Things I like about Stormbringer/Elric (ideas for DF)

[b-dog]

*I am not just talking about the game, I am trying give some input for possible DF ideas.

Even though the game of Stormbringer was very high fantasy, I really enjoyed the fact that many of the adventures were not epic. It gets old when players search for some item of ultimate good to defeat a being of ultimate evil. The cool thing was that an adventure usually started with something like a wizard asking players to explore some area, retrieve a magic item or defeat a foe that had caused them trouble. In DF, for instance maybe a lich, instead of vying for world domination, would have hired bandits, orcs and others to rob trading routes and treasure troves of kings or even dragons. Then the lich may have built an underground dungeon to hide his stolen possessions in. Maybe a dragon or a king offers to pay the adventurers if they will retrieve an item that belonged to it.

Another thing I like was the way they describe the demons. The demons were summoned to the mundane realm to perform a service so they are petty and evil, merely following the instructions as required. They only do as much as was requested by the summoning. But of course they will voluntarily kill others.

[vitruvian]

That's not entirely unique to the Stormbringer setting of the Young Kingdoms. Plenty of classic dungeon crawls start with an adventuring party being hired to go clear out a dungeon because it's being used as a base for banditry and other attacks on the local communities. Any treasure gained directly from the dungeon was gravy on top of the bounty. For an example from another fictional setting, many of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser's adventures were the result of contracts from the mysterious (and most likely extradimensional) wizards Sheelba and Ningauble.

What I found interesting about Stormbringer was that almost *all* of the magic system consisted of summonings and bindings, rather than working one's will directly on the world. I.e., any elemental spell required calling up a minor elemental spirit (only master sorcerors like Elric would dare call up the Elemental Rulers), most other effects involved summoning of either demons or other creatures like the patron spirits of different animal species. Likewise, any magic item was most likely the product of binding a demon or other spirit into the object in question.

To reproduce this in GURPS, one could develop a separate Summoning college, starting with *much* weaker versions of Summon Demon and Planar Summons, and requiring a sort of demonology and bestiary of other summonable types; this could also absorb the Summon (Type) Elemental spells. Or one could just keep those spells where they are and specify that other spells took a little longer because they required first summoning minor sprites, or didn't because a magician with a certain set of spells knows them in part because some of those spirits are always attendant upon them. Or, one could go with a wide selection of Summonable Allies, either as groups, as Alternative Abilities, or pulled from a ModAb.

[b-dog]

I agree with you about the magic system, I really thought that was cool. Maybe there could be a sorcerer template with a special power for summoning spirits and demons!

As far as what I meant was that the bad guys were sort of petty and selfish, not really lords of infinate evil. They just seem to have more believable motivations in my opinion.

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by b-dog

Maybe there could be a sorcerer template with a special power for summoning spirits and demons!

A word:

Thaumatology!

[The Colonel]

Wouldn't this essentially be spirit mediated magic in many areas?

[Shrale]

boy it's been a while, but I think I remember the archer being confronted with some sort of toad-demon and filling it with arrows, that suddenly melted into it and the demon turned out to be a friendly god, morphed.

can't for the life of me remember why he had to be there, but usually gods don't show up for trivial stuff. didn't he eat one of their enemies too ?

I'll have to read those again, pretty good stuff.

I'd probably use the old Dieties and Demigods section for the basis of recreating some of their monsters and other features of the setting.

I remember using Theleb K'arna (sp?) as one of the bad guys in a D&D game years and years back. I rather liked his ability to summon strange elementals and demigods...

[b-dog]

Cool, some people agree. I think that Stormbringer is a good change of pace from a typical fantasy game and it has a science fiction feel.

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by b-dog

Cool, some people agree. I think that Stormbringer is a good change of pace from a typical fantasy game and it has a science fiction feel.

Yes, the author mixes in a very liberal way fantasy with science fiction elements, for instance using the quantum theory "many worls" pattern for his "multiverse" instead the traditional "Worlds within worls" onion structure enabling not multiple physical realities, but different infra and extra-physical ontologic orders.

I find other aspects of his books more appealing. For instance:

Originally Posted by Shrale

boy it's been a while, but I think I remember the archer being confronted with some sort of toad-demon and filling it with arrows, that suddenly melted into it and the demon turned out to be a friendly god, morphed.

Things as these sometimes have a different non science fiction substrate I like better.

[b-dog]

You are right about the many worlds and such. I also think the Stormbringer sort of treated magic as just a force to deal with sort of like the forces of nature. No one knows why it works it just works. Plus the creatures encounter were often completely new and unknown almost like Gamma world.

I also like the moral ambiguity of the game. It fits more with Dungeon Fantasy than epic struggles between good and evil. Your character is just going into monsters houses, killing them and taking their stuff, and you are supposed to be a good guy? In D&D the religious men are saintly beings who are for doing good to others while the demonic are up to ultimate evil. In Stormbringer the followers of Law (Good) were often more hostile than the forces of Chaos(Evil). ( Sort of more like our world )

I always wanted to set up the Temple of Elemental Evil in Melnibone and substitute Donblas for St. Cuthbert. I think it would really change the feeling of the game because characters would be defeating the forces of chaos ( The Temple) at the request of the intolerant forces of Law. They would be in a sort of moral dilemma.

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by b-dog

You are right about the many worlds and such. (...)

I understand your view.

But I like better the "Worlds Within Worlds" traditional approach proper of myth (Basic Set: Campaigns, p.351). Despite both genres mostly strive in speculative terrains (but not the same terrains), myth doesn't share the modern interpretations of current science. A simple factor for that is that myth is not limited to be a corporeal, materialistic approach. By the way, the "many worlds" hypothesis isn't different to a pure imagination for trying to resolve quantum paradox in an artificial way, IMO.

A simple assumption as "Dungeons" implies an underground and dangerous place with supernatural monsters and treasures, and that isn't but the traditional ontologic journey called: "Descent to Hell".

Because the Dungeon is the archetypical ordeal.

Any descent to hell was a vertical displacement from above to below, inside the "Worlds Within Worlds" scheme, where the different cosmic orders were arranged through a vertical axis, not by an horizontal arrangement as in the "many worlds" science fiction hypothesis.

Your character is just going into monsters houses, killing them and taking their stuff, and you are supposed to be a good guy?

Of course! I mean, what is wrong with willingly going to hell for taking its occult treasures and bringing them to the light of the world? Even "the hellish, subterranean fire" can be redeemed as "light", which is an example of passing from the potential to the actual. An alchemist —for an example of a mustēs, “initiated one”— had instructions for descending to the hell until reaching its prima matter and searching there the enigmatic hidden stone, needed for making the Great Work or the Philosopher's Stone. It never meant to be a "work of thieves", and that "stone" was an ontological, spiritual achievement hardly compatible with banditry.

I also like the moral ambiguity of the game. It fits more with Dungeon Fantasy than epic struggles between good and evil.

In the ancient world, the "good & evil" conflict per se was unusual. Instead, it was usual "the passage from the darkness to light", from the potency to act, from non-being to being, from delusion to reality, from death to immortality, from slavery to freedom, from time to eternity, from relativity to absoluteness.

A posterior, additional and more limited moral perspective about this very fundamental cosmic duality lies in the origins of the "good versus evil" dichotomy.

The aforementioned passage "from the darkness to light" involved a cosmical struggle between the two main universal principles (darkness-light; yin-yang) and between all godlike beings and all demonic, intermediate forces and "spirits" aligned with these principles.

In one or other way, this always was the epic pattern that can be seen in mythic tales.

More about the morality factor: in ancient times a "Descent to Hell" was regarded as a holy purpose, the initium of a sacred journey to transcendent, higher realms (spiritual worlds), for individual salvation and simultaneously for bringing light to the world.

Always was deemed necessary to unlock the gates of Hell for gaining access to the upper regions (levels!) of the cosmos.

The supernatural pilgrimage (GURPS Fantasy, p.175: Perilous Journeys) was an epic enterprise, and every ancient culture worshipped gods known solely for having showed the needed steps and "the hidden map" needed for that supernatural journey.

The same classic Dungeon Fantasy motif of "levels" —approximately "Power-Ups" in GURPS— asociated with dungeons as "places", keeps a relation with the different levels of Hell in The Divine Comedy of Dante (a "known" example, but barely understood today).

These "levels" never were "parallel worlds", but ontologic strata of the different underworld gradations progressively more and more deep according to an itinerary from above to below (Above and Below in GURPS Fantasy, p.40) until reaching the exit of the hells, arriving to a "place" like a Paradise or the Navel of the world, having already changed the direction of the travel in 180º, going from above-to-below (downwards), to below-to-above (upwards) in an ascendent path along the same vertical axis.

On the other hand, once again the same motif of "levels" associated with the overall progress of Dungeon Fantasy characters keeps a dim relation with the ontologic superhuman vertical degrees acquired by the spiritual traveller in his journey or pilgrimage to the transcendent realm. In other words, "levels" were indicative of the "steps" advanced in the "Jaboc's Ladder" —one of the many symbols of the vertical axis.

-

Well, this isn't but a very quick-and-dirty summary. . . My conclusion is: if I want Science Fiction, then I pick Science Fiction but not Fantasy because both are very different genres (*) and, being Fantasy a genre who owes all to ancient myth, a distorted modern fantasy approach to its themes, mixing foreign and contradictory elements inevitably results in the so-called "bastardized modern fantasy" (I don't want to sound harsh with the expression!), because it isn't faithful to itself by betraying its very foundational elements, as the aformentioned verticality what is the very expression of The Great Chain of Being, and many, many other things!

I always wanted to set up the Temple of Elemental Evil in Melnibone and substitute Donblas for St. Cuthbert. I think it would really change the feeling of the game because characters would be defeating the forces of chaos ( The Temple) at the request of the intolerant forces of Law. They would be in a sort of moral dilemma.

I understand that it can be fun for some players, but that approach belongs to modern, humanistic perspectives, and even more: it is own of the democratic minset who is always struggling between the paradox of offering the promise of social freedom while at the same time needs to use coercive laws for limiting that very freedom. According to such particular mental frame, "chaos" is interpreted as freedom, while "order" is misunderstood as tyranny and intolerance.

In myths portraying spiritual quests, the main concern was the achievement of divinity, immortality, salvation or (spiritual) freedom, sometimes individual, sometimes collective, or both at the same time. Social concerns per se were completely out of context in spiritual journeys.

And in the social domain, usually there wasn't conflict by defending the order because it was regarded as a reflection of the gods themselves.

Elric's "multiverse" inspires relativity and paranoid feelings, because there is no essential being, no "absoluteness" in that horizontal, parallel amount of "many worlds", and The Great Chain of Being is logically missing there because the intrinsic nature of a horizontal perspective. Travelling between the worlds of that "multiverse" isn't actually different to an "interplanetary travel", devoid of any supernatural or ontological meaning.

(*) In many ways, Science Fiction can be defined as a materialistic transposition of ancient mythic themes and patterns —it is a sort of horizontal substitute.