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Yea I love it. And on that note in my Glorantha it’s the original Wilm’s Church not the later Wilmskirk.

On Roll20 have you also searched for games? I try and keep my campaign with an open slot because turnover is usually enough that if someone is motivated I’ll make room for them. Frank

You need to indicate timezone...

Nice, the only hitch is that Sanctuary was play tested as Refuge... But that is an interesting way to get the Thieves World boxed set into Glorantha in a way that might be a bit easier to get PCs into... Says one aforementioned lucky Thieves World boxed set owner... Frank

Yea, probably overwhelming, but if the work was done it could be cool... For actual play though, what you're suggesting is almost assuredly plenty. Frank

Have you seen the trade stuff done by Tao of D&D: http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/ and http://taoswork.blogspot.com/ and apparently drawn together here: https://tao-dndwiki.blogspot.com/2018/04/trade-system.html It would be cool to apply his methods to Glorantha if they make sense to folks. If they did, perhaps a bunch of folks could divvy up the task and make much shorter work of it than he did for Earth.

Well, that's that then... 🙂 I guess I'm mostly not surprised. Certainly it was out of pure stubbornness and not having an infinite gaming budget (though with a paper route and no other need to spend money, I probably purchased some kind of gaming item almost every week, especially once I started going to MIT every Saturday to play games and hitting 3 game stores on the way in to see what was new. But RQ2 was too soon after purchasing RQ1, and more expensive, and it really did just seem like a bunch of errata. Then there was this Q&A from Rambling Runequestions (in WF #8, but I may have read it first in The Wild Hunt): 27. (p.29) The book says that some forms of armor protect more than one hit location. "These types can, as a rule, be overlapped. Thus, one can wear both a chainmail hauberk and chainmail trews.'' If so, then how many points of armor does the abdomen have, 5 or 10? Basically, 10. This should not be allowed except in games where ENC is being played., In the case of chainmail, this would also increase the problems with moving quietly. I didn't like that ruling at the time, and still don't. But if you don't deal with overlapping armor, you can't do full body armor in RQ. Of course most folks who didn't like the stacking of AP probably just ignored that part... Now I have always, since shortly after RQ2 came out, used SOME things from RQ2. Being a penny pinching teenager at the time, I photocopied some pages so I had the quick reference sheets. I got the JG GM Screen and have always used the RQ2 fumble table. Back then, I played with various different weapons tables, but have since returned to RQ1's weapon list (with some additions). While I have played more hours of other RPGs, RQ is definitely my most consistently loved game. I have NEVER had a falling out with it (like I have with AD&D 1e and D&D 3.x). I've never felt stuck and frustrated with how to make a campaign fun (like I have with Traveller). I'm sure most of the RQ die hards here have played more hours of RQ than me. I'm also indebted to Chaosium for including RQ1 in the Kickstarter. I don't remember if it was originally included, but it is a nice bonus and makes it more possible for me to run my games (I point every new player at the availability, though if someone doesn't want to shell out the $10 but has at least RQ2, I'll help them along). I wonder how many post-Kickstarter RQ1 sales can be tied back to me, either from players, or folks who get interested in how RQ1 is different from RQ2 based on what I've shared over the years... I hope my continued interest reminds people that the first edition of any game is a labor of love and represents something the designer thought was a good game, and hopefully was actually playing, and thus is a worthy game to play. The new editions may have fixed various awkward mechanics, added new options, shifted the focus to fit a new play style or any number of reasons. And if those reasons apply to you go for it. But also consider the original edition may be quite playable and produce many happy hours of gaming. Frank

I thought I'd pull this stuff out of the "I Want to Love Glorantha" thread because it isn't helpful to the original poster there, but it's still a subject I'm happy to continue to discuss... I don't remember if I saw ads for RQ, or if I just found RuneQuest 1st ed. in my FLGS, probably mostly the latter. I looked through every new thing that showed up on the shelves there (and in 1978 there wasn't much, I think they had 2 maybe 3 36" shelves of RPG stuff with the magazines in a separate rack). So I bought RuneQuest 1st. ed and soon after Apple Lane and Balastor's Baracks. And White Bear and Red Moon. Between Apple Lane (and later Snake Pipe Hollow) plus WB&RM, I ran a Sartar campaign (and didn't really realize Balastor's Baracks was set in the Big Rubble). I had been playing mostly OD&D and actually in 1978 mostly Chivalry & Sorcery (though I ran some form of D&D on our cross country trip in summer of 1978), a bit of Metamorphosis Alpha, and I'm not sure what else. I had started role playing in October of 1977 with Holmes Basic D&D which we immediately outgrew. My early RQ play was pretty sporadic but soon Cults of Prax and Snake Pipe Hollow came out, and The White Dwarf had RQ content, oh and Trollpak and Griffin Mountain, but still I wouldn't actually start a serious campaign until the 1990s. But, probably due to college (which I started in fall of 1981), I didn't get Pavis or Big Rubble. I did get and try to run Borderlands in college. I also didn't get the Solo Quests. I did start buying the RQ3 material and eventually used some of it in the 1990s campaign. But all through that, I gravitated to treasure seeking monster bashing, pretty traditional gaming though maybe with a bit more characterization than with D&D, and certainly smaller "dungeons." And that's the type of gaming that still interests me. I initially bought heavily into Hero Wars and Hero Quest, but never played, and never got what the game was supposed to be like. It definitely did not look like what I expected Hero Quest to be like (and really didn't look like the Hero Quests Steve Marsh had written up in his zines published in The Wild Hunt). In the 2000s I went wild acquiring Glorantha material of any sort, but have since divested myself of some of it as it became clear that too much was too much, and especially much of the HW/HQ stuff was of little use to me. I dunno if I'll ever get RQG. RQ1 (plus bits from RQ2 which I do now own as of 2005 and RQ3) is the game I want to play. I'm NOT sold on the newer style tribal centered play. I'm not sold on what I've heard about the RQG rules. But Glorantha is big enough for all of us. It's had enough gonzo and wacky stuff that it makes the way I play still "fit". And that gonzo and wacky stuff is part of the appeal to me. I like ducks. I like some of the silly stuff that shows up in Trollpak. If people ask ME for MY opinion of how to get started, I'd say pick up RQ1 or RQ2, Cults of Prax, and Apple Lane. if that grabs you, look into Griffin Mountain or Pavis/Big Rubble for more extensive (and available) content, or pick up some of the newer Sartar centered material and make a game of it. Borrow from whatever source you want (I'm always borrowing D&D and other games content) or make stuff up on your own. But that's my opinion based on my interests. If you are looking at how to get started in Glorantha from a perspective of current support (official publications, fan publications, and fan discussion), go with RuneQuest Glorantha (which comes with some starter adventures) and if the adventures there aren't enough, pick up something official or from the Jonstone Compendium, but ask someone else for suggestions... Originally I stuck with RQ1 because I wasn't going to pay $12 for a bunch of errata... Now at the time I didn't really realize how many differences there were. Recently I completed a paragraph by paragraph comparison which I had hoped to share, but it's impossible to do the idea justice without copying too much text to work under the fan license so I will be working with Chaosium (probably over the next year) to polish it into something that can be offered as a more official document. Sometime between 1980 and 1995 or so, I did come up with some changes I don't like: 1. I don't like RQ2 armor, in part because of the AP stacking on the abdomen and chest, partly because I like to just say "this guy is wearing chain". 2. After playing with John T. Sapienza's unified weapons tables of the early days (published in The Wild Hunt and Alarums and Excursions APAs), I have come to prefer RQ1's quirkier weapons table over RQ2. 3. From the paragraph by paragraph comparison, I don't agree with all the spell changes. 4. While it is nice to be able to look up creatures alphabetically, I also like seeing the creature groupings in RQ1, plus I noticed a few changes (and since I use RQ1 I have the Ambush and Sense Ambush skills). That said, I had never really looked at Shamans very closely, in part because RQ1 Shamans are sort of confusing. If I run Shamans now, I will use the RQ2 rules. I have long used Protection as a variable spell instead of RQ1's Padding and Protection spells. I wonder how many other folks in the world still use RQ1... Am I some weird holdout? Of course one might ask how many even still use RQ2, it seems like most folks migrated to RQ3 when it came out (or at least once it had decent Glorantha support).

I really hope I didn't come across as insisting that someone new to Glorantha relive my journey... Heh, it was much easier before RQG was released but the kickstarter had put most of the RQ1/2 material on Drivethru... Then if one wanted to recommend RQ as opposed to HQ, one could in good conscience recommend RQ2 (or RQ1) + Cults of Prax + maybe a module or two. Now I agree, it's better to recommend RQG and a current module or two.

Oh, sure, I agree, if you're getting into RQ and Glorantha today, go pick yourself up RQG and some of the current modules. Then if you're curious and willing to do some work, go back and pick up some of the RQ2 era modules (or even the RQ3 ones if you can find them in a bargain bin in a dark corner of your FLGS). I was merely stating what I would recommend if someone asked ME what I would suggest... Don't listen to me... I guess I wasn't clear enough. And I was also responding to Nick Brooke's story of how he got into RQ and sharing mine, and that I unlike most (all?) others, have stuck with the original game.

So originally I stuck with RQ1 because I wasn't going to pay $12 for a bunch of errata... Now at the time I didn't really realize how many differences there were. Recently I completed a paragraph by paragraph comparison which I had hoped to share, but it's impossible to do the idea justice without copying too much text to work under the fan license so I will be working with Chaosium (probably over the next year) to polish it into something that can be offered as a more official product. Sometime between 1980 and 1995 or so, I did come up with some changes I don't like: 1. I don't like RQ2 armor, in part because of the AP stacking on the abdomen and chest, partly because I like to just say "this guy is wearing chain". 2. After playing with John T. Sapienza's unified weapons tables of the early days (published in The Wild Hunt and Alarums and Excursions APAs), I have come to prefer RQ1's quirkier weapons table over RQ2. 3. From the paragraph by paragraph comparison, I don't agree with all the spell changes. 4. While it is nice to be able to look up creatures alphabetically, I also like seeing the creature groupings in RQ1, plus I noticed a few changes (and since I use RQ1 I have the Ambush and Sense Ambush skills). That said, I had never really looked at Shamans very closely, in part because RQ1 Shamans are sort of confusing. If I run Shamans now, I will use the RQ2 rules. I have long used Protection as a variable spell instead of RQ1's Padding and Protection spells. I wonder how many other folks in the world still use RQ1... Am I some weird holdout? Of course one might ask how many even still use RQ2, it seems like most folks migrated to RQ3 when it came out (or at least once it had decent Glorantha support).

I really want to see the RQ3 stuff in PDF form. I don't think there's a rights issue (I may be wrong), other than maybe for the RQ3 core rules, it's probably mostly a case of whether there's enough interest to do the work.

Cool, interesting to hear from someone who got started a bit later than I did. I don't remember if I saw ads for RQ, or if I just found RuneQuest 1st ed. in my FLGS, probably mostly the latter. I looked through every new thing that showed up on the shelves there (and in 1978 there wasn't much, I think they had 2 maybe 3 36" shelves of RPG stuff with the magazines in a separate rack). So I bought RuneQuest 1st. ed and soon after Apple Lane and Balastor's Baracks. And White Bear and Red Moon. Between Apple Lane (and later Snake Pipe Hollow) plus WB&RM, I ran a Sartar campaign (and didn't really realize Balastor's Baracks was set in the Big Rubble). I had been playing mostly OD&D and actually in 1978 mostly Chivalry & Sorcery (though I ran some form of D&D on our cross country trip in summer of 1978), a bit of Metamorphosis Alpha, and I'm not sure what else. I had started role playing in October of 1977 with Holmes Basic D&D which we immediately outgrew. My early RQ play was pretty sporadic but soon Cults of Prax and Snake Pipe Hollow came out, and The White Dwarf had RQ content, oh and Trollpak and Griffin Mountain, but still I wouldn't actually start a serious campaign until the 1990s. But, probably due to college (which I started in fall of 1981), I didn't get Pavis or Big Rubble. I did get and try to run Borderlands in college. I also didn't get the Solo Quests. I did start buying the RQ3 material and eventually used some of it in the 1990s campaign. But all through that, I gravitated to treasure seeking monster bashing, pretty traditional gaming though maybe with a bit more characterization than with D&D, and certainly smaller "dungeons." And that's the type of gaming that still interests me. I initially bought heavily into Hero Wars and Hero Quest, but never played, and never got what the game was supposed to be like. It definitely did not look like what I expected Hero Quest to be like (and really didn't look like the Hero Quests Steve Marsh had written up in his zines published in The Wild Hunt). In the 2000s I went wild acquiring Glorantha material of any sort, but have since divested myself of some of it as it became clear that too much was too much, and especially much of the HW/HQ stuff was of little use to me. I dunno if I'll ever get RQG. RQ1 (plus bits from RQ2 which I do now own as of 2005 and RQ3) is the game I want to play. I'm NOT sold on the newer style tribal centered play. I'm not sold on what I've heard about the RQG rules. But Glorantha is big enough for all of us. It's had enough gonzo and wacky stuff that it makes the way I play still "fit". And that gonzo and wacky stuff is part of the appeal to me. I like ducks. I like some of the silly stuff that shows up in Trollpak. If people ask ME for suggestions of how to get started, I'd say pick up RQ1 or RQ2, Cults of Prax, and Apple Lane. if that grabs you, look into Griffin Mountain or Pavis/Big Rubble for more extensive (and available) content, or pick up some of the newer Sartar centered material and make a game of it. Borrow from whatever source you want (I'm always borrowing D&D and other games content) or make stuff up on your own. Frank

Hear hear. A newcomer may be best served by sharing what drew them to Glorantha and it's game systems, and then what kind of game they are interested in playing and how deep they like to dive in learning about the setting. All of us then can pick and choose what we recommend based on those interests.

That's one reason I like "done" settings if I'm going to use a commercial setting. With no new material coming out, there's no future meta-plot to clash with how my campaign has run. Up until recently I was able to compartmentalize Glorantha as a "done" setting by sticking to the RQ2/RQ3 material (and not even incorporating all that's implied in those scenarios). But now there's temptation. I COULD make use of some of the RQG material in my RQ1.5 campaign... Fortunately, I can still hold to the "done" setting by considering ANYTHING newer as stuff that has high potential to be ported in, but it need not be any more canon that the D&D module I'm currently using to run some adventures (said D&D module making my Tada's High Tumulus definitely non-canon - the module is UK5 - Eye of the Serpent and I'm using it as an adventure of getting down from the top of Tada's High Tumulus).

I haven't looked at any of the new scenarios, I suppose an RQG scenario shouldn't be too hard to back port to RQ1/2, but it sure would be cool to have any original RQ1/2 stats for things and not lose skill ratings for skills that don't map 1 to 1. That may not be too much of an issue with the early stats other than perhaps loss of Ambush and Sense Ambush skills from RQ1, but then I have to account for those being missing in most of the published scenarios anyway. Other stuff like early sorcery rules would be really nice to see. I have one version of the early sorcery rules as published in The Wild Hunt. On the other hand, I can probably live without them. Maybe someday I'll get to visit someone who has the unpublished books and have a chance to peruse them (I could arrange for my employer to fly me to Ann Arbor when air travel is reasonable again.... my 2nd line manager and a co-worker are based there...).

Is there ANY hope of the Unpublished RuneQuest being made available in PDF form? I absolutely could not justify the expense of the High Priest level but in this digital age, it seems a shame to limit availability of information in that way.

I hope thread necromancy is ok, I'm sure Delecti would approve... I just realized, the Howling Tower was actually published... It's in The Dungeoneer magazine issue #11, p.46. The map is taken from Judges Guild's Citadel of Fire. It doesn't give stats, instead mostly borrowing from Balastor's Baracks. The descriptions of what is in it match the rumors mentioned in Sartar Kingdom of Heroes or the Tales of the Reaching Moon issue #19.

One thing I also forgot to consider in how different campaigns fall out. If you are RQ3 or a later system based, the mechanical advantages of Orlanth disappear without the reduced price skills and spirit/battle magic, and then yea, Humakt and Yelmalio have cooler rune magic.

Yea, that's a good point. I got my start with RQ1. I didn't play Balastor's Baracks much, but did play Apple Lane and Snake Pipe Hollow, plus I purchased White Bear & Red Moon. The very early play was without cults (RQ1 didn't have lay member status and really didn't talk about initiate status). But that early stuff set me up for Sartar play so when Cults of Prax came along, there was focus on the Lightbringers since they were the gods of Sartar. I did almost nothing with Prax, with the exception of an aborted run of Borderlands, until the 1990s and I may not have got Pavis until after that campaign wrapped up, though one of the players had Pavis so I did have access to some stuff, plus I was acquiring the RQ3 supplements as they came out. There was a bit of Balazar play, but I never found it as compelling as Sartar. I did start a play by post campaign in Pavis, and I love playing in Prax, but Sartar will probably be the start of most of my campaigns.

Ah, and perhaps therein lies the difference. If you're not playing in an Orlanthi area, then Orlanth should not come up much, though I would could Prax an an Orlanthi area...

It would be interesting to figure out how these differences in cult selection come about. What is it that puts the two of us having something in common while others have very few Orlanth cultists? BTW, I get, if you play Lunars, you aren't going to see many Orlanth PCs... And maybe that's some of the difference.

No thieves? Orlanth is a good choice for a thief, ok, with Pavis you get Lanbril but if you want a non-city tied thief, Orlanth is really good. That's where at least half my PC Orlanth cultists come from.

Hmm, I haven't though about this too much. I play RQ1/2, but I have switched to HP = (SIZ+CON)/2 + POW bonus + SIZ bonus (but not SIZ penalty), yea, it double counts SIZ, but I wanted to keep the same range of hit points for humans. With that, smaller creatures do at least have not quite so many hit points. A thought that I am having is that if a small creature is worth having combat stats, then it deserves the hit points it gets and leave it at that. No, a run of the mill SIZ 3 animal won't have that many hit points, but that's because a run of the mill SIZ 3 animal isn't going to get combat stats. If you hit it with a weapon, it's dead. So yea, Alynxes, Rubble Runners, Ducks (I use RQ1 with 1D4+2 SIZ), and Vrok Hawks will all have surprising hit points. At least it's better than the original RQ1 where the 18 CON Duck gets more HP than the 3 CON Great Troll... Frank

I don't know if Orlanth has been the most popular in my campaigns (RQ1/2 with Cults of Prax), but I'm pretty sure just about every PC group has had at least one Orlanth worshiper. Lately, I've had lots of Foundchild cultists. Other cults that tend to be represented (but not necessarily every PC group) are Humakt, Storm Bull, and Yelmalio, and Aldrya (if there's an Aldryami in the group). I don't think I've ever seen an Ernalda PC. I have had Daka Fal, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy, and Chalana Arroy PCs. I don't think I've ever had an Eiritha or Waha PC, and I'm pretty sure I've never had a Zorak Zoran or Kyger Litor PC. I'm not sure about Seven Mothers. I'm pretty sure that other than Found Child I've never had a non-Cults of Prax PC (oh, and I have had a Zola Fel PC or two, and my current campaign did start with a Black Fang Brotherhood PC - who was also an Orlanth worshiper as cover), certainly no Cults of Terror PCs, and with no Troll campaigns none of the other Troll cults. Beyond that, I haven't had much play time with other cults as real possibilities due to when I got materials. But yea, Orlanth has at least been well represented. I always point out the generous list of reduced price skills and spells. It's worth noting that my campaigns are old school adventure romps rather than Gloranthan new school culture explorations (nothing wrong with those, just not my play style), so a more "adventuresome" line up of cults is going to be represented.