bandits had lost their chief and another member, while a third laid unconscious only because Zergan Four-Pigeons - the Purple Towner sailor - was too kind-hearted and had opted for a non-lethal attack. The Duke ordered the unlucky fellows to surrender. And the survivor saw it as a better prospect than being slaughtered by the adventurers. Desperate because of drought, famine and injustice from the King and Church, they had heard that in Rignariom, on Ilmiora's border, Estele Regardus - a girl of humble birth and pure heart - was preaching the penance of the corrupt Church and calling the poor to disobedience in the name of True Law. Inspired by these stories they had created their own insurrectionist group nominally allegied to her cause, but actually not doing much beyond petty banditry. When our heroes entered the village of Hrolford a small crowd gathered around them, voicing contrasting sentiments. The Duke was hesitant, but Marlissa of Sequaloris delivered a great speech, promising a new era of prosperity (and Chaos?) to the village. They plan to stay one or two weeks in Hrolford as their wound heal. Those who are not wounded will be busy with agricultural works (and demon summoning in the crypt below the chapel of Law!). Bu the Duke won't let them stay for long as he has Doom Point constantly on his mind, dreaming of the mysterious treasure and of the red-rosy light.

I am doing Soloquest (Scorpion Hall) with RQG iconics. They are more survivable than RQ2 characters but not MUCH so! They look like superheroes compared to a fresh RQ2 characters but they are still very vulnerable. When the scorp critted Harmast was suddenly a goner, despite his high sword skill.

The Stormbringer game on Roll20 keeps going. Last night it was a side quest with just one of the players. I improvised the session using the Old Hrolmar gazeteer. It's a great resource for NPCS, plots and places! Criticals, fumbles and a successful call for divine intervention made the rest!

Session 7 was a short one. A lot of talking in the Ducal Palace of Hrolmar, visiting a shrine of Arkyn, summoning Undines. The players surprised me by asking the Duke a fief as reward for accompanying him in his adventure. Avan Astran said yes! Now, they are the appointed lords of Hrolford - a starving hamlet on the border between the duchy of Hrolmar and the duchy of Jadmar. If they manage to save it from the drought of the ever expanding Dinner of Dust, they will earn the Duke's gratitude. NOTE: According to the "Atlas of the Young Kingdoms" Hrolford is supposed to be a small town, but I'm going by the original Stormbringer map and Hrolford is most conveniently not represented and happens to be a hamlet and sit exactly on the road from Old Hrolmar to Doom Point.

Just a quick update on my Stormbringer online game, now into session 6. Big fight in the basement of a waterfront tavern in Old Hrolmar took the whole session. Two demons and a Mereghn assassin as opponents. Additional cinematic elements spiced things, but I won't say more because the scene is a modification of an encounter in the published scenario "Stolen Moments". We run the combat using Stormbringer's action economy RAW (see the other thread). It must be the first time I use declarations of intent in my whole career as Stormbringer GM. The combat was tense if a bit less dynamic than I had anticipated. The finale, however, was dramatic and satisfying. One important NPC got her right hand amputated, but the PCs came out of the big fight relaively unscathed. VERY MILD SPOILERS for "Stolen Moments" AHEAD The game is gaining momentum, with the players finally buying into the premise of the scenario and bonding with Duke Avan Astran and his bodyguard Nadjana. The trouble in Old Hrolmar has political underpinnings that the players and their characters start being curious about. This is good and gives more depth to the Duke's character. However, I need to have them out of the city quickly to embark in the main quest, which is largely unrelated to Vilmirian politics. If they dive into the political sideplot they risk delaying too much the AWSOME main quest and lose focus. I could either try to weave together the two plots more tighthly than the scenario suggests, or simply leave politics in the backdrop as per the published scenario.

It is labeled "A Grand Campaign". That's grand (as the Irish say)! We need more grand campaigns. And the "Fall of the Children of Bronze" has a very nice Bronze Age Collapse vibe. Hope it has Shardana pirates raiding the coasts from their remote western island of Ichnusa.

Hi! I'm not Chaot, but thanks if you meant my post! Yes, I guess that kind of move does not work well with the round structure as written. There is no obvious way to deal with it. Generally speaking, Stormbringer 1-4 lacks rules for many specific cases and explicitly advocates an approach where the GM makes commonsense rulings. If I were to decide right now, I'd try to make no exception to Stormbringer's round structure and roll the STR vs SIZ in the resolution phase on the following round. We don't have to assume that there is a break in continuous action between rounds.

That was my first impression as well and it's wrong. When you move to engage you are in phase 3 and your opponent's attack is already gone in phase 2. What happens is that you move within melee reach and the actual exchange of blows will be in phase 2 next round. If your dex is higher you will attack first the next round. The story with missile weapons is also interesting. Round 1. Grokk of Org DEX 7 declares he is charging to engage Sharilla of the Dancing Mist DEX 18. Sharilla, who - having greater DEX - declares afterward, wisely choses to fire at him with her bow. She fires in phase 2 at DEX 13 (18-5), wounding Grokk. In phase 3 Grokk closes in. End of the round. In round 2 Grokk declares he is hitting at Sharilla with his axe. The Myrrhyn woman declares that she is dropping the bow and unsheating her barbed dagger. In phase 2, Sharilla attacks at DEX 13 with the dagger going past his failed parry and hitting Grokk badly for a major wound. Grokk staggers and falls to the ground before completing his planned charge on Sharilla. So I'd say DEX is the queen of stats also with this system...

When we played Stormbringer back in the day we played fast and loose with the rules. I don't think we ever played it RAW. We almost immediately added stuff from RuneQuest and CoC upon habits that were formed by playing Basic D&D. When we switched to Elric! we started to play a little bit closer to the actual rules. Now, in a different age of the world I have greater appreciaction for clear rulesets that can be played and enjoyed as written. So, I set to look at the anatomy of a round in Stormbringer (1-4), which is significantly different than the one found in Elric!/ Stormbringer 5. Here is what I was able to distill from the close reading of the rules. It seems quite interesting and playable. I'm interested in learning whether it matches your own reading of the rules and how you actually play the game. More than anything I'm interested in checking something that is not written in the rules but seems clearly implied and necessary to make them work. Namely, that there is no move followed by attack in the same round: if you engage as a result of your movement you attack in the next resolution phase, i.e. the following round. This is completely different than Elric! STORMBRINGER ACTION ECONOMY DISTILLED FROM THE RULES A round is about 12 seconds if you really want to measure it. 1. Declaration of intent Method 1: GM and players alternate Method 2: reverse DEX order. 2. Resolution of Missiles and Melee In DEX order -5 DEX if you draw/change weapon or perform a similar simple action before melee 3. Movement of non-engaged figures and appearance of conjured elementals and demons Full movement is nominally 30 m in normally chaotic melee conditions (obstacles, people, weapons in hand). If running freely in an empty field up to double this figure. Narratively, full movement corresponds to «You can move to any desired location on the battle scene, but maybe less if commonsense suggests otherwise» (cf. Stormbringer p. 36). If you were engaged and disengaged (by dodging or defeating your enemy) in phase 2, then you may move half your normal movement. If you did anything else apart from moving around (e.g. picking up a dropped weapon) you may move half your normal movement. Demons and elementals appear at this time and do not move. The most important implication of these rules: if you engage as a result of your movement you attack in the next resolution phase, i.e. the following round.

Talked to the players after the session. Very nice chat on what was liked and what was disliked. Everyone is still onboard for wreaking havoc in the Young Kingdoms. Yay!

As some of you may know, I've been running my son and two old friends (both expert role-players) through a short Stormbringer 4 online game. The game combines the Tower of Yrkath-Florn (from the rulebook) and Stolen Moments, one of my favorite scenarios from Perils of the Young Kingdoms. Sessions are short, a bit less than 2 hours of actual play. After four sessions that were an absolute blast, last night we were into session 5 and finally in Old Hrolmar, where the players meet Duke Avan Astran. I don't want to spoiler the scenario, so I'll be terse in describing the issues that my players had with the game: 1. My lack of skill in running Roll 20. This is perhaps the easiest to fix. Part of the problem stems from the very basic Stormbringer 4 sheet in roll 20. I have already created an ugly but effective macro to let players add their DEX rank to the initiative tracker - which was the main complaint. And I might just decide to switch the whole game to Elric!/SB5 rules, which have a much better character sheet for Roll 20. 2. The first action scene from the Stolen Moments scenario. It should be dramatic and cinematic, but it has one element that is physically implausible (unless it is declared magical, which isn't in the scenario). I won't say what it is but has to do with an NPC being moved against what should realistically be a very strong current of water at high pressure. That was strongly disliked. Well, I should have ironed out that glitch, but whatever. 3. A bit of perceived railroading. Well, Stormbringer scenarios of the early '90 ARE linear. I'm using the Old Hrolmar sourcebook to add sidetrecks and random events... but we'll see... Probably, after the phase of old school excitement subsided the players feel the need to deepen the motivations of their sketchy characters... We'll see...

Fourth Stormbringer session! A very short one, but quite fun. Eventually, we did not start in Old Hrolmar because the players wanted to use their time on the ship to summon the panther demon, taking advantage of the silver panther statuette with a ready binding sigil and of the grimoire they had found in the tower of Yrkath-Florn. The kind of succeded but they were unlucky with the summoning results table: an Extraplanar Ambush ensued. The man-panther demon was helped by three Dolphtigers. Minor demons with the body of a tiger and the head of a dolphin. They are pretty stupid and have an annoying laughter. A pretty chaotic but not too lethal fight ensued. Fumbles and parried criticals caused a more than healthy dose of weapons breaking and flying around, noses bleeding and so on. The fearsome man-panther did not score a single hit. It was bound and directed against its dolphtigers pals. It continued failing rolls afterwards. Eventually, the annoying dolphtigers were dispatched. But not before they destroyed the demon broadsword of Morgainen of Pikarayd with a critical parry. It turned out that the fearsome sword had a CON of 3. Now they have a pretty impressive combat demon of dubious effectiveness. Next time they WILL be meeting Avan Astran in Old Hrolmar without further ado - and the prequel will be over. Here you can admire the summoning-fight scene in all its chaotic glory:

Please do. I think a Jackals forum belongs here.

Harlem hardbound! Jokes aside: both are beautiful. I will probably fall first to Dark Ages.

That floats my boat. Beast Valley and the Grazelands are cool. I'll start with Smoking Ruin. But I fear I will get both eventually.

So, supposing I am not buying both "Pegasus Plateau" and "Smoking Ruin", which one should I get?

Yes, these are the two.

Third short Stormbringer session tonight. The players characters bested the demons an clackars of the Tower of Yrkath Florn. The only casualty was Little Mylos. Whom they left crazed on the stairs landing, only to discover that he had jumped to his death trying to escape tornado demons of Vezhan that existed only in his imagination. They are now in Old Hrolmar drinking too much at the Cardinal's Nose and reminiscing about their adventures. Tomorrow they will meet the Duke Avan Astran at the Scales of Goldar on Quayside. They are bunch of chaotic-leaning misfits and stick like a sore thumb in a Vilmirian city. Even in Old Hrolmar.

My own house rules. OK, that's not valid. There are two very different rules iterations that I equally like. So, in terms of potential for FUN at the gaming table... 1st place ex aequo to Stormbringer 4th edition with the Sorcerers of PanTang updated rules AND Mongoose Elric (either edition - summoning rules are identical) 3rd place to the original summoning rules of Stormbringer 1-3 4th place to the Elric! / Stormbringer 5th edition rules - I dearly love many parts of Elric!, but the summoning rules is not one of them. They are OK but not great. However they are easily houserulable into something much more fun.

I've seen it three times in the distance in the light of a glorious sunset, it was on sale in a stall in the market of unpublished books, but I could not descend the marble stairs that led to the narrow streets where the market was held. For three times I remained on the high terrace... I was about to lose faith when a voice reminded me: "with the passage of strange aeons, many books are published and even Pulp Cthulhu did become a thing."

Thanks! I've read it will have rules for treating dreams in different ways. Will it also have scenarios? New ones? For some reason I have always loved HPL Dreamlands stories even if I am unsure whether they really gel with a regular CoC campaign. It seems almost a variant game to me, like say Pulp Cthulhu vs regular CoC. So, I guess one can either try to make the Dreamlands as relevant as possible for CoC games or have them be their own mini-game or style of play. Older editions were a bit on the fence I guess. Veering towards the second option with the fourth edition (which however, introduced a lot of Lumley and left out the best scenario of the original book). I'd like to see Dreamlands treated as a distinct style of play, but closer to the original HPL stories and less pastiche.

What are the latest news about the Dreamlands book for 7th edition?

Second short Stormbringer session of about two hours. Lots of fun was had by the players who went full old school and paranoid. They also explored room by room, chest by chest. So, they are still in the Tower of Yrkath Florn. And - surprisingly - all of them are still alive. Despite almost succumbing snake poison and major wounds in combat. A lot of chatting with demon doors, too. So, I guess we will continue... I hope, next time, to start the main adventure in Old Hrolmar

I am currently using the Stormbringer 4e sheet on Roll 20. I'd say it is almost entirely identical to 3e except for the summoning rules (unified summoning skill). Note that the sheet has some house rules in it (hit locations), but they are optional and you can hide them using the settings button on the sheet. Finally, there are a few glitches (does not roll parries). NB I do not know who made the sheet. I owe him/her a beer. Thanks!