Day One: Maelstrom

Welcome to our first RPG - we're looking at Maelstrom! 

Maelstrom is a game about adventures in Elizabethan England. Released in 1984 by Puffin Books, it was published as part of the Gamebooks line, alongside the better-known Fighting Fantasy books. It's very grounded, with lots of realistic, working-class characters. There's a very few fantastic options: characters can learn Magick, which is extremely difficult to use, and there's a short section about supernatural encounters. (I believe this gets more focus in a modern edition set in earlier times, where you become the X-Files for William the Conqueror!) The book also includes a pick-a-path adventure for an Assassin character, a short adventure where you travel from St. Albans to London, and a detailed guide to herbs. 

The game system seems derived from Runequest (like many other games later in this series!) It uses percentile dice to resolve tests, and characters can improve their skills during the game as they use their skills. Injuries are nasty and take a long time to heal. Magick is extremely difficult to use: it requires a Knowledge roll and one to five Will rolls, depending on how improbable the effect is. 

Character Creation

Here's my sample character, with the amazing and improbable name of Gonerill Starveling (thanks www.fantasynamegenerators.com!) Characters start with a 30 in all skills, and have 50 more points to allocate. This means that Gonerill has very bad odds at everything! You then choose one of twelve different careers (although many of them have further sub-divisions.) I decided that Gonerill would be a Mage, which is the only career which requires you to take another career first. I picked randomly, and so Gonerill is a wood-carver. Careers add to your age, and give you special abilities and starting equipment. Gonerill's abilities are the protection of a guild, and the ability to find work where a skilled craftsperson would be welcome. I imagine that she lives near London, and travels around to do work for rich patrons. She's able to disguise her Magickal activities through her semi-itinerant lifestyle, and her magick staff is disguised amongst her wood-carving equipment. 

Final Thoughts

Maelstrom has always been a curiosity to me. It just seems like it wouldn't be much fun to actually play, and I've never been sure what you'd do in it. The sample adventure is sort of dull. But strangely, the whole thing becomes so mundane that it becomes sort of fascinating - a game where you can have an 'adventuring party' of mercers and tanners and tinkers, who wander around having mundane, down-to-earth experiences.