The theology is left unstated but they are clearly priests of a Christian sort appropriate to the time period (as far as I can see any conflict between Catholics and Protestants is left unnoted though). Priests are not clerics for some generic Christian God stand-in nor an odd combo of pagan polytheism and Christian monotheism. The magic system I find really interesting. No firearms rules is a strange oversight, perhaps Penguin wasn't comfortsble publishing a game with firearms in it under their children's line? But then one of the Livings available is assasin and you even play one in the solo adventure! 'Historical Authentic' in 1984! It is all rather lightly sketched in here, mostly communicated in the Livings section and the solo and group sample adventures. The setting btw is a semi-historical 16th century Tudor England. Here though it is very flavourful and evocative of the setting. Herbalism is surpringly detailed but quite elegant system, obviously it must have been a pet interest of Alexander Scott, like Gygax's love of polearms. The Livings systems similarities to the careers in WFRP are much more surprising, must have been something in the air in the UK where people wanted to be able to play beggars! One can be a variety of merchant, street vendor, noble, etc as well as the more conventional rogue, priest, mage, mercenary.īut to me the most distinctive elements in Maelstrom is the much-noted herbalism system and the approach to magic. Pretty much everything in the game is built around 'saving throws' based on attributes. Although once your Endurance reaches zero you pass out instead of dying. The combat system, particularly if you use the optional serious wound and critical tables, looks pretty lethal. In some ways Maelstrom's simplified combat system is what I expected to find in RQ2 when coming to it first from CoC. I wonder if Runequest was the direct influence on the percentile system in Maelstrom. ![]() The blog discusses the similarities between Malestrom and WFRP 1E and just recently having read that rules set I have to agree that they are striking. That a 16-17 year old could do this so well in 1984, admitedly with the help no doubt of a Penguin editor, is kind of amazing when you look at the mess that the 0e and 1e D&D rule books are. The rules, explanation of how a RPG works and advice to players and GM are all laid out in a clear and concise manner. Just finished reading it last night.įirstly, the author Alexander Scott was just 16 when he started to write this book for Penguin. After reading this blog post about this mini-rpg published by Puffin, Penguin's children's line, I ordered a used copy online from the UK for a reasonable price.
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