From: Adam Justin Thornton <adam@owlnet.rice.edu>
Subject: Review: Elric!
System: Elric!

I must admit that I come to this review a little handicapped, having played neither Stormbringer nor Elric!, and having only glanced through the Stormbringer rules. The background I bring to my review of Elric is heavy on Call of Cthulhu and GURPS, but light on any sort of Moorcockian roleplaying, save the statistics in first edition Deities and Demigods. With that caveat out of the way, on to the game:

Elric! appears to be aimed at beginning roleplayers and gamemasters: there's a fairly extensive section on what roleplaying is, lots of tips for Gamemasters new to the job, and a whole lot of warnings not to let the players get away with too much. I guess the background of the novels may tend to lead to rampant munchkinification, so this is probably a good thing. Impending Ragnarok and soul-sucking Runeswords probably tend to enourage powergaming.

This is not to say Elric! is in any way unsuitable for experienced players. They and their GMs will just not need the frequent caveats given. No big deal.

The mechanics are what one would expect from a Chaosium game: seven stats (CON, STR, SIZ, INT, POW, DEX, APP), and then rolls such as Idea and Luck calculated off of those. All statistics are 2D6+6, which gives sadly flat statistic curves. It also means that all humans are about equally hard to kill once you peel them out of their armor. There's nothing wrong with this, but it does mean that superhuman characteristics will probably come from skills rather than from attributes. The only other Chaosium game I'm familiar with is Call Of Cthulhu; Elric! looks very familiar. It's occupation-based, and I think it was a good aesthetic decision to make the random occupation chances NOT reflect the actual distribution of occupations in the Young Kingdoms. Who wants to be a peasant?

The skills also work as they do in CoC; a base chance that you can then put points into. One of the better reminders that this is Elric! and not Generic Fantasy Hack'n'Slash is in the Art skill. The specializations are "Conversation, Courtly Manners, Declaim Poetry, Formal Dance, Song, Tell Story or Torture." 

I'd personally prefer a more GURPS-like skill system: someone with a high DEX _should_ be able to be a better swordsman quicker than a klutz. But hey, it's Chaosium's game, and their choice. 

However, there are some cool features of the skills that don't exist in CoC; skill chances can be greater than 100%. Since criticals are 1/5 of base skill, this even makes sense. I think it should work pretty well, though I haven't playtested the game yet. Skill increases (a checked skill increases on 100-INT%, or INT%, whichever is greater) are elegant and intuitive although I'd prefer a division of mental and physical skills.

The combat system is straightforward: percentile dice against a skill, and then damage. At 2 HP you pass out; at 0 HP, you die. This is highly lethal, at least compared to most other games. This is actually a Good Thing. People die all the time in Moorcock's Elric stories, mostly gruesomely. Since everyone has about 13 HP, and a broadsword slash will do 2-9 HP, plus damage bonus, in general, three sword slashes should kill an unarmored character. I like it. (Stormbringer, for the curious, when wielded by Elric, does 2D8 + 1D6 + 17D10 + 1D6 damage. Plus sucking out 1D100 of POW. At an 880% chance to hit.)

The Major Wounds table is really good too; however the system could benefit from a hit location system. I'd really recommend glueing on Pagan Publishing's _Killer Crosshairs_ if you want to target specific body parts [perhaps someone would like to write a Elric! hit location system for a future issue? -sda]. I particularly applaud the use of DEX-ranks for combat initiative; the highest-DEX fighters go first, but things like aiming subract from DEX-ranks. Thus, a DEX 18 archer can either get off a quick shot or, say, aim for ten DEX-ranks and improve his chance of hitting, but by so doing risk losing his shot to a slower fighter who nails him in the meantime.

There's a lot of mechanical stuff specific to Elric!, too. The alignments are great. Certain actions can give you points for Law, Chaos and Balance; over the course of an adventuring lifetime, you'll probably rack up scores in all three areas. The Alignment system is well thought-out. If there _is_ a "good" side it's the Balance, but even that isn't especially clear. Certainly Elric! doesn't fall into the easy and predictable trap that Law=Good, Chaos=Evil that I half-expected. Heroes can become Champions of one of the alignments, conferring certain bonuses and incurring certain responsibilties, or less extremely, take allegiances to the alignments. This seems fairly true to the spirit of the books, and I think it would work well in a larger-than-life sort of game (which Elric! encourages).

The magic system is supposed to be the major difference between Elric! and Stormbringer; having never used Stormbringer I can't really comment. I like it; POW determines the efficacy of your magic and INT how many spells you can remember simultaneously. Magic is (almost exclusively) inherently Chaotic and corrupting. The spells are neat. They're colorful and mostly gruesome, and very much in the spirit of the series. Demonic and Elemental magic seems to work well too; the demons are among the most charming of the system's features. They are insanely powerful and dangerous. The suggested "needs" are often quite amusing, and there is a certain amount of dark sympathy for them. It's too bad that summoning demons is likely to be quick and unpleasant, because a great deal of thought has gone into their creation, and there are some opportunities for really fun roleplaying here.

The Elementals are a little less thoroughly fleshed out, and basically less interesting. However, they're a resonable Balance alternative to the Chaotic demons. Overall, the magic system looks quite good:  beginning characters are unlikely to be able to seriously unbalance play with it, but it leaves more than enough room for insanely powerful sorcerors (I can't wait for a Pan Tang supplement) [Sorcerers of Pan Tang, a Stormbringer supplement for Pan Tang, should still be in print. It will take some conversion, but I think you'll find its really good -sda].

Enchanted items, and items that are bound demons or elementals, are well and thoroughly handled, and range in power from the fairly trivial to, well, Stormbringer. The "Rumors" section in particular gives good adventure seeds and item suggestions.

Two adventures are included with Elric!; the first, "The Weight of Doom", is extremely brief, will not be deadly, and probably serves as a good introduction to bigger and better things, but is a good reminder that Law can be even less nice than Chaos. The second, "The Thought That Counts" is also intended for beginning adventurers, and is a pretty fair version of the "Retrieve a Valuable Thing At Some Personal Risk" plotline, with a nice twist and not one, but two, horrifying and repulsive demons. It should provide a fun couple of hours.

A few more notes before I rave about the background:

The Spot Rules for combat and demons are great. You won't need them much, hence Spot Rules, but they cover a pretty wide variety of situations.

I wish they had used a different font. The highlight/heading text is that annoying Jurassic Park font and it's really getting to me. They layout is otherwise splendid, though, and the art is extremely well-done.

And Chaosium really should employ a good proofreader. There are lots of silly and easily avoidable spelling errors, bits of poor syntax, and the like. It's no worse than most first printings, but I certainly hope the second run fixes these up.

On to the background of the Young Kingdoms:

It's amazing. It's fantastic. This is one of the neatest worlds to roleplay in ever created, and Chaosium has done a bang-up job with it. The creatures are well-presented and suitably deadly, the NPCs are a good assortment of the major characters from the novel, and well-translated into the Elric! mechanics. The geography is coherent, well-described, and varied. The discussion of "Gods and Cults" seems faithful to Moorcock, suitably creepy and pretty complete. The whole is copiously annotated with notes from the novels, including _The Fortress Of The Pearl_ and _The Revenge Of the Rose_.

Like CoC, the background is complete enough that you could probably successfully run games under the system without ever reading the source material. Also like CoC, you probably wouldn't want to; I personally can't imagine somebody who would want to play or run an Elric! game but _not_ read the novels. If you read the novels and liked them, you'll love the background. If you haven't read them, and are considering buying Elric!, you should read at least a couple before you decide whether or not to. If you read them and didn't like them, you probably have no interest in the game. The atmosphere of Moorcock's books is preserved quite well. Expect characters to die frequently and spectacularly. If you were looking for a lighthearted change of pace from Call Of Cthulhu, this isn't it. Try Toon instead.

The background is the best reason to buy Elric!; the forthcoming supplement of Melnibone ought to be excellent as well.

Overall, I liked Elric! very much. However, I'm not sure if it's worth $19.95, especially if you play Stormbringer and are happy with it. The mechanics rate about seven out of ten; the layout, art, and overall appearance are also a seven, provisionally an eight once the spelling and grammar is cleaned up. The writing is generally very good, perhaps an eight or a nine, and the background material is without parallel. It looks like gameplay should be fast and smooth (most rolls resolve to a quick lookup on a matrix), and it's certainly got the excitingly dark and menacing feel of Moorcock's world.

Adam Thornton