I can honestly say that I write this blog mostly for myself and do not expect many replies. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that some anonymous reader lurking out there had left some very deep and delectable questions on my blog in May, which I totally missed due to work, life, and Nuna.
Whoever you are, I really appreciate you taking the time to pose such weighty questions. Here are my responses to your excellent questions and comments.
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| Behold the psychedelic glory of an old Moorcock cover. Care to guess what book this is? |
Q1:
AnonymousMay 15, 2025 at 1:14 PM
Hello. This seems to be your last post on pushing Stormbringer into balance and stronger narrative.
I’d like to share a few considerations and a silly request.
Silly first. How many fantastic stories have you read that involves a storm at sea and perhaps a ship wreck? How many myths have storms and ships at sea? I can think of a few.
I want rules for sinking ships in storm and rules for being thrown ashore in the middle of the night and waking at dawn.
Hello. This seems to be your last post on pushing Stormbringer into balance and stronger narrative.
I’d like to share a few considerations and a silly request.
Silly first. How many fantastic stories have you read that involves a storm at sea and perhaps a ship wreck? How many myths have storms and ships at sea? I can think of a few.
I want rules for sinking ships in storm and rules for being thrown ashore in the middle of the night and waking at dawn.
A1: Waking up on a strange shore is such a common trope in fiction. The whole TV show LOST was built around it, I remember reading it in Umberto Eco's Island of The Day Before, as well as the Bard's The Tempest and Twelfth Night.
There is a supplement about ships for Stormbringer, but I don't recall storm or avoiding drowning rules. Since you end with the narrative trope of being washed ashore, I would say it is GM fiat in a good sense and might not benefit from being codified into rules that could kill PCs due to a shoddy Navigation roll. That said, way back in 2017 before I dove into Stormbringer, I wrote a post about turning death in D&D / LotR into a story hook HERE. I think this would fit the bill nicely, but would require limitations on use (number of times per session, place in the story arc, etc).
Q2
AnonymousMay 15, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Moorcock(as Elric) vs. Stormbringer the rpg.
Moorcock is the story teller that we seek to experience in a story,
I want to stick to the first six books.
1) Moorcock began his mythology with the death of Elric. That blows me away. And his death might have been in vain. All the cosmic actors tricked by a devil in a sword, only to be tricked?
Moorcock the pulp writer had a three stage formula: the hero runs into problems, the problems get a whole lot worse and the hero defeats doom. No major player is to be introduced beyond mid point.
Moorcock is a moralist. He wrote moral stories. This is a hard concept.
Q2
AnonymousMay 15, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Moorcock(as Elric) vs. Stormbringer the rpg.
Moorcock is the story teller that we seek to experience in a story,
I want to stick to the first six books.
1) Moorcock began his mythology with the death of Elric. That blows me away. And his death might have been in vain. All the cosmic actors tricked by a devil in a sword, only to be tricked?
Moorcock the pulp writer had a three stage formula: the hero runs into problems, the problems get a whole lot worse and the hero defeats doom. No major player is to be introduced beyond mid point.
Moorcock is a moralist. He wrote moral stories. This is a hard concept.
A2: Aye there's the rub, we all want Moorcock at our table, but our stories are D&D derived hack & slash fests and none of us have the wits and erudition to draw from literary tropes on the fly.
Sticking to the 6 books makes perfect sense. As I noted in my research on Japanese media (available HERE), a work sets the conceptual basis in the first few foundational stories, then mutates into something unrecognizable as the entropy of success takes over.
Yes, moral stories are difficult when the game reduces moral complexity to black versus white. As I noted in my interview with Andy at BotR, Stormbringer the rpg replaces Moorcock's cosmology with theology, a huge step down in framework.
The way plans go awry in Moorcock's older books reminds me of Matt and Trey of South Park's story advice:
"Each beat of your story needs to cause or be disrupted by the next one."
Note that I did the same in my novel of the supernatural in Japan, Heisei Ghosts.
Q3
AnonymousMay 15, 2025 at 1:34 PM
Moorcock is not a world builder. Like any good writer he pulled from his own psyche ideas unique to him or reexamined. Moorcock’s scenes are a random generator of the psyche. “Need a giant. Giant will have ten arrows. Each arrow will be named after a form of suffering.
That sounds cool. That is good…”
https://lucasrolim.itch.io/salamandur-household
A3: I wouldn't say he is not a world builder, but just that he does it in a resonant, lyrical, stream of consciousness way, and not in a literal or cohesive way. If you read my Moorcock Bestiary post HERE (one of my best IMHO), you'll see that I was testing out this idea of creating monsters based on the human psyche.
Q4:
AnonymousMay 15, 2025 at 1:39 PM
The above link is to a little rpg in the Moorcockian tradition that has random tables.
I’d like Stormbringer to have a chapter of Moorcockian tables in his voice, using some of his favorite words: saturnine, sardonic, chitinous, irony, melancholy…. Use spontaneity. Use speed.
A4: Ooh I am a sucker for a good collection of tables! I will pick it up! (NB If I can get Musk's bank to work and get over my revulsion of giving him money)
The above link is to a little rpg in the Moorcockian tradition that has random tables.
I’d like Stormbringer to have a chapter of Moorcockian tables in his voice, using some of his favorite words: saturnine, sardonic, chitinous, irony, melancholy…. Use spontaneity. Use speed.
A4: Ooh I am a sucker for a good collection of tables! I will pick it up! (NB If I can get Musk's bank to work and get over my revulsion of giving him money)
Q5:
AnonymousMay 15, 2025 at 1:53 PM
I must have read this at some time, but I consider Elric (Eternal Champion in general)
to be psychedelic sword and sorcery. Moorcock has spoken of how he has hallucinate since a child. His mother might see a green velvet hat in a shop window and he would see a samurai helmet. Quite serious. Later as he used hallucinogenic drugs he experienced what could be considered chaos or awakened dreams.
His youthful writings have a raw creative that is unique to him. Moorcock drew a great deal from the Broken Sword, Ship of Isthar, Jirel of Jorel BUT Moircock was using drugs.
A5: It certainly is psychedelic, as I noted in my Bestiary posts. Considering he was writing in the 70's, Moorcock's use of drugs and the psychedelic nature of his writings are only natural. But there are writers who come from the same era who didn't stand the test of time, so I think MM had something special, a fusion of the psychedelic and mythic a la Campbell or Celtic mythology. Elric is almost a doomed elf from the Norse sagas, as is Corum.
Q6
AnonymousMay 15, 2025 at 1:53 PM
I must have read this at some time, but I consider Elric (Eternal Champion in general)
to be psychedelic sword and sorcery. Moorcock has spoken of how he has hallucinate since a child. His mother might see a green velvet hat in a shop window and he would see a samurai helmet. Quite serious. Later as he used hallucinogenic drugs he experienced what could be considered chaos or awakened dreams.
His youthful writings have a raw creative that is unique to him. Moorcock drew a great deal from the Broken Sword, Ship of Isthar, Jirel of Jorel BUT Moircock was using drugs.
A5: It certainly is psychedelic, as I noted in my Bestiary posts. Considering he was writing in the 70's, Moorcock's use of drugs and the psychedelic nature of his writings are only natural. But there are writers who come from the same era who didn't stand the test of time, so I think MM had something special, a fusion of the psychedelic and mythic a la Campbell or Celtic mythology. Elric is almost a doomed elf from the Norse sagas, as is Corum.
Q6
AnonymousMay 15, 2025 at 3:36 PM
So his drug use contributed to his aesthetic.
Now here is an odd framework for Stormbringer, four types of drugs. This how Moorcock used drugs:
LSD - The grand concepts.
Cannabis - Relationships
Cocaine - Drive to complete.
Amphetamine - Speed
I don’t expect anyone is going to drop acid for a good Stormbringer session, but if look at the drugs as archetypes, then an early Moorcock story involves big ideas, human struggles, and a confidence the story will work, so don’t labor over it.
A6: I've gamed with stoned and drunk people, and it sucked. I never touch anything stronger than light alcohol, but if other people want to try whatever that is their lookout. Still, I LOVE the drugs as aesthetic and that would make an epic story or random table in and of itself.
So his drug use contributed to his aesthetic.
Now here is an odd framework for Stormbringer, four types of drugs. This how Moorcock used drugs:
LSD - The grand concepts.
Cannabis - Relationships
Cocaine - Drive to complete.
Amphetamine - Speed
I don’t expect anyone is going to drop acid for a good Stormbringer session, but if look at the drugs as archetypes, then an early Moorcock story involves big ideas, human struggles, and a confidence the story will work, so don’t labor over it.
A6: I've gamed with stoned and drunk people, and it sucked. I never touch anything stronger than light alcohol, but if other people want to try whatever that is their lookout. Still, I LOVE the drugs as aesthetic and that would make an epic story or random table in and of itself.
What does MM make of this fentanyl induced age, with people folded on the sidewalk like broken lawn chairs? I surmise he'd agree with Philip K Dick in his preface to A Scanner Darkly - they didn't know what damage they were doing.
If we are linking drugs to Moorcock, what would the Elric characters consume?
Elric - Hash
Yrkoon - Cocaine
Cymoril - Shrooms
Moonglum - Pot & booze
Q7:
AnonymousMay 15, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Lastly, a question on sorcery and how much thought need be given to it. How much sorcery is really present in the Young Kingdoms? Outside of Melniboné and the rare, like in RARE human sorcerer, all most none. Perhaps, an argument can be made for priests, but little is shown in the stories.
Q7:
AnonymousMay 15, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Lastly, a question on sorcery and how much thought need be given to it. How much sorcery is really present in the Young Kingdoms? Outside of Melniboné and the rare, like in RARE human sorcerer, all most none. Perhaps, an argument can be made for priests, but little is shown in the stories.
A7: Fair point, but a story and a fantasy game with no magic cannot have an equal appeal. In the Elric saga, the Melniboneans have made the pacts to access all kinds of magic (Elemental lords, Chaos lords), but their only rivals, the Pan Tangian sorcerers, pale in comparison.
As I posted earlier, for a game I would open up sorcery to all nations, and to any character willing to transform themselves to get it. This is what makes a game where you can play anyone different from a novel following one doomed protagonist. But the game has got to keep the threat of doom hanging over any magic dabbler's head and not devolve into pew pew fireball fights.
Great conversation, thanks for the thought provoking questions and come again!
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