Rick Meints

The GW hardcover RQ3 books cost about 10 quid each, so the three of them to get all the rules and monsters would have been 30 quid, as opposed to the AH Deluxe boxed set which was over 40 quid. Vikings was never done as a GW hardcover. The AH boxed set of Griffin Island came with a bigger poster map, but the GW hardcover had a color poster map, although somewhat smaller. The GW version had more content than the AH version of Griffin island. The AH boxed set for Land of Ninja, only one advantage over the GW hardcover book, that being the B&W poster map. In short, none of the GW books had less content than the AH boxed set equivalents if you set aside the map differences. As I said, the GW hardcovers had slightly more content in them, or the same content.

In the UK, there is no Value Added Tax (VAT) on books, but there is on boxed games. In the 80s VAT was 15%. Importing the boxed set from the USA (where it was printed) was just too expensive, so Games Workshop opted to produce the game line as hardcover books. If you bought the three core RQ3 books done by GW (Standard, Advanced, and Monsters) you actually got more content than the RQ3 deluxe rulebook, not a trimmed down version.

That's my general memory of LoT. I remember it having debuted a few months before RQ Con San Fransisco (con was Jan. 1995). In a similar vein, I could have sworn that the RQ Deluxe perfectbound rulebook was being sold in January of 1994 at RQ Con 1 in Baltimore. As a side note: I have just discovered that the ISBN on the back of the RQ3 Deluxe perfect bound rulebook has a typo in the ISBN. Each publisher had their own prefix. In the 90s Avalon Hill was publishing RQ3 books with the 1-56038 prefix, which as then followed by a 4 digit number for each title. Oddly, that rulebook has an extra 6 in its code, as it uses 1-566038. That's impossible, because it is one two many digits for a very specific and rigid standard. The incorrect ISBN is only found on the back of the book, and if you omit that digit and do a search for 1-56038-082-9 you will find Strangers in Prax. On the spine of the rulebook, it uses 1-56038-082-9, so somebody at AH screwed up. Alas, it's not easy to know what they filled in on the paperwork back then, as most ISBNs were registered via paper forms, not online like today.

Here's what I say in the MIG: While Avalon Hill released its early boxed sets of the rules and the first few supplements in the US, Games Workshop in the UK took a far different marketing and packaging approach. Instead of boxes, they published hardcover books with far better layout and artwork for less money. They published 5 main books in total, plus a 16 page RQ Preview promotional item: 4616 – RuneQuest - Fantasy Roleplaying Adventure, 96 pages, 1987 (hardcover), 1989 (softcover). 4628 – Advanced RuneQuest, 159 pages, 1987 (hardcover). 4630 – Griffin Island, 144 pages, 1987 (hardcover). Had a bit of additional content. 4655 – Land of Ninja, 144 pages, 1987 (hardcover). 4667 – Monsters, 112 pages, 1987 (hardcover). Included info and stats from Monster Coliseum. Besides splitting the contents of the rules between the three books as previously mentioned, all the books had different covers, additional internal color art, and a different layout. The books all suffer from poor binding, and it is common that pages become loose very quickly.

The RQ3 Deluxe perfect bound rulebook (8570) was published by Avalon Hill in 1993. Lords of Terror (8595) was published by Avalon Hill in 1995.

Chaosium is in the process of fulfilling all the remaining awards for both 7th Sea Kickstarters. All rewards will be provided to backers before anything goes on sale to anyone else. All PDF rewards are being distributed via BackerKit. We notify backers when a new PDF is available, but even if you missed the email you can always go into BackerKit and download the PDFs any time you want. Your Kickstarter email and your BackerKit email can be the same, but they do not have to be the same. Either can be changed at your convenience, but they do not auto-sync with each other. You would have to update both of them if you want them to be the same. If you don't know what your BackerKit email is, please send us a message and we can look it up. NOTE: Every now and then we have a small number of customers that need to have some of their data/rewards adjusted in BackerKit. Message us with your concern and we will help sort it out, usually very quickly. NOTE: We no longer use DTRPG to distribute PDFs. Any/All older DTRPG codes you may have once been provided have been deactivated. All PDFs for completed books are available in BackerKit.

As always, please use or not use whatever you want to use in your game, including not using Glorantha at all. I don't really see "Howard the Duck" as being in Glorantha because that specific character isn't in Glorantha, nor is Daffy or Donald. There is a race of creatures in Glorantha called ducks/durulz, and while a lot of jokes have been made about them, when it comes down to how they are used or not used in play is up to you and the other players. My general experience is that anything or anybody can be portrayed in a silly manner. I've had players try to use a Donald Duck voice and I've told them they are lessening my enjoyment of the game. If they insist on continuing down that road then I wouldn't continue playing with them. Why would I continue playing with anyone who places a higher value on annoying me than making the game enjoyable for me. As for Jack O'Bears, I personally think they are fine as they are. Sure, they were added to the game because Archive minis had a miniature already in production that they could relabel as a gloranthan creature as soon as Greg told them what name to use. Like all chaos creatures, they are pretty much a "break the expected norms" sort of creature because that's how chaos works. How close to an actual pumpkin their heads are is up to you. I personally find them very creepy, scary, dangerous, and lethal. As for Morokanth, having them be vegetarians or meat eaters is such an easy adjustment to make. I personally see them as eating meat, but have no problems if others don't see them that way. I feel Morokanth can also process vegetation better than people can, so they kind of have the best of both worlds when it comes to being able to eat whatever is most available to eat. Since a Herd man probably has less meat on them than a bison or many of the other beasts of Prax I think most of the time the morokanth have an easier time finding vegetation to eat than meat. They probably don't eat a lot of other Praxian beasts because they already have a bad enough relationship with the other tribes and probably find trading the beasts with other tribes as more worth their while. I don't tend to think that deeply about whether any fantasy creation makes total sense, though. That's just not my thing.

Just so I understand, are you requesting that we make the Travels of Biturian Varosh from Cults of Prax and the Paulis Longvale info from Cults of Terror on the Well of Daliath as some sort of free intro?

Chaosium very much wants to get VTT content onto Astral, Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and the Foundry. The problem is simple to state, yet hard to solve: Each platform's VTT content has to be created specifically for that platform. We can't just create the content once and then upload it to all of these platforms. We have some in house developers, but many of these VTT platforms mainly use their own developers. Those companies decide what content to prioritize, and while CoC is a fairly high priority item for them, RQ (and any of our other lines) are much lower priority.

Between 1981 and 1985 there were 5 printings of boxed Stormbringer. The 2" box had at least two distinct printings. The 1" box had at least two printings, but I do not know of any specific differences. What I do know is that contents sometimes get shuffled by their owners, especially if they owned more than one set over a long number of years. Some people cobble together a set by combining a couple of partial sets. Further complicating matters is the fact that the boxed sets were collated in house and they used up older printings of material before switching to the newer printing on an item by item basis. That's the curse of being the Chaosium, instead of the Orderium.

Distributors will probably be able to order it later this month. No clue as to when game shops will then order it from distributors. It's for sale now on chaosium.com

It hasn't been sold to distribution yet.

No updates.

Orlanth is a religion/cult. Sartar is a region/people.

It's a frog with some shark like features, mainly the teeth. Lance & Laser was given minimal oversight when it came to what minis they wanted to produce.

Suffice it to say the decision was the end result of a lot of deliberation and not done on some whim. It had nothing to do with Gen Con timing or the release of any other game, or the end of the business quarter. PS: Chaosium offers older Pendragon things because we inherited them from Nocturnal, who used to sell them. PPS: We don't have any immediate plans to release more older CoC titles right now. We are devoting our energies to fulfilling the current Classic Kickstarter and working on other current 7th ed. products. After the kickstarter has shipped we'll start getting other older titles back into print. We got HotOE and BtMoM back into print, as well as CoC 2nd ed and 5 classic supplements. That's not bad for the last year or so.

Here's list of everything they published: Oriflam (RQ3 and wargames) 1987 RuneQuest boxed set 1 1987 Les Dieux de Glorantha 2 1988 Genertela 3 1991 Les Secrets Oublies 4 1992 Les Guerriers du Soleil 5 1995 La Voie du Sabre 6 1993 Dorastor 7 1997 Trolls 1989 Les Monts Arc en Ciel (Rainbow Mounds) 1988 Le Maitre des Runes 1994 Sous le Signe du Chaos 1989 Les Ruines Hantees 1991 RuneQuest Rules Hardcover 1991 GM Screen, 2nd Edition 1993 Le Roi de Sartar 1993 La Guerre des Heroes 1994 Les Dieux Nomades Oriflam also published 27 issues of Tatou magazine from 1988-1996, most of which contained RQ3/Gloranthan information.

I think people need to focus on the original post and not go into the weeds.

Monsters! Monsters! is a nice little game that came out in 1976. It's a set of rules for creating monsters and playing them as they try to stop adventurers from plundering their lairs and dungeons. It's not like All the Worlds Monsters or the Monster Manual. It doesn't have a bestiary, nor is it a compendium of monster stats. It's also only 40 pages in length.

I would think that they hope their characters will get some sort of skill increase or bonus from it. That's fine, in abstract, but I would ask them a simple question: What specific benefit will your character get from having read everything HP Lovecraft wrote? If they say they expect their Mythos Skill to improve, I wouldn't necessarily have a problem with that. After all, their Max SAN takes a hit from that. If they expect that you will just tell them more stuff for no extra effort, then that's a different matter. Beyond the Mythos skill there are very few mechanic/rule advantages to knowing more about the mythos. There's no "identify mythos monster" skill, or "avoid mythos machinations" skill.

You can also message me on Kickstarter. Just let me know what backer level and what email to send the invite to. pr-at-chaosium-dot-com

We hope to have it for sale on our website within a month.

The first edition of the screen didn't actually have it. I grabbed the wrong screen shot for the Kickstarter example, which used the 1988 screen by mistake.

Mike Mason has begun figuring out and planning those sorts of things. He was involved with a number of these titles back in the day. It's still early days on where we go from here. The first step was purchasing the IP. As we have more information we will announce it.

Nick's answer is correct, and I want to emphasize one detail: If the game store participates in Bits&Mortar they will be sending you the PDF. Please don't email Dustin and try to show him a receipt from a game store in the hopes that Chaosium will be supplying you with a PDF. That's not how it works. We only provide the PDF when you buy directly from us on chaosium.com We get regular requests for free PDFs from people who buy from Amazon, a local store, or even when they bought a used copy of the game, That's not what we are offering when it comes to complimentary PDFs.