Based on the Elric of Melniboné books by Michael Moorcock, this is the fifth edition of the game originally titled Stormbringer.

[1] As RPG historian Stu Horvath noted in his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, the world's oncoming doom and the ability to create pacts with dark forces to become unstoppable and invulnerable "seduces players by offering a way around the randomness that so often frustrates their ambitions and, in giving them that power, sets their fate and damns them.

What matter such details as honour or nationalism, when in less than ten years the entire world will be one seething, shapeless seas?

Designers Lynn Willis, Richard Watts, Mark Morrison, Jimmie W. Pursell Jr., Sam Shirley, and Joshua Shaw substantially revised the entire game, adding additional material from several older game supplements that were no longer in print.

Game historian Shannon Appelcline noted that Chaosium began creating significant role-playing systems for the first time in nearly a decade, commenting, "The first was Elric!

It also downplayed demons and increased the role of common magic — perhaps making it more accessible, particularly in Middle America.

"[5] In Issue 79 of the French games magazine Casus Belli, Tristan Lhomme called Elric!

Lhomme thought that the revision of the rules was needed, writing, "the Stormbringer system was ten years old and had aged quite badly.

Lhomme thought that the game's strength was its "fluid and officient" system, but that the writing was often too dense and the rulebook suffered from a lack of illustrations.

Not only must you balance the players' freedom with the direction of your plot, you must also ensure that the game's overall mood and atmosphere are dark without being claustrophobic."