Stormbringer Redux #27 - Berserk

I just watched THIS video and, as a fan of the manga Berserk for a long time, it has made me ponder applications to Stormbringer.

I consider Kentaro Miura's Berserk saga a spiritual successor to The Eternal Champion in many ways. Gutz is called The Struggler (a moniker that could apply equally to Elric), both wield a giant sword, and Gutz loses a hand and an eye like Corum. In Berserk there is the phenomenon of history repeating itself like ripples, interspersed with the idea of doom & sacrifice, much like Moorcock's Vanishing Tower.

What insights from Berserk can we use in Stormbringer roleplaying? I see two useful takeaways for Saga style play. Groups enjoying pulp adventures in the Young Kingdoms will largely steer clear of gods at any rate - just not worth it.

ONE - Where Invisible Armies Clash By Night

In both Berserk and Elric, we know the names of the godhand / Lords of the Higher worlds. This does not mean we know what they want, or that mortals can hope to rise against them, or that they are inviolate. Just as the video I linked indulges in the fan theories about the Godhand, their origin and fate, and the concept of Causality that makes their victory unavoidable, so too do the gods of the Elric saga remain an inscrutable, irresistible menace that should leave players puzzling.

This gives us three corollaries for running Stormbringer games:

1) Whatever you do plays into their hands.

Elric would have been doomed regardless of whether had he taken Yrkoon's life or not in the Shadow Plane when he acquired Stormbringer. Elric's dream of a demon haunted Imrryr, with Arioch manifested and Cymoril as his bride (a la Tim Curry in Legend) gives us a glimpse of other possible outcomes to the saga. Gamemasters thus have to be ready to improvise at any instant when players (invariably) throw a spanner in the works, but always make the gods come out on top, one way or another.

One exception to this is if player characters commit heresy or try to ursurp a god, in which case they will rightly be sent to hell for their temerity.

2) It takes a god to kill a god.

If the player characters take it into their heads to kill a god, they will need equally strong allies. As noted before, D&D gives stats to gods, implying they are killable. Stormbringer / Elric! doesn't, which means players will have to get creative and roleplay like mad to make useful friends if they want to rub out a cosmic lord. In Moorcock's works, we see Corum 'kill' Arioch (ie banish him from a plane), but he needed the help of the mad immortal Shool (who had stolen some of Arioch's power) and the alien hand of a forgotten god to do so.

The downside (and there should always be one in Stormbringer) is that the new godly ally will likely prove worse than the god they depose.

3) A God Never Truly Dies

Corum may have crushed Arioch's heart, but he never truly killed him. Instead, Arioch exists in different forms on different planes, much like the Lich in Adventure Time. This means that if player characters DO succeed in banishing a god from their home plane, they may have some explaining to do when they meet the deity on another plane, or better yet they will be forced to act when some cult moves to let the exiled god back to the gameworld.

In a way, death is only the beginning for gods. Berserk hints at this with the existence of the previous Godhand, and it will be interesting to see what the Berserk team comes up with on how the older pantheon was deposed.

BONUS QUESTION - What if Arioch & posse were younger gods who replaced an older pantheon? Who were they, what happened, and how could this affect a game?

TWO - Great Power Needs Great Sacrifice

In Berserk, Griffith sacrifices his mercenary army, the Band of the Hawk, to become Femto, an Apostle or basically god of evil. Similarly, Elric ends up sacrificing nearly every companion he has, from Smiorgan Baldhead to Moonglum and Zarzonia (not to mention his entire civilization), but only ends up playing into Arioch and Stormbringer's hands.

Once again, let's take 3 lessons for Stormbringer games.

1) You have to choose to let them in, but you must always pay the cost.

A god will never just give boons without expecting something in return. In too many games, contacting or summoning powerful entities is a one and done with no longterm ramifications. I call this Pokemon summoning, and it is dull.

Instead, summoning any type of entity should make a character beholden to it. Call on  beast lord or elemental? Then expect to be asked to protect the natural world from destruction.

There is never a free lunch.

2) The brand of sacrifice and ghosts of those you sacrifice will ever haunt you.

In games I have run, players have sent NPCs and other PCs to their doom to save their own skin. This is soon laughed off and forgotten, which is really antithetical to Moorcock's works. Instead, sacrificing someone, even a nameless NPC, should weigh on characters.

You could give Elan (allegiance points) every time someone is sacrificed. Also, expect the ghosts to appear and oppose the character whenever they move through a spirit realm. Perhaps sensitive NPCs will shun a character that has lots of skeletons in their closet.

Once again, there is never a free lunch, especially when someone else pays the bill.

3) In the end, you are doomed.

I probably don't need to say this, but becoming an Agent is like becoming a vigilante in Watchmen - no one dies peacefully in their bed. As I noted before, being an Agent should make you a magnet for weirdness and danger, much as the brand of sacrifice does to Gutz.

In game terms, an Agent becomes an easy adventure seed generator - no need to look for a quest or purpose when they come knocking at your door, and your allegiance means you cannot refuse an entreaty.

In Pulp games, this would mean an Agent would best be an NPC to let the PCs keep their autonomy and right of refusal. But if your are running a Saga and everyone is in on the Ride of Doom, this is a feature of the game, not a bug.

BONUS QUESTION - What if we replaced Amulets of allegiance with Brands of sacrifice? Imagine a character with the Sigil of Chaos (or Law) carved into their flesh, bleeding whenever danger approached.

Food for thought.

Farflung RPG ‘March Madness’ Blogwalk Days 26 and 27

I realize that by calling this blog challenge ‘Non-D&D’ I am conversely attesting to what a huge footprint that game has left on the hobby. It is close to being a proprietary eponym like “Let’s Google it.” “Let’s D&D” is understood to mean roleplaying, and does not always mean TSR’s game.

Therefore I think for the last week of this challenge I won’t be acknowledging D&D in the title. Once again, I don’t hate D&D, I just would rather give the nod to other great games without constantly harkening back to Gary’s game.

Anyway, on with the show!

Other blogs can be found HERE. It is over a dozen now, so I am pretty happy with that.

The questions can be found HERE. They’ve proven not to be perfect, but they are stimulating some good discussions and sharing of experiences.

26 What RPG based on an IP did you enjoy most? Give details.

For official products, I’d have to say my old first love Stormbringer was the most fun I had with an IP product. The wonky chargen, the deadly combat, the demon summoning just screamed Elric to me, and was a welcome relief from the intricate spells and level grinding of Gary’s game. Second runner up would be The Watchmen sourcebook for the DC RPG. Although I never got to play it, it was one finely crafted product, and any fan of the comics would be proud to have it on their shelf. It has even inspired me to write a Watchmen scenario explaining why the Keene Act was proposed, one that I hope to put on this blog someday.

Although it is not an official, licensed Walking Dead product, I’d have to give mention to Kreg Mosier’s The Dead again. Whereas DC was not a great fit for the gritty world of Watchmen, The Dead nails its subject matter in terms of fear and character interaction. Grab it if you haven’t already.

27 What IP (=Intellectual Property, be it book, movie or comic) that doesn’t have an RPG deserves it? Why?

Wow, tough question. I think just about all of my itches have been scratched – Stormbringer, Star Wars, TMNT, Watchmen, Robotech, Firefly, and The Dead allow me to play in the gameworlds that are most alive to me because of their sources. I suppose the only IP missing would be Kentaro Miura’s Berserk, a great dark fantasy manga series about Gotts, a maimed swordsman who goes about slaying demons let loose in the world by his old comrade-at-arms, Griffith, while trying also to save his lover, warrior-woman Casca, whose mind was savaged in the same mass demon summoning that destroyed Gotts’ right eye and left hand.

Berserk has spawned some PS games, an anime series, and a recent series of gorgeously animated movies. Some people are turned off by the preamble part of the story when Gotts is traveling with Griffith and Casca before the summoning, but stick with it and the intricate art, amazeballs fantasy action, and philosophic meanderings pay off in spades. Dark Horse apparently does an English version, but the Japanese original is at the same time amazingly well-written but done in an archaic style that fits the genre but requires some work to understand.