smiorgan

BTW, despite DLOM being a really wretched incarnation of the Eternal Champion... Slaves of Fate is, in my modest opinion, a VERY good adventure, well worth playing with the Elric! conversions. Alas! I never had the occasion to actually run it.... Maybe I should do something about that. Smiorgan

Straits of Chaos never materialized. Its cover was recycled for the BRP (RQ3) monograph. Smiorgan

Who will check their Latin? The authors of Cthulhu Invictus, and particularly Oscar Rios, have been prone to terrible howlers in the language of Cicero and Vergil. Don't get me started with 'Malum Umbra' and ahem ... 'Extrico Tabula'. When I tried to point it out on fora I got the impression that they did not realize that looking up word by word on the dictionary just doesn't work for Latin. In contrast the Latin of BRP Rome was impeccable. A real gem of a supplement.

The short stories and novels are great in my opinion. They are immensely fun to read and really want to be used as a BRP setting. (Too bad that there is a stupid gap in the English translation. The second short story collection - which would be "The Sword of Destiny" - was not translated which makes some events in Blood of Elves hard to understand.) My system of Choice for the Witcher would be Magic World, using the Advanced Sorcery supplement for the ultra-powerful magics of the glamourous sorceresses. MW - which can also stand for Major Wound - is gritty and fast and perfectly fits the Witcher world.

Dowloaded. It's nice to have an introductory adventure. BUT It seems there's quite a few issues with the rules section though. Or to be more brutal: the rules section is a lazy cut and paste work. Combat is not described in an intelligible way. The combat rules on page 10 do not even mention the attack-parry matrix on page 29. Nowhere it says that armor is a dice roll. There are weapons descriptions (page 11) and a description of soft leather armor descriptions (page 12) but no table with stats for the described items. Neither there are stats amid the descriptive text. Characters for the scenario have armors that are not described. This after a quick glance. The great potential of the MW corebook was hampered by a not so nice book layout, bland to ugly art and too many typos and errata. A quickstart that does not actually get you started certainly does not help to promote the line. Personally, I much prefer MW to RQ6 as a fantasy ruleset. Both are very good d100 rules implementation but my tastes lean towards the ligther MW. But let's face it: RQ6 material is of much higher editorial quality. (And they give you a complete playable version of the game for free) Smiorgan

Evvai!

Good! Better to have a nicer, cleaner book later. Smiorgan

Sorry. I did not know it had already been said. I would have spared my rant

"Arcania of Legend" is a horrible name. It just screams CHEAP! Why not "arcana"? It's a nice Latin word (the plural of "arcanum"), and an English one too. It reminds of Unearthed Arcana. Arcania ia an embarassing non-word. And it's the title of a videogame. "Arcania of Legend" truly deserves to sit on a shelve next to WotC's "Libris Mortis" and to "Malum Umbra" and "Extrico Tabula" - the infamous companions to Chtulhu Invictus.

An Italian translation of OQ? That would be very cool! I'd play it with the kids at home! P.S. I also own that edition of Stormbringer.

Ciao, Whisker89 benvenuto! I guess you're a fellow Italian. You'll see that BRP central is a very friendly and relaxed board! OpenQuest is a cool game ... as is/was Stormbringer. Which edition/s of Stormbringer did you play? Smiorgan

Well, not with the BGB. But I have done quite a lot of CoC/Stormbringer and CoC/Elric! crossovers in the past. Never had a problem. I'm sure that with the BGB it will be even smoother. One little thing is weapon damage. Many weapons have slightly different damage dice in CoC and BGB. Personally, I would ignore the incoherence. Smiorgan PS Do you have BRP Rome? Personally, I'd use Rome's chargen and character sheets to run Cthulhu Invictus.

Very cool!

Very interesting. So, there's no need of owning the Taskan Empire book to enjoy this setting? Is there any connection with Monster Island's setting? I have a vague remembrance of having read something about this connection somewhere.

I'm a lazy guy and I've always found BRP had terrific settings (Lovecraft, Moorcock, Glorantha). So, I've always used BRP published setting. What I often did was crossovers and setting-mix. Chtulhu 1920 + Ellric + Corum + Lovecraft's Dreamlands, or Elric + RQ Griffin Island. I also did a lot of Hawkmoon + Elric, but that is expected!

That's true. The fact is that the Roman Empire never was a dynastic monarchy, at least not constitutionally. The Principate was a bizarre and unstable equilibrium between a formal Republic and a de facto military dictatorship. The form of the state remained largely untouched in the transition between the Republic to the early Imperial Age. Contrary to Palpatine in Star Wars , Roman emperors never suppressed the Senate, most central Roman magistrates of the Republic continued formally untouched, including the consulate, even if they were largely devoid of real power. And that was at the center, in Rome. At a local level municipia in Italy and in other territories with Roman citizenship continued to be governed by elected officials (election campaign graffiti in early imperial Pompeii are a clear example!). Roman emperors never took the title of 'rex' (king), which was hateful to Romans. They used titles such 'augustus' (the beloved), 'princeps' (first citizen), 'imperator' (general, military commander) and took the name of 'Caesar' (who himself refused to be king, taking the title of 'dictator for life'). To my knowledge there were no written family based succession laws in the Roman empire. Exactly because the state was formally a republic! Emperors could indicate a successor but things went smoothly only when this choice was given legitimacy by the Senate AND military backing from the Legions and from Rome's Pretorian Cohort - which happened, well, rarely... The only period in which succession sort of worked was the age of the Antonine 'adoption emperors': Nerva -> Trajan -> Hadrian -> Antoninus Pius -> Marcus Aurelius, where each emperor adopted as son his appointed successor, who usually was a relative. Marcus Aurelius had adopted Lucius Verus and made him co-emperor but here things went wrong because Verus got the plague and died. The throne passed to Commodus, Marcus Aurelius' biological son and the golden adoption age was over... It is in fact surprising that it did not go wrong earlier, because the adoptions were the result of complex negotiations, brokered by the Senate... Then Late Empire was entirely a different beast, but surely not a dynastic monarchy in any traditional sense. The military element was prevalent. Diocletian tried to put order in the succession mess with the Tetrarchy system, which was a bizarre chain of succession between itinerant regional commanders and vice-commanders with their travelling état-major and court. It never really worked.

Corum and Hawkmoon stories are a lot of fun. I greatly recommend both Corum series and the first Hawkmoon series (History of the Runestaff) - which is the epitome of fun. The second Hawkmoon series (Castle Brass) is a bit weaker but still worth reading for the broader picture of the Multiverse (especially 'Quest for Tanelorn' which is the putative "end" of the Eternal Champion Series). Erekose stories are also worth reading, at least the original novella 'The Eternal Champion'.

Yes. Unfortunately. That's a sad old story. And that's why I wrote that some of the options were not realistic.

I see that there is a (relative) majority of votes for RQ6 - which is understandable, given the excellent work done by Loz for MRQ2 Elric. I was looking at my copy of MRQ2 Elric this morning over breakfast. It's an incredibly complete work. Everything seems to be in there. You can use it to run all kinds of Elric campaigns from relatively old school fast-paced sword and demon to subtle dreamthieving intrigue, from angsty games where characters struggle as slaves of the higher powers to apocalypse and crazy plane hopping. Apart from the ugly cover and lousy layout, there is not much I would change. So, what could be in RQ6 Elric - apart better layout and better art?

I agree that was a great picture! The "horn of fate blowing and Melniboné in ruins" picture of Stormbringer 4 was not bad either, even if the Pteranodon-like dragon seemed kinda wrong.

I hate to be the French-speaking uber-pedant who corrects the pedant but it's NOT the French translation of MRQ2. It's a completely new game and it's not d100 as you can see from the character sheet http://www.sombresprojets.com/mournblade/pdf/mournblade-fdp.pdf that you can download from their website: http://www.sombresprojets.com/mournblade/ As to why the Mongoose logo is there I have no idea. Maybe they got the licence indirectly from Mongoose...

In case you did not know... here is somethig that I have recently come across. There is one officially licensed Eternal Champion rpg that is currently in print, which appeared in 2012. It's in French, it's non d100 and it's called... MOURNBLADE! http://www.black-book-editions.fr/produit.php?id=349

So, Mongoose Elric has died. If you were to choose the rules engine for the next incarnation of the Eternal Champion, which would you pick? Note that the poll is d100-centric and that some of the options are very improbable - looking at the past history of the license.

That's an interesting perspective. Having a current version in print can be good if you want to gather a group of players for your game in person or online, organize a game at a convention or just have something new to read and to discuss on Internet forums!

It seems that Mongoose's Elric line has died a quiet death... http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?f=79&t=56328&start=60 PDFs of 'Secrets of the Steppes' have been withdrawn from Drivethru. This makes me think that Mongoose does not have the licence anymore. I wonder whether we should wish someone to pick-up the license. On the one hand I still love the Young Kingdoms as a rpg setting. Last week end I picked up 'Stormbringer 4' with a friend and with my oldest son. We just rolled up some characters following the fully random procedure ... and we had a blast amidst laughs and pangs of nostalgia. So, I'm sort of sad thinking that the Albino exits another time from the world of pen and paper rpgs... On the other hand, I have TONS of Eternal Champion rpg material for 5 different rule-sets in 3 different languages, spanning the worlds of Elric, Hawkmoon and Corum. Do I need another one? Also, my appreciation of Moorcock stories gravitates towards the older stuff. I still enjoyed 'Fortress of the Pearl' and 'Revenge of the Rose' (a little bit), but 'Dreamthief Daughter' was a big letdown and I've stopped reading after that. So, what do you think? Do we need another Elric/ stormbringer version? Smiorgan