CAMPAIGN BACKGROUND

1) Resources List
These were useful in writing these scenarios. Abbreviations for these wondrous tomes are given in brackets. Stormbringer 3rd Edition rules (SB3) - for the core rules AD&D 1st Edition Lankhmar source book - for a few maps and floorplans WFRP Original GW edition (WFRP) - for a few maps, floorplans and background Other Skills List (OSL) - Drawn from several sources and adapted to SB3 Chaosium Stormbringer White Wolf Supplement (WWS) - for the Ship Combat rules Chaosium Stormbringer Demon Magic Supplement (DMS) - for the Sanity rules and the magical Runes of Rathdor

These sources are not compulsory for running this campaign, although SB3 would be highly useful. Almost any Basic Roleplaying rule book could be used with minor adjustments to stats and skills. This includes Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, the BRP rules (the Big Gold Book or BGB), and any of the Stormbringer/Elric ranges. NOTE: the campaign was set up to paint the Pan Tangians as the bad guys from the get go.

2) Personal Introduction
This is a world-spanning Stormbringer campaign, designed to take PCs from (let's face it) wherever they started, to being part of the End of the World. Given such a wide ranging scale, it might be best if I explained myself a bit. Over the years I have read a lot of fantasy and scifi literature: Conan, LotR, Michael Moorcock (Elric, Hawkmoon, Jerry Cornelius, Dancers at the End of Time), Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, the Belgariad and so on. I've read Tom Clancy and James Ellroy and a number of others. I played a lot of AD&D and ran Stormbringer, Cyberpunk, Vampire and others. While at college, I found the Chaosium/GW edition of Stormbringer 3rd Edition. This was COOL and was the first game I ever ran as a Game Master. The thing which makes this "work" is what Ken St. Andre wrote in the rules: the PCs should be independents, not tied to Elric's own story, and may hear canon-specific events as gossip, hearsay or legends in the background. This is a brilliant idea! I tried to take Mr St. Andre's ideas one step further and shamelessly borrowed from another scenario. An old RPG magazine called, I think, Adventures Unlimited, published a scenario for ICE MERP. In this scenario, a meteor had crashed into Middle Earth. Elrond had sent the PCs out to recover the molten iron from the crashed star. But a group of Dwarfs had found it first. The scenario meant the PCs had to find and negotiate or kill for this meteoric iron. How they did so would then "colour" the qualities of the iron. Longer term, and hidden from the PCs' view, was that the iron was to be used by Elvish smiths to reforge the shards of Narsil (creating Aragorn's sword, Anduril). The PCs' actions therefore had a long term effect on the War of the Ring. (Note: I think this is Middle Earth canon: even before the Fellowship met at Rivendell, Elrond had more than one team of adventurers in play at the time; in this scenario, the PCs are just one such team.)

So, taking Mr St. Andre's suggestions and the MERP scenario deep background into account, I asked myself the question: how could a team of Young Kingdoms PCs possibly help the Lords of the Higher Worlds bring about the End of the World? The scenarios presented here grew out of that idea. I hope you and your players enjoy them as much as my players did. Colin Brett