Stormbringer (role-playing game)


Stormbringer is a fantasy role-playing game published by Chaosium set in the world of the Young Kingdoms, based on the Elric of Melniboné books by Michael Moorcock. The game takes its name from Elric's sword, Stormbringer and uses the Basic Role-Playing game system, a percentile-dice-based system used in many role-playing games designed by Chaosium.

System

The game uses a version of the Basic Roleplaying system originally developed for Chaosium's RuneQuest fantasy RPG, but has different rules for magic and other setting-specific elements. The first three editions are functionally similar, while the fourth edition changed the magic system extensively. Elric! was a substantial reworking of the game, and Stormbringer fifth edition is the Elric! rules with additional material from several older, out-of-print supplements incorporated.

History

The game has evolved through several editions over the years:
Chaosium no longer produces new books for the Stormbringer roleplaying game. In August 2007, Mongoose Publishing published the Elric of Melniboné RPG by Lawrence Whittaker, which is based on Moongoose's first edition of RuneQuest, though it was itself discontinued when Mongoose's license ended.

Reception

Murray Writtle reviewed Stormbringer for White Dwarf #29, giving it an overall rating of 7 out of 10, and stated that "So, if you want to have single death or glory adventures in the Young Kingdoms, Stormbringer will give you them, but to get a continuing campaign underway will take a certain amount of rewriting and careful thought."
In a 1996 poll of readers conducted by Arcane to determine the 50 most popular roleplaying games of all time, Stormbringer was ranked 25th. Editor Paul Pettengale commented: "A simplified RuneQuest, only set in Elric's world. It captures the spirit of the books, but to play it properly you really need to be familiar with the novels, and they are of the type of fantasy that you either love or loathe."

Reviews