Agentorange

Ok, that clears things up a great deal, but.......can you ever run out of stock of a PDF ? After all it doesn't exist physically ( as it were ) it's a data file. there is no warehouse inventory as it were. and........ last time Chaosium made an agreement with a Hasbro company ( Avalon Hill ) about licensing a chaosium product eg RuneQuest it didn't work out well for anybody. Given that most people associate HQ/HW with Greg Stafford/Issaries/Chaosium lets hope this time works out better.

That probably did muddy the waters a bit. I was simply trying to find a HQ/HW product that to me seemed a reasonable price for what it was.

I am now competely confused, possibly because I don't know all the convoluted history of RQ and HQ/HW and am also rather ignorant of licensing laws. On the Chaosium website there are a number of HQ products ( PDF'S ) for sale and they very clearly say HeroQuest on them. So...what in licensing terms is the difference between a PDF and POD version. the same author/authors still wrote the material, presumably the copyright resides with Chaosium - unless of course chaosium is selling them under license for someone else in which case why can you sell PDF's and not POD's ? I know a lot of HQ/HW stuff was released by Issaries when Greg Stafford headed to the sunny uplands of HQ/HW....but then he returned to RQ and Chaosium . Did the licenses not come with him to Chaosium or did they remain seperate legal entities ? It all seems rather murky and confused. But in response to your original question of what would be a reasonable price I did give it a good think and after looking at the Runequest Classics over at the chaosium website I have a tentative answer for you. so here it is...... The RQ classic POD's seem to be going for about twice the price of the PDF's. Some a bit cheaper, some a bit dearer, but on average about twice the price. So that to me would be a reasonable price for POD HQ/HW stuff.

So, I've been over at the Chaosium site having a stooge around, and my eye keeps falling upon the Red Book of magic. But despite looking i can't see a print version. Am I just being really thick and have simply missed it, or is there really no print version ?

Which comes out to £7.14 - and that seems reasonable enough. I still have my my somewhat battered original. Might be worth getting a new copy though.

Are we talking about RQ or HQ/HW here ? I mentioned HQ/HW though I was a bit vague in my second post. I'd certainly pay more for RQ stuff because it's of more interest to me if that makes sense. Mmm....a reasonable price, I guess it's whatever I'm prepared to pay , I mostly posted that because I knew someone would feel compelled to reply 🙂 . It's a fair question though. Er, softback, hardback ? I've bought some of the Jonstown Compendium stuff over at DTRPG. I bought Valley Of Plenty ( as we're talking HW ) $35 for the print/pdf combo and I thought that was very good value for money. I actually think it's a great little supplement. So that's a new piece of work, authors need to make their money back and hopefully turn a profit for all their hard work. As HW/HQ has been out for a while and presumably everyone involved has already been paid ( I hope so anyway ) I wouldn't expect to pay as much for a similiar sized product as a brand new piece of work I appreciate that's a rather waffly answer but I'll give it some more thought.

HQ/HW never really grabbed me as a gaming system - It's RuneQuest for me. That said i am thinking about buying up some of the PDF's to get the Gloranthan vibe and back ground from them. If Chaosium could see their way clear to PODing them at a reasonable price I'd probably go far as to buy hard copies as well.

Well I finally bit the bullet and bought the shiny new Runequest - in the slipcase edition no less. Obviously there's a lot to take in. Some things I really like, some I don't, that's normal But, oh, Apple Lane, what have they done to you ? Where is the happy little community I fell in love with when I got my RQ2 box set all the way back in 1981. Gone, trampled underfoot by the hobnail boots of history.....is nothing sacred ? I think I need to enact some kind of heroquest wherein I enter the hero plane return to my youth and purchase another copy of RQ2 with the yellow Apple lane booklet. When I re enter the mortal Plane I shall find Apple Lane has been restored to it's former glory in all editions of Runequest.

Well, ordered my copy yesterday - should be arriving Wednesday.

For me it felt more like lack of support coupled with irrelevance than anything else. i know the production values weren't great but I can forgive that if the crunch factor is high. The main thing though was I just couldn't see the point of it. It seemed like a rehash and re issue of the BGB for no apparent purpose. What I would rather have seen was an expansion book for the BGB. Imagine Advanced sorcery but with extra stuff for the other powers from the BGB as well, maybe throw in some geographical , place and seasonal magical stuff Pendragon style as well and that'd have made a cracking supplement. Do a comprehensive bestiary as well and I'd have bought that. On the settings front I felt that some of the Monograph settings had the legs to be developed. The Green and Swords of Cydoris spring to mind.I like both of those a great deal. so to sum up, for me more than anything else Magicworld didn't feel it had a purpose.....

What is says on the tin really. I've been over at Drive thru RPG looking at all the lovely new RQ/Gloranthan products they all look interesting, but most are PDF only. I have asked several authors if they are thinking about POD versions and ( happy day ! ) many are doing so. I'm just old fashioned, I like having a print/POD version. But it got me wondering what do people think is the minimum viable length for a print product ? The Design Mechanism are doing Mythras modules with print options down to about 16 pages and many D'nD modules were smaller than that. So what do folks think ?

Hi Guys, I was wondering what people thoughts were on Worlds United . I keep looking at it, and almost certainly am going to buy it. But was curious what other people thought. it's always nice to get feedback before splashing the cash.

Now, I have no plans to publish anything in any system so I have no dog in this fight. But.....if we all waited around for Chaosium to publish the things they say they're going to publish we'd all die of old age. Remind me again how long it took the Dorastor supplement to be published after it's first mention ? :-)

I started playing RPG'S in the early 80's, like many I started on D'n'D but my local games shop had a copy of Snakepipe Hollow ( bigclub fighting the snake cover ) which I bought because of it's quirky cover....got RQ2 boxed set for my next birthday and never looked back. 38 years later I have shelves groaning under the weight of Chaosium related games. It's probably fair to say that playing Runequest got me reading a lot of history, mythology and all sorts of other topics A sad day indeed.

Dear all, Some time back I read a book the theme of which stuck in my mind, now recently I fancied reading it again...and realised I could remember neither the title or the author ! Quelle horreur ! I know I'm getting old now but even so..... So: It's set in a city that is stuck in the middle of an impenetrable forest. There is a short hinterland of fields round the city and then forest. All attempts by the people of the city to break out to the outside world are met the dwellers of the forest with extreme prejudice, nobody survives. Eventually though one intrepid band do make it out ending the cities isolation. At the same time the main character is dealing with a sub plot which is the murder of a prominent member of the city. Ring any bells with anybody ?

I don't look down on people that don't play BRP related games..... I may pity them and their empty meaningless lives, but I don't look down on them :-)

Last night ( in fact about 1.5 hours ago ) I had a dream about BRP I'd gone into a games store and on the shelves were supplements giving official conversion notes for most major RPG's into BRP so..: MERP/Rolemaster, D'n'D, Traveller. Mechanics, creatures, spells the whole works. I was leafing through them thinking " thank god I've got my credit card here " and then I woke up. And what was worse I couldn't remember any of the conversion details :-) What a sad muppet.

Just to add to this, the Worlds Of Cthulhu magazine did a fine write up of CAS Averoigne setting for Cthulhu Dark Ages spread across several issues, spells, beasts, geography etc etc. I thought it was rather good.

I think it'd be a shame if the whole concept were discontinued. As I've said before I think some of the most interesting stuff I've bought from Chaosium in the last few years has been monographs, especially on the BRP side of things. Also as I've said before if you remove the BRP monographs that's the vast bulk of the BRP line gone, apart from Magic World what have you got ? Magic world is ok but coming from an RQ background it doesn't quite tick all the boxes for me. By contrast however both Swords of Cydoria and The Green were both in my opinion excellent ( The Green in particular ) and I'd have happily bought additional supplements for both. I think part of the problem was that due to Chaosiums glacially slow production schedule the monographs became the bulk of what Chaosium had to offer. When 3rd party semi pro product is the majority of what you've got to sell then there's something severely wrong. I know the quality of them was variable but they had a kind of quirky charm that I rather liked. Because they were people's pet projects there was an enthusiasm and sense of excitement to them that was missing from much of the official Chaosium material. Perhaps a good compromise solution would be to allow them to continue but as PDF and POD products only ?

Mission to Epsilon has literally only just hit the streets...yet it it's gone already. ? I went to order it and it seems to have vanished. Not even in the sale ? I do hope they go down the POD route. Some of the most interesting stuff I've ordered for CoC and BRP has been monographs. And the vast bulk of the material for BRP is monographs, take those away and you don't have much of a line left.

Now seems to have gone from the Chaosium website. Couldn't find it under BRP rules, supplements or monographs.

They say: Thus, we have 50% off the Following: All BRP and Call of Cthulhu Monographs! Novelties & Accessories! All licensed Call of Cthulhu products, including Fantasy Flight Games boardgames and miniatures, Cubicle 7 books, Golden Goblin, Arc Dreams, and more! All non-English language books! Nephilim! (These books will not be reprinted or reordered once they’re gone!) So.......none of the BRP or Call of Cthulu monographs are ever going to be re printed again ? Are the authors aware of this ?

There were two MRQ1 adventures by Sceaptune Games that had a vaguely similar theme: Singleton scenarios : Exile The second one was called Dryhaven, they were both pretty good

Sounds like a good idea. I don't think there would be any objections at one time they were widely available all over the net for free. It's just as people have left the hobby and due to the general attrition of time lots of old RQ sites have bit the dust. It's sad really when I first got on the net in about 1994 ish there was a great RQ link site run by a chap called Kim Englund, it had around 400 links to RQ and/or Gloranthan sites. Loads of great material, you'd be lucky to find 40 RQ sites now.

Rod, tried PM ing you and it says you cannot receive any new messages ?