Did anyone here play it?  Did you give it a long go or just play a one-off session or two?  It was I recall just BRP, right?

Quote from: thedungeondelver;684803Did anyone here play it?  Did you give it a long go or just play a one-off session or two?  It was I recall just BRP, right?

I haven't played, but my brother did, as he had a big love of Elfquest.  

Yes, it's mostly just BRP.  Standard stats, slightly different array of skills, and magic points to power spells.  I've got a few copies at home.  It's not too hard to get your hands on it, really, and there were a few supplements with additional rules and background.

I have the boxed set but never played it as intended but I did use its bestiary. The big cat-snake monster (madcoil?) showed up in a few of our Stormbringer games as a chaos beast.

I played it some and liked it a lot. It's probably my second-favorite of the older BRP games, next to Stormbringer 1st edition.

What kind of magic system did ElfQuest use?  Something like the RQ system, or the one from Stormbringer (unlikely, I assume), or the one from Magic World?  Or was it its own thing?

(Wow... ElfQuest.  That whole thing -- comics, novels, and RPG -- seems so 1980s.)

Despite having been a huge ElfQuest fan (I remember waiting for the third and fourth TPBs to appear) the RPG never tempted me.
Not even the collector/completist in me. I don't know why.

And there was a time in my life when BRP (in the incarnations of AH's RQ3 and GW's Stormbringer HC) was among my favorite games.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;685954Despite having been a huge ElfQuest fan (I remember waiting for the third and fourth TPBs to appear) the RPG never tempted me.
Not even the collector/completist in me. I don't know why.

And there was a time in my life when BRP (in the incarnations of AH's RQ3 and GW's Stormbringer HC) was among my favorite games.

I remember reading a copy of the game when it first came out; a friend was complete ElfQuest fanatic and we were all dyed in the wool RQ and CoC players. My memory was of being appalled by just how over-complicated it was. If I remember correctly it had a whole lot of RQ3 mechanics in it just before RQ3 was released. Although we had been gearing up to play it as soon as we got it, we never even got round to rolling up PCs. Admittedly, I probably haven't looked at since some time in the 80s so maybe my view has mellowed.

There was that run of games from Superworld, ElfQuest and Ringworld and the whole RQ debacle which really soured me on Chaosium. We tried to play Superworld but it seemed to do everything worse than every other supers game out there. ElfQuest we pretended didn't exist. Ringworld, we got one session in before we found it basically unplayable. Looked lovely though.

Quote from: Akrasia;685906What kind of magic system did ElfQuest use?  Something like the RQ system, or the one from Stormbringer (unlikely, I assume), or the one from Magic World?  Or was it its own thing?

(Wow... ElfQuest.  That whole thing -- comics, novels, and RPG -- seems so 1980s.)

The magic system was essentially psychic powers, which (if I recall correctly) were rated on a percentile basis. They were closest in spirit to those from Magic World.

I raided them for the psychic power section in the big gold BRP book.

Quote from: deleriad;686019I remember reading a copy of the game when it first came out; a friend was complete ElfQuest fanatic and we were all dyed in the wool RQ and CoC players. My memory was of being appalled by just how over-complicated it was. If I remember correctly it had a whole lot of RQ3 mechanics in it just before RQ3 was released. Although we had been gearing up to play it as soon as we got it, we never even got round to rolling up PCs. Admittedly, I probably haven't looked at since some time in the 80s so maybe my view has mellowed.

You might take another look at it. It's actually about the same level of complexity as Elric!, much less crunchy than RQ2 or 3. It, like Elric!, are in the sweet spot for me along the complexity|simplicity scale.

Quote from: deleriad;686019There was that run of games from Superworld, ElfQuest and Ringworld and the whole RQ debacle which really soured me on Chaosium. We tried to play Superworld but it seemed to do everything worse than every other supers game out there. ElfQuest we pretended didn't exist. Ringworld, we got one session in before we found it basically unplayable. Looked lovely though.

I'm not much of a fan of RQ3, as well. I agree that Superworld was unplayable without the copious errata, and in my opinion, Ringworld's complexity was its biggest downfall. Plus, honestly, it was a nightmare to GM, considering the level of power available to player characters at the get-go.

To tie the thread back to Elfquest...

When we were playing Ringworld, one of the players caused untold misery for the rest of us by playing a dolphin character. It didn't occur to the GM to just say "no." So we were constantly having to work our way around the transportation issues caused by his character.

Then when we pulled out Elfquest, we had been playing a while and the player's elf character died. He looked at the Sea Elves sourcebook with hopes that he could create one of those, complete with dolphin mount, and the GM finally said "no!"

Quote from: jdurall;686084Then when we pulled out Elfquest, we had been playing a while and the player's elf character died. He looked at the Sea Elves sourcebook with hopes that he could create one of those, complete with dolphin mount, and the GM finally said "no!"

Every group must have a dolphin boy. Ringworld fell to pieces on the back of the luck rules for us. One guy (Elfquest happen as it happens) managed to end up with POW 33. It was all downhill from there.

Just went digging for reviews of Elfquest and found Sandy Peterson's comments on rpggeek. My teenage self is feeling vindicated now.

Quote from: deleriad;686108Just went digging for reviews of Elfquest and found Sandy Peterson's comments on rpggeek. My teenage self is feeling vindicated now.

Do you have a link? I'd love to see that.

Quote from: jdurall;686121Do you have a link? I'd love to see that.

Here you go. http://rpggeek.com/thread/687987/what-went-wrong-with-elfquest-one-of-the-authors-c

This is mind boggling:

QuoteWe met with them, and it took a while to get Wendy on board. She REALLY didn't "get" roleplaying. When she heard that gamers would be allowed to change her storylines, and interact with, or even marry or kill her characters, she reacted very negatively. We explained the situation and eventually she understood. I think. Richard certainly got the picture from early on, and he helped soothe her. Now I look back and it is pretty funny. I suspect what was happening was that she was looking at roleplaying as if it was a film version or something of her works, and she wanted it to remain pristine.

...all of the stuff I'd read about the Pinis (and I read a lot as I was an insufferable EQ geek when I was a kid) implied that they were really uber-nerds (in a good way), Mrs. Pini did cosplay, for example.  She didn't understand RPGs?  Wow, that kind of floors me.  I mean, joe-person-off-the-street I could understand, but them?

Quote from: thedungeondelver;686186This is mind boggling:

...all of the stuff I'd read about the Pinis (and I read a lot as I was an insufferable EQ geek when I was a kid) implied that they were really uber-nerds (in a good way), Mrs. Pini did cosplay, for example.  She didn't understand RPGs?  Wow, that kind of floors me.  I mean, joe-person-off-the-street I could understand, but them?

Well, this was 30 years ago.  Rumor has it that J. K. Rowling reacted in a similar way to suggestions for a Harry Potter RPG.

(This reminds me.  The Pinis showed up as judges on a recent episode of 'Heroes of Cosplay'.)

Quote from: thedungeondelver;686186This is mind boggling:



...all of the stuff I'd read about the Pinis (and I read a lot as I was an insufferable EQ geek when I was a kid) implied that they were really uber-nerds (in a good way), Mrs. Pini did cosplay, for example.  She didn't understand RPGs?  Wow, that kind of floors me.  I mean, joe-person-off-the-street I could understand, but them?

IMO Power Word: Paycheck was not cast properly.



At the same time, they got the licence...what else did they want from the author? A kiss on the cheek?