Is Magic World "dark" and "gloomy"?

[imd]

Everywhere I see people talk about Elric or Stormbringer (the games), they mention how "dark" or "gloomy" it is, like this RPG.net review. I just got Magic World, and it doesn't strike me as particularly so. Was part of the process of adapting Elric to MW a shift to a more neutral tone? What made the old game so gloomy?

[NickMiddleton]

Everywhere I see people talk about Elric or Stormbringer (the games), they mention how "dark" or "gloomy" it is, like this RPG.net review. I just got Magic World, and it doesn't strike me as particularly so. Was part of the process of adapting Elric to MW a shift to a more neutral tone? What made the old game so gloomy?

The Elric! saga, the source fiction for the setting of the old Stormbringer / Elric! game was (especially in its original core stories) distinctly dark and gloomy - <SPOILERS!!>>

The protagonist kills pretty much everyone he ever loves or is friends with; destroys his own country / capital city and makes exiles of his surviving kinfolk; helps set in motion events that lead to the end of the world; ultimately, activates the doomsday device that DOES end the world and create the new one and even then, is ultimately betrayed and survived by a dangerous and destructive entity. And along the way there is a LOT of mournful angst, byronic-self analysis and bitter lessons in how curel, heartless and down right depressing the world is.

Now, the oriignal series in particualr are written with huge energy and pace, many of the characters are compelling and the protagonist frequently regards the whole thing as a bad joke he shouldn't let get him down and displays a huge gusto for life - so they are well worth reading. But they are definitely one of the early examples of "Dark Fantasy".

Magic World doesn't use that setting. But there's nothing inherently "Dark Fantasy" in the rules per se - it's a BRP variant, so it's NOT as inherently heroic as D&D 3.x or 4, but it's not as gritty and low powered as starting RQIII or CoC.

The sample setting in Magic World, the Southern Reaches, did set the tone somewhat for the core book - but it's a SAMPLE, the game assumes that chronicler's will use the rules in other settings (their own or published). Having said that, Southern Reaches is not "Dark Fantasy" in the sense the Young Kingdoms was. There's more than a touch of European / Celtic folk tales and mythology as well as a slightly more "post-Tolkien" fantasy (it has Elves and Dwarves for a start). One could certainly run the SR as Dark Fantasy; one could equally run then as "Romantic Fantasy" in the style of Tamora Pierce - neither are the native tone of either the Southern Reaches as presented in the Magic World core book, nor the MW Core book in general.

Cheers,

Nick

[fmitchell]

Everywhere I see people talk about Elric or Stormbringer (the games), they mention how "dark" or "gloomy" it is, like this RPG.net review. I just got Magic World, and it doesn't strike me as particularly so. Was part of the process of adapting Elric to MW a shift to a more neutral tone? What made the old game so gloomy?

 

As Nick mentioned, most of the gloom was in the setting.  The only "dark" mechanical bits were Alignment and demons, but you can redefine the first and downplay or remove the second.  I'm planning to use Magic World in more of a "low fantasy" manner ... sorcery is officially banned (wink wink) and most of the PCs' antagonists will be people (mostly but not exclusively human).