Jeff

Yes. As do dragonewts. Neither make good PCs without a fair amount of work from the GM (which is why no "Creating Dragonewt Adventurers" or "Creating Mostali Adventurers" sections are in the Bestiary. The Elder Races aren't just "us" in different shapes - they are fundamentally non-human in a way that none of the Tolkien "races" are.

Well since the RQ2 rulebook. Greg's big Mostali piece in Different Worlds 24 (including his "Why I dislike Mostali" article) dates to 1982, so it is not like any of this is new.

Keep in mind, there will be a Cults of Dragon Pass book, with the long writeups as done in CoP & CoT, but for 40+ cults. But that is a later project.

Trolls are definitely playable. I got "Creating a Dark Troll Adventurer", "Creating a Great Troll Adventurer", and "Creating a Trollkin Adventurer" materials.

Morokanth are one of the Five Great Tribes of Prax and can be found anywhere Praxians can be found. And since Argrath has a large Praxian army, that means that they can be found in Dragon Pass. The Morokanth are non-human, but of Praxian culture, making them eminently playable (different but approachable). Normal Mostali make about as good of player characters as dragonewts, which is to say, they make lousy player characters. Mostali culture is very alien to human cultures, individual mostali are immortal, xenophobic in the extreme, atheistic, and pretty much never leave their mines (except Iron Dwarves). There's enough information in there that if someone really really wants to play a broken mostali, they can, but I'd rather focus on the more broadly playable species.

The core book includes the Seven Mothers cult, cyclical magic, and enough material on Lunar sorcery to be able to create a Lunar sorcery. It is NOT intended to be a Lunar sourcebook (that is coming later). The Gamemaster book has more material on Lunar religion and a short write-up of the Red Goddess cult, as well as material on Illumination.

You only need the core rulebook. You don't need an expansive bestiary to play the game (since any scenario is going to stat them up anyways). Nor do you need the additional rules, encounters, and scenarios in the game master book. But I bet plenty of people will happily buy all three.

Right now they are dark trolls, green and brown elves, ducks, centaurs, Telmori, and morokanth.

Blade venom is pretty widely considered to be a power-gamed mistake by the writers (Greg hates it) and it got abused HORRIBLY in the old Chaosium house games. Healing potions, anti-venom are just fine though.

Yes. Although the books will be written and art commissioned prior to the Kickstarter. But Kickstarter provides us with the best opportunity to let everyone know they can get the books, helps us determine print run, etc.

The three books are: 1. RuneQuest rules. Everything you need to play. Its about 165,000 words. Page count will depend on art (right now it is 280 pages). This is the book you NEED to have. 2. Gloranthan bestiary. Monsters. Cults for monsters. Even monsters with occupations. That's around 100 pages without art, maps, etc. You need this if you want monsters or want to play one of the Elder Races. 3. Gamemaster book. Rules for heroquests, heroes, illumination, special notes on Lunar magic, Chaos, ship rules, Dragon Pass encounters (all nicely statted up), and several scenarios. Size tbd (Chris, Jason, and Mob/Ken haven't finished their scenarios). We'll likely make all three available together in a slipcase, with a GM Screen (like was done with CoC7e). The books will be color printed, and done in hardback. You can also get them all separately.

Hey all, a new RQ Design notes is now up at the Chaosium page: http://www.chaosium.com/blog/designing-the-new-runequest-part-10/ ------- Good news RuneQuest fans - the manuscript for the core rules of RuneQuest has now been passed over to Jason Durall for copy editing! Jason's been informally involved with the design team from the beginning as a sounding board, but now he's taking on a very active role (including correcting any of the many mistakes and errors that may have snuck in as I finalized the draft). He'll also be writing the rules examples based on the ongoing character saga within the book. So, what's in the final manuscript? The core rules include character creation, homelands, runes, passions, rune magic and cults (I think there are 17 short cult write ups in the core rules, plus 2 spirit cults), spirit magic, new spirit combat rules, new shamanism rules, new sorcery rules (including notes on Malkionism, Aeolianism, and Lhankor Mhy sorcery), wealth and occupation rules, and material on running seasonal campaigns. Plus plenty more. Right behind the core rules is the Glorantha Bestiary, which has over 60 species statted up, 4 or 5 short cult write-ups (including Kyger Litor, of course), and creating adventurer information for 6+ species (and enough information to wing it with almost all the other Elder Race entries). The third core RuneQuest book is the Gamemaster Book, which includes HeroQuesting information, rules on Heroes (with a capital H), Chaos, Illumination, more short cult writeups (including the Red Goddess, with brand new Lunar magic), magic items, loads of encounters, and 3 or 4 scenarios (by Chris Klug, Jason Durall, MOB, and myself). That's a lot of stuff. That's why we've decided to divide the new rules into three books, because that way we could put out everything we wanted to, and keep each book a reasonable length. And for me, I always prefer having a separate Bestiary from the core rules, and although I am a huge fan of having starting scenarios immediately available, I do think they are better not in the "players book". So I kind of snuck at two bombshells in there, didn't I? First is that the new sorcery system is written. It is NOT that of RQ3 (or even Sandy's sorcery rules). It is much easier and way more Gloranthan than the RQ3 rules. And it will be the likely subject of the next design notes. But the other bombshell is the new rules for playing or running Heroes in RuneQuest. Heroes gain an increasing presence in the otherworld, which becomes a tremendous source of power, but also requires that the hero be worshiped to maintain it (that worship can be regular or propitiatory). A hero can return from the dead, and can gain other abilities such as unaging as a result of heroquest gifts. Heroes no longer need to be "super-skilled" - their "Hero Soul" and heroquest gifts enables them to do remarkable things, even if their actual skills are in the range of a Rune Lord or Priest. And that too will likely be the subject of a future design note!

A few thoughts on Yelmalio and his variations. We know that there are Little Sun cults popular throughout south Peloria and Dragon Pass. Most commonly associated with Yelmalio the Sun Dome Temple god, the god's myths are diverse and contradictory. Sometimes the Little Sun is a foe of Orlanth (as is common with Yelmalio), sometimes he is a friend of Orlanth (as is common with Elmal). Sometimes he is the husband of the Earth Goddess (Yelmalio), sometimes not. But a God Learner would say that Yelmalio, Khelmal, and Elmal are just variations of the same god. Yelmalio is not alone in this. Orlanth has very diverse aspects (so much so that Thunderous, Adventurous, and Rex are effectively separate cults), although I'm pretty sure poets and priests have managed to create a corpus of stories dating back to the First Age that manages to be broad enough to encompass them all. Think the differences between Hesiod, Apollodorus, the Homeric Hymns - yet all were recognizably the "same" Olympian gods. So in Imther, the Yelmalio cult of Kereiston's Temple preserves some interesting local variations in myth from the Yelmalio cults of Dragon Pass and the Mirin's Cross network of temples. We call that god "Khelmal" (likely just the local name of the god) to distinguish the variations, but it is unlikely cult members make the same distinction! Locals call him the "God of Kereiston's Temple" (or what-not), and give him lots of epithets including "Little Sun" or "Son of the Sun" or "God of the Sky Dome" or "Cold Sun". Outlanders likely find the Imtherite practices and stories as exotic (and perhaps as fascinating) as Pausanias found Zeus Lykaios.

Those internal bws by Rachel Kahn do a better job of showing the diversity of the Sartarites than just about anything so far.

Going back to 5% increments in everything proved a bridge too far - as I suggested it. It proved a classic example of "game designer logic" clashing with "player experience". Wearing my game designer hat, I don't see a tremendous gain between 1% increments and 5% increments. Experience gains are normally 3-4% (1D6), training 2-3%, and so on. Bonuses from spells are usually in 5% increments or whole numbers, as are characteristic modifiers, and most other modifiers. Players and other designers enjoyed it (yes there is a minority that likes super-granularity, but I assure you it is a small minority, albeit a talkative one). So I proposed making everything in 5% increments as per RQ2. We wouldn't go the full Pendragon and keep the D100 percentile system (I like rolling a D100 more than a D20 and it is way more intuitive - everything is an obvious percentage chance**). The result? Flop. Turns out people who don't like super-granularity in character creation, modifiers, etc, like having skills go up 1 to 6 points. They enjoy rolling the dice to see if they go up and by how much. That's part of the game enjoyment. And so skills will keep their 1% granularity. And experience will continue to increase skills 1D6%. Jeff ** My experience has been that D100 is very intuitive for new players and players coming from Call of Cthulhu. Your skill, passion, or rune is a percentage chance of success. That is way more intuitive than the D20 (which is only "intuitive" if you started with the D&D system - and going from D&D to RQ has a lot of paradigm shifts far greater than the dice mechanics).

I agree. RuneQuest is about heroism with "realistic" consequences. And that ties into Glorantha - as Glorantha is all about the consequences (often unintended) of one's actions. Not just to others - but to yourself.

Yes absolutely. Or that all houses in Bronze Age Transylvania looked the same. Or even that ancient Greek houses were all the same.

A big part of this is feature not bug. D&D and RQ come at combat with very different assumptions. In D&D, the tradition is that overcoming the obstacle through combat is necessary in order to move on. Monsters need to be carefully tailored to the character's level, and much of the tension is the attritional depletion of resources. RuneQuest makes no such assumption. Combat is deadly. A Rune Lord can get killed by a trollkin on a bad day. All it takes is one bad roll or one lucky roll to take someone out. The only sensible approaches to combat are: 1. Hit the foe from surprise after casting every spell you can on yourself, and strategically neutralize key foes with magic, terrain, or whatever - before the battle begins. Then hit them hard and fast. If any adventurers go down - or even look about to go down - RUN AWAY! or 2. Find a way around the obstacle without combat. Negotiate. Bribe. Plead. Go around. Lure them out and then go in. And so on.

Most of all, warn them that this is deadly and the consequences are realistic! Throw them a fair easy fight early on and let them know even an easy fight is dangerous. And introduce the Chalana Arroy cult early!!!

There's a pretty broad degree of cultural similarity (and also tremendous diversity) across southern Europe to Anatolia in the Bronze Age. There are central European thalos graves that wouldn't look out of place at Mycenae, and houses in prehistoric Romanian that wouldn't look out of place in Etruria. That same range can be found from Nochet to Mirin's Cross.

The Earth Rune shape is the most popular in Sartar. You will find it throughout Colymar-land, Malani-land, Killard Vale, Chormsvale, and of course in Boldhome. But not everywhere. There's a lot of variation from village to village - the Earth Rune shape is just the most popular overall.

Again, I disagree utterly.

You and I clearly differ on this. The difference is that I am ultimately responsible for writing the book. And hence I've made the choice that I have made. Personally, I agree with the playtesters. Of the three approaches, your suggestion was unanimously rejected (and got strongly negative feedback), and RQ3's approach was ultimately rejected as taking too long. You are welcome to have a differing opinion, but that's not the direction we are going to go.

That was actually an approach taken early on. However, it got panned by playtesters (who have little or no background with any version of RQ, but are Cthulhu or HQG players) who found it: 1. Took too long for what it was worth (quite a few playtesters complained about needing to add values like "+12%" to skills, and greatly preferred doing these bonuses in 5% increments).. 2. Restricted relevant characteristics to three (instead of four). 3. Meant skills needed regular recalculation with POW going up and down. This turned out to be the most decisive complaint. For design purposes, the most important element of the skills modifier is its impact on the rate of skill improvement. The RQ2 approach does this as well as RQ3 and the others, and was seen as being much less work. A character with a +5 or more skills modifier should eventually be able to skills above 100% in that category (if the character lives long enough), a character with a 0 skills modifier won't. If your cult requires 90%+ in a skill you have a +0 modifier to you, becoming a Rune Lord is going to be a challenge.

For what it is worth, I think we have a pretty good collection of both on the core team. Between MOB, Sven, Ken, Chris, Jason, and myself, we have a LOT of game experience with RuneQuest and its progeny. Now add Steve, Sandy, and Greg. All have different viewpoints, accents, etc. We range from very rules light, to enjoying lots of crunch. But the house testers by and large don't. They know Glorantha. They know Cthulhu. None are grognards. They are fifty-percent female, fifty-percent male. And they are very willing to tell me what they like and don't like.