Maelstrom (role-playing game)

Maelstrom is a role-playing game by Alexander Scott, originally published in 1984 by Puffin Books as a single soft cover book. Maelstrom was published under Puffin's Adventure Gamebooks banner, along with the Fighting Fantasy series, The Cretan Chronicles trilogy, and the Starlight Adventures series. Maelstrom was written while Scott was a teenager in school. The game is set in a 16th to 17th century British setting – the Tudor Period – although the rules can be adapted to other locations or time periods. Firearms (readily available in Europe at this time) are conspicuously absent from the setting, mentioned only in passing in the initial rulebook.

The Maelstrom book includes two adventures. There a solo gamebook adventure, intended to teach new players the rule of the game. There is also a second adventure for a referee and a group of players.

Maelstrom has been republished as a PDF in 2008 by Arion Games, under license from Puffin Books. Arion Games also published seven supplementary rulebooks and resources such as The Maelstrom Companion, the Beggars' Companion, and several modules and settings resources. These are all available for online purchase at RPGNow.com in PDF format (see external links, below). The Maelstrom Companion provides guidelines for the in-game purchase and use of period firearms, as well as new livings, rules for using alchemy in the game, and other developments. The book also provides rules for using the town of Bury St Edmunds in the year 1540 as a setting for Maelstrom campaigns.

Arion Games have also published adaptions of the Maelstrom rules for use in other settings. These include Maelstrom Classic Fantasy (2012), for use in a high fantasy quasi-medieval world; Maelstrom Domesday (2013), set in England after the Norman Conquest; Maelstrom Gothic (2017), set in Victorian England; and Maelstrom Rome (2019) set in the Roman Empire during the reign of the Emperor Claudius.