Jason D

Or we'd end up renaming the game Runey McRuneface.

Who showed you that?!?

Here's the thing. The RuneQuest logo needs to be readable on the spine of the book. Ideally, at a distance. The one we didn't use (with the ornate scrollwork at top and bottom) is too thick vertically for easy placement. So you have to remove the runes and the red designwork to make it fit. At that point, it's another Celtic uncial title, which we were not thrilled with.

We have differently colored variants of it, for all cover treatments.

I would honestly rather not see one.

Thanks all for your feedback. As I understand things, the corrected proof has been submitted for printing at this point. I'll have to check with Rick when he's back from GAMA to confirm, though. We made as many corrections as we were able in the time we had, though some suggestions were not implemented for various reasons.

We're working daily on it. I hate to give a date only to be wrong, but layout is roaring. This is a very nice-looking book, and certain chapters such as adventurer generation and combat take a lot of work, with all of the tables. As noted above, giving a specific date is a prescription to be wrong. But "not that much longer" is a safe estimation. Art is 99% done. I think we're waiting for an adjustment to a map and a sidebar header. To be honest, the winter convention season hit us hard, and there was this other sourcebook we squeezed into the schedule before RuneQuest... Not so much, as it happens. The clarifications that came up with the FRPG Day Quickstart had already been addressed in the manuscript. We got some useful feedback from the ashcan version, but ultimately we weren't releasing and waiting... editing and revisions were ongoing, and will probably be ongoing (but tapering) until we send in the last print proof signoff. While it's probably good form to not steal one game's thunder with an announcement about a second with an overlapping fan base, but to be clear, we're going to announce the RuneQuest .pdf's availability as soon as it's possible.

In answer to your questions: Spirit combat damage is based on POW+CHA: 2-12 = 1D3 13-24 = 1D6 25-32 = 1D6+1 33-40 = 1D6+3 41-56 = 2D6+3 Assistant shamans begin with +1 spirit combat damage, and more experienced shamans better bonuses. For a critical attack vs. a parry, roll the special damage and apply the damage directly to the parrying shield/item, and any excess goes to the defender, bypassing armor protection. A successful shield parry always protects the defender against an missile weapon attack (unless the weapon attack bypasses the shield's hit points, as above). If desired, an adventurer can use a shield up to ward off missile fire without needing to parry. The shield will automatically protect the hit locations it normally protects... a small shield covers shield arm only, a medium shield covers shield arm and another hit location (player choice), and a large shield protects the shield arm and two other hit locations (player's choice). No parry roll is required... any hits to those locations hit the shield instead.

Correct. You're looking at the un-modified initial version of the color sheet. In fact, that picture is of the first version, and many small tweaks have already been made. Many more will be made, including intensity balancing for areas where the image interacts with text.

As it happens, I work very closely with the Conan line manager, so I'll be paying close attention to the lessons he learned on that line.

Just for a trip down Memory Lane, during the development of the big gold book I asked about changing the name to "The Chaos Engine", "The Chaosium Engine", or "The Chaos System", but no one went for it. Dustin also asked me if I'd be up for the equivalent of an Even More Basic Roleplaying book, but we never could get the stars to align for that.

Just to be clear, we're still collecting feedback and reading these forums carefully. Part of the purpose of the Gen Con preview edition was specifically to get the rules outside the Chaosium biosphere and to external player groups. Until the print proof is authorized, it's not final. We want it to get there soon and hold off on any last-minute changes, but they happen.

I don't have the book in front of me, but IIRC, you can parry and attack in the same strike rank, so there'd be no need to delay your attack.

It is the design intent, and you can. Just not so long that you go past the end of the round.

Yes.

Noted, thanks!

As mentioned on the submission guidelines, the Ottonic period specifically.

In answer to your questions... Skraeling/Wine-land book - when reviewing Pedro's Mythic Iceland manuscript, it was apparent that the material about skraelings and Slab-land, Forest-land, and Wine-land was greatly removed from the core game experience of being heroes in mythic Iceland. Additionally, it really calls for more, such as a campaign about survival, settlement-building, and exploration, which is also outside the core game experience of being heroes in mythic Iceland. So we'd like to give it room to breathe, as a campaign sourcebook of its own. Much-later era book - no, this isn't the noir book. After going back and forth over the tone and "soul" of that book, we and the author decided it wasn't the right project. He pitched us another sourcebook he's passionate about, and this is it. Thanks for your interest!

As much as I would love to see it, I'd be highly surprised if Mark would take the time out of his busy schedule to work on such a project, and it could not be a simple conversion.

We've talked about RQ Fantasy Earth before. The RQ3 rules discussed it, and we've been quite explicit about what we'd like to see for the line on our website. https://www.chaosium.com/roleplaying-game-submissions/ Specifically, this: All going according to plan, Pedro will be following Mythic Iceland up with a companion book. We'd like to do an adventure book. I've suggested that we remove the Skraeling/North America material from Mythic Iceland and flesh it out to be its own campaign. IIRC there's something about the Rus in the works. We're close to signing a contract for a longtime Chaosium contributor to do a a much later-era book, contents to be revealed. On other fronts, we'd LOVE to see a book about medieval Germany. I'd love to see a book about Constantinople, or about 16th century Prague and King Rudolf II's obsession with alchemy. A Japan book would be most welcome.

We're quite excited about the RuneQuest Fantasy Earth line, which already has several products in development. I'll readily cop to being the bottleneck here... all focus was towards getting the core rules for the new RQ lined up for Pedro to use as the base. When he started the revision last year, the core rules were not locked down, and some things were still "soft". As is now planned, Mythic Iceland will be fully compatible with RQG, and will be the first product in the Fantasy Earth line. Many more will follow. Getting that squared away required me to go through his manuscript meticulously and point out discrepancies between his treatment of the BRP rules and the RQ ones, and make some careful decisions about what needed to change. Now, Pedro now has a full blueprint of what we need his manuscript to become, and a copy of the RQG rules for adaptation. Jeff had a sit-down with him at Gen Con to discuss things, and we'll do a face-to-face status check at The Kraken, in October.

Jeff and I have clarified this in the Bestiary manuscript, and in the writeups for those characters with elementals. It's easier for earth elementals to shove their own mass around, such as an earth elemental making a big pit. It's basically just telling a bunch of earth "get out of the way". It's harder for earth elementals to do something as tricky as engulfing a moving being and bringing them down to waist-high and immobilize them. We've also adjusted the sizes of earth elementals to be more in line with others, so that a small earth elemental is about 1 cubic meter in size, which coincidentally, is just about waist-high.

A few quick replies: We're using the RQ2 method of skill category modifiers. Training merits a die roll for improvement. I'm not sure how to address "more like a glorified D20 system" when RQ was a significant influence on the design of D&D 3rd edition. Skills are clearly grouped by categories on the quickstart characters. We originally provided the skills category modifiers, but these were confusing to non-RQ players, who didn't know if they would modify the values provided. As has been said before, one of the virtues of the BRP system is its modularity. It's quite easy to remove subsystems, houserule things, and add new systems onto it.

Generally, I tend to view it as: 1. If your characteristic is bring pitted against its own limits, like pulling yourself up by your hands, use a characteristic roll. This also applies to rolls where there's no clear skill or opposing force, like catching something thrown at you. 2. If there's an easily-quantified opposing/passive force, use a resistance roll. The "carrying someone" used as a double example isn't in the rulebook.

Some quick answers: There's no mention of the doors, but the assumption when I wrote the scenario was that they were long gone. The map contradicted that, so when running it I just mentioned they were stone doors, balanced into grooves cut into the ground, so they'd pivot open when pushed in either direction. That made sense considering supplicants are bringing in cattle heads, and also gives Idrima the ability to walk through them without futzing with keys. Why would an immortal stone goddess need a barred door? Items would use their SIZ against the elemental's STR. It was deemed too much detail to throw into the already-packed rules section. The core rules are very, very comprehensive.