[BRP/RuneQuest] Elric of Meniboné

[Benoist]

Creating a topic here so we can discuss about this at length.

Picked up Sailor on the Seas of Fate, again.

Yeah. I got the PDF of the Elric of Melniboné RPG using Mongoose's RuneQuest II game system, and that got me into reading the Del Rey books again.

Sorry to go Off Topic a bit here but, what do you think of the new ELRIC RPG and RQII?

The Eternal Champion books are some of my all time favorites, and I've got the Hawkmoon books in my 'soon to be re-read
queue...

On Topic, I'm currently reading Book Ten of the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, "The Crippled God".

I'm sure it has already been recommended in this thread, but I'll add my recommendation to them as well!

I just started reading the game. Picked it up as a PDF when the prices of Mongoose on DriveThru/RPGnow went down dramatically a few days ago. I intended to give it a try after Lawrence Whitaker, the author, pitched it to us at the RPG Site, and the sale just gave me that occasion.

This: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product_i ... s_id=84675

My first impression was that the cover was crap. I expected to have a typical Mongoose layout (i.e. not to my taste, with shades of grey in the background, very bad for a printer etc). Instead what I got was a very clean layout (which the preview on the page linked shows really well), so that right there surprised me right off the bat.

The background of the Young Kingdoms is really well done, and really extensive. The map of the Young Kingdoms covers Elwher and the kingdoms of the East, which is a first from my perspective. It covers the whole of Moorcock's work, including the latest developments with the Dreamquests, the offspring of Elric and so on.

The rules are RuneQuest II, which is to say, very good stuff. It's less random/wonky than Stormbringer at character generation, obviously, which may be a plus or a flaw, depending on where you're coming from. I haven't made up my mind on this, personally. Both approaches make sense to me.

There's a system of Passions, which reminds me a bit of Pendragon at first glance. It looks like you can use your love and hate in variety of ways, but I haven't gone into the detail yet. The Cosmology is covered extensively, including writeups of various dukes and lords of law and elemental entities and so on. Magic covers Dreamquests, Rune Magic, Potions, Summoning (I see the types of demons, i.e. desire, transport etc are here too), Spirit Magic.

Cults in the Young Kingdom are very detailed in the book as well. The creatures and personalities of the Young Kingdoms chapter seems very detailed to me: it includes entities like Agak and Gagak, Elenoins, the Dharzi, Dragons of course, Clakars etc etc and pretty much all the NPCs from the books.

The advice section on how to set up your campaign, whether you want to play in the Young Kingdoms as described in the novels, or want to depart from them to create your own alternates for the PCs to explore (like for instance in the case Elric retires in Bakshaan for good and actually doesn't become the instrument of the end of the world...) seems to be an extremely interesting read. There's a detailed timeline of the history of the Young Kingdoms too.

Overall, I'm very impressed. I haven't had the time to go deep into it yet, but at first glance it's hitting all the right notes for me. The RuneQuest II game system from Mongoose is very good and tight game design. It's different from the previous versions of RuneQuest in that it doesn't have a resistance table, using instead Common Skills for oppositions and the like, uses a combat system which creates a different experience at the game table via combat maneuvers for instance that are effects you apply to your attacks or parries depending on the discrepencies between your rolls and your adversary's, it feels more "unified" in terms of consistency of the system, which may or may not be a good thing, but overall, it's very, very well done and well worth a look if you've ever been interested in the Basic Role Playing system, if only to steal ideas here and there to house rule your Stormbringer or Cthulhu game if you feel like it.

Overall... yeah. I'm impressed. I'm glad I'm giving this a try. Makes me want to run a Young Kingdoms game again.

[Alpharius]

Thank you for the review - I probably WILL pick it up in PDF form now...

Of course, I'll have to get RQII as well!

Have they listed the release schedule for any of the Eternal Champion-verse supplements yet?

[Benoist]

Yes. Elric of Melniboné requires you to have the RuneQuest II rules as well. Honestly, it's just a great game, one of the better ones that has been released in recent years. Since you're a fan of Moorcock, and I assume BRP as well, it seems like a no brainer to me.

[Philotomy Jurament]

I like the mini-game of random character generation from the original Stormbringer. If you don't have it, here's a BRP conversion of the system that somebody did.

FWIW, there's a MRQII PDF bundle. For $30, you get the core rulebook, Arms & Equipment, Empires, Monster Coliseum, and Necromantic Arts.

[Alpharius]

Right on all counts - and really, at those prices, I think I'll pick up the whole lot of "Elric" releases!

Mongoose should thank you!

[Philotomy Jurament]

Have they listed the release schedule for any of the Eternal Champion-verse supplements yet?

They've released Cities of the Young Kingdoms 1: The South, Cults of the Young Kingdoms, and an Elric GM screen.

However, there's upheaval in the MRQ line. Mongoose lost or gave up the RQ/Glorantha license. They've announced that they're going to keep publishing the MRQII system under a new name (apparently "Wayfarer"), but who knows how it impacts the other MRQ-derived lines. Also, the two developers that probably had the most to do with MRQII and Elric actually being good products (Lawrence Whitaker and Pete Nash) have left. (As a complete aside, Pete Nash's BRP Rome book is damn good, too.)

So if you're going to buy into Mongoose RQII and Elric, you'll want to do so with the understanding that it may be a line that is essentially over, as far as official support products go. Personally, that doesn't dismay me at all, but YMMV.

[Benoist]

Yeah, what PJ said. That isn't affecting me either, but indeed, YMMV.

PS: Apparently the publisher of Wayfarers, the RPG namesake that existed prior to the MRQ change in name, just contacted Mongoose about this. Hmmmm. We'll see what happens! Dun-dun-dunnnh!

[Alpharius]

Ah!

Talk about a 'good news/bad news' situation!

[THACZero]

As a person who likes and reads BRP games but rarely plays them (I use Stormbringer/Elric! for inspiration mainly) I have to ask if this would be worth getting or if the older games will contain pretty much the same non-0stat info.