RE: (TFT) Stormbringer & Elric

[David Michael Grouchy II <david_michael_grouchy_ii@hotmail.com>]

> My big question about running a game in Elric's world is not so much>
Stormbringer . . .
>
> . . . But wizards don't go around> flinging fireballs or anything that is
"instant". Which appeals to me, but> maybe not so much to others who want to
roleplay a spellcaster.

David,
   This question is quite a bit bigger than Just Stormbringer me thinks.  So
I'll take it that the Stormbringer rules are ok and just address what appeals
to players.  At least in the way of books.

    Unless you can `make` everyone read the Elric series I don't see the
reason force this kind of campaign on the players.  What if what they are all
currently interested in is `World War Z`, or `The Watchmen.`  Further
designing a campaign to represent one particular authors' world is not really
what I would consider compelling.

    A couple of one shot adventures maybe would be better.  Then they can play
the title characters, and they can see how you interpret TFT in that authors
light.  But a campaign with any staying power has to have one thing.  An
engine driven by the players.

    Personally I'm partial to Heinlien novels.  But I never run my players on
them.  I have just found that my GMing is far more efficient, brisk, action
oriented, and fair if I read a Heinlein novel before I GM a series of
adventures.  For some reason those books serve me well in patterning my mind
to be the GM the players like to interact with the most.  For Robbie flammang
I would have to say he did the best GM'ing after he got hooked on a National
Geographic article.

     But taking a novel, or a series, and expecting the players to enter it is
tantamount to asking them to put aside their own dreams and desires and role
play individual copies of the GM's feelings.  A recipie for dissatisfaction.
Perhaps I can offer a different thesis to use in approaching books, movies,
music, and gaming.

    `Role playing is the same as debreifing.`  After Aliens came out, it
seemed like everyone wanted to play sci-fi for a while.  They all wanted to
talk about, and explore, the various ideas and equipments.  Consider your
players to already have a head full of ideas and the GM's job is to facilitate
safely exploring those thoughts and images.  For instance through a series of
encounters that probed and tested Jays character I realized he wanted to
destroy the world.  So I arranged for his team to be taken into orbit, and he
got to `push the button` and watch the whole thing from above.

   They went into cryo for a thousand years, woke up and then landed in bronze
age culture.  Not only did they love it, this is exactly what they wanted.
When I started the campaing I didn't know, nor could I know, this.  What they
wanted became clearer as the game went on.  By not being married to any
particular book or movie series I was able to stay felxible enough to travel
there with them.

   In conclusion Stormbringer is not a gun slinger genera.  Insta cast
lightning bolts is very much like an episode of High Noon.  But if you insist
of finding the existance of insta cast blasting spells in the Elric series,
may I recomend `The Vanishing Tower.`  The lizard men from the other reality
were defeated using a technology from another even more different reality.
These odd weapons that Elric used to shoot down the riders, very similar to
rods of missile spells.  But tell the players up front, this is an IQ 11 world
as far as spells go (no personal flight) and that they should expect to have
to invent every spell they want to use themselves after that.  Or worse, steal
it from a vengeful god.

David Michael Grouchy II

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