Elric of Melniboné
- Thread starter atrida
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havercake lad
Banded Mongoose
I'm happy to keep writing more Elric material. Ideally campaign/source books like Loz's excellent Cities of the Young Kingdoms.
Olaus Petrus
Mongoose
That's true. However Talons of Winter is still listed as future release. So, hopefully removal of Elric line is some sort of glitch or mistake.
tarkhan bey
Mongoose
Just saw this thread. Has the Elric license expired?
It is currently under review.
Olaus Petrus
Mongoose
I really hope that the license stays with Mongoose. I haven't started hosting Secrets of the Steppes yet, because I've been waiting Talons of Winter (first part is really good, but you really need the second part for the full experience) and I wish that we shall see future Elric releases of the same quality.
Prime_Evil
Emperor Mongoose
Olaus Petrus said:
Mongoose has done good work with the license so far, but I still live in hope of seeing a new Corum game some day
Mind you, I also loved MRQ Lankhmar and was sad to see that license go.
There was a time there where Mongoose almost had the trifecta to establish Legend as the premiere swords & sorcery system - Conan, Elric, and Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser. Maybe the next licensed product should cover the worlds of Clark Ashton Smith or Edgar Rice Burroughs or Leigh Brackett...
Problem is that the younger gamers generally have little knowledge of the greats of the pulp era, apart from Conan in his Arnie insubstantiation and the more recent movie. I've had to explain Lankhmar to youngsters and had a meh! response as it doesn't hold a candle in their estimation to WoW or Skyrim. Many current gamers don't remember the days of TSR releasing their take on the tales and haven't read much, if any, of the works noted in Appendix N. If they do know Leigh Brackett's name it's because of her writing the first draft of Star Wars and not her Jirel stories.
Lovecraft is known by gamers mostly because of the success of the game from Chaosium. Sword and planet remains perhaps the best known of the pulp era genres because of Burroughs although games based on his Mars are few and far between.
Without the knowledge of the stories and tropes of the pulp writers it's hard to imagine any gamers indulging in true S&S games apart from those playing occasionally when they get to meet outside the usual demands on their time - families and household chores.
Lovecraft is known by gamers mostly because of the success of the game from Chaosium. Sword and planet remains perhaps the best known of the pulp era genres because of Burroughs although games based on his Mars are few and far between.
Without the knowledge of the stories and tropes of the pulp writers it's hard to imagine any gamers indulging in true S&S games apart from those playing occasionally when they get to meet outside the usual demands on their time - families and household chores.
I hate to say it, but the Jirel stories were written by Catherine Moore. Brackett was the source of many plantary romance stories, not S&S.strega said:
However, I agree that there is a problem with introducing youngsters to early works of the genre. I have a group of early twenties players, and its quite shocking how little literature or early cinema they have been exposed to.
Prime_Evil
Emperor Mongoose
It's definitely a problem. Back in the early days of the hobby, almost every gamer seemed to be familiar with the classics of literary fantasy and science fiction. Even if they hadn't read all of these works personally, they had at least some knowledge of what they were about. I know a number of gamers (myself included) who took Appendix N in the 1st edition DMG as a personal challenge and set about tracking down every single book and author that Gygax listed as an influence. And the equivalent list of science fiction authors in the Star Frontiers rulebook was also a formative influence for many of us. And the bibliography at the back of the Runequest rulebook introduced many bemused teenagers to authentic medieval literature in the form of the Icelandic family sagas and Le Morte d'Arthur. (I've still got my 1980 RQ rulebook sitting next to me right now...lol). But there was definitely a strong bookish strand to the hobby in those early days.
This seems to have vanished as fantasy has become more accessible to the general public through movies, television, comics, computer games, et al. Most of these derivative works draw upon the classics in increasingly diluted form. Sadly, we've reached the point where adaptations of genuine works of literary fantasy - such as the HBO version of Game of Thrones - seem startlingly bold and vivid to members of the public whose only previous exposure to fantasy literature was some inspid knock-off of Tolkien or Robert E. Howard. Nothing in the works of George R.R. Martin is amazingly original to people who are familiar with classic fantasy or historical novels, but it seems original to people who simply don't read that kind of literature (or any literature at all). Incidentally, I don't mean to put George R.R. Martin's achievement down at all - he's a very good writer whose been winning awards for his science fiction and fantasy works since the mid-1970s - but the kind of attention that the TV adaptation of his novels has been getting is very revealing about the expectations that the general public has towards fantasy fiction. They expect something that is safe and sanitised and packaged as a commodity - and and are genuinely surprised when they get slapped in the face by a work that's raw and brutal (without descending into self-parody).
I dunno what the answer is, but I still love reading as was delighted to see a list of recommended reading at the back of RQ6. It is my hope that some impressionable kid somewhere out there will stumble across that list and decide to track down a few of the books that they aren't familiar with. Unfortunately, I fear that the only people who read RPG rulebooks nowadays are fellow grognards.
Now all of you kids can go and get off of my lawn....
This seems to have vanished as fantasy has become more accessible to the general public through movies, television, comics, computer games, et al. Most of these derivative works draw upon the classics in increasingly diluted form. Sadly, we've reached the point where adaptations of genuine works of literary fantasy - such as the HBO version of Game of Thrones - seem startlingly bold and vivid to members of the public whose only previous exposure to fantasy literature was some inspid knock-off of Tolkien or Robert E. Howard. Nothing in the works of George R.R. Martin is amazingly original to people who are familiar with classic fantasy or historical novels, but it seems original to people who simply don't read that kind of literature (or any literature at all). Incidentally, I don't mean to put George R.R. Martin's achievement down at all - he's a very good writer whose been winning awards for his science fiction and fantasy works since the mid-1970s - but the kind of attention that the TV adaptation of his novels has been getting is very revealing about the expectations that the general public has towards fantasy fiction. They expect something that is safe and sanitised and packaged as a commodity - and and are genuinely surprised when they get slapped in the face by a work that's raw and brutal (without descending into self-parody).
I dunno what the answer is, but I still love reading as was delighted to see a list of recommended reading at the back of RQ6. It is my hope that some impressionable kid somewhere out there will stumble across that list and decide to track down a few of the books that they aren't familiar with. Unfortunately, I fear that the only people who read RPG rulebooks nowadays are fellow grognards.
Now all of you kids can go and get off of my lawn....
Prime_Evil
Emperor Mongoose
PeteN said:I hate to say it, but the Jirel stories were written by Catherine Moore. Brackett was the source of many plantary romance stories, not S&S.
I'd argue that the distinctions between swords and sorcery fiction and planetary romance were more fluid back then and that the boundaries were quite permeable. Nobody thought twice about introducing ancient superscience into fantasy or quasi-supernatural elements into what were ostensibly science fiction stories. It wasn't until the era of John W. Campbell that a firm dividing line between fantasy and science fiction was enforced as editorial policy. It is no accident that this marked the time when planetary romance - which straddled the dividing line in a delightlfully subversive way - fell out of favour.
PeteN said:
Actually, it's interesting to note the kind of cinema that influenced early gamers. Foe example, the significance of Ray Harryhausen and Hammer Films on the evolution of RPGs should never be underestimated.
Marlow Kurtz
Mongoose
msprange said:
By Mongoose or by Moorcock? Who is reviewing what, exactly?
havercake lad
Banded Mongoose
Naturally I'm hoping Talons of Winter sees print. I feel it ties in with well with Secrets of the Steppes book and references a lot of Moorcock material.
tarkhan bey
Mongoose
As do I. I really enjoyed Secrets of the Steppes. You will be a worthy successor to Pete and Loz, assuming that Mongoose retains the EC license.
Prime_Evil
Emperor Mongoose
DamonJynx said:
True...the old Universal monster films of the 1930s and 1940s were a strong influence on early RPGs. However, I was thinking in more terms of contemporary influences. One thing that doesn't get much airtime is the strong influence of 1970s martial arts movies on early RPG design - just look at the incongruous inclusion of the monk character class in D&D as an example. It definitely owes more to Bruce Lee and David Carradine than it does to Friar Tuck or Brother Cadfael
Prime_Evil said:
This is the nub of it really. And actually I think it has been going that way for a long time - even 25 years ago the Conan movie and comics had at least as big an influence on people's imagination as the books. Now it has gone the same way with Tolkien - mention The Lord of the Rings and most teenagers assume you are talking about the movie. Elric is unknown now because there hasn't bee a movie.
I guess it's partly because movies are a more accessible medium - lots of people just don't read - and partly because a lot of money gets spent on publicity & marketing when the movie is released.
What is surprising to me, given the obsession with licensing official settings, is that there haven't been more computer game derived tabletop RPGs, i.e. like Dragon Age.
