Pete Nash

www.thedesignmechanism.com/products. It is the year 495. Saxons control Britain's east. Aelle, Guercha and Cerdic vie for supremacy in the kingdoms of Ceint, Anglia and Mierce. To the west and north the fractious Britons struggle to unite, their previous attempts betrayed by Vortigern and Uther's personal follies. Now, a new warlord emerges, guided by a druid: Uther's bastard, Arthur, bearer of Caledfwlch, the sword forged by Gorfannon. This is the Dark Ages. Blood soaked, treacherous, fraught. The new religion of Christianity bears down on the old pagan ways. New gods invade old lands. New warlords vie for new territories; old ones seek to even older scores. The war horns are sounding. Britain is rallying. Merlin collects the Thirteen Treasures and signals the start of the battle between the Red and White Dragons. Fetch your spear. Heft your shield. Prepare for war! Mythic Britain is a 360 page supplement for RuneQuest 6th edition set in Britain's Dark Ages. Taking a realistic approach to the period it is, nevertheless, a time of myth and magic as cultures clash and old ways are challenged. Play as a Celt or Saxon, spearman or druid, and help forge Britain's destiny. The book features a detailed setting and a seven scenario campaign involving Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, Gawain and many others. If you like Bernard Cornwell's Dark Ages tales, Robert Holdstock's Merlin Codex or even History Channel's Vikings, this is the RuneQuest supplement you've been waiting for.

If you ask your friends to support it, there's a better chance of the project succeeding.

Take a look over here... RuneQuest 6 in Spanish

Chaosium RQ had both Tusk Brothers (were-pigs) and more pertinently, the Morokanth. The latter being an sapient, bipedal tapir-like race which lack opposable thumbs on their crude hands. They originally had STR 3d6+6, CON 3d6 and SIZ 3d6+6, with DEX reduced to 2d6+3 reflecting a lack of manual dexterity and very poor weapon skills. Better still they herded and ate men (although only men reduced to animal intellect a bit like those in Planet of the Apes).

Practice! Try running a few small combats first and get used to how combat flows, before moving up to larger scale engagements. Once you get a feel for how quickly opponent's can be defeated without needing to dismember them, it won't be so intimidating. I also suggest using the Combat Tracking Sheet (page 446) or using status markers/labels if using figures. Hope that helps!

Against a 9mm at close range I suspect a single hardback copy of RQ6 would not stop the round... but TWO copies, I'm fairly certain would be more than ample protection! Edit: Picked at the post

Well, we have an additional 76 pages over Hero 5th Ed, and I think the quality of the RQ6 covers might add to stopping power. However, what it really comes down to is exactly how 'pulpy' the pages are. Whilst RQ6 is fashioned from a specially refined type of historical/S&S pulp, the Hero 5th Edition pages are the epitome of garden sink pulply goodness, doubling its thickness. So until someone shoots a copy full of small calibre lead, I'm pretty sure http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3Wmj46S5qo!

For the last two months the Design Mechanism has found itself in the rather pleasing situation of having sold out its entire first and second print runs of RuneQuest 6th Edition. We have been very fortunate that our customers have not only rated RQ6 very highly in reviews, but also spread the word amongst their gaming friends. Faced with the need to print a new batch of the core rules, we are pleased to announce that RuneQuest 6 is now available as a high quality, durable hardback. This latest print run includes all of the errata, the upgraded artwork funded by the Indiegogo fundraiser; and has been produced by the same company who printed our excellent Collector's Special Edition. For $60 you get a complete 456 page game including one of the most highly regarded combat systems in RPGs today, five different forms of magic with hundreds of abilities and spells, a comprehensive bestiary, Game Master advice and tons of additional extras, such as rules support for creating your own setting, cults, diseases and poisons, even traps. Anyone who held out, put off by the price of the softback, will find this edition excellent value for money. You can order directly from us at the Design Mechanism website (we will throw in the pdf for free), or locate it at your local game store.

Oh dear. I'm sorry to jump in, but this post has so many errors and misconceptions I'm going to have to join Simon and Tom to comment. Besides the point Simon made about RQ and BRP having to cover a greater range of real world periods, you really shouldn't ever try to make claims about Stormbringer armour. Its a game based on pure fantasy, created by a drug-addled, idea purloining author, and is subject to no more reality than its own need for a dramatic story! Er, not quite. Bronze can be hard, soft or a mixture of both depending on its alloy and how it is worked. Just because it is bronze it doesn't mean its immediately brittle, nor that it is more likely to shatter than iron. That can depend on the iron's purity, casting/forging temperature, whether it was tempered and a few other things. You are making sweeping statements. Utter rubbish, starting with the reasons Simon first mentioned. All armour is made to be 'just good enough' to face the weapons of its era. Pre-firearm body armour was never constructed to be bomb-proof and indestructible. Rather it is fashioned to be as thin and light as humanly possible whilst still saving your life; in effect it is ablative to the point that it is only supposed to last a single battle or lethal encounter. There is time enough to repair or patch damage after the fighting is over. The same thing holds with shields. Yes we have literary references to bronze panoply being thrust through by spears. However we also have archaeological remains which show steel armours being buggered too. What you seem to forget (or even know) is firstly that almost all historical mail is only ever made of iron (the softness allowing links to deform around a thrust, absorbing force and not shattering), and secondly the quality of steel used in plate armour and its hardness varies tremendously over the period of the 14-16th C. Most early steel is unhardened, full of slag and has a poor crystalline structure which makes it prone to weak spots or even tearing. The first historical artefact we have of a possibly case hardened helmet is the Pembridge Helm from about the mid Fourteenth Century, and it wasn't until the late Fifteenth Century we start to see consistent martensite structure and only then from harnesses made by select families of master armourers. Most of the stuff available was munitions-grade either over-hardened to become brittle or not hardened at all. So all plate armour, whether bronze, iron or steel utilised deflective surfaces for its primary defence. Yet even the top quality steel armours could still be punctured by polaxes, cracked or folded by great swords or simply bypassed by the concussive force of hammers and mauls. "Then Jacques de Lalaing, seeing how aggressive his adversary was, whirled the point of his polaxe around, and struck 3 blows on the eye-slits of Diego, one after another, in such a way that he was wounded in 3 places in the face...the first blow landed on his left brow, the second on the point of his forehead, and the third above the right eye." - Tournament in Valladolid 1447 Bear in mind that these tournaments were not intended to be to the death and thus they used specially rebated weapons as to not kill or maim their opponent. Tourney polaxes did not have especially sharp points, nor were they permitted to be long (the points that is). You are making another sweeping statement based upon shaky premises. The mass of bronze for example can vary between 7400 and 8900 kg/m3 depending on the alloy, whereas homogenised steel can be from 7400 to 8000 kg/m3. So in terms of weight they are very similar. As to hardness bronze can achieve a hardness of around 200-230 VPH when cold-worked (hammered). Mild steel (of which most of the early plate armour was manufactured from) can only achieve about 100 VPH. Whereas hot-worked, air cooled carbon steel (late 14-16th C munitions armour) averages 250 VPH. It is only the exclusive and very top quality martensite steel of the late 15th C (based on samples from Augsburg from 1480-1551) which reached between 240 and 441 VPH. So where you get the idea that a bronze greave should weigh three times its (undefined period) steel counterpart I have no idea. And just to broaden the areas where you might perform some further research, are you aware that in spite of its rarity and expense, the Romans continued to produce and use bronze helmets for legionaries, cavalrymen and gladiators up until at least the 3rd C AD, well after they industrialised the manufacture of iron and mild steel. None of which is borne out by the metallurgy or historical examples. You have obviously never tried to hack through wicker-work with a swung blade, nor penetrate it with a spear. They may be light, but provided it has not dried out from careless maintenance, wicker is a bitch to hew or thrust through. Even trying to cut through hide leather with a sword is near futile. Remember what I said about shields above, that they are expendable defensive devices which only have to last a single battle. Peoples who used these materials didn't do it because the only alternative was soggy toilet rolls, but because they actually worked! Amongst others the Aztecs, Incas and Pacific Islanders used stone weapons for centuries to great effect, and if not for the advent of disease, cannon and firearms would have continued to prove their effectiveness many times over in hand to hand combat. Stone in fact produces some of the most durable (and beautiful) weaponry known to history and they remain extremely effective. Since the hey-day of truly superior steel is less than a century in duration, compared to several thousand years of bronze superiority followed by half a dozen centuries of metallurgical parity I think you are being somewhat unfair. Most versions of BRP games cater to the Classical and Medieval ages, not the early Renaissance when hardened steel was actually produced for armour. I disagree. Weapons and top-of-the-line armour were in parity until the Renaissance when armour tech advanced so much it forced a similar spur in the development and adoption of great-weapons. Now you are just being bigoted. See Simon's list of early cultures, and add to that the empires of South America and Africa. Professional warrior classes and craftsmen have been in existence for at least as long as recorded history, if not longer. Ignoring the system mechanics fallacy, this frankly doesn't even deserve a response. Honestly Jadis, I think you should study the fields you are debating before throwing yourself into mechanical revisions. Not that you can't change whatever you want, feel free to tinker! But some of your ideas are poorly informed and if you are going to the effort of making things realistic, it behoves you to do more research first.

You are correct that some games do misuse it, but actually the OP's original point was specific to RuneQuest in particular, not games in general. RQ6's Athletics skill does include Running, Jumping and Throwing - with Climbing appended for skill conflation - so it actually represents the scope of athletics; and since this is clearly explained under the skill description, it should also qualify as accurate use of language. As you might know, Athletics in RQ6 is not used for "endurance and traveling terrain", that's what the Endurance skill is for. I think the real issue here is not that modern game design has evolved towards shorter, more inclusive skill lists for ease of running games and that some skills are conflated for good reason... but more that the OP has a mental hangup which associates the word 'Athletics' with modern track and field events and hi-tech sporting equipment; rather than viewing it as an ancient set of associated disciplines which were used for healthy recreation, often vicious no-holds barred competition (both at personal and religious levels), and eventually as preparation for war. It is little known nowadays, but the highest regarded athletes pursued and trained a balanced set of abilities, hence the origin of the Pentathlon. There is no support for Athletic Styles in the RQ6 RAW, but I could certainly add them into my Mythic Greece book, a setting which specifically lends itself to a greater focus on athletic sub-skills.

Not really. They are all fundamental physical abilities that most human beings are capable of, and those that practice one or more of them are generally better than average at the others. Can you specialise in them to noticeable excess? Yes of course, that is why we have a tiny minority of the world's population who can perform a bidoigt or swinging-lieback, or people who train for Olympic competition. However, do people normally specialise in one to the exclusion of the others? Rarely in modern life where we have time to pursue it, hardly ever in historical times where that sort of luxury doesn't exist - even ancient Greek and Roman athletes (beyond the daily health regimes at the baths or gymnasium) were sponsored. So for simplicity's sake, to prevent skill creep and to ensure (N)PCs have enough skill points to be vaguely competent, the three skills are conflated. Following your line of thought and musician joke, one can say the same thing about most of the skills. If we are going to be really anal about it why stop at just a Running skill? Surely we need Sprinting, Jogging, Marathon, and do I make Hurdling a separate skill or fold it under Jumping... Which then brings up the need for Long Jumping skill, High Jumping, Parachute Rolling and Roof Hopping. They are all quantifiable different types of action and in real life require specialised training to be any good at. Maybe to you. Sounds fine to me, and better defined than the more nebulous "Physical". Athletics is a universal term which fits a multitude of both historical settings and traditional fantasy without any problem. Indeed giving a classical monster a classically named skill sounds perfect to me! Then again mythology and history were fundamental as part of my British upbringing, early education and entertainments I pursued. Since you refer to Reeboks and Hotdogs as part of your expressed cognitive dissonance, I'm assuming they weren't for you. Anyway, silly rant is indeed silly. Its easy enough to just hive off the climbing skill, and rename Athletics to Physical if that helps you.

Economics, smelting techniques and physical coverage.

I'd love to take them off your hands Simon, to fill out my own treasured collection - but I'm not very flush at the moment. Send me a PM about how much you're seeking...

You wouldn't have, since they are my own delusional takes on deities mentioned in passing by CAS. But for the most part they are somewhat Dunsany-esque in their morally questionable, frivolous way. Monster Island is packed with alternative cults for animists, sorcerers and theists.

Really? The Monster Island product description should read as follows, which clearly indicates it contains an extensive bestiary... If you had done a search for Monster Island reviews you might have discovered this in-depth listing of the bestiary. The RQ6 core rules include an extensive list of animals and monsters too. Monster Island is also available as a printed book, which can be ordered directly from our website. We don't offer POD via DriveThru due to its low quality. Hope that helps.

In the far, far north a man reaches for his glass of single malt and leans back from the computer. "Another successful blagging" he mutters to himself, then looks out of the window to watch the snow gently falling. "I wonder what can I gen away with in next month's issue..."

John has decided to continue writing for his excellent AoT setting, but utilising the RQ6 rules instead. His follow-up 'Shores of Korantia' is both a setting and campaign book, and will be released early 2014. Its currently in art and layout.

Its just the art we're waiting for. Everything else is ready to go.

Very well deserved!

I'd be quite happy about it, since my other characteristics are not going to match the 18 I have in CON. The best way of thinking about this is that Characteristics also have effects on your secondary Attributes, and that to be honest you are more than just your sum of random rolled stats. In RQ6 skills are king, and bad stat rolling isn't as penalised as in other games .

Sorry Tom, although I'd be the first to admit RQ6 isn't intended for mini's game, I'm a bit confused by what you said here. Can you explain better?

In that it is a campaign setting based around a tropical island, overflowing with huge and nasty monsters, ancient mysterious ruins, treasures waiting to be looted, evil sorceries, animate four armed bronze statues, a valley full of ivory, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. The island itself is not Arabian themed by default, but the small human settlement could very easily be re-named/populated to embrace that particular culture. In fact that aspect of the island is designed to be modified so that it can slot into just about any on-running campaign setting with the minimum of fuss. Being written for RQ6 it is fundamentally compatible with any BRP rules-set, but of course there will be some specifics like certain magic spells and creatures which you'd need to convert/create for yourself. Yet the majority of the book would be usable as is.

...and thank you once again for that!

To tell the truth there were a number of reviews written, mostly brief, but we haven't linked to all of them on our web site. We had expected more, especially considering the number of requested gratis review copies we sent out, but that's life I suppose. Loz and I would have loved to see even more very supportive and glowing reviews, but neither of us are comfortable with whipping-up the fan base to write stuff they would normally be disinclined to do. Neither are we much good at shameless self promotion. So we are at the mercy of our purchasers to promote the quality of our wares to the RPG community at large, rather than tooting our own horns.

Yes. A short spear is named thus for two reasons. First its shorter than a long spear. Second, when you wield a short spear one handed, even one three metres long, you need to grasp it midway along its half , otherwise the spear head drags the tip down. So the weapon effectively halves its reach. However, the normal length for single handed spears usually ranged from 2-3 metres, so 3m is about the maximum for a 'shortspear'.