Melnibone: Dragon Isle and Dreaming City

Rating:
Summary: An essential supplement for the Elric! game
Review: This book is the Melnibonean supplement for Chaosium's Elric! roleplaying game, covering the history, geography, cities, magic, culture and peoples of the Dragon Isle. Especially useful is the in-depth descriptions and hints on playing Melnibonean characters (which is probably a staple fantasy of any Moorcock fan). The famous personalities of Melnibone are also discussed in more detail than the small sample in the main Elric! rulebook. In the last section of the book are three excellent short adventures to introduce the players to Melnibone. The first of the three, 'The Suffer Glass', captures the tone of Moorcock's novels especially well and is better than most of the gaming books published as individual adventures.

The writers have done a fine job of expanding seamlessly on the brief paragraphs describing Melnibone of Michael Moorcock's Elric books. This books provide an entertaining read for fans of the Elric series even if you don't actually rolegame since the book is light on game rules and heavy on descriptions. The only (minor) issues are the lack of detailed maps of the Dreaming City of Imrryr and some of the illustrations are not particularly inspired.