BMonroe Posted May 18, 2015 Share Posted May 18, 2015 For the first time in over 30 years, I recently began rereading the Hawkmoon books. Which got my mind wandering back to play testing the Hawkmoon RPG with Kerie, which then got me thinking all about all the Stormbringer/Hawkmoon games I played back in the day. All of which is simply to say that over the past week or two, I've been thinking a lot about the original Eternal Champions games. So, now I’ve got this idea to mash together 1st ed. Stormbringer and Hawkmoon to run my 80s S&S weird fantasy game. Admitting that 1e SB is a great game, but a terrible representation of the Elric world, makes me wonder what it would be like to use it as the basis to create a whole new world... I really want to build a world using both demon magic from SB1, and super science from Hawkmoon. The Gateway Bestiary would be the perfect monster book for this. And it needs a wandering tribe of werewolves. Wrote up a stack of new index cards (setting brainstorming) based on this stuff last night. EG: "The Isle of Wights: home to the immortal sorcerer kings of a bygone age. Their bizarre science borders on magic, and their presence fuels legends of ghosts and hauntings." At the core, I've got this: The world is constantly slowly shifting in a balance between three cosmic forces: Disorder: Disorder is a state of unnatural occurrences, where the laws of nature are wronged. Undead, mutations, etc. Sorcery is the magic of disorder. Use SB 1st edition Demon magic, renaming Demons to Spirits, or something similarly odd. Equilibrium: The natural state of the world is in Equilibrium. It is the province of elemental magic. Use the standard 4 elements, but add Light, Darkness, Plague, and (others?). Order: Order is the province of stasis, science, technology. Hawkmoon weird science rules for this. It's all very weird, Atlantean, Flash Gordon sort of stuff. I also think I'm going to try and replicate my original idea for the SB 4th edition sorcery revision, which was to replace the static demon types with a fluid magic system based on the Superworld powers rules. I'm not sure how that fits in with the three forces above, but I'm going to mull it over a bit and see what I come up with. So, after all that, I need to think for a bit about how to make a setting feel "Moorcockian" without the use of any of his specific settings. If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them! And for what it's worth, I'm attaching the map I'll probably use for this setting. 5 Quote Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baron Posted May 18, 2015 Share Posted May 18, 2015 I would never try and spoil someone's creativity, so I applaud your efforts. I will say that, as a fan of Moorcock and Elric from way back, I still play 1st ed Stormbringer and find it represents "the Elric world" just fine. But again, by all means. I support your creation of another campaign setting, and thanks for sharing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BMonroe Posted May 18, 2015 Author Share Posted May 18, 2015 I have trouble reconciling the demon magic from SB 1-3 with the books, but maybe saying it was a "terrible" representation was too harsh. I was a huge fan of the game back in the day, but haven't played 1e in years. Hence now my interest in going back and revisiting it. Should be fun! Quote Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smiorgan Posted May 18, 2015 Share Posted May 18, 2015 Stormbringer and Hawkmoon 1ed are great games indeed. For one, I love the random character generation in both. Flavorful. And elegant in an old school way. I'd like to play them again. Stormbringer takes liberties on demon magic. True. But only in the sense it takes ideas that are in the saga and runs with them with the aim of creating a cool game as opposed to a faithful one. A demon in a sword? Let's have demon weapons galore! Myshella of Law has a mechanical bird? Let's make clockwork animals for lawful characters! That said. I've always found that old Stormbringer matches quite well the sword and sorcery vibe of the early Moorcock stories as opposed to the more recent ones, Dreamthieves and moonbeam roads? Cocktail party at the End of Time? Native americans and green giants? No thanks, I'll keep my degenerate savages from Org and mad Pan Tangian sorcerors! Hawkmoon, as written, lacks a simple system for creating magic-like tech wonders/ gadgets. The French edition of Hawkmoon added that to great effect, using the demon powers of SB4 as a rough guideline. To emulate that I'd use the Super Powers rules from BRP's big gold book. Shattered Island supplement for Hawkmoon 1ed has great material on Granbretannian Orders that adds a lot of depth to granbretannian characters. EDIT: To clarify, I do like dreamthieves - "Fortress of the Pearl" is one of my favorite Moorcock novels. I was just trying to contrast the early stories with elements that appeared later on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BMonroe Posted May 18, 2015 Author Share Posted May 18, 2015 Hawkmoon, as written, lacks a simple system for creating magic-like tech wonders/ gadgets. The French edition of Hawkmoon added that to great effect, using the demon powers of SB4 as a rough guideline. To emulate that I'd use the Super Powers rules from BRP's big gold book. That's awesome to hear. After SB4, I'd hoped to have a chance to do the same thing with the Hawkmoon science that I'd done with the Stormbringer magic system, but it never happened. Using Superworld is essentially the way to go. The Stormbringer 4 demon powers were really just clusters of powers made up using the SW system. For my game, I'm going back to my original idea (which was to have demons and sorcery separate) and probably going to build a "Wizardry" system using the Superworld powers. My idea right now is to allow "Wizards" access to a pool of power points during character generation, and letting them build their spells with them. I'm still fiddling with the ideas, so no details as of yet. 1 Quote Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hexelis Posted May 19, 2015 Share Posted May 19, 2015 I read the Elric stories years ago, but only recently read the Hawkmoon books. Afterwards I had to track down, the Hawkmoon box set, the Corum book as well as those stories too. We played Hawkmoon characters updated to SB 5, and played through the Shattered Isle and Rogue Mistress. I have to say it was one of the most epic and fun games ever played. When I realized that Magic World had the same skills on the character sheet as Stormbringer, Hawkmoon, Corum and a Hyborian characters rules (I found on here I think), we had 5 different worlds to explore. Sadly that game hasn't been played in awhile. Anyway, so yeah, I love anything to do with those older rules and settings. BRP rules. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BMonroe Posted May 20, 2015 Author Share Posted May 20, 2015 That sounds like a hoot. Using SB to run Hyborian Kingdoms stuff is great. I did a bunch of that back in the day with the GW hardcover version of the game (SB 3, I think). 1 Quote Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vagabond Posted May 22, 2015 Share Posted May 22, 2015 That sounds like a hoot. Using SB to run Hyborian Kingdoms stuff is great. I did a bunch of that back in the day with the GW hardcover version of the game (SB 3, I think). Well, considering Elric and Conan met semi-officially in Marvel Comic's Conan (a story actually written by Mike himself), there is precedence to do an EC/Conan crossover. Which, of course, can be extended to add some Cthulhu Mythos as well ... Muuhaahaahaahaahaahaa ! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BMonroe Posted May 23, 2015 Author Share Posted May 23, 2015 Indeed! Quote Please don't contact me with Chaosium questions. I'm no longer associated with the company, and have no idea what the new management is doing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason D Posted June 5, 2015 Share Posted June 5, 2015 Given the recent news, I'm quite interested in seeing if your Stormbringer enthusiasm carries over into something new for Magic World. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smiorgan Posted June 5, 2015 Share Posted June 5, 2015 Yes, please! Smiorgan 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mankcam Posted June 9, 2015 Share Posted June 9, 2015 While it would be truly great to have Chaosium doing the Young Kingdoms once again, I think it would be better for Ben to put all that vibe into the Southern Reaches and make it his own setting, full of all those years of listening to Heavy Metal and playing Sword and Sorcery flavoured games Make Southern Reaches the kind of gritty trippy place that Moorcock would have wanted to game in! 2 Quote " Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason D Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 Inspired by Ben's own enthusiasm, I'm going to be running a session of Elric! at The Kraken later this year, along with a Magic World/BRP science fantasy and demos of the new Conan game. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nclarke Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 I'm rather glad I've already booked The Kraken then Jason. Quote Nigel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcus Bone Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 It should go without saying that I'll happy host any Elric!, Stormbringer or even Elric of Melinbone material that anyone might produce over at stormbringerrpg.com. Marcus Quote Stormbringer! - Exploring the worlds of the Eternal Champion at http://www.stormbringerrpg.com Unbound Publishing - Bringing back the fear - http://www.unboundbook.org DCtRPG.info - Supporting Dark Conspiracy across the decades - http://www.darkconspiracytherpg.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mankcam Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 I wish the Conan game would have been BRP or RQ6... Quote " Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fmitchell Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 ... demos of the new Conan game. Wait, what? FWIW SJ Games still sells its Conan sourcebook for GURPS 1-3. It might make a decent reference / template for a fan sourcebook for BRP. Until this other thing comes along ... Quote Frank "Welcome to the hottest and fastest-growing hobby of, er, 1977." -- The Laundry RPG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nclarke Posted June 16, 2015 Share Posted June 16, 2015 Modiphius Press is doing a Conan game, sue for release maybe at Gencon. I think Jason may have had something to do with it. Quote Nigel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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