Akrasia,

Thanks for the excellent overview. I've never quite understood, though, why Stormbringer and Elric! were so different. Aren't they modeling the same source material?

Quote from: Garnfellow;393106Akrasia,

Thanks for the excellent overview. I've never quite understood, though, why Stormbringer and Elric! were so different. Aren't they modeling the same source material?

Since both versions are based on BRP, they do share the same foundation.  Lean Elric! and it should be easy to pick up Stormbringer, and vice versa.

The main differences concern (a) character generation and (b) magic.  The other differences are minor (e.g., Elric! uses one skill for both attacks and parries, whereas Stormbringer treats them as separate skills).  However, difference (b) is pretty significant.

I'm not sure why Elric! broke so strongly from earlier versions of the game (Stormbringer 1e - 3e are all the same system, and 4e is very close).  

The authors are different, of course, so I guess that the Elric! authors (Willis & Watts) just had a different interpretation of the setting than the earlier authors (Perrin & St.Andre).  

I speculate that Elric! was written after Chaosium had finally decided to abandon RuneQuest, and thus they wanted to purge their remaining BRP games of any 'RQ-isms' (or references to RQ).  But that's just speculation on my part, and would not explain the different magic systems.