More Blood and Souls For My Lord Arioch!

Michael Moorcock's Elric may not have been my (post-Tolkien) introduction to the sword-and-sorcery genre (that honour rests with Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser), it was Moorcock's work that truly shaped my taste in reading.

I haven't read any Leiber in an age, but I often revisit the twisted, hallucinogenic, weird fantasy adventures of Elric of Melniboné and The Young Kingdoms.

There's something about the succinctness of Moorcock's early tales of Elric and his soul-devouring sword Stormbringer that I've always found more enchanting than the doorstop tomes so prevalent today.

It was after years of reading Moorcock that I instituted my "Moorcock Rule" (more of a guideline)  that stated that a book REALLY had to work hard to justify itself if it ran longer than 150-200 pages. 

That said, I've never used the Young Kingdoms - nor any of the trappings of Elric's adventures (even Stormbringer, itself) - in my own roleplaying games. 

I don't own a copy of Chaosium's Stormbringer/Elric of Melniboné RPGs (1981 - 2010). I've looked into it in the last couple of decades but those books generally command silly money on the secondary market.

However, in recent weeks, both Goodman Games and Free League have announced they will be releasing games based on this IP next year (after crowdfunding campaigns).

Goodman Games is planning two different iterations: one using Dungeons & Dragons 5e and one using Dungeon Crawl Classics. While I feel the latter system is probably more suited to emulating the demon-fuelled magic of Elric's world, neither of these systems really tickle my fancy at the moment.

However, my interest is well-and-truly piqued by Free League's offering, Legends of Stormbringer, which will run on the Dragonbane engine. 

I know I keep saying I'm out of the buying new games side of the hobby, but to quote Michael Corleone in The Godfather, Part III:

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

Dragonbane isn't a game I'm particularly familiar with, except from second hand accounts which are a generally overwhelmingly positive... with a few minor niggles about some of the mechanics.

A translated version of Drakar och Demoner, a game system played in Scandinavia since 1982, Dragonbane's definitely been at the top of my "must check out the starter set" list since it was first released in English in 2023.

This recent announcement might be the nudge I "needed" to pull the trigger on yet another game that I may - or may not - run for the Tuesday Knights.

You can read about Free League's forthcoming Stormbringer offering (and a bit about Dragonbane) here.

Tell Me About Your Character

One of the most powerful influences in my formative gaming years - and one that still inspires me to this day - is the "dedication" sections found in old role-playing games, where the author records (usually in just a simple phrase) the fates or notable deeds of play-tester's characters.

Not only did this prove to me that the system had been thoroughly play-tested (something a lot of games, I fear, these days - especially from some of the 'bigger' companies - don't get) but also that the players were clearly putting some thought into their characters and helping craft a grand story, the bigger picture.

The list of characters above is from the 1979 Heroes game, a Dark Ages RPG that has long since left my collection - the only memento I retained from it being a photocopy of the dedications page.

But as great as the Heroes dedication was, the ones that have driven my role-playing ambitions the most were the dedications by Dave Hargrave in the first two volumes of his seminal Arduin Grimoire:

I know I've talked about the "Elric in Hell" scenario several times in recent days, but this is the kind of myth-making that is a cornerstone of my love of role-playing games, especially those with an 'old school' flavour, over any other form of gaming.

I don't want to know about your "feat-combos" or "power-ups" - I want to hear the stories you've had a hand in creating, the actual adventures your characters have undertaken... and I want to help my players create those moments and memories as well.

This, for me, is the essence of role-playing games and why they are the greatest hobby in the world.

Elric In Hell!

My beloved original Arduin Grimoire trilogy

I mentioned the foundational roleplaying text (for me) the Arduin Grimoire the other day, but I'm pretty certain it's not as famous (infamous?) these days as it was when I was growing up as a young gamer.

When I first encountered Dungeons & Dragons, back in the late 70s, I had little to no idea about the concept of worldbuilding.

It wasn't until I acquired the three little tan books that make up David Hargrave's original Arduin Grimoire trilogy (there are now nine volumes in total, but none as inspirational as the first three) that it even dawned on me that 'other people' were making up their own worlds to campaign in.

The first thing that struck me, and that I still love today, was the sense that the history of Arduin had been a co-operative development between the gamesmaster and his players.

This was crystallised in the dedication pages of the first two volumes where Dave lists the names of the some of the player characters and their fates.

In the first volume, Dave's own character is listed simply as "Elric The Hell-Lost", but this is expanded upon in volume two, Welcome To Skull Tower:

"The Baron In Exile, Lord of the House Of The Tower of the Dragon, wishes to thank formally the brave and steadfast people who gave their years and their lives to return him and his from the very clutches of the Lord Of The Undead.

"These true friends crossed three hells and seven and a half long, long years to fight their way to our succour. Our House is ever in the debt of the House Of The Rising Sun, the House of Ibathene, the House of Greylorn the Patriach, and to all those heroes who joined in that undertaking.

"You who slew the Great Lord of the Undead himself know who you are, and you know that our House will give its all in your need, if ever that time should come. We who were hell lost and soul caged SALUTE YOU, our comrades and friends.

"David A Hargrave

"a.k.a. Elric,

"Baron and Lord of

"The House of the Dragon Tower".

However, the most detailed explanation of these events came in issue two of the superb Different Worlds magazine,  in which Dave Hargarve recounted a potted history of his campaign:

"Elric, Duke and Lord of the Dragon Tower, spent seven years in hell, a captive of Cimmeries, Lord of the Undead. The efforts to free him cost the souls of over 40 other characters and was directly linked to the causes of the Great Insurrection. But freed he was, to take up a blood feud with those he felt had left him there!"

It's no wonder that that imagery has stuck in my head for the better part of 30 years, and has constantly played a leading role in my "wish list" of unfulfilled role-playing moments.

Although the hefty Legendary Lands Of Arduin makes reference to Cimmeries as Lord of the Undead and Elric's House of the Dragon Tower, there is no mention in that 800-page tome of his time in the underworld that I can see (but I haven't read the book cover-to-cover!)

I'd love to find out more details of this "campaign-within-a-campaign", if there is anyone out there in the Interwebs with more detailed knowledge please get in touch.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Whence Lovecraft?

Mythos Tomes: My earliest forays into the works of HP Lovecraft

I've been reading HP Lovecraft since I was a teenager. I recall writing about him in my English Literature A Level exam, which given I was supposed to be critiquing Dickens' Great Expectations probably explains my poor grade.

My memory of how I actually came upon the works of Lovecraft is rather hazy, but I'm sure I was already aware - and a fan - of his oeuvre before I invested in my first edition box set of Chaosium's seminal Call Of Cthulhu game.

This was published in 1981, with the second edition coming out in 1983, which suggests I picked up the game sometime between those dates.

I suspect my introduction to Lovecraft could well have been TSR's Deities & Demigods (the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons supplement, published in 1980, that - only for its first edition - included the Cthulhu Mythos as well as Michael Moorcock's Elric mythology, as well as various pantheons or gods and heroes from ancient religions around our world).

This almost certainly led me to invest in the paperbacks you see above, several of which are stamped as coming from the P&P Book Exchange in Goods Station Road, Tunbridge Wells (which is where I also came across my first collection of Wolfman/Perez era New Teen Titans comics that got me hooked on the medium and turned me into a 'proper' comic book collector).

Those paperbacks have seen better days. particularly The Haunter In The Dark And Other Tales Of Terror (a 1963 edition from Panther Books, priced at three shillings and six pence!) which is falling apart because it was read so much.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Conan Digests

When we were readying ourselves to move house half-a-dozen years ago, I was shifting boxes in the 'office' part of my attic-gamesroom and 'discovered' a long concealed bookcase; squirrelled away in the corner, on which was my collection of eight, old Conan The Barbarian digests.

These were pocket-sized, British reprints (in black and white) from the early '80s, of Conan's original stint in the pages of Marvel Comics, each around 50-pages long.

These were my first exposure to both Conan The Barbarian and the works of Robert E Howard, I would have been about 14 or 15 when I picked these up.

I guess I was a comparative latecomer to the exploits of the mighty Cimmerian, having cut my sword-and-sorcery teeth - soon after being introduced to Dungeons & Dragons at the tail-end of the '70s - on Fritz Leiber's Nehwon tales with Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Harry Turtledove's stories of Gerin The Fox, and then Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné, years before I encountered Conan The Barbarian.

In truth, I think, after the comic book digests, my first actual Robert E Howard book was a remaindered copy of The Gods Of Bal-Sagoth, an Ace Science-Fiction collection of non-Conan stories, that I purchased in a discount book store while out shopping with my parents.

Like pretty much everything at that time, my early interest in Howard's work - and Conan - was fuelled by my desire to make everything about my blossoming passion for roleplaying games, and particularly Dungeons & Dragons.

A passion they still serve today.