MOB

Chaosium's Julia Rawcliffe won the first prize in the lottery at Niederrheincon in Dinslaken, Germany today! First prize was a copy of Uhrwerk Verlag's new German edition of RuneQuest. The translator of that edition was... er, Julia Rawcliffe. Congratulations to Julia, and to our friends at Uhrwerk Verlag on this release! (Julia has observed that the new German edition "probably marks the first-ever instance of an inter-familial generational hand-down of an RPG translation." It was her father Lutz, who translated the first German edition of RuneQuest - the original 3rd Edition - in the early 90s.)

Nick Brooke, co-author of the ENNIE nominated A Rough Guide to Glamour writes: "My friend Chris Gidlow’s book Citizens of the Lunar Empire on Chaosium’s Jonstown Compendium community store is also in the running for this year’s Best Organized Play ENNIE Award. It’s a detailed tour of one apartment building in Glamour, capital city of the Lunar Empire. It examines everyday life in an imagined ancient city, complementing our propagandistic top-down A Rough Guide to Glamour with a view from street level, and serving as a home base for any parties of adventurers who find themselves in the big city. "I designed the book, my daughter Sarah did the technical drawings, and our friend Dario Corallo lavishly illustrated it throughout. The cover art is by the brilliant Mark Smylie. "The ENNIES use a ranked preferential voting system, so you can vote for both books and know that your vote will help determine the winner. Everyone is eligible to vote, and the polls are open until Friday 27 August." Here's how you can vote for Chaosium's community content creators in the 2021 ENnies!: 1. Go to the ENnies page: https://vote.ennie-awards.com/vote/2021 2. Our three nominations are in the Best Organised Play category (the ENnies' term for community content). A Rough Guide to Glamour (Jonstown Compendium) Citizens of the Lunar Empire (Jonstown Compendium) Hand of Glory (Miskatonic Repository) Vote for them 1,2,3 in whatever order you choose! 3. Everyone in the Chaosium team would also be flattered if you picked Chaosium in the Fan Award for Best Publisher. 4. Tell your friends who are Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest fans to submit their vote too! Chaosium congratulates all the nominees in this year's awards. The winners will be announced at the ENNIES Awards ceremony on September 17th, 2021 at 8:00 PM EDT.

EXT - SUN DOME TEMPLE - INITIATION DAY (NOON) LIGHT PRIEST (staring at the sun): "As your initiation gift Yelmalio will now make you more intelligent or taller, what do you choose?" BRAND NEW INITIATE: "I've always wanted to be smart! Gimme three points!" LIGHT PRIEST (rolls eyes) *PING, FLASH OF LIGHT ETC* LIGHT PRIEST: "In return for your gift, Yelmalio decrees you must now never wear armour on your head (geas #1) or left leg (geas #2), never let a horse suffer needlessly (geas #3), never flee or surrender from Darkness creatures (geas #4), never bathe (geas #5), and speak only Truth (geas #6)." BRAND NEW INITIATE (now much smarter, and only capable of speaking Truth): "I think I overdid it." LIGHT PRIEST: "No backsies."

The Laundry was not included in our recent acquisition. Last we heard C7 were going to do their own rules for The Laundry: https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/cubicle-7-and-call-of-cthulhu.820320

Co-author of the ENNIE-nominated A Rough Guide to Glamour Nick Brooke says: "Our book A Rough Guide to Glamour was the first print title and the first Gold best-seller on Chaosium’s Jonstown Compendium community store, which hosts fan-created works for the RuneQuest tabletop role-playing game and Greg Stafford’s mythic sword-and-sandal fantasy world of Glorantha on DriveThruRPG. "It’s a propagandist gazetteer and tourist guidebook to the capital of the evil Lunar Empire. Profoundly unofficial, it’s laced with Elvis, IngSoc, Blondie and Spice Girls references (among others), and has wonderful artwork by Dario Corallo, Julie Hudson, Simon Bray and Antonia Doncheva. "Anyway, the Guide has been nominated for this year’s Best Organized Play ENNIE Award (that’s the nearest thing my hobby has to the Oscars); you’re eligible to vote for the winner, and I would be honoured and delighted if you’d consider voting for our book." Here's how you can vote for Chaosium's community content creators in the 2021 ENnies!: 1. Go to the ENnies page: https://vote.ennie-awards.com/vote/2021 2. Our three nominations are in the Best Organised Play category (the ENnies' term for community content). A Rough Guide to Glamour (Jonstown Compendium) Citizens of the Lunar Empire (Jonstown Compendium) Hand of Glory (Miskatonic Repository) Vote for them 1,2,3 in whatever order you choose! 3. Everyone in the Chaosium team would also be flattered if you picked Chaosium in the Fan Award for Best Publisher. 4. Tell your friends who are Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest fans to submit their vote too! Chaosium congratulates all the nominees in this year's awards. The winners will be announced at the ENNIES Awards ceremony on September 17th, 2021 at 8:00 PM EDT.

So we don't get asked "but what about X?" we decided to just go with (and link to) the comprehensive product lists as given on RPGGeek. All the ephemeral titles are listed separately there. WWC: London is considered both a Cthulhu Britannica and World War Cthulhu title.

"Governor Halcyon was vexed by his superiors’ relentless demands for men, beasts, equipment and slaves, all needed for the Reaching Moon Temple project in Dragon Pass" after Argrath's conquest just becomes "The New Pavis authorities were vexed by King Argrath's relentless demands for men, beasts, equipment and slaves, all needed for the war effort against the Reaching Moon in Dragon Pass". plus ça change, plus c'est la même...

Ann Arbor, MI, August 20, 2021—Chaosium, publisher of the Call of Cthulhu tabletop roleplaying game, has acquired Cthulhu Britannica and World War Cthulhu from publisher Cubicle 7. Cthulhu Britannica was produced under license from Chaosium from 2009-2017. Cubicle 7 released twelve titles that explored the Cthulhu Mythos in the British Isles. The World War Cthulhu line was also published under license, from 2013 - 2017. Eight titles were released focussing on the Cthulhu Mythos in conflicts of the 20th Century including World War 2 and the Cold War. Both lines received critical acclaim and won multiple awards. Cubicle 7's Call of Cthulhu license wound up at the end of 2017. Chaosium plans to rerelease these lines for Call of Cthulhu 7th edition, with all-new layout and art. New titles are also planned for each. No release dates have been announced. Covers of various releases from Cubicle 7's Cthulhu Britannica and World War Cthulhu lines

The Call of Cthulhu release The Grand Grimoire of Cthulhu Mythos Magic is now available on Roll20! Over 500 spells of dire consequences, secrets, and unfathomable power! Contained within are gathered spells drawn from over thirty years of Call of Cthulhu supplements and scenarios. Each spell has been revised for the Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition game, including optional Deeper Magic for the most powerful of Mythos sorcerers and monsters, with which to beguile and confound investigators. Packed full of advice and guidance on diverse matters including spell names, elements of spell casting, magical components, and astronomical considerations. Plus flawed spells, ley lines, folk magic, and the magic of the Dreamlands. Use this grimoire as a resource, a play aid, and as inspiration when designing scenarios. The Grand Grimoire of Cthulhu Mythos Magic is an essential supplement for Keepers of Arcane Lore. $39.95 Accessing Your Content Compendium You can access all of the rules, items, and creatures from The Grand Grimoire of Cthulhu Mythos Magic in the in-app compendium, as well as on the Roll20 web compendium. A Glimpse of the Magic Inside Advice on Expanding Magic in your game: the suggestions within this chapter are intended to provide Keepers with ideas and possible scenario plots with which to confound, delight, and horrify their players. Whether ley lines, areas exposed to magical residue, astrological alignments, or other factors, Keepers are encouraged to expand the use of magic within their games, ensuring that "magic" is never a safe, easy, or understandable process, and that it often comes with unforeseen and dire consequences. Spells that should not be cast: your investigators will face cultists willing to sacrifice their sanity and indeed their very souls to be able to cast terrible spells in the name of their dark and unforgiving masters. And how to integrate Folk Magic (or not). Play with Less Prep The Grand Grimoire of Cthulhu Mythos Magic includes: All book assets and information fully integrated for the VTT, including all 500+ spells and 9 monsters with drag and drop support onto the official Call of Cthulhu by Roll20 character sheet. What the Critics say about The Grand Grimoire: "Players have been clamoring for a Call of Cthulhu spellbook for years. Here is, in one single tome, the unspeakable knowledge that is bound to break even the most fortified minds." — Antonios S., RPGNet Review. "A treasure trove of info… a near indispensable reference work for practically all Call of Cthulhu Keepers." — The Gaming Gang, Thirty Years of Mythos Magicks. "Looks like an old tome of magic - as it should... a great resource when you are running a campaign, and especially when you are writing your own adventures." — Geeks-A-Go-Go, The Grand Grimoire of Cthulhu Mythos Magic Reviewed. Play Call of Cthulhu with Roll20! Throughout 2021 we'll be adding more Call of Cthulhu releases to Roll20 on a regular basis. Other current titles include: Call of Cthulhu Starter Set - $24.99 Call of Cthulhu Quickstart Rules (inc. 'The Haunting' scenario) - FREE Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook - $54.95 Call of Cthulhu Investigator Handbook - $44.95 Harlem Unbound - $44.99 The Lightless Beacon - FREE Dead Light and Other Dark Turns - $14.99 Gateways to Terror - $19.99 Mansions of Madness Vol 1: Behind Closed Doors - $42.99 Malleus Monstrorum Cthulhu Mythos Bestiary - $59.99 Reign of Terror - $34.99 For useful tips and advice about playing Call of Cthulhu and other Chaosium games online, see our helpful Getting Started with Online Gaming guide.

ENNIES voting is now open - please support our community content creators by voting for A Rough Guide to Glamour, Citizens of the Lunar Empire and Hand of Glory in the Best Organised Play category (The ENNIE's idiosyncratic term for community content). Details here:

ENNIES voting is now open - please support our community content creators by voting for Hand of Glory, A Rough Guide to Glamour, and Citizens of the Lunar Empire in the Best Organised Play category (The ENNIE's idiosyncratic term for community content). Details here:

The ENnies are the annual fan-based celebration of excellence in tabletop roleplaying gaming. This year Chaosium itself did not submit any products for consideration as we've won our fair share recently (30 ENnie Awards from 34 nominations in the last five years). But we strongly encouraged the independent creators in our Miskatonic Repository and Jonstown Compendium community content programs to enter instead, and we're delighted three titles were nominated by the judges. Voting is open and they now need your support! Here's how you can vote for Chaosium's community content creators in the 2021 ENnies!: 1. Go to the ENnies page: https://vote.ennie-awards.com/vote/2021 2. Our three nominations are in the Best Organised Play category (the ENnies' term for community content). A Rough Guide to Glamour (Jonstown Compendium) Citizens of the Lunar Empire (Jonstown Compendium) Hand of Glory (Miskatonic Repository) Vote for them 1,2,3 in whatever order you choose! 3. Everyone in the Chaosium team would also be flattered if you picked Chaosium in the Fan Award for Best Publisher. 4. Tell your friends who are Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest fans to submit their vote too! Chaosium congratulates all the nominees in this year's awards. The winners will be announced at the ENNIES Awards ceremony on September 17th, 2021 at 8:00 PM EDT.

In his 'Out of Suitcase' posts Chaosium President Rick Meints shares stories from a life-time as a collector of all things Chaosium. Today, something very obscure from the Danbury Mint... https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-suitcase-20-the-art-of-obscure-finds

Rivers of London 10th Anniversary Message By Lynne Hardy, line editor for Rivers of London - The Roleplaying Game. It’s a wet Sunday afternoon here in the North East, so the perfect time to reflect on something else with a watery theme: Rivers of London, now celebrating its tenth anniversary. I wasn’t quite there ten years ago. According to the very faded receipt from the Waterstones in Newcastle, still jammed in the back of my copy, I actually bought Rivers of London on 3rd June 2015, so definitely late to the party despite friends telling me for years it was something I would probably enjoy. They were right. Having been raised on Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, and Columbo on the murder mystery front, the police procedural element was right up my street. And, having also been surrounded by the likes of Doctor Who, The Adventure Game, and Bagpuss as a nipper, I was also on board with the whole urban fantasy side of things as well. Ben’s sense of humour shone through, and I quickly devoured the other available novels, then sat down to wait for the next release. Fast forward to 2018, to a book signing queue in that self-same Waterstones where I’d bought Rivers of London a little over three years earlier. First in the queue with my hardback copy of Lies Sleeping, I broached the subject of a potential roleplaying game to Ben. I knew he must be a gamer from the various references in the novels, and it was something I’d been thinking about for a while. Happily for me, he was interested, and over the course of the next year, the paperwork was sorted and put in place to make Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game a reality. Now in the final stages of production, I can safely say that immersing myself in Peter and Nightingale’s world over the last few years has taken me to some very interesting places, ones I couldn’t really have foreseen when I picked up that first paperback in the Emerson Chambers six years ago. Working with Ben has been an absolute pleasure, and I look forward to where the rivers flow next. Happy Birthday, Rivers of London! And thank you, Ben. Lynne Hardy, Line Editor, Rivers of London: the Roleplaying Game, Chaosium Inc. Chaosium's Lynne Hardy (R) and Michael O'Brien (C) met with Ben Aaronovitch (L) in London in April 2019 to discuss a roleplaying game based on his Rivers of London series. Rivers of London The Rivers of London series follows Peter Grant, an ordinary constable turned magician’s apprentice, as he solves crimes across London in a sensational blend of inventive urban fantasy, gripping mystery thriller, and hilarious fantasy caper. The series debuted in 2011 with Rivers of London (Midnight Riot in the US) and now includes more than a half-dozen novels, several novellas, and a number of comic book series. The series has sold well over two million copies and has been translated into fourteen languages. In May 2019, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost announced that their production company, Stolen Picture, had acquired rights to create a television series based on the world of the Folly. Author Ben Aaronovitch is also known for his work on both television and audio scripts for Doctor Who. Ben Aaronovitch is represented by John Berlyne of the Zeno Agency Ltd.

They are being shipped to our warehouses right now, but global shipping movements are unfortunately very disrupted at the moment so we can't give a concrete date.

With the release of the Call of Cthulhu Classic Kickstarter PDFs, this thread is to catch any typos or errors spotted. Please note them here, quoting the page number, the error, and the suggested correction. We have a couple of weeks' window to catch errors before print. If corrections come in later than this, we will correct the relevant PDF file and the print files for reprints. ERRORS in this initial post have been corrected. Please review them before submitting them, to avoid duplication Important: please make sure you note which book you're referring to, as shown below. CHA2006 Basic Role Playing p. 3, Left column, "As you watch, he turns the comer" CHA2301 2nd edition rulebook p. 7, “If you roll a 5 the first time and an 8 the second time, you’ve rolled 38.” (should be 58) p. 8, INT section second column "JNTx5" now fixed to INTx5. p. 18, example in Bargain skill: There is a space between the A and t of "At this time". The word "norma" should be "normal" p. 18, Fast Talk description near the bottom of the page: an extra space in the word "f ast" should be "fast". p. 24, "babbling nonsense to Kurt s corpse.” fixed to "Kurt's" also fixed "Harvey 's" to "Harvey's" (extra space). p 25, Claustrophobia - “ger out of here” is “get out of here” p 36, Deep Ones - Description text and book name are now italicized. p36, Second column, in Notes for Dholes, a section of text reads “does not visibly harm then.” is now "them". p 40, Second column, second paragraph: “A mem- be of the race…” is now “A member of the race…” p 58; first column in Summon Byakhee, the hyphenated “Alde- baran” should probably be changed to “Aldebaran.” p 59 first column, the “Summon Star Vampire” title should be in bold face to make it consistent with other entries. p 59 second column, in Summon Chthonian, “sight” should more properly be “site” p 63 first column, in example under Increasing POW, “A f- ter ” should probably be “After” p 65 first column, second line after How to Set Up a Scenario heading, “laer” should be “layer” p 71, first column, last line of second paragraph under CLUES heading, year date should be “1917” instead of “917” p 72, column 1, "if the investigator is not wearing extremely ... he must roll his C0Nx5 ..." =>c-zero-n should be CON (C-O-N) p 79, second column, last line of first paragraph: a hyphen appearing at the end of “virtue-“ appears to be unnecessary. p 79, second column, under entry for Golden Repository of Shining Truth, an unnecessary apostrophe appears at the end of “some’” p 81, H.P. Lovecraft Timeline - in the 1923-25 entry, “WIERD TALES” should be “WEIRD TALES” p 82, In the second to bottom paragraph of the first column, “Fora” nowe “For a” p 82, unneeded “>” following the parenthetical “(in which case it may surface again someday)” deleted. p 84, first column, World war II ("war" should be "War") p 84, 2nd column, 1st sentence: "Afferent" -> "a different" p 88, Second column under Anniversary project notes 7 lines down individual is misspelt as indivdual. now fixed. p 93 spells Call Nygotha, Telepathy, and Mind transfer now have asterisks. Back Cover Table of Contents - third column - “Money for Campiagn” now “Money for Campaign” CHA2301 Sourcebook for the 1920s p. 1, paragraph one "The timeline starts m 1890" (now in) p. 7, in Einstein's biography the word "hypothecated" (hypothecated is as per the original) p. 9, The * following uncivilized changed to single quotation mark. p. 9, in the skills listing for Soldier in the Other Occupations box in the lower third of the page, “Automobil” should be “Automobile” p. 13, In the second column, Naval Skill example, “AU three aboard…” now “All three aboard…” p. 13, "...the Myra Umps to the dock" (now limps) CHA2302 Shadows of Yog Sothoth p 2, first line: Shadows of You-Sothoth © (now Yog-Sothoth) p 8, in the diagram of 2nd floor, dais is misspelled as "dias" several times. p 16/17, map of Basement on p 16 uses the term "E. Coli Room" - this is changed to "Black Fever Room". Both same now. p 18, chapter header should read "The Coven of Cannich" - not "Caimich" p 55, first column, fifth paragraph, third line - capitalize Shantak.p 65, 2nd column, under description of the hole - "A successful Spot Hidden roll will find the hole, or a Luck roll x will allow a searcher" p 66, first column, beneath "The Graveyard" - "The tombstones are overgrown, and many have fallO en over." - should be fallen.p 68, first column, description of (29) Bedroom - unnecessary space "...now is gold-inlaid..."p 68, second column, Cave of Gases description - "hands" now "hangs"p 70, Philip Boucher's Mythos skill has a space before the rating CHA2302 Shadows of Yog-Sothoth Player Handouts P 20 of player handouts for SoYS (now switched to players map) CHA2303 Asylum & Other Tales p.4: The section Gate from the Past is now separate from that of The Mauretania. p. 5, First paragraph, back slash at end of Ausperg pronunciation is now a bracket ]. p. 7, "Keeper's Information" now bold in The Magus and Skull, Human description. p.8, Dictionnaire Infernal now spelled Dictionairre Infernal. (typo was in the original) p 13, under Klaus Hunderpest - odd spacing, reads as "a 5 7-y ear-old" p 13, last paragraph in the left column, "coffin Rd" should probably be "coffin lid" p 16, a few times where "1D10" has been OCR'd as "ID 10" p 16, under Financial & Social Rewards, "European" misspelled p 17, second paragraph under "Keeper Information" - "Has-tur" should be "Hastur", i wager? p 20, under notes for Second Byakhee, there is one instance where Byakhee needs to be capitalized p 22, 2nd column, third line, "Data:" needs to be indented & formatted to match the rest of the text. p 24, in the description of the sheriff, "jowls" is misspelled as "jowels." p 31, first column, last paragraph - "a Italianate" should become "an Italianate" (original typo) CHA2303 Asylum-handouts.pdf p. 10: Many missing spaces: (all fixed) CHA2304 Cthulhu Companion p.32, Elaine Gibbson lacks EDU stat (now has EDU of 15) P. 26, column 1, the phrase “One even- int, he…” is now “One evening, he” CHA2308 Trail of Tsathoggua: p 3, column one, second paragraph: physicallyfit is now "physically fit" x2, and "morescholarly" is now "more scholarly" p 5, first column, paragraph beginning "During the..." -- spacing issues "halfmillion" and "nowdegenerate" p 5, first column, "The Hyperboreans has weathered" now "Hyberoreans had weathered" . p 10, first column, third paragraph under "The Wall In The Ice" -- "slowlymoving" needs a space p 10, same paragraph, "caste" should be "cast" p 11, 2nd column, 2nd paragraph beneath "Clues Found In The Ice" -- "recordof" needs a space p 12, 2nd column, 2nd paragraph: "theinvestigators" needs a space. p. 20, boxed text, second column, 6th row: itsSIZ (should be "its SIZ") p 20, 2nd column, 2nd paragraph below boxed text, "spareslyfurnished" needs a space. p 28, first column, third paragraph, "approachesmore" p 38, "The Hounted House" p 50, 3rd paragraph, "Scottish lines" now "Scottish linens" p 52, 2nd column, last paragraph, space needed- "(See “The Van Laaden Papers 11.”)This book was kept only...." p 54, 2nd column, 2nd paragraph - missing space, "(See “The Van Laaden Papers 12” and “13.”) This slim volume..." p 54, 2nd column, top boxed text has unclosed parentheses. p 56, 2nd column, "the druid will drag himself out and being attacking the investigators" -- "being" is now "begin" p 63, "melee round, and hot good unless..." -- changed "hot" to "not." p 63, 2nd column, beneath At The Mission - "buildingsare" now has a space. p 64, first column, third paragraph - "TheDawn" now has a space. CHA2310 Fragments of Fearp 25, 2nd column, third paragraph - a "Library Search" roll is called for - change to "Library Use"?p 27, first column, "...hide on the ground If the investigators try to interfere, or..." - period added. p 28, 2nd column, first paragraph - "30yards" needs a spacep 28, 2nd column, third paragraph - unclosed parentheses & "beings" now "begins"p 33, no page number! & missing periods in several journal entries.p 34, boxed text, 2nd paragraph - "1 5" now "15"p 34, boxed text, 2nd paragraph - missing a period " grow papyrus reeds Any investigators with the Botany...." - period added p 34, boxed text, third paragraph - "which resemble skunk-house- cate hybrids..." now "skunk-housecat hybridsp 39, boxed text, 2nd column - " own teeth When he is done, he sacrifices a point..." period added.p 39, boxed text, 2nd column, second paragraph, - " resist it normally However, it is specially." period added.p 42, first column, 2nd paragraph: "escape to the future, all witnessing investigators lose 1D6 SAN."p 45 - the paragraph beginning "If the viewer succeeds..." is now within the box.p 45, first column, under Secret Room C - "The piece weighs a little over 6% lbs" changed to 6 1/2. p 46, second column under "The Byakhee" " attacked, the fight until all of them are destroyed" -- now "they fight until..."

PDFs going out to all 5,718 backers of the Call of Cthulhu Classic Kickstarter today! BTW, these aren't just scans of the originals: we recreated everything in Adobe Creative Suite. All the files are crystal clear, searchable, and hyperlinked!

"Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson founded the roleplaying industry with Dungeons & Dragons (1974); Ken St. Andre proved that the feat was replicable with Tunnels & Trolls (1975); but it was Steve Perrin who broke the mold of D&D and proved that fantasy roleplaying games could be more than just variants of that primordial game with RuneQuest (1978). However, Steve Perrin's story is so much bigger than that..." A wonderful RPGnet memorial piece by industry historian Shannon Appelcline: https://www.rpg.net/columns/advanced-designers-and-dragons/advanced-designers-and-dragons54.phtml

Author George R.R. Martin paid his respects to Steve Perrin on his website today. George R.R. Martin's popular Wild Cards stories stemmed from what he memorably described as a "two-year-long role playing orgy that engulfed not only me, but the rest of my Albuquerque gaming circle as well." And the game they were playing was Steve Perrin's Superworld, which George R.R. Martin received as a birthday present in September 1983. It ultimately led to the creation of a shared universe of superhero stories by 30+ authors, including Steve Perrin himself. "Without his game, there would never have been a Wild Cards series," says George R.R. Martin in his obituary, also noting he and Steve had known of each other since they were in high school, both "writing amateur superhero stories for the ditto’ed fanzines of the fledgling comics fandom of the 60s." They finally met in person in 2002 at WorldCon in San Jose. Read George R.R. Martin's valedictory post about his friend Steve Perrin "Farewell to an Ace" at georgerrmartin.com. nb People in the Wild Cards universe with superhuman abilities are known as "Aces". Steve Perrin's Superworld is available in PDF from Chaosium and DriveThruRPG, along with the Superworld Companion, Trouble for Havoc and Ken Rolston's legendary adventure Bad Medicine for Doctor Drugs.

Steve Perrin: Creating RuneQuest – Part Six: Debut at Origins '78 STEVE PERRIN: By the time Origins came around, I had enough leave time from my day job to go along with Greg, Tadashi Ehara, and Lynn to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where the convention was being held while the students were away for the summer. We arranged for Warren to go with the crew to Gen Con the next month. Steve H and Ray Turney were too busy with their own lives to carve out the time, and Chaosium only had so much money for plane tickets.At Origins I got to meet a bunch of people I had only known through correspondence and by reputation. Greg had one of his better marketing brilliancies and asked me to make up a list of people who should get review copies of the game. I put together a list of folks like John Sapienza, who later contributed so much to further editions of RQ, and Mark Swanson, the publisher of the Wild Hunt APA (Amateur Press Association), and Lee Gold of Alarums and Excursions APA, all of whom seemed like good and honest folk who would give a thoughtful review and hopefully generate some interest. And they were and they did. At Origins, I had to give some people back their money because they bought the book first, then introduced themselves as someone who was on the list.Game demos were scheduled in the lounge areas of various dormitories at the University, and navigating to them to run the demo game was sometimes confusing. Neither the dormitories nor the lounges were very well marked. Thus was born the first RuneQuest spinoff game – RoomQuest.The next anecdote needs a bit of backstory. Back in 1975, when we were getting ready to hold the first DunDraCon, when D&D was just three books in a box and some supplements, I wrote up a bunch of house rules for play in the official house dungeon for the convention. Since, once again, I was the person typing them up, I called them the Perrin Conventions. In theory they were only for local consumption, but several attendees at the first DunDraCon were from out of town.While at Origins ’78, I took time off from the Chaosium table to go see the seminars. I sat down to watch one that included folks like Marc Miller, Dave Arneson, and others discussing RPGs. One of the organizers of the convention that I had met earlier, saw me and asked me to come on stage. I am not shy. I expected to be introduced as the author of the new game RuneQuest, or perhaps of All the Worlds Monsters. Instead, he introduced me as the author of the Perrin Conventions. Apparently my little pamphlet had legs I didn’t know about.It was a great two years from July of 1976 until June of 1978. The time since the debut of RuneQuest has been equally fulfilling. I established friendships that are still active forty years later and established a name in the game business that has held me in good stead for the whole 40 years. Even as I write this I have new games coming down the pike from a variety of publishers. I am very pleased the new “Classic” edition of RuneQuest 2nd edition brings back into print what many fans tell me is their favorite edition. I am only sorrowed thinking of the friends who have not managed to make it to see this 40th anniversary of the game we all contributed to.RIP: Clint Bigglestone, Steve Henderson, Jerry Jacks, Terry Jackson, Rory Root, and Lynn Willis. [And now RIP Greg Stafford and Steve Perrin himself. Vale to them all - #weareallus]

Part Five: An Ancient World fantasy STEVE PERRIN: One important aspect of RuneQuest and Glorantha was implied in Greg’s board games, but we decided to emphasize it. Dragon Pass is essentially an Ancient World fantasy, not a medieval fantasy as generally portrayed in most D&D games and their ilk. There are many gods and they have a more personal influence on the people and events of Glorantha, just as the early myths say they do. The Lunar Empire and the largely tribal Kingdom of Sartar have analogs in Imperial Rome and the Gauls, or perhaps the Goths of Germany, rather than medieval England and France.This is why the warrior woman on the cover is armored like a Greek hoplite. It gives a different feel to a fantasy game, and we exploited it mercilessly. We decided to make the game reflect the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age. But one of the reasons bronze gave way to iron is that iron is very easy to find and work and turn into steel, while bronze must be alloyed copper and tin. Tin, at least, can be hard to find.So we played the fantasy card and declared bronze the bones of the giants whose bodies formed the mountains of Dragon Pass. So bronze was plentiful, malleable to magical enchantment, and did not interfere with the special rune metals of the various godly pantheons (which we also created to justify the bronze use). Iron became a Rune Metal for Rune Lords. Very powerful, but unless properly treated it dampened magic. Anyone detecting something of L. Sprague de Camp’s work in this will not be surprised to learn he is one of my favorite authors of the 30s, 40s, and 50s.Of course there are anachronisms. The halberd, for instance, is a late medieval weapon. Why is it being used in an ancient world?Two words: Great Trolls. When you have constant enemies who are much bigger and stronger than you are, you want the biggest weapon you can handle to deal with them. The only problem? Great Trolls use them too.The four of us, me, Ray Turney, Steve Henderson, and Warren James, slowly hammered the rules together and tested them in play tests. I handled most of the basic rules, Ray was the magic guy, and Steve H and Warren contributed their skills, including conducting a lot of the play testing. Warren’s Blind King’s Palace was the scene of many adventures, and Steve H took us out of Pavis on adventures throughout the world known to us at the time.Steve H also had a good ear for dramatic language and he came up with the back cover copy. Too bad whoever set it up on the typesetter misspelled “Chaosium”.Terry Jackson contributed some very good material on horses and horse combat. Anders Swenson came up with the idea of Power Crystals. And of course Greg answered many Glorantha-based questions. When we handed him a first draft manuscript, he accepted it and said he enjoyed reading it.One of the first decisions to be made was who got the cover credit for the game. We settled on Steve Perrin and Friends because I had done the lion’s share of the organizing and rules concepts (and typed the final draft), and too many friends had helped (as can be seen above) to get them all on the cover.Putting that first draft into something like presentable form was mostly my job. I took all my vacation time accrued from my day job, rented an electric typewriter, and hammered out all of our playtest notes and occasional items I suddenly realized we needed, such as the shaman rules, and put them into a semi-coherent whole. There was a lot of pressure, because we wanted to have it for Origins 1978, and the date for getting the manuscript to the printer in time was looming in the not-too-distant future. There were no personal computers. No handy internet to ship stuff from one desk to another and off to the printer. There was just an IBM Selectric typewriter and piles of paper and pints of white out. Does anyone remember white out?From my typewriter, the manuscript had to go to Lynn Willis, the production marvel at Chaosium for decades until only a few years ago. In those days he had only recently taken up this position, learning how to use the typesetting machine in the process, and I made things hard for him by single spacing the document, but there was no time to correct it. It would take too long to typeset the various tables and columns, so those were just extracted from the manuscript and pasted onto the copy going to the printer, which is why all the tables are in a different font from the rest of the book.We were late enough that getting the books in time to go to Origins was tricky. We had to bring them as luggage on the airplane – the truck carrying merchandise to the convention had been gone for a week.

Part Four: Came the Ducks STEVE PERRIN: Creation of creatures for Glorantha occupied a fair amount of our attention, particularly when trying to figure out what to toss at play testers this week. Many had already been created by Greg either in his board games or in Wyrms Footnotes, which started as a fanzine supplement to White Bear and became the voice of Glorantha. Creatures like the Walktapus and Dragon Snails and Pumpkin Jack (appearing in RQ as Jack O’Bears – Pumpkin Jack’s spawn) first appeared in the pages of Wyrm’s Footnotes,along with character pieces so they could be added to the game(s). We rapidly realized that we had a multitude of very nasty creatures but not many run of the mill critters for beginning adventurers to deal with before they ran into the big guns.I am not sure whether Greg Stafford came up with the Troll curse at this point, or it had been brewing back in his very creative mind from the first time he decided to put trolls into White Bear, or before. So now we had Trollkin (another name I came up with, though there might be parallel development in other areas).We were also lacking some kind of Hobbit equivalent for those players who really insist on a challenge. Came the Ducks.From the time White Bear & Red Moon came out, and perhaps before, Greg had a friendship with a talented miniatures sculptor named Neville Stocken. Neville may have created some of the prominent monsters of Glorantha by first dreaming up (literally in some cases) something like the Dragon Snail and then Greg including it into the bestiary. Neville’s company, Archive Miniatures, created many Gloranthan miniatures that Greg used to promote his board games at conventions.Among Neville’s creations was a two figure miniature set of Barbarian Duck and His Old Lady, taken rather closely from the cover of Howard the Duck #1. Marvel objected strenuously and immediately. Neville asked Greg to justify the Duck (anyone can do barbarian girls in chain mail bikinis) and now we had Ducks to essentially fill the hobbit niche in the Gloranthan mythological ecology.The concept got a boost because one of the cities of Dragon Pass is called Duck Point. It got that name because when Greg was readying White Bear for initial release, he needed names for the cities he had been calling “City Number One,” etc. He asked each of the talented artists who had worked on the project with him to name a city. One of the artists, a definite fan of Carl Barks, pointed to one of the cities and said “That one is Duckburg.” Greg, not wanting Disney on his case, changed it to Duck Point. But where did the ducks actually come from? An ancient curse is the accepted reason, but I always favored the story that I heard from Steve Lortz, Neville’ s assistant in the latter days of Archive Miniatures.In ancient days, a cabal of sorcerers wanted to call up a giant fire-breathing Dragon to assist them in their conquests. However, they slipped a couple of decimal points and instead got 5,000 cigar-smoking male ducks, otherwise known as drakes.One wonders how the race perpetuated itself, but maybe that’s where the barbarian girls in chain mail bikinis come in.Another monster was based on an artistic creation, but this time the artist was my wife, Luise Perenne. She created a dynamic monochromatic cover for the first edition with an armored warrior woman dealing with a lizardy creature hanging on to her shield. For the second edition, she recreated the cover in color.But we didn’t have lizard monsters. We had Dragonewts and Newtlings, but no dangerous just plain lizards. So Rock Lizards were born. We populated them in the ruins of Pavis and then came up with Cliff Toads to give them some challenge in their ecological niche.Warren James helped with these critters and then came up with the Stake Snakes and their kin. Our Bestiary was unique for most games (though Tunnels and Trolls: Monsters, Monsters supplement had some of this) in that full characteristics were presented for each critter. A player could actually play a troll, or a broo, or a scorpion man, or an intelligent baboon, etc. Strictly speaking players could play dragon snails, though I have not heard of anyone trying it. More than one player has told me of campaigns that included no humans at all.

Part Three: Ha Ha in the basement STEVE PERRIN: I started running playtest games of “The Chaosium Game” at my house in Oakland. Warren and I had this nice basement room to turn over to a large gaming table and a ragtag collection of discarded chairs for gamers to sit in. My wife Luise, not a gamer, liked to listen to the conversation and laughter coming through the heating vents. She called it the “Ha Ha in the basement.” When it came time to publish the game, which by this time had acquired the RuneQuest name, Luise contributed a cover and interior artwork that is still praised today. When we started, AD&D was just getting going, and the main alternatives for those who were looking for something different from it were Tunnels and Trolls, Bunnies and Burrows, and Chivalry and Sorcery. Elements of the first two appear in RuneQuest, such as armor absorbing damage and the approach to some skills. Certain friends of mine call RuneQuest one of the best researched games of its time.I suppose we can take credit for being the first role playing game that didn’t use a Frick & Frack style title. I came up with the RuneQuest name by combining the Runes created or adapted by Greg as background for his world of Glorantha with Quest, a nice heroic sounding noun.A perennial question since the game debuted has been “What is a Rune Quest?” This question has been answered in several different ways in several different venues. All do a pretty good job. Sven Lugar, a Southern California gamer I knew from our SCA days who helped with play testing, suggested that you became a Rune Lord or Priest by “attaining a Rune.” Nice concept, just how it is done is still open to discussion.By this time several of my gaming friends were active play testers of RuneQuest. Some of them have even been published by the Chaosium in early supplements to the game. Among them are Bill Keyes, Gordon Monson, Anders Swenson, Terry Jackson, T.O. Green, and Tony Hughes. If I remember correctly, the Chaosium play test group consisted of Ken Kaufer, Rory Root, and Greg himself – but I may be confusing the time between the first and second editions of the game. Most of the play testing took place in my basement, as I still had a day job at the time and was just contracting with Chaosium.Our play testing campaign centered in the ancient city of Pavis, looming over the River of Cradles, the lonely river that meanders through the Plains of Prax – providing the only sure source of water. The ruins of Pavis provide several square miles of deserted city possibly hiding the treasures of earlier times. For an overall conflict to establish the background, we postulated that the Lunar Empire had conquered Dragon Pass and sent their legions into Prax. This is the actual prelude to the events of White Bear & Red Moon as established by Greg’s chronology, so we were on fairly solid ground.Wanting to monopolize the treasures of Pavis, the Lunars forbade independent adventurers to enter the ruins. And so the tunnels were dug and adventurers had to sneak into the ruins, occasionally engaging Lunar patrols as well as the resident monsters among the trolls and Broo of the ruins.These play test sessions found some problems that got fixed. The main problem was that it was difficult to build a character up to Rune Lord or Rune Priest, so some of the problems with skills over 100% did not get fixed immediately. To test what rules we had for the conditions, I created a Rune Lord named Rurik, whose adventures in the rule book are essentially fiction. He sprang as the sun at sunrise over a Sun Dome temple, whole and Rune bound upon the play test scene. He also died ignominiously on a Trollkin’s spear on his 3rd or 4th adventure.When we started, the Attributes had already been fixed – essentially the D&D Attributes with Power substituted for Wisdom - and characters had a very small number of “mana points” to power their spells. For the most part magic was Ray’s bailiwick but I felt that the very few mana points were a definite hindrance to the survival of adventurers. I suggested that a spell slinger would be using his actual Power for spells. Since Power was already the defense against magic, this meant the mage would have more power for spells, but his defense would slowly decline. A nice concept but it got too deadly for magic users – so now characters use mana that is equal to their Power.Of course, the “spend Power for Magic results” concept still survives in the sacrifices a Rune Priest must make to gain use of Rune Magic. As part of my D&D play I had conceived of Strike Ranks to determine who had the first strike in a combat. It is based somewhat on my experience in the SCA. I ported this concept over to RuneQuest and it has gone through several mutations since then. It was not originally meant to control every little action in a combat round. The later implementation of this idea was clumsy (my fault as much as anyone’s, I was working on it) and I personally have gone away from it, though some players consider it central to play.Sven Lugar created and pioneered the use of the Resistance Table, which is almost an entirely different game system. It is very useful for magic duels, perhaps less useful for other procedures. Particularly when applied to percentile skills it has a limited utility. But it became a feature of all Basic Role Playing – based games.

Part Two: Any character can do anything Any character can do anything. STEVE PERRIN: Fired up by this concept, I started working with this group. I had spare time at work, access to electric typewriters, and can type 50 words a minute. No personal computers sitting on every desk in those days. Clint lived across the Bay in San Francisco and dropped out quickly. Art and Henrik dropped out as I developed concepts like no classes, no experience points, and direct attacks against attributes. Ray stuck with me and I added my old friend Steve Henderson and my housemate Warren James to the mix.Initially, the game had three character classes: Fighter, mage, and thief. The innovation was that any member of these classes could get training in the other professions at a premium compared to what they had to pay in their own profession. Percentile skills were already involved with the idea that when a fighter got to 100% in his skills he became a Rune Lord, a mage who got to 100% became a Rune Priest and gained access to Rune Magic, and a thief who got to 100% became – er- what would they become? Rune Merchant was suggested. This quandary was one of the incitements to conceiving that the classes were too restrictive. I was soon pushing to eliminate classes entirely. Perhaps too much of a modern American democratic model, but there you are.Similarly Experience Points were equal to gold pieces, which you had to pay out for training. Dropping XP and just spending gold for advancement was actually a concept Jerry Jacks (another of the Monday gamers) and I had pioneered with a proposed D&D class we called Sages, published in the Alarums and Excursions APA. It seemed to fit Glorantha, so we adopted it.I disliked the D&D concept of gaining competency by reaching some meta-game “level” that has no actual reality in the game. I conceived the idea of all abilities essentially being skills, and attaining greater skill through experience. I also conceived the idea of having to roll over one’s current skill to attain increase. This was actually something of an afterthought, as the original concept was simply to pay for training with treasure.A factor of my game playing is that I have notoriously bad dice luck. In one of my regular games these days, the common knowledge is to never borrow my dice because the bad luck will rub off. In RuneQuest this means that I roll high (when I need low) to hit targets and roll low to do damage, or gain from experience. Several years later, George MacDonald, co-author of Champions, asked me why if I had such bad dice luck I came up with a game that depended on dice rolls to advance a character. All I could say then, and now, is “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” It still seems like a good idea and several fans have reinforced my opinion. I think they all have better dice luck than I do.

For our RuneQuest Classic Kickstarter in 2016 Steve Perrin generously provided a personal account of his role in the genesis of the RuneQuest roleplaying game. Although at the time of the Kickstarter we publicly featured an excerpt of Steve's recollections, the full account was only ever published a high level backer item (in the RuneQuest Playtest Manuscript) and so only received limited circulation.In memory of Steve, here we present his account in full as a six part series, offering his fascinating insights into the development of RuneQuest, the rules that cemented Steve Perrin as one of the most influential game designers of all time. Part One: "The Chaosium’s role playing game” STEVE PERRIN: I first met Greg Stafford through his board game, White Bear and Red Moon. Greg independently published it out of a small house near the Oakland Airport. It portrayed a fantastic world full of wonderful concepts like the Red Moon’s variable power, Cragspider, Sir Ethilrist’s Black Horse Troopers, Dragonewts, and many others. The game concerned the efforts of the Lunar Empire to conquer legendary Dragon Pass and the brave barbarian warriors of the Kingdom of Sartar.The game’s format was similar to the war games put out by Avalon Hill and Strategic Simulations, with a hex map and cardboard pieces for the army groups (actually card stock for the first edition, which made for some fun storage and unit-stacking problems). But instead of the usual modern military designations for infantry and artillery and cavalry, each piece was decorated with Runes, each tied to the type of unit it was supposed to be. The runes were an interesting conflation of futhark, American Indian symbology, and a few from other sources.Greg moved in the same science fiction fan circles I did, but our paths had not crossed. I was mostly involved with the Society for Creative Anachronism, which was really just starting to go national at the time. Greg was not part of that group. So despite mutual friends and acquaintances we had not met.Yet.Greg and I met physically at a D&D game a few months later. My friend and fellow wargamer Clint Bigglestone ran into him at a fan party and invited him to be a guest at one of our regular Monday night D&D games. Greg invited our group to come help playtest his Nomad Gods game, a sequel to White Bear & Red Moon set in the neighboring desolate Plains of Prax. I began to appreciate just how much creative energy he had put into these games, and the world of Glorantha they were set in.Various members of our group, significantly Steve Henderson and Clint Bigglestone, and I helped with the playtesting of Nomad Gods. When Jeff Pimper and I conceived of All the Worlds Monsters, we went to Greg for advice on how to publish it, and he offered to take care of publishing it – taking some of the burden off of us and giving him more items to put in his catalog.Meantime, Greg thought he needed a role-playing version of Glorantha and looked about for someone to write it for him. For a while Dave Hargrave of Arduin fame attempted to fit Glorantha into his style of game, but the result was still too D&D-ish for Greg’s liking. A trio of gamers in the area, Art and Ray Turney and their friend Henrik Pfeifer offered to come up with a game for him and he gave the go-ahead. After a couple of months, he thought maybe another viewpoint might be useful and he asked me and Clint Bigglestone to take a look at how things were going.On July 4, 1976, as the United States of America celebrated its 200th anniversary, we were introduced to the first stage of “The Chaosium’s role playing game.” It looked a lot like D&D, with classes and experience points and saving throws, but it had one feature that I immediately picked up on:Any character can do anything.