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ELotH : The Furnishing

First published in March 1998, ELotH : The Furnishing is a tabletop roleplaying game system around the enormously successful Epic Legends of the Hierarchs brand created by Realmworlds Publishing.

The first edition took the form of a 220 page large format paperback the binding of which lacked any durability whatsoever. Published by Elemenstors of the Peninsula (EotP), it spared every possible expense in filling the book with mediocre fantasy art and large extracts from various ELotH novels to which EotP owned the rights.

The game system itself was designed by the then highly non-famous Mark Danube-Splathagen and his team of no dedicated playtesters. Despite his knowing little of ELoTH canon and even less about roleplaying system design, the game was a huge cult success. Critics ascribed this success to three main factors:

• Elemenstors are fundamentally way cool. Who doesn't want to be one?
• Mediocre fantasy art frequently depicts scantily clad females.
• A roleplaying nerd and his money are easily parted.

The game's background was taken from The Savage Brutality Of The War Men. This was an excellent decision since it enabled players to focus on mashing enemies into a pulp without worrying unduly about character motivations, the details of the world's rich cultural background or any of that other tedious stuff.

The second edition of the game, released in December of the same year represented a huge step forward and is still played today by some beardy types who are really too old for roleplaying games. This time the rulebook was a glossy hardback of some 320 pages, illustrated by the finest fantasy artists of the day. And yet - fortunately for fans of the game - the same cheesy themes still prevailed, the art was still mostly nubile girls and the pages still fell out of the binding after a few months.

The game left a real mark on the history of roleplaying. Perhaps most importantly in retrospect it popularised roleplaying amongst female gamers who loved the home improvements angle represented by the game's animated furniture.

Despite its success the game was not without its critics. Ironically, some of the fiercest critics were ELotH fans themselves. Particular points of contention were:

• In ELotH canon the High Priestess Phyllana sacrificed her own life to defeat Gr'z'tok. In ELotH : The Furnishing it was relatively straightforward for any well equipped party of player characters to take him down. Indeed, it became something of an in-joke amongst gamers that a battle wasn't really a battle unless it ended with Gr'z'tok being defeated again.
• The system of critical fails for skill tests was considered to be somewhat weak. For example, if you rolled a critical fail whilst attempting to insult someone then your head would explode from your shoulders and land 2D6 yards away in a random direction.
• The experience system was felt my some to be overpowered. In some cases it would be possible for a character to have no magical abilities when he woke up in the morning and be able to summon a firebreathing Edwardian three-piece suite before bedtime that evening.
• The NPC list in the back of the rulebooks contains stats for Lord Hopebane, Harbinger Portent, Lord Kinlo, MooMaa, Shezdor and many others from completely different time periods. This encourages the running of horribly anachronistic adventures (which may or may not handwave about Temporal Elemenstation in an effort to explain away the blatant nonsense).

It is rumoured that ELotH Online: The Bloodrage Chronicle draws some of its elements (no pun intended) from ELotH : The Furnishing. Certainly it is true to say that many of the staff at Sculptured Software Inc are beardy types who are really too old for roleplaying games, but still play ELotH : The Furnishing on a weekly basis.

Controversy

The game and its rival, the ELotH: TES - Pen and Paper RPG, were printed nearly simultaneously. The main reason why is because Tycho Brahe was in the midst of his infamous tizzy and forgot about the first when he liscensed the second.

Various opinions are held as to which game is better; while The Furnishing sold more and is generally more popular, fans of the original claimed the system was better suited to ELOTHTES because it emulated the dramatic tropes of the series, wheras The Furnishing was a bare-bones adaptation to a premade system. Others claim the original game was too baroque and oddly unbalanced, and also had too many supplements to keep up with. No conclusion has been reached, but many amusing fistfights are had at conventions.