OSR Commentary - Perils of the Young Kingdoms By Fred Behrendt, Geoff Gillan, Nick Hagger, Mark Morrison, Mike Syzmanski & Richard Watts For the Stormbringer Rpg

 "A thousand years ago a great war between the Dharzi and Melnibonean eliminated the ancient race of sorcerers from the Young Kingdoms, and established the Dragon Lords as masters of the world. Far to the north of Melniboneân the family of a lesser lord took the caverns of a tall, black island as their home, transforming the former laboratory of a Dharzi sorcerer into a magnificent abode." 

"Then, the Bright Empire began its inexorable decline, and the caverns were abandoned. Four hundred and fifty years have past, and something dark and vile now inhabits this isle, warping the natural order of living things and twisting their very beings into hideous monsters."

"Lord Straasha summons the adventurers to the coast of Tarkesh, bordering the frigid Pale Sea and the unholy domain of forbidden Pan Tang. Visions of bloody waves ceaselessly haunt their dreams, presaging a doom to come should the heroes fail to heed Straasha’s urgent call."

 Perils of the Young Kingdoms By Fred Behrendt, Geoff Gillan, Nick Hagger, Mark Morrison, Mike Syzmanski & Richard Watts For the Stormbringer Rpg has five scenarios that challenge and are set in unusual locations throughout the Young Kingdoms. 
 Back in '91 we slowly ran through these adventures with 6 PC deaths and one TPK directly lost in the Million Spheres. Alright, we slowly had a build up of slogging through the Young Kingdoms after having dealt with the Hawkmoon campaign setting. Perils of the Young Kingdom was a campaign adventure supplement that my uncle used to hype up the fact that the events of Elric's Young Kingdom were accelerating. 
Sorcerers & wizards from Pan Tang were playing with forces that were best left alone especially those ancient secrets of the Dharzi sorcerer's civilization & ruin. Perils ties into the fact that the old orders & powers of the Young Kingdom are declining. The back of the book describes this: "PERILS OF THE YOUNG KINGDOMS provides five independent adventures for the STORMBRlNGER roleplaying game. Each of these adventures explores places scattered across the world of the Young Kingdoms, revealing marvelous, mysterious, and treachous locales such as the Floating Realm, a Sargasso sea of ruined ships; the Link Machine, an engine of law which slowly mutates the winged Myrrhyn race; and a Chaos Storm, carrying the chaos pack of Queen Xiombarg, which hastens the appearice of the Infinite Cathedral of Gormweller the Cod Seller."

These adventures are location based enabling the DM to customize them as they want to their own Stormbringer rpg campaign and they are as follows:

• The Floating Realm by Michael Syzmanski
• The Myrrhn Link  by Fred Behrendt
• The Fang and the Fountain  by Richard Watts
• Stolen Moments  by Nick Hagger and
• The Man Who Sold Gods by Geoff Gillan.

 So in my mind Perils of the Young Kingdom is a mid tier Stormbringer campaign set of adventures for an ongoing campaign. This means that a DM doesn't have to suppress their Young Kingdom campaign setting. 'The Man Who Sold Gods' was an adventure that we used to lead deeply into a Corum rpg mini campaign. 

Coursing & Crawling - More Commentary On - Runequest Cities A Generic Role Playing Supplement

Now let's pick it up right back here on the blog with Runequest Cities.  But what makes Runequest Cities so damn useful for Sword & Sorcery OSR and BRP games?! When it comes to Stombringer Rpg cities, the Runequest fourth edition's Runequest Cities is an excellent resource and one that is especially useful when round out the Sword & Sorcery's Young Kingdom. Why?! Because between adventures there's a catch up system that allows Stormbringer & Elric adventurers to have events outside of the dungeon. Even in the description says so;" The Fourth Edition of the Cities supplement from Midkemia Press was brought into the Avalon Hill/Chaosium Runequest series as a generic sourcebook. This served as one of a number of AH Runequest supplements in their "Gateway" series, intended to broaden the RQ system beyond the Glorantha setting." 

"From the publisher:
RUNEQUEST CITIES: the natural arenas for fantasy roleplaying adventures, city events are the most interesting, city dungeons the deepest, city biways the darkest, city dangers the most invidious, city activities the most tempting, and city rewards the most fabulous.
A unique guide to urban possibility, RQ CITIES includes clear instructions, more than 60 tables, additional dozens of sub-tables, and many illustrations and silhouettes.

RUNEQUEST CITIES: Entertaining, systematic, indispensible.

• Challenging Encounters
• City Populating Procedures
• Character Catch-Up System" 

As I stated my own recent experience with Runequest Cities has been Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg. Where the PC's are between adventures and need to have experiences on thier own terms many of which have gotten rewoven through back play and the like into the Borderlands campaign that we've been doing on and off for years now. The Borderlands is rich with several Bronze Age civilizations and societies. And because of the very nature of Runequest Cities we were able to bring to life many of the lesser areas around the Borderlands to life as minor cities and the like. 
And the same was true with the Young Kingdoms there were minor kingdoms and road  side towns that needed to be fleshed out. And Runequest Cities was a God sent of a product. Many of the plethora of random tables allowed us to flesh out Sword & Sorcery cities without the need for other 'official D20' style supplements. This went hand and glove with many of the ideals that echoed in the aftermath of the D20 implosion.  

Because of it's very nature Runequest Cities is perfect for the Young Kingdoms allowing minor areas of The Sea Kings of the Purple Towns  & Perils of the Young Kingdoms to be filled in with living and thriving areas of vice and trouble across the board. 

Between Law & Chaos - More Thoughts on Corum Heroic Adventures Across The Five Planes 2001 By Darcsyde Productions For The Stormbringer rpg

 "A New World for Stormbringer

The balance between Chaos and Law has tipped. Barbarian hordes sweep across the land while civilization decays in doomed castles. Eldritch beasts terrorize the innocent. Arcane technologies are all but lost and foul Chaotic magic corrupts land and sea alike. In the age to come a cursed Prince will seek his destiny across this dying world. His path will be vengeance, his ultimate goal . . . to confront the gods themselves."

"In this supplement to the acclaimed roleplaying game Stormbringer you can adventure in a heroic fantasy setting based on the World of the Five Planes created by the master of fantasy, Michael Moorcock. You will confront the most bizarre monsters and foil the deadliest plots on this and other planes of the Multiverse as you battle to free yourself and your world from the machinations of the gods" 

If there was one campaign changing supplement for the Stormbringer rpg for our players this was it. Corum was published in 2001 & brought home the five planes and deadliest horrors of Chaos and Law.. yet. And what made it so damn deadly was the combination of the lands of Law & the adventure elements of Michael Moorcock's Corum mythology. According to the Corum wiki entry;"This trilogy consists of The Knight of the Swords (1971), The Queen of the Swords (1971), and The King of the Swords (1971). In the United Kingdom it has been collected as an omnibus edition titled Corum, Swords of Corum and most recently Corum: The Prince in the Scarlet Robe (vol. 30 of Orion's Fantasy Masterworks series). In the United States the first trilogy has been published as Corum: The Coming of Chaos." One of the things that makes the Corum Adventures Across the five planes work is the fact that not only does Corum work on the side of Law but that the game supplement brings some very neat magical options into the Stormbringer rpg. 

What Corum does is takes the myth of Elric and the Eternal Champion in new directions. The forces of Chaos work for the incredibly destructive side of mankind in the form of the "Mabden" (men) led by the savage Earl Glandyth-a-Krae. Adventuring on the fifteen planes presents its own obstacles and problems. The fact is that running afoul of the Mabden or thier armies can prove very dangerous. The Mabden are some of the most savage and dangerous examples of humanity in the Stormbringer rpg.
The Corum rpg brings home the fact that Law is as much a force for the greater good as is Chaos. The balance between the two depends on the equalibrium for the planes centered around these two metaphyiscal aspects. Our own adventures with Corum began with the the Storm of Chaos which carries the monstrous legions of Queen Xiombarg hastening the appearance of the Infinite Cathedral of Gormweller the God Seller from 1991's Perils of the Young Kingdom. The appearance of the Infinite Cathedral of Gormweller the God Seller marked our party's cross over into the world of the five planes and our first encounter with the Mabden. We lost four party members. But struck back against these armies after the defeat of Arioch on Corum's watch. 

Ultimately we would not encounter the Mabden until much later after aquiring our own scale craft. And we ran straight into a group of Mabden mercenaries working for a sorcerous foe of ours who was in league with the corrupt forces of Chaos from the five planes. 

Exeperiences In The Care & Handling of A Stormbringer first edition Campaign

 One of the advantages that Rogue Mistress allows a DM to do is to take an 'across the board' approach to thier campaigns. Want to bring in a PC from Hawkmoon's world? No problem. Want a barbarian from the lands north of Elric's Kingdom? No problem at all. 

I've seen comments describing Rogue Mistress as 'rail roadie incarnate' and to a certain extent that's true. Chad Bowser on Rpg Geek from '09 described it as thus; "A genre and 'verse spanning campaign. If your players are into it, this can be a lot of fun. The group really has to be up for anything, though."
And this is absolutely true. Why?! Because Stormbringer is designed for epic and mythological play. And that's no lie. 
The fact is that we thought that the game was better without Elric & Moonglum there to muck things up for our PC's. 
My biggest complaint has been the fact that many Americans have lumped the rpg in with the  Santanic panic'. I've run across people & player who think that the various demons and creatures of the game are 'real'. And during our gaming I got into two very real and dragged out fight with religious players who swore the 'demons' of Runequest and Stormbringer are real. Needless to say that we quickly ejected these two morons out of our campaigns. 
So let's go back to the fact that if we interlock the Rogue Mistress into the events of  Perils of the Young Kingdom. Then we've got an epic cycle that can circle into Sea Kings of the Purple Towns. 

What we did was to take the Stormbringer Companion #1 and the  fact that the companion actually had the Melnibonéan slaver & war ships within. These ships are capable of making even the most hardened adventurer quake within thier boots. 
And that's no joke none of our PC's wanted to end up in a drugged stupor serving on the Dreaming Isle or worse shackled to the end of a Pan Tangian chain. 

When the events of Rogue Mistress come around we were penniless and jumped at the chance to gain entry onboard the Mistress. Much later on we gained our own scale ship the Entropy Climber. That was much later on. All of these events looped back around after all of our PC's had died multiple times within Roge Trader. We had a couple of barbarian tribes men from Glorantha and Avalon Hill's Runequest third edition among our party. 
This was after a lucky break after we had been captured by a the Melnibonéan slaver ship. Only a lucky storm allowed us to escape. We had added two new players which would have been right around '04 just before meeting my wife from the U.K.. 
At it's heart is the fact that Rogue Mistress takes place around to key events one is the fact that the PC's are placed in dire circumstances and must complete the events. We didn't do that but were instead picked up by the Rogue Mistress and had a debt to Captain Maria De Pistola. And the second is the fact that the Mistress is a part of the world ending plot that drives Rogue Mistress. We didn't see the need to derail this plot and we were the group up for anything. And this was one of the secrets I think to running a solid Stormbringer rpg campaign. 
And Rogue Mistress events opened up our party for journeying to Corum's five realms. 

OSR Commentary - Rune Quest Cities A Generic Role Playing Supplement

 Let's pick it up from the other day here on the blog.  And now I mentioned yesterday to one of my players how I was shaping a Stormbringer campaign and we started talking about the game. He mentioned having a collection of early Chaosium material and mentioned that there was a book that I was going to need from 3rd edition Runequest. That book is Runequest Cities from 1988 is one of the best generic universal urban supplements ever. 

Rune Quest Cities is a solid sixty six pages of urban encounters and random tables that isn't simply useful for Runequest but game after game of Sword & Sorcery as well as fantasy. 
And it's all keyed with dice matrixes across the board. Rune Quest Cities is even useful for Cepheus Engine or old school Traveller where you need primitive or other Bronze age world encounters. And so it's incredibly useful for a game of Stormbringer or even another OSR game. 

And my most recent use with  Rune Quest Cities has been with Adventurer, Conqeuror, King.  Yes that's right Rune Quest Cities works very well with a late Roman Empire Style campaign. 
And this was around the time when I had quit D&D completely for about two years. D20 had taken over the entire spectrum of the market. And older players wanted something or anything besides 3.5 or even 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Our Stormbringer campaign had seven or at one point as many as ten players who rotated in and out of the game. 

The Care & Handling of A Stormbringer first edition Campaign

 "A thousand years ago a great war between the Dharzi and Melnibone eliminated the ancient race of sorcerers from the Young Kingdoms, and established the Dragon lords as masters of the world. Far to the north of Melnibone, the family of a lesser lord took the caverns of a tall, black island as their home, transforming the former laboratory of a Dharzi sorcerer into a magnificent abode."

"Then, the Bright Empire began its inexorable decline, and the caverns were abandoned. Four hundred and fifty years have past, and something dark and vile now inhabits this isle, warping the natural order of living things and twisting their very beings into hideous monsters."

"Lord Straasha summons the adventurers to the coast of Tarkesh, bordering the frigid Pale Sea and the unholy domain of forbidden Pan Tang. Visions of bloody waves ceaselessly haunt their dreams, presaging a doom to come should the heroes fail to heed Straasha's urgent call."
One of my all time adventures that I love to use to introduce the Stormbringer PC's into the world of Michael Moorcock's Corum has been 'The Man Who Sold Gods' By Geoff Gallian. The adventure centers around a prince from the realm of Corum; "RORN FELDUN HARAI is a Prince of the Vadagh, a fugitive from the World of the Fifteen Planes. He has come to the Young Kingdoms seeking military aid for his people. Centuries ago they left their native plane in their Sky City. Now they are unable to return, and are besieged by the forces of Xiombarg, Queen of the Swords. Prince Rorn’s quest has been in vain. The Melniboneans declined to assist him in any way. Now he only wishes to return home, but cannot find a way to." 
Eventually the PC's have to summon the 'infinite cathedral' & here's where we recently changed the adventure. And this element was the planar engine  within the cathedral over into an Entropy Configuration ala the Rogue Mistress. 
We did this after a Facebook comment and then to keep internal consistancy with the Stormbringer Rogue Mistress &  Corum book. Our own party had to face the machinations of many Chaos packs and thier handlers.  And this all takes place right after or before the events depicted in Sea Kings of the Purple Town. 

Yes I took this photo from Wayne's Elric/Stormbringer entry here. 

And this allows the campaign to maintain internal consistency. And this is something that we're looking to do coming up with our Stormbringer rpg campaign. The Corum sourcebook has such good material that it can be back drafted into 'The Man Who Sold Gods'. And this allows the DM to pick & choose what adventure elements wants. 

This all feeds into the internal campaign aspect something highlighted within the Rogue Mistress campaign. 

But why?! Well get into that coming up! 

Recollections of The Sea Kings of the Purple Town & Perils of the Young Kingdoms For The Stormbringer rpg

 "Between the Oldest Ocean and the Eastern Ocean lies the Isle of Purple Towns, the center of commerce and trade in the Young Kingdoms."

"Sailing into port, visitors are impressed with the magnificent buildings, the splendid markets, and friendly people. Few see the undercurrents, the dirty deals, and the politics which threaten to rip apart the apparent serenity of the island."


"The Isle of Purple Towns is a haven for adventurers, a safe port to count money and plan future deeds of daring. It lies literally in the middle of the world, and ships sail from Purple Towns ports to every other nation"

Way before Elric took the ruby throne there were other adventurers who strode the Young Kingdoms. Who were they?! They were your adventurers! So goes the premise for the Sea Kings of the Purple Town & Perils of the Young Kingdoms. 

 The Sea Kings of the Purple Town & Perils of the Young Kingdoms both had adventures that put the adventurers right in the heart of the Young Kingdom without Elric & Stormbringer. And this was an adventure element that allowed the PC's to shine. The other thing that these two book allowed the DM to do was too make the Young Kingdoms their own. 

And the divine regularly interacts with the mortal realms. There wasn't a day of the week when Law,Chaos or the elemental lords wasn't sticking thier noses into the collective business of  the adventurers. 
In 'Perils of the Young Kingdom the player's PC's are literally investigating an artifact left behind by the previous incarnation of the Young Kingdom's empire. And then in the same adventure book your solving mysteries for one of the most powerful elemental lords; "A thousand years ago a great war between the Dharzi and Melnibone eliminated the ancient race of sorcerers from the Young Kingdoms, and established the Dragon lords as masters of the world. Far to the north of Melnibone, the family of a lesser lord took the caverns of a tall, black island as their home, transforming the former laboratory of a Dharzi sorcerer into a magnificent abode."

"Then, the Bright Empire began its inexorable decline, and the caverns were abandoned. Four hundred and fifty years have past, and something dark and vile now inhabits this isle, warping the natural order of living things and twisting their very beings into hideous monsters".

"Lord Straasha summons the adventurers to the coast of Tarkesh, bordering the frigid Pale Sea and the unholy domain of forbidden Pan Tang. Visions of bloody waves ceaselessly haunt their dreams, presaging a doom to come should the heroes fail to heed Straasha's urgent call."

Sea Kings of the Purple Town literally gave the PC's one of the best base towns & kingdoms  in all of the fantasy rpg's. I've literally taken the Purple Towns and molded the Young Kingdoms around them. 

Even though none of the adventures in the Sea Kings of the Purple Town & Perils of the Young Kingdoms were balanced these were Chaosium's proving grounds for a ton of options that would later come to be incorporated into other editions of the Stormbringer rpg. Law, Chaos, and The Elemental Lords were always playing havoc with mortal's loves and lives in the Young Kingdom.  And the thing that I really miss about running Stormbringer was the way the game gave and took from player's PC's so readily. There's something to be said for the way that Stormbringer really handled itself. Man this was a game where Chaos almost always had the upperhand. And the PC's were almost always a hair's breath away from being Chaos spawn.