D&D General Official Elric of Melniboné TTRPG coming from Goodman Games

Michael Moorcock's Elric of Melniboné is getting an official tabletop roleplaying game courtesy of Goodman Games. The game will be powered both by the D&D 5E game engine, as well as Goodman's in-house Dungeon Crawl Classics.

A whole line of products is planned, under the banner The Classic Era of Elric, and will be crowdfunded in 2027.

Elric of Melniboné is a classic sword and sorcery character dating back to the 1960s, featuring in a series of stories by Michael Moorcock. The titular character, a summoner, is physically weak and maintains his health using special herbs until he acquires Stormbringer, a magical sword which grnats him physical prowess, but which must feed on the souls of living beings.

 

[Parmandur]

Have we forgiven Goodman for the Invincible Overlord thing yet?

Nope.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I think that a lot of folks remember the BRP version fondly and maybe more on the fence about a level/XP version of the game. I read some of the stories and was floored by how much Gary and others had lifted and put in D&D.

Hard to overstate how much Appendix N was directly inserted into D&D. I was shocked the first time I read early Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser. It's good that TSR had a good relationship with Leiber, because he had, IMO, an actionable amount of stuff in D&D.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Backerkit is....aggressive in its outreach.

"Oh, you looked at one of our pages once? Great news, your grandchildren will continue to get updates about a project you never actually backed, despite you telling us to stop multiple times and your kids eventually switching to a new email address and even faking their own deaths to try to shake us. Your college's alumni association only wishes it was as dogged as we are."

 

[Joshua Randall]

Typo “grnats” instead of “grants” Elric power.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For folks who haven't forgiven Joseph Goodman for going back on working with the Bledsaws, there's the Black Sword Hack.

Black Sword Hack – Ultimate Chaos Edition – The Merry Mushmen

www.themerrymushmen.com

 

[JDR]

That's too bad considering their support of Judge's Guild and the Bledsaws.

I thought that they were going to "make good" for the backers of the failed Kickstarter (a good thing IMO) and the Bledsaws were not going to profit from it - or did that change?

 

[Argyle King]

Dragonlords of Melinbone was one of the worst D20 conversions that era released. So. bad.

Hopefully this is a step up from that drek.

I think it will be.

Given the timeline, I'm curious if there will be any crossover between what Goodman Games does for Elric and the DCC starter boxes that were mentioned on YouTube a few months ago. The announcement is around the 2:20 mark in the following video:


Either way, it seems likely that there will be a boxed set. Both Lankhmar and Dying Earth had boxed sets.

 

[EthanSental]

Nope.

Me either and I appreciate Whizbang for that link to the black sword hack to check out.

 

[...m...]

...ye gads, just look at the appendix N material goodman's published for DCC: dying earth, lankhmar, elric, empire of the east...

 

[Voadam]

Not me. Never knew this existed until today.

Most of my focus during d20 was collecting non-spell slot magic systems. Was this one of them?

My 20+ years on recollection is there was a little bit of a system about binding demons into items to make magic items.

I also remember there was some system weirdness in stuff (can't remember if it was in the magic or monsters) that was not fully converted from BRP to d20 so it did not work mechanically as written. Something about using the Power score I think.