tonight’s random train of thought

[swan_tower]

Faffing around, putting off actually getting started again on work like I should, browsing the web, come across a mention of Wendy and Richard Pini, spend a moment imagining what I would say to them if I met them.

Remember that way back in the day, I bought the Elfquest RPG and made a bunch of characters, but never actually played the game; just sat around making up stories that more or less amounted to OC fanfic.

Probably a good thing we never actually played it. I think the game was Chaosium, and I don’t recall the system being really all that well-suited to the setting — not that I would have known the difference at the time.

Hmmm. What would be a good system for running an Elfquest game?

. . . no, I’m not actually planning on running such a thing. File this under “fun things to fiddle with,” like my hack of Cinematic Unisystem for Harry Potter or Mage: The Awakening for the Wheel of Time. (Or, um, Pathfinder for Dragon Age. Except I actually ran that one for a while.) But I open the floor to suggestions: what would you use for Elfquest? I personally have no idea, but I’m curious what other people might suggest.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[kathryn_scannell]

Assuming you didn't want to create a system tailored specifically to implement the magic of Elfquest, I'd be inclined to try a point-based system. My system of choice is Champions (4th or 5th edition - I haven't tried 6th and don't plan to), but GURPS would probably work well too. There's enough variation in Elfquest that I don't think it would lend itself at all to a class-based system. For an Elfquest game I'd probably create some house-rules with packages for the kind of magic/kind of elf so that the players could pick that, and then customize with extra skills and maybe a unique personal talent or two.

If you wanted something much lighter in rules mechanics, you could also try something like Fudge. You could probably even get it to work using a very light rules set like the one for Diana Warrior Princess (and if you haven't seen that rules set, you should go check it out - I literally laughed till I cried reaching the campaign background, and I think given your interest in history you'd find it just as funny as I did).

[swan_tower]

Yeah, I'm looking more for "hack" than "homebrew." Definitely would want a point-based system -- unless you make the tribes into classes, there's just no equivalent to fighter/rogue/etc.

Problem is, I detest GURPS. :-P Generic systems rarely interest me, even though I know they're supposed to be ideal for this kind of thing, where you need mechanics to use for a given story.

Diana Warrior Princess sounds fascinating all in its own right . . .

[kathryn_scannell]

I've never actually played GURPs. I mention it only because it's better known that Champions. :-) Champions was originally written for superhero settings, but people noticed it was expandable, and a couple of editions later it was repackaged as a generic system. I'm currently running a homebrew game based on the Liaden series by Lee and Miller (space opera, if you haven't read them) using Champions. We've also used it for a kind of mixed urban/high fantasy setting, 1920's pulp, and a setting much like the White Wolf RPG (because we kind of liked the concepts, but ended up tearing our hair over their game mechanics.)