Is a new Elric TTRPG on the way?

If you are a fan of Michael Moorcock’s Elric you may soon be finding a new tabletop roleplaying game exploring Melnibone and the Young Kingdoms heading your way.

Goodman Games made an announcement at Dungeon Con over the weekend that they now hold the Elric! license. Not much else is known about their intentions at this stage but they have previously published Dungeon Crawl Classics settings and series of adventures for other classic fantasy series that inspired Gary Gygax and co to create Dungeons & Dragons and start the tabletop roleplaying game hobby.

Goodman Games supports DCC RPG with adventures, settings, yearbooks, and sourcebooks based on Appendix N authors. Goodman Games has released over 40 adventures for DCC RPG, and more are in the pipeline.

Having already published Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar, based on Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser sword-and sorcery series , Dungeon Crawl Classics Dying Earth, based on Jack Vance’s fantasy series, and also Empire of the East, based on the books by Fred Saberhagen, adding Michael Moorcock’s Elric to their portfolio seems an excellent next move.

Whilst little is known, at present, about what the license entails it is believed to cover the first six books in the Elric series. If, as expected, Goodman Games release Elric as a tabletop roleplaying game it will be the third time the series has been an English-language TTRPG, having first been published using the Basic Roleplay System (BRP) by Chaosium in 1981 with their Stormbringer RPG and then in 2007 using the RuneQuest system by Mongoose Publishing with their Elric of Melnibone series. Elric’s first TTRPG appearence was in the first edition of TSR’s 1980 Deities & Demigods for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons before being removed in subsequent reprints due to some licensing issues.

Elric first appeared in print in Moorcock’s 1961 novella The Dreaming City and has been the subject of dozens of novels, novellas, comics, and Hawkwind songs (who Moorcock collaborated with on a number of occasions). The series also inspired a number of other bands, most notably British classic rock band Deep Purple and US band Blue Oyster Cult, the latter of whom Moorcock also co-wrote the song Black Blade with, about the sword Stormbringer.

Image courtesy of Chaosium from their 1993 Elric Rulebook.