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Elric beats Conan in soul-stealing smackdown

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There Will Be Games

In all my recent harrumphing about Age of Conan, I forgot to mention the game that's my point of comparison, Chaosium's Elric (also based on a series of heroic fantasy stories, in this case written by Michael Moorcock). While hardly a perfect game, Elric did a much better job of fitting the individual hero into the context of the bigger game.

 Much like Age of Conan, the players in Elric take the role of battling nations. (If you're not familiar with the Elric series, the great powers of the "Young Kingdoms" are various human nations that have recently thrown off the yoke of the Melniboneans, a degenerate race that's somewhere between the elves of Lord of the Rings and the bored sybarites of Eyes Wide Shut.) While there's a scenario that pits the eponymous Elric, rogue emperor of Melnibone, against one of his chief antagonists, the wizard Theleb Ka'arna, the central game puts Elric in the background of the central story, war among the Young Kingdoms.

 Sticking with the spirit of the books, Elric is a potentially useful tool for the rulers of the Young Kingdoms. He's an immensely powerful hero, armed with the sorcery of ancient Melnibone, and Stormbringer, a demon bound into the form of a sword. Elric has his own agenda, however--as does Stormbringer, which Elric only partially controls. Every once in a while, Stormbringer decides the soul of one of Elric's current allies looks particularly tasty, takes control of Elric, and compels him plunge the runesword into the chest of that ally. Elric feels horror and regret, decides to run for the hills (a good idea, probably, in any case), and later pops up in a different part of the world. Another Young Kingdoms ruler then decides whether its worth the risk of trying to use Elric for his own ends.

The game doesn't have very complex mechanics for simulating this aspect of the Elric novels. Unlike Age of Conan, the heroic saga isn't grafted onto a game that's really about something else, war between the major powers of a well-respected fantasy setting. Given the pros and cons of recruiting Elric, you might easily pass on the opportunity of adding him to your army, given the risks to your other leaders that he represents. (Plus, there are plenty of other goodies to find in the map of the Young Kingdoms.)

The double-edged Elric mechanic provides just the right amount of flavor for fans of the stories, without getting in the way of the rest of the game. Many elements of Elric the game are more than a little random, such as the spells that devour entire armies and fleets. The randomness of Elric's arrival on the map, followed by Stormbringer's unfortunate episodes, makes the game veer that much more wildly. If you don't mind that sort of game (which in its own way is faithful to Moorcock's theme of the wild swings between the gods of Law and Chaos), then the Elric mechanic definitely works in a way that the drab draw generic tiles to simulate "Red Nails" mechanic does not work in Age of Conan.

There Will Be Games
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