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Well I say "rulebook." What I actually meant was that someone had found the torn off cover of a copy of Apple Lane and we had to play it with tiny lumps of coal because were too poor for coal sacks. At the risk of going even further off topic. The first session was boxing day after getting the GW set of RQ2 on Christmas day. It was Gringle's pawnshop with family including grandparents. Somehow we thought the Listen skill meant you had to roll it to hear each other speak. After slightly too much sherry it was about 3 hours of people rolling dice and shouting "I can't hear you!" "who's that screaming?" "there's a dragon in the kitchen!?" and "does that mean I'm dead?"

Some months ago a dear friend of mine, coming from d&d/pathfinder, told me that he wanted to change game and I racomended Mythras. He was enthusiastic with the engine, and asked me to play as a master for him and some friends. It took some time to organize the play, expecially because he asked lots of friends to join, but finally this evening (=yesterday) they had a taste of the game with this adventure... and it was a blast! They enjoyed the adventure as much as I loved to be the GM. They loved the task resolution system and the story, which I agree it was great. If you're reading this message and you don't own this module: do yourself a favour and buy it. Totally worth it!

At the risk of escalating stories of just how bad we had it way back when... I started playing RuneQuest before we even owned the rules. This was in 1979 and I was 13. All we had was the original Apple Lane booklet. We had to take our nascent but avid experience with DnD and try to work out how to play from the stat blocks, but it was enough to get us hooked!

Coal sacks? He were lucky! We used to dream of coal sacks! We had it tough. We had to hand-chew our d100s out of old ox bones, and played our RQ in our 15 minute breaks from 26 hour shifts at t'pit face.

I don't really ignore anything written for Glorantha. If I were setting up a Gloranthan campaign I would be basing it in a part of the world I already know, which is mainly the Dragon Pass area, but that isn't because I dislike/disagree/hate/ignore the rest of the world. I don't have any problems with ducks, although I tend to portray them with only slight bits of humor. If I were a PC in a group where the GM used a Donald Duck voice and flapped his arms like wings while playing an NPC duck I probably wouldn't enjoy it. When we played through our Griffin Mountain campaign in the early 80s I had no problems with Jack O'Bears. They seemed no more or less silly than a number of creatures I had encountered in previous D&D games only a few years before (including Bugbears, which Jack O'Bears are based on). I like Dragonewts for a number of reasons and am happy to have them as NPCs because they specifically are unpredictable and I enjoy the speculation as to why they do things the way they do. I don't mind if people play the Lunars as X or Y, especially if I am playing in a one-shot scenario. I've enjoyed playing them as "The Romans in Life of Brian", playing them as Soviets more akin to the Hunt for Red October, (Hunt for Red Storm Season freeform) and also as they are in the Guide to Glorantha,, which is how I would probably use them in a campaign. All that said, I expect everybody to drop some aspects of Glorantha. There's SO MUCH written about Glorantha how could you agree with or like absolutely all of it. I'm not a personal fan of the Juggernaut (big rolling wheel) but all I do is just think "It's far away", not "erase it from the histories". Lastly, I don't play Morokanth as vegetarians (although I appreciate the humor of it) because to me it means they DID cheat in the contest. I'd prefer not to know if they cheated. I prefer the sense of the unknown surrounding it. I'm actually one of those irritating types that loved sitting in an "Ask Greg" seminar at a convention and was happy when he would answer with "I don't know" or "I haven't decided". I don't want to know what Charg is like while under the Ban, or who really won between Arkat/Gbaji, etc. I love Glorantha because of the ambiguity and the wide sweeping weirdness it contains.

That's up there with Neil Gow's (author of Duty and Honour, Beat to the Quarters) tales of playing Basic D&D sat on coal sacks in a shed in the North East, for gritty rpg origin stories

I don't know when the change to SIZ and INT was made. It was somewhere between RuneQuest 2 and 3, but quite possibly first appeared in one of the other stablemates. In fantasy games such as RQ, it does make sense, especially for SIZ. In RQ2, it was quite possible for a dwarf (SIZ 2D6 with an average of 7) to be larger than a human (3D6 with a minimum of 3). The smallest dwarves (SIZ of 2) were almost the same size as the smallest human. The smallest elves (SIZ 2D4+4 minimum of 6) were quite larger than the smallest humans (SIZ of 3). RQ3 made the smallest humans larger than an average dwarf, and larger than the smallest elves. In a game that doesn't have races smaller than humans, it perhaps doesn't make as much sense to have SIZ of 2D6+6. It is perhaps harder to justify the change to INT, other than very few players (yes I know some do exist) like to play truly moronic (INT 3) characters. Stupid ones, perhaps yes, but not ones with an INT that low. Also, by having the lower human INT range set at 8, it better allows scope for fantasy creatures that are really stupid (but still sentient). Perhaps (completely conjecture here), the reworking and emphasis of knockback in RQ3 made playable characters of very small size potentially problematic. Remember that paradoxically while RQ (the game system) was ground breaking in having monsters with the same full stats as the "player races" and thus potentially opening up a plethora of playing races, Glorantha is quite relatively opposed to this (with the notable exception of Trolls which seem to be a fan favourite) and mixed race adventuring parties seem to be less common in RQ than in D&D (where they are almost a staple). And yes I am aware that some people do play rogue dragonewts, newtlings, trollkin, baboons and even elves and dwarves, but far less frequently than in most other fantasy RPGs.

I just spontaneously have to express my sincerest happiness for the general usefulness and fast accessibility of the 7th Edition Quick-Start Rules booklet. I know it's not really fast of me, as it's been up for some years now, but THAT is what the gist of the BGB should be according to my taste. Light, only the core mechanics and lots of room to house rule the existing guide lines.

So... I made this a while ago and shared it with the exceedingly nice folks over on the Chaosium Discord, and they seemed to like it, so I figured I might as well share it here. I actually don't know where exactly I should post this so I'm guessing it's fine here, but please correct me if I'm wrong mods. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ MicroThulhu Characteristics: Strength (STR), dexterity (DEX), mind (MIND), and power (POW). Roll (3d6)x5 to determine each of your character’s characteristics. Other Stats: Hit Points (HP)= STR/5 Magic Points (MP)= POW/5 Sanity (SAN)= POW Skills: Athletics, communication, charm, fighting, firearms, investigation, knowledge, mythos, subterfuge, & wealth. Assign 70% to one, 60% to two, 50% to three, and 40% to the rest. The only exception to this rule is the mythos skill, which always begins at 0%. Any points gained in the mythos skill permanently lower the character’s SAN by an equal amount. Points in this skill can be gained by encountering a mythos entity for the first time or reading a mythos tome. Skill Checks: Roll 1d% equal to or less than the % value of the skill being used. A roll of 1 is always a success and 00 is always a failure. At the GM’s discretion, you may also perform a “characteristic check”, in which you roll against a characteristic’s value. Combat: A combat rounds goes in order of DEX (or DEX+50 if attacking with a firearm), from highest to lowest. Each combatant can move and attack once per round. To perform an attack, make a skill check with the fighting skill if in close combat, or the firearms skill, if in ranged combat. If fighting in close combat the target may attempt to counterattack against your attack, also rolling against their fighting skill. Whoever succeeds at the check and rolls lower than the other deals their weapon’s damage to the opponent. Combatants may also attempt to dodge incoming attacks from any range with an athletics skill check, taking no damage if they both succeed and roll lower than their attacker. You may also perform other types of skill checks in place of your character’s attack at the GM’s discretion. Sanity: When confronted by something very shocking, disturbing, or a thing of the mythos you must perform a skill check against your character's SAN. Failure results in your character permanently losing a number of SAN points that the GM deems appropriate relative to how disturbing the experience is and the GM gaining control over your character momentarily. Losing more than 5 SAN at once and failing a MIND characteristic check will result in your character gaining a permanent minor phobia or mania and going insane for the next 1d10 hours. If your character loses 1/5 or more of their SAN over the course of one hour they will become indefinitely insanity for 1d6 months and acquire a serious mental disorder. If your character reaches 0 Sanity then they are considered permanently insane. Magic: To cast a spell your character must know it, possess any required physical components, make a successful mythos skill check and POW characteristic check, and subtract the number of points from their MP listed in the spell’s description. Failing either the POW check or mythos check results in the spell working but having dire consequences for the caster. MP regenerates at a rate of 1pt. every hour. To learn a spell, your character must learn it from a mythos tome. This takes 1d6 days, a successful MIND characteristic test, an increase in the mythos skill, and potential SAN loss. Alternatively if the character can contact a great old one or outer god they can attempt to learn spells directly from them. Though this second process is extremely dangerous and difficult, with the risk of retribution from the being and massive SAN loss, the spell is learned instantly and automatically. Advancement: At the end of a scenario where you successfully used a skill, you may attempt to roll 1d% over the % value of the skill. If you successfully do, you may add 1d6% to it. The mythos skill cannot be increased this way.

I appreciate the input! Yeah, I think that option 2 does present a good combination of what I would call 'ease of use' and aligning with the presumed intention of the modern SIZ and INT ranges. I have to admit that I am also drawn to the 'wildness' of the earliest incarnations of the d100 system, though. Another concern of mine is how to incorporate modifications for non-human species, but I'll save that discussion for later posts. I did want to say that M-Space is a very inspirational set of rules, and I believe I've still got a copy of BRP Starships 2.2, back before you ported things to the Mythras Imperative. The issue with the game I ran was a mismatch between the player goals and the GM goals, and I'm responding to it by trying to get out and meet new people.

"Ahh...RuneQuest 3: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

For those who have insufficient ducks in your life, or insufficient Jannell Jaquays adventures, there’s a Kickstarter just for you. Simon Hibbs

I'd like to say I was one of the cool kids and RQ2 was my favourite, but it is RuneQuest 3. Oh the fun me and my mates had with that game. It was like being allowed to breathe after all the Gygaxian directives in AD&D and the training wheels of Moldvay's Red Box (we had yet to learn to say "sod it, this is my game I'll run it the way I want"). Also I jumped in with Games Workshop version, dutifully buying the basic slim volume first which I loved, because it was quick up and at 'em although I knew enough about RQ to know that I wanted the Advanced book as soon as I had saved up my paper round money for Divine Magic and Sorcery if nothing else. The Monster Book was next, because that made sense in a world of AD&D's PHB/DMG/MM Land of Ninja and Griffin Island were picked up in the great Games Workshop sale where pretty much all their RPGs (except their own lines which if memories serves me well lasted another 3-5 years,) were dumped in the sale bin, as part of their move to focus solely on miniatures. I always regret that Vikings never got the GW hardcover colour plates treatment. Not having Glorantha available, I spent my formative years GMing in worlds of my own devising. So despite knowing better, my RQ is a Generic Fantasy system. I didn't get round to using Glorantha until a good five years later when I used a good chunk of my student loan to buy all the Avalon Hill boxsets. That led to another ten years of my home game. Which by the end of it had lead to the stripped down system that would be the prototype of OpenQuest years later. I wouldn't go back to playing RQ3, Mythras is a fine inheritor in my opinion of that branch of RQ (the realisation of which makes me love it even more) but when I was originally designing OQ it was RQ3 I used as a reference, nicking a bit of RQ2's coolness an simplicity here and there. If you want to read more of me waxing on nostalgic about RuneQuest, I wrote this post on my blog Sorcerer Under the Mountain, a couple of years ago: RuneQuest and Me .

Istanbulletin #3[...continued...]Struggling under the weight of my luggage, I was searching for a place to stay. In any western port one will find all manner of hostels by the docks, but not here it seems. I eventually stumbled into what I thought initially was a tavern. The patrons were unsavoury in smell and unfriendly in demeanour, and I turned to depart, but alas, Lady Luck had departed me. I gathered from the gesticulations of the proprietor that I was obliged to him for a sale. I drank the contents of the small cup he gave me in an attempt to leave as quickly as possible. Swallowing the drink was like taking a hammer blow to the head. "Phouska" I was assured by the landlord, helping me to a stool and pouring me a second. "Phouska!" saluted the other patrons as they drained their cups. "Phouska…" I whimpered as I drank again, this time a mere sip. The flavour was vile, and the drink clawed its way straight into my head without leaving me anything to swallow. These Greeks – sorry, Romans -- must be tough indeed if this is what they drink.I was joined at my table by a lady. Any sense of scandal that I had at being in the company of an unrelated woman dissolved into the mental fog brought on by the phouska. I know now that the striped headscarf she wore was a sign that her favours were for sale; would that I had known it at the time!

RQ3. I started with RQ2 and it was good. Then I got RQ3 and it was so much better. Sure it wasn't so closely tied to Glorantha and wasn't well supported with quality supplements, but that isn't a flaw in the game system. Sure it's encumbrance and fatigue systems are clunky and seemed to demonstrate a lack of play testing but on the other hand: It is a true D100 system, not a pseudo one like RQ2. Hit locations in RQ2 were cool. But RQ3 with different tables for melee vs missile/magic makes so much more sense. The formal distinction between Pow and MP is great and makes the rules easier to understand. Siz and Int of 2D6+6 instead of 3D6 for humans is a good change (Siz more so than Int perhaps). Creatures having a Con of more than 3D6 is good. The skills bonus calculations is harder to do than RQ2 but is much more logical (and less D&D like). I never had a problem with it but I have talked with people who complained that the RQ2 Defence concept could get broken very easily. RQ3 Dodge is not perfect but I think is better than Defence. Sorcery is not well suited for Glorantha, but for those of us who played in other worlds, and with a bit of tweaking, it can be an awesome magic system, great for players who like to number crunch and plan ahead. Renaming Battle and Rune Magic to Spirit and Divine is in my opinion good. RQ2 is good. RQ3 is better. I hope RQG is the best.