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1st edition did have a small print run (it's documented somewhere out there on the web...) but it was reasonably available, I picked up my copy in the Boston MA area in 1978. I also got all the early modules (I was in college and my budget was more limited by the time Pavis and Big Rubble came out so I didn't get those originally).

Lots of parallel to my experience. Though between White Dwarf and Judges Guild there were a few more modules for RQ, but it wasn't until the 1990s that I got a campaign going that lasted for more than a few sessions. By that time I had enough experience with adapting D&D modules to other systems that I was easily able to fill out a campaign (and in fact, only ran a fraction of the RQ modules available...).

I agree that the Traveller skill improvement is barely there, but I point it out because so many people believe Traveller had no improvement at all which is simply not true. On the other hand, the little known Space Quest clearly has skills that are separate from its character classes and are clearly improvable with training, so even if we discount Traveller's improvement system, we still have another example that predates RQ. BUT RQ IS still the first system where skills replaced classes and provides for character advancement as a regular part of play There's also more to the revolutionary nature of RQ than just the skill system though, so it certainly is a revolutionary system when taken as a whole and compared to the other games that preceded it.

Thought that's technically not true. Traveller (1977) has a mechanism for improving skills though it is very slow. It's so common for people to forget or not be aware of this. RuneQuest IS the first game though where skill improvement is a major feature of the game. EDIT: SpaceQuest (also 1977) has character classes, but it also has skills available to all that are trainable (doesn't look like they can be improved with experience or use though). Still, RQ still really does look like the first game where skill improvement through training AND experience is the primary mechanism for character improvement.

In my campaign I'm considering them undead, or at least undead in Humakt's eyes. Thanatar and Humakt are enemy cults per Cults of Terror.

I'd love the source code for this to see how easily I could back port it to RQ1.

I could swear I've noticed some scale inconsistencies over the years. It would be an interesting if laborious project to pick 10-20 (or more) landmarks and measure the distances between them on as many maps as possible and put out a table of comparisons. If there really are some "different" maps, it would be cool to know, and then be able to adjust distances or scale as desired if using maps that differ from your campaign's "gold standard" map (which is RQ3's Trollpak for me).

Yea, those will be starting points. I'll be curious though if different items seem to have different price adjustments between editions.

Are there any previews? What sort of content will be in this? On the one hand it sounds like it could be really useful for my campaign, on the other hand, how many weapon stats do I really need? Also, I understand there have been changes of costs of things between RQ1/2 and RQG, how easy will it be to convert back to RQ1 prices?

But the post I quoted said: "The other house rule I considered was failing a resistance roll against your initial rolled POW. Effectively you can only increase up to 10 POW greater than your initially rolled POW" so no 5% chance of increase no matter what.

The one problem with this is that characters who rolled less than 8 POW could never become Rune Priests, and those who rolled less than 5 could never become Rune Lords (and if applied to RQ1/2, a character who rolled between 8 and 10 POW who wants to be a Rune Priest had better sacrifice for at least some rune magic as an Initiate, especially with an original POW of 8, while rolling less than 11 POW, you need to get all the 3 point spells you want BEFORE you become Rune Priest... This is less of an issue with RQG, but still, an original POW of 8 would limit a Rune Priest.

I checked the elf’s character sheet. No misses on skills to make initiate. Also since we play RQ1 we use defense not dodge and the character has a 45% (or higher) defense and a real easy increase roll on it with the really high INT.

The elf in my campaign was a rich noble with practically perfect stats. Many of his ability bonuses were +40% and he could afford to train up some skills. He also got some stat bumps from the previous experience system. But I may have also missed something.

Who me? 🙂

OK, that all sounds reasonable. I thought your original comment was aimed at the elf PC in my campaign where with previous experience all that was pretty much washed away (though MAYBE we missed a 50% skill, unlikely though with all the +40% ability bonuses the elf in my campaign had).

I used previous experience which grants some stat improvements. But not sure why the elf as rolled couldn't use a bow. In any case, the previous experience left the character all ready to go with an elf bow. Oh, and I use RQ1 not RQ2 (well, I do use some bits from RQ2, but not weapons and armor unless I need stats for a weapon not in RQ1).

The elf mistake... The mistake was partly forgetting that I had dropped elves as PCs for previous campaigns due to their uniquely high INT which, especially in RQ1/2 is an uber stat, impacting almost everything. Then combine with how I utilized the RQ1 previous experience by adding ability bonus to the skills that came out of it with near perfect rolls on the players part (STR 14, CON 14, SIZ 11, INT 21, POW 17, DEX 25, CHA 21? no that must be modified...) and rolling Rich Noble. The result was that all he had to do was make one POW gain roll and he qualified for Rune Priest (because previous experience +40% knowledge bonus gave him read/write Aldryami at 90%). And recently he qualified for Rune Lord also... AND then combine that with a young (college kid who just graduated) player who was always bragging about his abilities. I had one player rage quit early on (though that player based on previous history would have eventually rage quit) and a couple more players who were close to quitting because of the uber-elf. Fortunately for us, the player post graduation became super flaky and I asked him to leave because it wasn't fair to the others for him to be taking up a seat that he was rarely in, combined with just vanishing from a couple sessions (he was also time zone disadvantaged, which was probably fine while a student, not so great with a real life job to go to in the morning). Oh, and the player seemed to have no interest in actually engaging the setting. So here was this uber-elf priest slum murder hobo adventuring with humans and baboons with no obvious reason why the Aldryami would give two hoots about what was going on.

I've not played any RQ, but PCs in my campaigns have been Ducks (one or two), Baboons (several), Elf (one - allowing this was a mistake on my part), Pixie (one), Dwarf (one), Newtling (one). That's pretty much the run of what I typically allow. I would consider Troll PCs, but I've not run any campaigns where it made sense to allow them.

Have we talked somewhere else? I have shared in this thread what I ignore. This most recent bit about the creatures happens to be an area where at least from RQ1/2 I am happy to use everything. There are some creatures in RQ3 Glorantha material I don’t use. I have the RQG Bestiary but haven’t done a deep dive to know if it has creak wouldn’t use.

I’m confused…

Sorry for offending anyone... I run/play what I like to run/play... I've been running RQ 1st edition since 1978. Some of how things work in my campaign is due to starting to run RQ and Glorantha before there was much written at all about the setting, or at least not much I had read. The RQ1 book gives no hint of the later Mostali and actually sounds vaguely Tolkienesque - D&Dish. The Dwarf of White Bear and Red Moon has a little more hint, but still not much. Of course I read Different Worlds so read the infamous article which destroyed dwarfs for me. In my current campaign I have reclaimed them.

I don't want to hate Mostali, so in my Glorantha they are more like D&D dwarfs.

That's where I tend to go. If a fantasy creations makes the game interesting, I'm not going to worry too much about specifics. I don't have problems with any of the creatures that were written up for RQ in the RQ1/2 era. I'm less fond of the things that got added in RQ3, on the other hand, most of them are from outside the Dragon Pass/Prax/Balazar region that I run my campaigns in so they are very easy for me to ignore. I love Ducks. I love Jack-o-Bears. I love it all. OK, I don't like how the Mostali wound up and am ignoring "Why I Hate the Mostali"...

Hmm, my campaign is set before all the Hero Wars stuff, so most of the timeline is ignored by me. We've also kept mostly to Sartar (and really not much South of there) and Prax (mostly Pavis, Dead Place, and along the Zola Fel) with a bit of exploration of Balazar. I haven't followed all the cultural changes post the RQ2/3 era.

Since I have been running RQ1, the shaman rules didn't really make sense so we never used them. The shaman rules in RQ2 make a lot more sense. I think there is supposed to be a way for shamans to get rune magic but it never made sense. You might want to look at the shaman rules from RQG.