Jeff

Phil - I am inclined to take this entire thread down if anyone tries to find errors in how I ran a game at 4 am in the morning my time!. The fact that I was even awake was tribute to the fun of playing with Bluejay, Jim, JP, and Will.

When we discussed this internally, we cut disarm from the core rules because: 1. we felt it was a rarely used option and always a bit fiddly in games; and (more importantly) 2. not really core that Bronze Age spirit of Glorantha - Achilles, Odyssesus, Gilgamesh, etc. don't capture prisoners by hitting on the head "non-lethally" - at best they reduce a hit location to 0 hit points or less and the incapacitated or unconscious foe surrenders or is taken captive.

Given that most of that material was in Appendix G of RQ2 (or was from RQ3's Genertela boxed set), I am surprised by this reaction.

Crazy! Seriously, in 35 years I can count the number of times I have seen those tactics used on the fingers of one hand. I've seen aimed shots used more with the new edition (large because adventurers tend to start with better combat skills than in previous editions) than ever before, but disarms, knockback, stunning attacks have in my experience (and my experience is broad and varied) been about as rare as the proverbial hen's teeth. The new RuneQuest is the size of the Keeper's Book (which was as big as we were going to let it get), and so what rules But that's why there is a Gamemasters Book coming out - an opportunity to give more options and tools.

Yeah. In our house gaming group we have several players who have zero interest in complex simulation and just want to get to the action and immerse in the roleplaying experience. I've also now run RQG with LOTS of newbies. The common experience is that RQG combat is easy and intuitive (I attack with my sword; I wait until the end of the round and make an aimed shot for the head; etc.) - just we found RQ2 combat easy and intuitive back in the day.

That would be awesome.

In 35 years of playing RuneQuest, I've seen only one disarm attempt (back in the early days of RQ3). I've seen scores of attempts to line up into a shield wall or phalanx (everywhere from battles to trying to form a line in Snake Pipe Hollow). Jason and I cut out Disarm because both of us consider it to be something that rarely gets used and isn't particularly key to the genre. We'll have notes on it in the GM Book, but given that just about every adult in Dragon Pass knows how to form up into a phalanx (at least because of militia training), I do think that it is at least significant for the genre to have some idea how to do that in the core book.

The book was actually the maximum length we were going to allow.

Whereas RQ uses the same SR system as RQ2 and more or less the same as RQ3 (the main changes are that RQG has 12 SR like RQ2 and doesn't use the pseudo-impulses of RQ3). I personally find SR systems easier than rolled initiative, but to each their own.

We will have plenty of additional rules in the GMs book.

I'd say the opposite. In RQ3, large monsters had absurd amounts of hit points. We know that RuneQuest adventurers fight giants - that is part of the genre - but in RQ2 Bigclub had 28 hit points. In RQ3 Bigclub would have 42 (and actually it got worse, as RQ3 knocked up the CON of big monsters as well, so in the RQ3 version of SPH Bigclub had an insane 63 hit points). Fighting big monsters is part of the genre of Glorantha, and was far more possible in RQ2 than in RQ3. Jeff

Yep. For example, a setting using primarily firearms probably doesn't hit locations and could use general HPs and another system for determining major/minor wounds. Similarly, a game involving reincarnating occult entities might have some totally new mechanics. Or we might have a different set of personality traits, etc. A game where all the protagonists are within the human norm might use more elements of CoC7. And so on. But it ain't RuneQuest if you can't lose your left leg!

Sorry to disappoint, but Mythic Iceland will have hit locations. It will be using the RuneQuest engine but tailored to the setting - different magic, no Gloranthan runes, etc.

I did (and often still do) the same.

One of the things I always wanted to see is the promise of the campaign glimpsed in RQ3 - a setting in a fantasy earth that goes from Vinland to the Indian Ocean. Where our Icelandic farmers might end up joining the Varangian Guard and fighting in the Levant or where a Persian poet might end up fighting trolls in the icy wastes of Greenland. Where Constantinople and Baghdad are the great metropolises, saints intercede on the battlefield, and old gods survive in their copses and hidden temples. A setting Harald Hardrada, Ibn Battuta, Benjamin of Tudela, or Michael Psellos might recognise. And as Creative Director of Chaosium, that's something I am making sure comes to life.

I'd also strongly recommend the new RuneQuest which is now available. The mechanics are strongly rooted in the setting and really help the player understand the setting through the game.

One of the finest HQ games I ever ran was a Star Wars game.

We send out notice of updates via email. We haven't updated the pdf since it was released on Friday, but we'll let folk know when we do.

I'm perfectly happy if folk come up with their own point-buy mechanics, although I've got to confess that I am biased against them in RQ. To me, what is significant about rolling dice is not the spread (I think the rules make it very clear that I am perfectly happy to let players discard lousy rolls) - it is that it usually generates numbers that are slightly "imperfect" and characters that are not truly "optimised". A character's STR+SIZ might end up being just a bit too low for that higher damage modifier, SIZ+CON might result in you still having only 3 hit points in the arms, and so on. In my experience, point-built characters in BRP systems tend to feel "constructed," because they tend to be fully optimised for various modifiers. I admit that is only an aesthetic feeling, but it is the same as with the Family Background - I always let a player choose a result if they think it is important for their character concept, but most of the time they just end up rolling results because they don't. As a result, the results feel more "natural".

This is correct.

Yes it will. Runequest Fantasy Earth will be RuneQuest after all.

Both elemental wheels are correct.

There will be a RuneQuest Fantasy Earth book. Fantasy Earth is a setting, not a generic BRP rules system. That being said, you'll see a standalone RQ Mythic Iceland before that, and likely two or three other standalone books in the RQ Fantasy Earth line before a core book gets done. But that is grist for a later discussion.

As I see it, RuneQuest and Cthulhu are on a spectrum. Cthulhu is fundamentally nihilistic. Mankind is doomed as the universe is hostile and uncaring, and eventually the Great Old Ones will awaken and devour us all. The best we can do is buy some more time. Heroes are Nietzchean, staring into the abyss and the abyss is staring at them. The hero ends up alone and mad, scribbling on the walls with his fingernails. RuneQuest is Jungian or Campbellian. The cosmos is in constant danger of degenerating into Chaos but it is possible for the hero to defeat Chaos and refound the cosmos. The hero's path comes at a price - sometimes a terrible price - but the hero can confront the void and succeed. However, the hero is a mortal with feet of clay, and even the greatest hero is flawed and falls. Let us honour the heroes that keep the world from disappearing into the empty void. IMO neither is naive - neither is grimdark (then again, to me the quintessential grimdark setting - the WH 40k universe - is O'Brien's booted foot stamping on humanity's face forever). There is evil and horror in both settings, but in Glorantha we mortals are not necessarily doomed to annihilation (although we are certainly doomed to suffer and die) and engage in a constant struggle to keep the void at bay.

When I ran the Dragonrise occurring as a background event, I treated the appearance of the True Dragon more like something out of Call of Cthulhu. It caused temporary insanity - amnesia, hysterical fear, catatonia, etc., - among those who failed a POWx5 check.