Rick Meints

Everything David Scott has mentioned is true. Here's a bit more info for those who are interested: In 1979 Chaosium announced in the back of the RQ2 rulebook that they were working on a version of RuneQuest called HeroQuest: An FRP game wherein the mighty of Glorantha may enter into the lands of legend and myth, penetrating the immortal stories to participate in the Gods War, fight against chaos in the Great Darkness, or aid in the trials of the Lightbringers or the Protectors. A revolutionary concept and approach to myth, magic, and role-playing. By the Chaosium. Over the next few years the game would inevitably be listed in various issues of Wyrms Footnotes as a "Next Year" publication in their "In the Works" column. In Wyrms Footnotes 10 (Fall 1980) it appeared in the "rumored" section with the following description: As the next major step beyond the Rune Levels, Heroquest adventures take place on the Hero Plane. Game mechanics are slowly being tested as written. The feeling here though, is that we could get it out soon, or we could get it out right. Right now, we're shooting for a 1981 release. The general notion of what the game would do never fundamentally changed from being a high-powered version of RQ, but the descriptions in Wyrms Footnotes kept evolving. In WF11 it was in the "planned" section with: A game where honor, truth, courage, and respect all come into play when the brave attempt the paths of the Hero plane in this game of myth and legend. Riddle with the Trickster, duel with the gods of war, and discourse with the winds. Gain gifts greater than treasure and explore the mysteries of the universe. In WF 14 it shifts again to: This is a game of adventure in the realm of the gods and heroes of Glorantha. A Heroquest is a journey made by mortals to establish themselves in the pantheons of the gods. Travel along established routes or forge a trail of your own, but the farther you get from known ways the more dangerous the adventure. However, fabulous treasure and superhuman skills are the rewards of success; death and a loss of free will are the costs. Rules linking this game to RuneQuest will also be included as well as a HeroQuest character sheet, sample journeys, encounter charts, monsters, and an assortment of stats on gods and other heroes. The game never came out. Greg kept working on it. Fast forward to 1989. Milton Bradley and Games Workshop jointly published HeroQuest, a boxed adventure board game with miniatures. The generic fantasy game had nothing to do with Glorantha or RuneQuest. I interviewed Greg about this a few years ago and he was surprised they had used the name, but there was nothing Chaosium could do about it. You can't copyright a totally unpublished manuscript. Copyright is not the same as trademark, and you can't easily trademark an unpublished game, especially one that kept getting delayed. Games Workshop applied for the Trademark in 1989, and it was granted in 1992. The boardgame went out of print by 1997 and the Trademark lapsed in 1999 when it was not renewed. When Greg found out the trademark had lapsed he applied for it in 2001, was granted it in 2002, and started using in in 2003. Moon Design Publications is the current holder of the HeroQuest Trademark, having purchased all of Greg's Glorantha/RuneQuest/HeroQuest IP a few years ago. Most Trademarks have a 10 year life span, although they can be renewed easily if the trademark is still in active use. When Greg first published Hero Wars in 2000 he had already spent quite some time working on it and had already decided on its name. That early on he never thought the HeroQuest Trademark would ever be available again. The Milton Bradley HeroQuest boardgame series had be very popular and successful. Suffice it to say that HeroQuest the RPG and HeroQuest the boardgame have been the subject of confusion for many. Every now and then we get emails from enthusiastic fans of the boardgame that ask us about our HeroQuest game, ultimately to get an answer that disappoints them. The technical term the US Patent and Trademark office uses for this situation is "brand confusion".

It's also worth noting that ALL of the Praxian tribes have access to the Alter Creature magic, and they all use it too. ALL the Praxian tribes have herd men in their herds, although far less than the beasts of their own herd, or the captured beasts of other tribes. I know it's not how we in the real world tend to look at it, but Praxians see a herd man as just another animal.

I tend to play games that allow me to play a character that is different from who I am in real life, and also to experience things I probably will not experience in real life either. That said, I don't tend to get into playing games that are focused on rape, torture, genocide, or other very vile acts. I don't mind what the world is like, or if it has numerous evil beings in it, but my gaming groups have just not really brought those things into our sessions. I've played in some games over the years where people have wanted to "roleplay" a variety of behaviors I don't want to participate in, and those players don't tend to get invited back if they insist on making those actions a regular part of their gameplay (or I'll move on if I am the dissenting opinion in that group). I have no interest in policing anyone else's gaming groups or limiting what they can roleplay. If your group loves X or Y in your games, and the whole group is into it, go for it. If your group is against having X or Y in your games, don't have it.

Being turned into a beast would be a nasty fate for any sentient creature that is a part of the Survival Covenant of Waha. It only affects Praxians, not outsiders or foreigners after all. It can be reversed with the proper magic, so there always is a chance for future liberation. It is still an awful fate, even if temporary.

We are looking at having a continental European warehouse in addition to the UK warehouse, regardless of what happens with Brexit.

To make things potentially more fun, please don't interpret that one random encounter as a statement that meteorites don't happen in Glorantha. They may or may not, based on whatever you think is more fun.

To clarify, the discounts are based on the price of the PDFs. The maximum discount is therefore $62, which is based on purchasing the RQG rulebook PDF ($27), the Bestiary PDF ($20), and the GM screen Pack PDF ($15).

The UK has no VAT on books.

All books that are shipped to a "European" address are shipped from the UK warehouse. The Royal Mail has different prices for different european destinations. Shipping to countries like Germany and France are cheaper than shipping to eastern Europe, and also Scandinavia. I can't explain why that is, but that's what the Royal Mail charges. Malta is actually the most expensive place to ship to "in Europe".

The internal pages are all the same. The front and back covers, as well as the spine are all gold foil stamped, and different to the regular hardcovers. All our hardcover books have sewn binding, so no glue is involved in that. The Leatherettes are also printed in far smaller quantities.

The $9 shipping charge for US customers is because of a wonderful US Post Office special rate for "media mail". Thanks to Ben Franklin, books and printed materials can be sent at a relatively inexpensive special rate within the USA. Unfortunately, overseas shipping from the US gets crazy expensive for anything over 1.75 kilos. If you doubt what the actual shipping costs are, please use your national post office website to check what they would charge to send a 4 kilogram package from your country to with the US, the UK, or Australia Choose whichever of those three locations is closest to your country. Also, I seriously doubt you will find a cheaper rate with FedEx, DHL, UPS, or similar. They tend to charge even more than the post office does for overseas shipments. Postage costs suck, and we aren't huge like Amazon is so we can negotiate super discounted rates or just subsidize the shipping costs.

In Griffin Mountain and Griffin island this was random encounter [31] A VISION IN THE SKY: As the adventurers travel, one of them begins to notice a giant image forming in the air, several kilometers ahead of them. As the image grows clearer, it is obviously several kilometers tall. It begins to move and is revealed as a struggle between a hero and a vile, disgusting, snake-like creature that virtually oozes venom from every pore. The battle seems to last only a few moments as the hero slays the creature. Suddenly, there is a sound as if the sky rips in half. A painfully brilliant light flashes, blinding all who have been watching the struggle. The blindness lasts for 5 minutes. Those who still see will witness fire streaking down from the sky to strike the ground. ----------------------------- While that impact has a crater, the "object" that falls is not a meteorite or similar from space.

It has not gone to layout yet, so we have no availability date to provide.

Chaosium hasn't traditionally sold much at Eternal Con. We have no plans to do so this year.

Pulp Cthulhu and 7E will remain distinct from each other, as they currently are.

We define a "partial slipcase set" as a SINGLE bundled item you can put into your shopping cart. Many months ago we thought of having the printer bundle together the GM screen Pack and the Bestiary into a slipcase with a cardboard spacer for where the rulebook would normally go. Unfortunately, we knew that would in all likelihood lead to too many shipping errors and confusion with the full and complete slipcase sets. Semantics aside, yes you can buy one or more items that would normally be included in the full slipcase set and refer to it as a "partial slipcase set", if you so choose. Chaosium isn't calling an adhoc group of items by that name. You can buy an empty slipcase, you can buy a Bestiary, you can buy the core rulebook, you can buy the GM screen Pack, and you can buy full slipcase sets. We would expect that this wouldn't be seen as a problem. If you want to buy a rulebook and an empty slipcase and refer to this as a "partial slipcase set", feel free to do so. If you want to buy a GM screen pack and an empty slipcase and call it a "partial slipcase set", more power to you. If you want to buy a Bestiary and a GM screen pack and call those two things a "partial slipcase set", that's fine too. What you will NOT find on chaosium.com is a single item of any kind with the name "partial slipcase set".

REPOST FROM MOB: Please note, it is no longer April Fool’s Day here in Australia, even if it still April 1st in other parts of the world. Since RQG goes on sale this week we didn’t want to delay the latest news. We have been working with our fulfillment partners to accurately ship and safely pack the full range of RQG products as follows: RQG core rulebook RQG core rulebook leatherette RQG Bestiary RQG Bestiary leatherette RQG GM Screen Pack Full slipcase sets (Rulebook, Bestiary, GM screen pack) in hardcover and leatherette Empty slipcases (chaosium.com only) (nb we previously announced we would not be selling empty slipcases, due to the logistical challenges involved. After further discussion with our fulfilment partners we now are able to.) Our planned release date is Wednesday April 3rd. Prior to the release, we are providing coupons for individual items and for slipcase sets by email, based on past PDF purchases on chaosium.com. Please note the following: We are selling slipcase sets (containing core rules, Bestiary, and GM Screen Pack), the individual books, and the empty slipcases. We are not selling "partial" slipcase sets. The empty slipcase will be available at a special discounted price for a limited time. We will not run out of slipcase sets any time soon. We have no doubt that some of our most loyal purchasers will require custom coupons, especially if you ordered different products with different accounts, or want to merge items. Custom coupons can be requested by emailing customerservice@chaosium.com. This will be our most complex coupon process ever, so we ask for everyone to please be patient!

We believe we have published the definitive and final edition of Masks. With over 40 products in the CoC pipeline, including some major campaigns, Masks is not on our list of future editions/projects. Other than fixing a few unavoidable typos or similar, that's it for Masks. We plan on keeping it in print as long as sales justify doing so.

The scenes are described for the most part in the GtG, in the grey boxed text on either the same page or the adjoining page.

If we ever substantially revise the Guide to Glorantha it will be to make it a 4 book set of 8.5" x 11" books of about 256 pages each.

There have been a few questions about discounts on the second printing of the rulebook. In short, if you purchase a PDF, you will get a one use coupon that can be used towards purchasing the printed version of that product. Almost all of our books get revised slightly when they get reprinted. That's a natural part of the process. We find typos or other small mistakes, clarifications, and similar, and we incorporate them into the next printing. We have done that with the majority of our books, since the majority of them go through more than one printing. Chaosium has done this for decades.

Without trying to sound unsympathetic, we designed the starter set for use at the gaming table, and at a price point that was attractive to newcomers and those curious about the system but sensitive to how much they were willing to spend to try a new game. I love hardcover books. I love the chaosium silk bookmark ribbon that is now standard. I like to put on my Fez and read a book in my comfy armchair. The box set was meant to be used at a gaming table, dice at the ready, to get new players keen to go insane before getting killed by a monstrosity beyond their understanding.

I would treat seminars like Jason's the the kraken as discussions and not formal announcements. The info is awesome and the discussion was great, but it wasn't a press conference discussing a solid fully formed product.

Many people simply place the book on a table in front of them, like the gaming table they are sitting at, or similar.