Monday, March 17, 2025

OSR Commentary On Demon Magic: The Second Stormbringer Companion By Larry DiTillio (Author) For The Stormbringer rpg

 "DEMON MAGIC is the second companion for Stormbringer, the roleplaying game of action and adventure in the Young Kingdoms. Authorized by fantasy author Michael Moorcock, DEMON MAGIC includes all necessary statistics, maps, and plans, and contains many original illustrations. Among its contents are: * The Velvet Circle: a scenario in seven chapters, which takes many sessions of play to conclude. The adventure includes a complete red-light district, with business notes and a plan of the Circle. * Sorcerer's Isle: a shorter, more intense scenario to fill one or two evenings. * Runes of Rathdor: analyzes and describes the properties of six magical runes discovered during the reign of the 42nd Emperor of Melnibone. * Sanity for Stormbringer: introduces the optional characteristic of SAN into Young Kingdoms play. * Six new creatures, six nationalities, seven new Demon abilities, and five new magic items."























Demon Magic: The Second Stormbringer Companion By Larry DiTillio  is in my humble  one of the better supplements for the first edition Stormbringer rpg. Why?! Well according to the 2018 Amazon review by Erik Brickman; "I have since discovered, through endless hours of reading and re-reading it (plus other books made for this RPG) and also playing it with my friends, is that it has a wildly unbalanced and over-the-top ritual magic system, but in spite of it (or because of it) - it works!" ""Why?" you ask? Well, that is a little hard to describe. But I believe it has to do with the overall style that Chaosium's writers put into this and other material at the time. You hear a lot of praise for AD&D/D&D for the hobby these days, even to the degree that they put it in successful TV-series like Stranger Things. But what company have made it through all these years, and still is here to talk about it? Chaosium! Back in the day when these kind of supplements were produced, they implemented a certain sort of composition that made the Gamemaster who wanted to run them feel that the material was made in the style of the atmosphere of the source books (Elric-books by Moorcock). And still make it blend with the BRP system, or Basic Roleplaying." See this is a completely different feel then say Advanced Dungeons & Dragons where the DM is trying to blend the rpg material to their own campaigns. The DM is blending their campaigns to the Stormbringer universe and material. This was especially true for us and the Hawkmoon rpg supplement. 




















Which was accurately described Hawkmoon  by Rpg Geek user pestigor as; 'Gamma World with with Law and Chaos...in the universe of the Eternal Champion using the tried and true Chaosium system...AWESOME!"  And this supplement tied back into Demon Magic through it's use of realms of Law & Chaos having detrimental effects on technology, & magic as these forces play marry havoc with the PC's magic items. This played a key point in visiting both the planes of the mini campaign 'The Velvet Circle' which was a key point of adventure within the Demon Magic supplement. Was Demon Magic balanced?! Hell no! But it did work when it came to setting the Stormbringer mythic feel into the rpg.

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