Rick Meints

As for the Entekosaid, being a work in progress, and an unfinished one in particular, sometimes speculation is all we have. Greg's ideas flowed like a veritable well spring. He wrote down what leapt to mind, regardless of where such speculations might lead him over time. Many parts of Glorantha were written on a large chalkboard, rewritten, erased, or revised regularly. His maps are full of erasures, small cut out sections replaced with taped in replacements, and countless revisions on multiple layers. Greg didn't worship canon. He valued exploration and experience. Everything he did combined the logical, illogical, creative and destructive. As long as it was interesting and fun and potentially transformative he continued his explorations. Alas, some of his unfinished works may never be understood, at least to their original intent. As we try our humble best to carry on his legacy perhaps we will fill in some of the missing pieces, or finish an unfinished body of work. Also, it is very possible that we might just leave the mystery as it is, and enjoy the confusing conundrum it may create. Sometimes the imponderable is its own reward.

As one of the founders of Moon Design Publications, I am happy to summarize our first 4 main projects, aka the Gloranthan Classics line of books: Gloranthan Classics Volume I - Pavis & Big Rubble (1999) is an updated and reformatted 316 page reprint of ALL of the information from the two original boxed sets organized together. Additional material on the Sun Dragon cult, plus 35 additional new pieces of art specifically commissioned for the book are also included. Rediscover the Puzzle Canal, Kakstan's Art Museum, Balastor's Barracks, the Devil's Playground, and Ogre Island. Adventure once more in the greatest roleplaying city ever written. Journey along on the epic Cradle scenario! The hardcover has a color dust jacket. Gloranthan Classics Volume II - Griffin Mountain (2001)is 256 pages (plus 12 pages of player handouts on the citadels, inns, and the like) of the legendary land of Balazar, plus the dangerous Elder Wilds to the north. Some of the new stuff we've added include magazine articles about Balazaring clans written by Rudy and Paul, a large section on running Gloranthan campaigns by Greg Stafford, over 30 new pieces of art, and several pages of designer's notes. We even added in a few of the new bits that were in Griffin Island, like Granny Keeneye and the maps of the major Inns in the three Citadels. Gloranthan Classics Volume III - Cult Compendium (2002)is 352 pages which detail over 40 cults, including all of the cults found in Cults of Prax, Cults of Terror, and Trollpak, plus White Wolf and Different Worlds magazines. Associated background from Wyrms Footnotes and similar sources give you a complete breakdown on how rune magic, spirit magic, elementals, and runes operate. Also added are all of the designer's notes, some never published before and a vastly improved index. The topics are vividly detailed with the addition of over 50 new pieces of art showing cult life (and death). Gloranthan Classics Volume IV - Borderlands & Beyond (2005)is an updated and reformatted 300+ page reprint of ALL of the information from the original Borderlands boxed set, Plunder, and Runemasters, as written for the Runequest 2 rules. Also included additional Plunder items, expanded Runemasters character histories, and loads of background info from Nomad Gods and Wyrms Footnotes magazine. The interior is lavishly illustrated with dozens of new pictures from Simon Bray, Dario Corallo, plus loads of oldies but goodies from Lisa Free, Luise Perrinne, Gene Day and Rick Becker. Back in 2006 you could buy the full set of 4 softcovers for just $150... The Hardcovers were about $60 each. Colin Phillips and I did the first volume all by ourselves, with the great art additions by a number of volunteer artists. The last three volumes were just me working from home in my spare time, with the great art additions by a number of volunteer artists. We could not publish the RQ2 Rulebook at this time because Avalon Hill had the rights to it, along with the Trademark, and Chaosium had some of the copyright. Information about the RuneQuest Classics can easily be found on Chaosium.com. Each book is pretty much a straight reprint of the best version of the original, with extra bonus or cut material included as applicable. The only substantive difference between the Gloranthan and RuneQuest Classic lines are that the Gloranthan Classics have more art (drawn by volunteers) and that the Cult Compendium has some RQ3 cults in it that were originally in White Wolf and Different Worlds magazines. Are the Gloranthan Classics ever going to be printed again? Probably not, although I won't go so far to say that it's impossible. I still get asked by people about picking up Vol. 1 the most, especially in hardcover, of which we only did 300 in total. Alas, getting these reprinted is far far down our priorities list.

These forums are here for peaceful and polite discussion. Many people who work at Chaosium post in these forums because they want to contribute to the discussion and often answer questions about what's in the works in the company. All are welcome to agree or disagree. All are welcome to share their opinions as long as it is done kindly. That's the vast majority of what happens on these forums. As for me, I mainly just try to provide history, background, or factual info. I'm not of a mind to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't like when it comes to matters of taste. If we just wanted to have employees post and promote things we'd do it via our twitter account or our website's blog, to name a few examples.

I don't think the gaming world has forgotten that illustrations of monsters are rarely good (worth it) since there is nothing to forget. The majority of the buying public likes more illustrations and more color illustrations in particular. A large majority of our customers have complimented us on switching to most of our books having full color interiors. The original Petersen color Guides sold well, and the 7th edition update of the Petersen Guides is an ongoing best seller. The first edition had few illustrations for a number of reasons, all of which had nothing to do with purposely choosing to not show the monsters. The creatures section is 25 pages, with 11 monster silhouettes. The whole 96 page main book has 12 illustrations in total, 3 of which are of Monsters. The art budget for the boxed set was relatively tiny, and much of it was spent on the color box cover. As for the price, it cost $20 in 1981, which is $55 in today's money. That means the current 7th edition full color hardcover 444-page rulebook basically costs the same as the original 1st edition boxed set with its 96 page B&W rulebook and 32 page B&W 1920s sourcebook.

Since you mention Uncle Scrooge I shall say a few things, since he is one of my all time favorite comic book characters. *I don't necessarily see the RPG business as being or becoming a rich person's hobby. Yes, absolutely, there are a number of people who have a day job that pays the bills and they create material regardless of the bottom line. That said, between PDF and POD publishing, and Crowdfunding, I feel there is more opportunity now to make money via starting as a small independent publisher and then growing from there. In the end, great product is great product. If you want any chance at making a living, or a part of your income, from RPGs you have to create and publish things. We at Chaosium have tried to make that easier for newcomers via the Miskatonic Repository and the Jonstown Compendium platforms we get up on DTRPG. I wouldn't at all be surprised if we set up another such platform for BRP as well in the not too distant future. ** I'm on the fence about the label of "nuChaosium". I don't mind having the current management team specifically called out or compared to the previous team. That said, I've also seen it used in the pejorative a bit too often to immediately see it as a positive term. I know g33k is using it in a positive way, as do a number of others. I prefer people simply call us The Chaosium. I grew up with the company, am hopelessly biased and in love with all that it is, and want this to be my career for the rest of my working life, and I have no plans for any sort of early retirement. The dollars are taking care of themselves. We have professionals with decades of business experience, budgets, finance, and similar skills minding the store. We focus on getting new product out on a regular basis. Product that gamers will love. We watch the money. Nuff said on that.

No news on renewing the license.

The project is currently on hold.

If the lower right corner of the map was not covered up we could tell if it was first or second printing.

To whom it may apply: Instead of "suspecting" why not just ask Chaosium for some info on why products are coming out more slowly than you want? A number of us at Chaosium (Jeff, Jason, me) are usually happy to shed light on the situation. The situation is actually far different than what the OP "suspected". Glorantha is tough to write for. A lot of writers are intimidated by the subject. Many decades ago, Chaosium was asked "why does so much more CoC material get published as opposed to RQ material?" Greg's answer from back then is still true today. Chaosium gets many more submissions for CoC material than it does for RuneQuest material. Probably at least 5 times as many. Also, as has been stated in previous replies, we spend a LOT more time on art direction than was ever done in the past. So, when you have few authors writing material, and art takes a long time, the end result means books don't get published as fast. It is also worth pointing everyone to the Jonstown Compendium section on DriveThruRPG. Chaosium has specifically set up an outlet for RuneQuest authors to get material published without Chaosium slowing you down with any, especially lengthy, editing or review. We are always on the lookout for more RuneQuest authors that can produce quality material to deadline. We happily pay them for it. We certainly don't discourage them. PS: We don't have any RuneQuest related kickstarters on the horizon, including Gods of Glorantha. Once again, instead of "suspecting" or "speculating", this could have been asked as a question, which we would have happily answered. Kickstarters often have the result of slowing down the release of new material. We don't need a Kickstarter to tell us enough people will buy the newest forthcoming RQ book.

The original Deadlight had a high price point ($9.95) and a low page count (24). A lot of its art was actually done in color. We have no plans to update the general look of our layout at this time.

Here's a photo of them.

before the end of the year.

NOTE: This thread started as being about what could be revised for a new version of the BGB of BRP. If you want to provide us with other advice, critiques, etc. please start a different thread with an appropriate name. I'm not trying to silence anyone. I am reminding folks to stay on topic, or possibly start a new topic in the correct forum.

What does this have to do with updating the BGB?

We have never considered any of our product lines "bastard children" so I will assume you were trying to be funny. This also isn't about playing personal favorites. Publishing a system is about making money from it. We aren't a non-profit, nor is this a side business or hobby business. We can't afford to spend $100 to make $110. Yes, Magic World reached some customers. Yes, the BGB reached customers. If you want to buy these things, please buy them. We still sell them.

We are making no promises, but if we were to update the BGB, what could be improved? NOTE: The printed BGB is available for sale still on our website, and certainly in PDF form on our website and DTRPG.

The additional warehouse for the EU is being prepared. We are still at least a month away from it being ready to ship orders. Expect more announcements fairly soon. We have to not only get the warehouse stocked, but we have to update our website as well.

We'll have something great to announce about the book shortly.

While I, like many of you, prefer printed books to PDFs, if a printed copy isn't available to me I am happy to fall back on getting the info via PDF. ALL of the titles you are asking about are available for sale on our website and DTRPG as PDFs. You HAVE access to all of that information, and at a far lower price than a POD book would cost. We will probably eventually have them as POD titles, but it takes time and resources, and they would have to be diverted from working on new products.

Jeff teases about new publications. I usually tease about reprints.

It would take too much time to get 600+ pages of material ready for top end printing based on the expected demand. These are cleaned up scans that will look great on screen. They are text searchable. We MIGHT do them as a two volume POD set, but that would be about it. Below is a sample page from Wyrms Footnotes 5. Page 1 from Wyrms Footnotes 5.tif

That all greatly depends on the publication in question.

We are working on releasing all of Wyrms Footnotes 1-14 as individual PDFs soon, as in within the next month. We have 4 issues left to finish. They will probably also be available as POD. As for Tales of the Reaching Moon, stay tuned. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN PRINTED ORIGINALS, please email me at rmeints-at-gmail-dot-com. I recently acquired a spare set of Tales 1-20, and many of the issues of Wyrms Footnotes. The originals would be at collectors prices...

RuneQuest debuted as Chaosium's first RPG at the Origins convention in Ann Arbor, Michigan in July of 1978. Most of Chaosium's RPGs are based on, and derivatives of that core rule set, now often referred to as BRP (Basic Role Playing). The first mentions of the Call of Cthulhu game while it was still being written referred to it as RuneQuest: Cthulhu. Suffice it to say we greatly prefer the name it ended up using. Call of Cthulhu uses the core mechanics of RuneQuest, and added in some things that rounded out the game for the specific time period and genre, such as Sanity and firearms. It also removed some things that were not needed, such as detailed combat. Greg Stafford's game design philosophy kept evolving. Greg was not a numbers heavy, rules heavy sort of player. Greg personally preferred story telling and rules light sorts of games, and created Pendragon and Prince Valiant in that vein in the 1980s. In the 1990s he struck out on his own with his own company, Issaries Inc., and focused on creating a storytelling game for Glorantha. It was first called Hero Wars, and ultimately became known as HeroQuest when Greg was able to attain the HeroQuest trademark a mere 30 years after he wanted to (different story). As a storytelling game, HQ is very rules light. It uses a much simpler D20 resolution mechanic. If you choose to do so you can have an entire army battle resolved with a single opposed die roll.

It's active. This is a relatively new forum and many 7th Sea fans are still just finding out about this forum.