Jeff

Social organizations, particularly cults, are hard-wired into RQ2 and RQ3. An adventurer without a cult (defining that broadly to include spirit cults and sorcerers) will always be a grave disadvantage against someone who does belong to a cult. When even a broo or a dark troll has a cult that can teach it magic, be a source of rune magic, and give it allies, a player character would be well-advised to do the same! 

Just to let folk know, the new RuneQuest will definitely have hit locations (and general hit points are back in after much deliberation).

A few notes on the Esvularings (Aeolians):

The original decision to license RuneQuest to Mongoose was back in 2005 or 2006 (I'm not going to look up my file). Issaries had largely assigned publication of the HeroQuest line over to Moon Design. At that time, I was writing with Greg, but on a part-time basis. Greg and I had neither the time, the capital, or the interest to try to rebuild RuneQuest - we were focused entirely on Glorantha as a setting. On retrospect, giving the license to Mongoose was a gigantic mistake for a myriad of reasons that I am not going to go into here.
When Mongoose lost the license, the RuneQuest brand was frankly badly tarnished. Sales of MRQ products had dropped off dramatically after the initial rules book. And for other reasons, Greg and I were both extremely unhappy with the Mongoose relationship, which we both considered to be as bad if not worse than the Avalon Hill relationship.
Rick and I felt that we had our hands full just getting Glorantha on track and to deal with the collateral damage to that brand.
So when Loz and Pete asked for the RuneQuest license, we were glad to help them get it. We knew we wouldn't be able to do anything with it for several years and they were passionate about presenting the rules system they had developed without the awful Mongoose editing, layout, horrible art, and just general awfulness.
When Greg assigned over all the Glorantha and RuneQuest rights to Moon Design (back in 2013), Moon Design became the owner of RuneQuest and of all of Greg's notes, design ideas, unpublished campaigns, etc. It was an embarrassment of riches - and huge amounts of it worked its way into the Guide to Glorantha.
Greg wrote his material for the RuneQuest 2 rules in mind (or a variant like Epic), not for HeroQuest 2. So even though this was all statless, the seed of doing RuneQuest for Glorantha was very much in my head. The whole Moon Design team had been talking internally about this since we published the Guide, and it accelerated after we finished writing HeroQuest Glorantha.
It was a combination of GenCon, HeroQuest Glorantha, some of Greg's Nephelim notes, and then carefully rereading Epic, the Dragon Pass campaign, and Enclosure 1 that revealed the solution to working the Runes into the rules and made us realize that we could make the RuneQuest rules really work for Glorantha. Feverish work with Jason Durall and Chris Klug, and gigantic email discussions with Ken Rolston cemented it. Sandy presenting us with some 50 files of RQ rules material he had worked on was the icing on the cake.
But as the development process proceeded it became pretty clear that this was not RQ6, but the RQ4 (or even RQ3) that never was. So TDM and MD went their separate ways, and we expect they will do great stuff with their rules engine.
However, we've been feverishly moving forward. Decades of work from key collaborators - Greg, Sandy, Ken, David Dunham, Chris Klug, MOB, and myself - all have finally come together into a coherent and consistent package. But it was built off RQ2 (and to a lesser extent RQ3), not RQ6. We most recently brought on Steve to advise, counsel, and edit - particularly with regards to the combat mechanics.

13 minutes ago, jongjom said:

I agree this has not been a long term project solely aimed at the new incarnation of RQ. Rather individuals in the team has played a lot of RQ and have a lot of experience with game design.

From what has been written about MRQ's development it would not be beyond the ability of Chaosium/Moon Design's to involve Greg and Steve (and the rest of the team) in a better and more productive way. Notably MRQI didn't have Steve's name in it, and only a 'Special Thanks' for Greg.

Greg had no involvement at all in the MRQ rules beyond approving the license. The only publication Greg had any substantive feedback on was Dara Happa Stirs. Greg and I both scrambled to get the Middle Sea Empire and the History of the Heortling People ready for Robin as a resource for the Second Age, but Matt's deadline was too fast for us and by the time we finished, it was too late. Other than Dara Happa Stirs, I am pretty sure Greg never even looked at a single MRQ-related manuscript.

18 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

No offense Jeff, but is that your opinion or Greg's? 

That's been both of our opinion for a very long time. And Greg has worked on solving it since about 1980, but never got there. Incorporating the Runes directly into HQ2 was a last minute design decision, that eventually showed the way to do it for RuneQuest.

If you think this is six months of work, guess again. Greg (I only joined into the process a mere 20 years ago) has been working on this for well over thirty years. My file of Greg's drafts and notes is a good 18 inches thick. This work was weaved through Pendragon, Epic, Nephilim, Pendragon Pass, and had a huge impact on Pendragon Pass, King of Dragon Pass, HeroQuest 2, and HWG. Annoyingly, working out how the Runes could fit into this and thus solve the last mechanical hurdle only revealed itself to us last year. 

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

I take it that you mean to emulate the game setting.  That is a very good point and one which puts the whole new RQ project into a bad light. For the last two decades or so we've been told how the RQ rules didn't really fit Glorantha, and how HeroQuest was much closer to the way Glorantha was supposed to be. Okay. In that case why are they doing a retread of RQ Glorantha? If the rules aren't a good fit for the setting then they should either use different rules or a different setting. But doing an updated RQ Glantha seems to contradict what Greg and the rest having been saying about how bad a fit RQ is for Glorantha. 

The biggest problems that RQ2+ had with Glorantha were: 1. the Runes had no game relevance; 2. the front-loaded nature of Rune magic (a character couldn't simple call upon the god to use the god's magic, but needed to determine prior to adventuring what spells - usually one-use - the character could use); and 3. the absence of mechanics to handle a character's drives and relationships - which made writing gameable heroquests extraordinarily difficult. None of those were a good fit with the setting, and HeroQuest did this far better. We've now fixed all of these for RuneQuest, and the playtesting results are that this is now a good fit if you want to run games where the characters do things like described in Gloranthan stories and history.

9 hours ago, Harshax said:

My point was that removing Special Effects in favor of the original and standardized results of "ignore armor, impale, sever limb" is working at cross purposes to the goal of streamlining the game. Dispensing with Special Effects is not trimming fat at all ... because there is no unnecessary components to Special Effects in the first place. It's a solid modern subsystem that gives players a certain amount of narrative control. Whether this narrative control is ultimately cinematic or literary is ultimately your decision to make.

I know that Special Effects has its fans. But we made the decision to drop them after careful deliberation. They may "streamline combat results" but they don't streamline the game (which is not the same thing). This is part of the controversy of RQ6. For some people, rules like Special Effects speed up combat results and gives them fun and cinematic combats. For others, the same rules are overly complex, counter intuitive, and the very act of narrative control with regards to combat results runs counter to the nature of RuneQuest. Different strokes for different folks. We chose to not use them because we don't think they don't fit well with what we are putting together. 

4 hours ago, kpmcdona said:

Here is the latest installment of the designer notes. Nothing new if you have been paying attention, but nice to see plainly stated.

http://www.chaosium.com/blog/designing-the-new-runequest-part-3

I am amused at my own discomfort in the essay when Jeff posed the following question and... answer? "But are we all still friends? Certainly, this is just what sometimes happens in business." The pedant in me thought it sounded evasive. He probably meant "Certainly. This is just what sometimes happens in business." Jeff, being a (former?) lawyer, will hopefully forgive my tendency to read literally.

It should be edited to read, "Certainly. That is just what sometimes happens in business."

1 hour ago, Mankcam said:

As far as the rules direction goes, yes I do like it, and it sounds what RQ4 should have been had not Mongoose become involved.

 

That is very much the goal of this edition. We have over thirty years of Greg's unpublished ideas, edits, and design concepts that were developed *for* RQ2 to draw on, plus Sandy, Ken, and Steve. What we have very much feels like "What RuneQuest would have been had Chaosium not done the Avalon Hill iicense (let alone the Mongoose license) and kept RQ2 as their active Gloranthan rules systems since then."

Or the reverse - the player who is personally very loquacious and outgoing, playing a low-CHA taciturn Humakti who gives speeches far better than their character could. We make a dice roll to see if a sword hits (we could just agree to talk that through), I see zero problem with rolling dice to see if a speech, seduction, quick excuse, etc works.

Actually RQ already does this through the skill system. If you want to do something, you look for an ability that covers it (or default to a raw characteristic). Where the skill is complex (like melee combat or Demoralizing someone), you require additional rules to handle the complexity, but in most circumstances, the ability description more or less covers it. Additionally complexity concerning resources or ability improvement also gets rules coverage (do I get Rune spells back? When do I get magic points/temporary POW back? etc). Important game concepts (what is a cult and why do I care about it?) gets rule coverage.

I think we are in agreement, just approaching it from opposite ends.  

I wish I could take credit for those two Design Rules, but they came straight from the Oracle that is Uncle Ken. I think there's a bit of overthinking going on here - these rules come from Ken's observations over 40 years of tabletop and computer game design. They are rules of player behavior that need to be design rules - because whatever your rules say, this is what your players will do with them.

If there is something that you as a designer thinks is important for gameplay put it on the character sheet somehow. If it isn't there, most players won't use it. RuneQuest has traditionally been very well-designed in this regard. If you need to know how to handle a situation, you look down the character sheet until you find an applicable skill. If you don't find an applicable skill, you are hosed. If you want to hit or parry with a weapon, you look at the character sheet until you find the relevant entry, which also tells you the damage it causes and how much damage it blocks. And so on.

If you introduce social skills, like passions, or want to have Runes be in play, then put it on the character sheet. If community is important, make sure that is on the character as more than just a "of Apple Lane" entry. Give it a number, a tool, a hook. Then players will do something with it.

Now this all real basic stuff, but Ken, Chris, and I all find it very useful to always keep in mind at the beginning of the process. What is going to be the "tool" that the players have in front of them? How are they going to know that something is significant? Make sure you know your result (ie what the heck are you trying to do?) before you start making rules and mechanics. And then think about how it gets expressed to the player in the single most important tool they have - the character sheet.

Jeff

37 minutes ago, jux said:

To me it looks exciting. I really like how the new RQ seems to be more rules light and beginner friendly.

I really like RQ6 as well and I think it is very complete. It has it's nice simulative tone that fits perfectly with the more historic settings that RQ6 has. I like it to be a separate product line. RQ6 is also very rules heavy - not over the extreme, but it is the maximum I can chew. So I like the new RQ to be a lighter version and without combat maneuvers.

As a "new blood" in the hobby (Mongoose Legend was my first RuneQuest), I want to emphasize one thing that the grognards here may disagree with. I think the key to success for this version of RQ is the accessibility. The core book must be simple, short and sweet. But I am afraid this product can very easily become a big tome, which means it will cost much and so do poorly to win over the "new blood".

The book is not out yet, but you can see how many are already scared away with the choice of including the monster of a setting that is Glorantha. This is what I am looking forward from the new RQ:

•  Minimal setting burden. It (mechanics, magic, etc) should be recognizable for Glorantha fans, but setting understanding should not be required. No one should buy the ridiculous Guide to Glorantha volumes, to enjoy this game. This RQ, while married to Glorantha, should be playable in other settings as well.
• Very, very good setting introduction. You want your target audience to be actually new to Glorantha. The old grognards are alrady sold, but you must sell that monster setting to the new players. Maybe they even go full-crazy and buy these big boring setting books of yours. So do it right. Don't overload it with information. Rather keep them hungry. Give a setting teaser or something.
• Keep it thin, yet fully playable with the core book alone. Make many expansions, but keep the core book thin, cheap, accessible. That means below 200 pages. (RQ6, while work of art, is totally dysfunctional as a reference book to me). You know your target audience, right? The gamers - they have jobs now, wifies, children, taxes. Pages cost money and they cost time for players. Modern RPG games try to focus on that. Least amount of material for playing the game! I want to see 10 page adventure supplements - not 300 page campaigns. Don't expect your gamers to be full time GMs, because we are not.

Well, that's only from a newbie point of view. You still can do stuff that all the old fans expect, but have opportunity for the beginners to be included in this as well.

I agree with all of the above. Just to add on it:

• This is a self-contained book. You don't need the Sourcebook, let alone the Guide, to start play. It is intended that you can use this book to run the RQ2 scenarios (it will contain material on how to handle Rune magic, which is a bit different now).
• The book will be somewhere in the vicinity of 240 pages. Maybe little more, maybe substantially less (as I plan to then cut, cut, cut). It currently stands at 200 pages, and will go up once the monster stat blocks are added. My expectation is it will be about the size of HeroQuest Glorantha.

Hope that helps!

But I do hope people at least find these notes interesting. The goal is to let you all know what we are thinking and how we are coming at it.

18 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

Very interesting read. It seems clear that except for "combat styles" you don't want to go in the direction of RQ6's very detailed and complex combat. Personally, I am fine with a simpler combat engine, but I know special effects have their fans.

But, since you go for simpler combat may I suggest to Jeff to have a look at the 1993 Elric! combat rules. The attack-parry matrix has its fans, multiple dodges and parries make the combat slightly more heroic in feel without taking away the deadliness, weapon hit points and shield hit points work, the spot rules are nice guidelines for improvisation.

Much of these combat rules were later incorporated in the Big Gold Book and Magic World. But, don't look at Magic World! You might be distracted by the dubious art and layout. Just look at the sleek and slim 1993 Elric! book. One of Chaosium's later gems.

Just my two cents. But I feel that combat engine is not that far from the simpler combat you are looking for. Maybe there is one or two things you can steal from it.

  

For what it is worth, I have a copy of the 1993 Elric! book right on my desk. I've been looking quite a bit at Stormbringer, Elric!, Hawkmoon, even Ringworld. And since Jason Durall will be coming into the process at some point pretty soon, I'm pretty sure that elements of those rules will have been considered carefully.

You attack and parry at the same weapon skill. And where you would learn two weapons together (say, 1h Spear and Shield) you use your 1H Spear and Shield skill for attack (1H Spear) and for parry (Shield). It is kind of silly to have those separated out into different skills given that they are learned and used together.

It will be released this year,

Believe me, my group of play-testers don't idolize the system (only one had even played any iteration of RuneQuest prior to this - and that was RQ3) . And they are wonderful at bringing basic things to a screaming halt. I'm know the other leads currently testing stuff out have the same experience.

RQ is not being released according to an arbitrary deadline. But we will have pre-release version of the rules ready for GenCon.

Barley is the staple grain of the Orlanthi, supplemented by wheats and oats. Beer is the staple beverage, wine is the drink for festivals, feasts, and ceremonies. Apples, berries, cherries, and grapes are common.

Lamb is the most common meat, followed by pork. Wild game is common. 

So with that in mind, let's look at your questions:

If you were a guest at a clan feast or cult intitation ceremony, what food and drink would you be served?

Depends on your status at that feast! But let's say you are a member of the community in good standing or a favored guest. Then you'd likely eat meat from the sacrificed animal (depends on the god), drink wine from a communal dish, eat flatbread, and have whatever fruits and vegetables are in season. Feasts are important times to show off the wealth of the community, honor the gods, and so on. They aren't how people eat every day! 

What do travelers eat on the road, and does anyone make a living preparing food for them at resting places on their journeys?

Flatbread, dried or cured meat or fish, fruits, cheese, etc. In Sartar, most towns and many villages have designated places where travelers are hosted.  Generally, if you travel a day on one of Sartar's Royal Roads, you will find a place where you can rest and eat.

What did you eat growing up, and what will you feed your children when you have them?

Your daily diet is going to depend on your status and occupation - the household of a priest eats better than the household of a tenant farmer! Priests and thanes have access to pretty much everything that is grown or raised in a region. Free farmers eat what they grow or raise, plus what little they can trade for with whatever surplus they have. Tenant farmers and herders eat from their share of the crop.

The houses in New Pavis are very normal Orlanthi houses adapted to the environment of Pavis County. The homes of notables in Sartar are often built of stone, not timber. 

8 hours ago, deleriad said:

To stick purely to the question asked: I don't think there's much to choose between RQ2 and RQ3 strike ranks. They have the exact same overall strengths and weaknesses.

• I personally preferred 12 SRs per round over 10 as it led to slight extra variability. 
• Didn't like the idea of SR 0 or spells that could take 0 SRs to cast and preferred 1 SR as a minimum.
• I preferred 3 SR (out of 10) as the default action length rather than 5 out of 12
• Had no real preference for the exact breakpoints of weapon SR, SIZ SR and DEX SR.

All in all then I had a slight preference for RQ3 but I would say that both iterations are equally viable. 

To go beyond the original question: these days I find RQ2/3 SRs to be an awful lot of fiddling about for relatively little gain in actual play and to be a pretty clunky system in general.  

 

For what it is worth, I have no problem with the idea of spells that take effect on SR0 (they just happen before anything physical is possible). And I greatly prefer 12 SR to 10, for purely aesthetic reasons. 

But my interest in feedback is not for "rules fixes" or mechanical preferences - just which approach was easier to understand or grasp as presented in the rule books.

Just continuing a discussion started on G+ (check it out here). 

How do you find that the original RQ2 strike rank rules hold up compared to that of RuneQuest 3? I'm curious not just conceptually, but how easy are they to apply in game? Do players have difficulty understanding them? Are there elements of them that don't make sense to you?