Rick Meints

Probably later this year.

While you are welcome to chat about any gaming related topics you wish, including dice, please start your own thread. The last comments have all wandered far away from the original topic.

RQ won the "Outstanding Miniatures Rules of 1978" award because they didn't really have RPG awards yet. While we would prefer to sell the last copy of something about 15 minutes before the booth closes on the last day of a convention, we usually have the opposite problem with most items. We bring too many of most things because it is hard to know exactly how well some things will sell. While it sucks to sell out of something on the morning of the first day of Gen Con, sometimes it just can't be helped. Overall, the truly "lost" sales are probably few. When we run out of something that somebody comes up and wants to buy we usually tel them it's for sale on our website and then give them a 10% off coupon which covers a lot of their shipping costs. There are no commercially available "plug and play" 5.25 Floppy disc drives that will work with the latest computers. You can kit-bash something together, but that isn't for the casual user. FWIW, we have a good enough idea of what the print run was for each product made, all the way back to the beginning. That's enough to satisfy my curiosity. As for DunDraCon, it's really too small a show for us to send people to now that we are no longer local to the area. That's nothing against the show. Steve Perrin recently tried to entice us to come and have a booth like in the days of yore, but it's a lot of time and expense. If we wanted to go to RPG cons with under 1000 attendees we could pretty much go to one every weekend of the year, all year long.

RQ1 debuted at Origins in June of 1978. (I guess you didn't watch the RQ Classic Kickstarter video or read its kickstarter text) They sold all of the couple hundred copies they brought to Origins, which had 3400 attendees that year. A month or so later, they then sold a few hundred of RQ1 at Gen Con, which had 2000 attendees that year. NOTE: Origins was mostly a wargaming convention back then, and not at all an RPG convention. The biggest exhibitors at Origins were SPI and Avalon Hill. In general, most of Chaosium's product is sold through distribution/retail. Convention sales are a tiny % of total sales. Prior to website sales, Chaosium did a decent sized catalog and mail order business, but it only amounted to maybe 10% of total sales. We are very fortunate to have a single sheet of paper that has some of the early sales figures for RQ on it. Other than that, we would have no idea. Chaosium moved offices about 6 times over the years, and threw away a lot of paper each time they did. Why did they? I don't specifically know. I don't know when Chaosium started recording sales figures on computers, but it certainly wasn't until some time in the mid to late 80s. I suppose we might have some of that on odd sized floppy discs, but I haven't really looked. It's not like I have easy access to a 5.25 inch floppy drive...

The Sartar book, Pavis book, and Sartar Companion book for Questworlds should be available in a few months. We will probably have a small stock of them at Chaosium Con in April.

RQ1 had a print run of 5000 copies, and it sold out by May of 1979. The RQ2 softcover rulebook debuted in October of 1979, and also had a print run of 5,000 copies. Boxed RQ debuted in October of 1981 with a print run of, wait for it, 5,000 copies. Most Chaosium print runs were 5,000 copies back in the late 70s and early 80s. If that print run sold out quickly we would print another 5,000 units. Other than the RQ2 rulebook, the RQ2 boxed set, Cults of Prax, and Snakepipe Hollow, no other RQ supplement was reprinted. Supplements like Balastor's Barracks, Trolls & Trollkin, Militia & Mercenaries, and Creatures of Chaos had print runs in the 2,000 to 3,000 copies range. The Runequest Rulebook was sold in most game shops as it went through regular distribution. By 1981 any RQ2 release was readily available when it debuted.

Unfortunately, that is very very unlikely to be made.

Back in the early 80s most of my friends were happy to try different systems and in many cases the rules weren't the deciding factor, it was the setting. If you wanted to play in Space you tried Traveller. If you wanted to play in the Wild West you played Boot Hill. If you wanted to play as spies you played Top Secret. For Horror you played Call of Cthulhu. If you wanted to play in a post-apocalyptic wasteland you played Gamma World. Sure, there were other games in those genres too, but they were often harder to find unless you lived near a really big game store or were really into mail order. For Fantasy settings you had a bigger range of options, such as D&D, RQ, T&T, and a handful of others. Because D&D had more modules available than the other games, and it was in a LOT of stores, it was often the easy choice to get into and keep playing. We stopped playing a number of rules systems because in the early days for that system you couldn't get a lot of ready to play modules. For RQ you only had Apple Lane and Snakepipe Hollow, and the very hard to find Balastor's Barracks. If your GM was happy to make up their own adventures this probably wasn't a factor for what you played, but it was amongst my circle of gaming friends. In the 90s I tried to get other gaming friends to play RQ, but most of them had played a fair bit of D&D and didn't want to bother with learning a new system.

I played the original edition of Traveller from the late 70s and remember its experience "system". It had a brief section on experience in book 2 on pages 42-43. You could pick one of 4 areas of general improvement and then spend FOUR years honing a few skills in that area. If you stopped actively focusing on those skills they often reverted back to their former levels. To me that's not really a "system", or even much more than an extended footnote. Once you throw in the word "technically" you might as well just say D&D had the first system for improving skills. They did it via experience points and going up levels, which improved your combat skill(s).

At Gen Con several years ago Steve Perrin and I often chatted while in the Chaosium booth. I enjoyed Steve’s tales of how RuneQuest got developed and what the RPG community thought of the game when it first came out. He mentioned he wrote about those things in Alarums & Excursions back in the 1970s. He said I was free to share what he wrote there with anyone who wanted to know, provided I could find those articles. He lost his copies long ago. I accepted the challenge of tracking them down, even though the chances of finding them were against me. A&E is an Amateur Press Association (APA) magazine that dates back to 1975. In the late 1970s only a few hundred of each issue were printed. Article writers would get a free copy of the issue they appeared in. Publication was far more about being a community than being a commercial enterprise. As luck would have it, on Sunday I finally found Steve’s article and got to work preserving his words for posterity. In the September 1978 issue of Alarums & Excursions #37 Steve Perrin laid out, in a very bare bones fashion how RuneQuest, Chaosium’s first RPG, blazed a new trail away from the main RPG that dominated the market. RuneQuest offered a stark contrast to what many players perceived as the one true way to play a game: Experience points, Levels, Fighters can’t cast spells, Magic-users can’t wear armor, and Clerics can’t use edged weapons. RuneQuest turned that world upside down or simply chose to ignore it. Almost 44 years later, we want to share how Steve explained it all those years ago. D&D IS A THING OF THE PAST Copyright 1978 by Steve Perrin. Photo-stenciled by the Chaosium (Greg Stafford) and printed by Lee and Barry Gold. The Last Hurrah Hurray! Last night (the 25th of June) we finished layouts and corrections for RUNEQUEST. The Albatross is gone! I would like to say right here and now that Lynn Willis, creator of GODSFIRE, OLYMPIA, and LORDS OF THE MIDDLE SEA, was absolutely invaluable. He worked 14-hour days doing layout and other dirty work to make sure RUNEQUEST would be finished in time, while I had to hold down my mundane job at Blue Shield and Greg Stafford and Tadashi Ehara worked on KING ARTHUR’S KNIGHTS. Thank you again, Lynn, it was a pleasure working with you. Commercial Note Note that this contribution is copyrighted. I don’t know if I’ll be using anything I say in it for future games, but I may, and I need to be covered. General Mailing Comments I’ve seen a lot of discussion in A&E the past few months on what needs to be changed in D&D. A lot of you are saying we need a whole new game. Buy RUNEQUEST. It’s all there. Experience Points hassles are gone with the wind. Combat makes sense. There is a legitimate Hit Point system (tied to Constitution) with the chance for increase tied to paying for physical fitness training and limited by the racial maximums and other Characteristics of the character. All Skills are available to be learned, taking time and money. We all know where the money is coming from, don’t we? Converting one’s D&D Characters to the RUNEQUEST system The main problem with creating a whole new game system is that we (Steve Henderson, Warren James, Ray Turney and I) have stables of D&D Characters we are fond of which we would like to continue to use in the RUNEQUEST format. Therefore, I’ve devised the following rough guidelines for converting them to a saner game system. I am purposely writing the following as if the reader had a copy of RUNEQUEST before him. If you want to understand the references, buy the game. New Characteristics Power - As Power in RUNEQUEST is the measure of the relationship of the character with the gods, and Wisdom could be said to perform the same function in D&D, one can simply use Wisdom for the Power of the Character. Alternately, the player can reroll Power for the character and drop the Wisdom roll entirely (or use it strictly for personal reference). Spell Users should add one point of Power for every Order of Spell over First they know, up to Racial Maximum. If the converter wishes to use the Mages-and-Clerics-as-automatic-Cult-Priests option following, their Power should be simply raised to 18 automatically. Size - If your character has a size firmly fixed in your mind, just estimate its equivalent in a 3-18 range and apply it to the converted character. If you have nothing in mind, roll it on 3D6. If you play with height and weight rolls, average them or just use the weight roll. Hit Points - For every Fighting Rank the character has attained (1-3 = 1st, 4-6 = 2nd, etc. for a fighter) add one to his Constitution if possible according to the limits of the game. The same can be done for Strength and Dexterity. Defense - If the initial Characteristics allow a Defense ability, the player may roll for each Fighting Rank attained by the character to determine if his Defense has increased. If a Defense ability is obtained by. the increase of Dexterity increase shown above, allow one Defense increase roll for every Fighting Rank attained afterthe necessary initial Defense was obtained. Conversion of Character Classes Fighters First figure the Combat Abilities Natural Ability adds and subtractions from the Characteristics. If Fighter is of First Fighting Rank (lst-3rd level), his Basic Chance is 20% with his usual weapons, plus all Natural Ability pluses and minuses. If Fighter is of Second Fighting Rank (4th-6th), His Basic Chance is 30% with usual weapons, plus Natural Ability pluses and minuses If Fighter is of Third Fighting Rank (7th-9th), his Basic Chance is 45% with his usual weapons, plus Natural Ability pluses and minuses. If Fighter is of Fourth Fighting Rank (10th-12th), his Basic Chance is 55% with his usual weapons, plus Natural Ability pluses and minuses. If Fighter is of the Fifth Rank (13th-15th), his Basic Chance is 65% with his usual weapons, plus Natural Ability pluses and minuses. If Fighter is of the Sixth Rank (16th+), his Basic Chance is 80% with his usual weapons, plus Natural Ability pluses and minuses. These are the Attack and Parry chances with their usual weapons. Thus, if he has always used Broadsword, he will be at the usual RUNEQUEST Basic Chance with a Large Axe he may pick up. Use of Magic - This depends on the campaign. Either the magic use is still limited to specialists, as it is in D&D, or the campaign can be opened up to the cross-training found in RUNEQUEST. If the former, Fighter use of magic would be limited to the use of Spell Matrices, and perhaps Bound Spirits... Magicians Most games do not allow Mages to wear armor and use most weapons. RUNEQUEST does not bother with these restrictions, but the individual adapter can suit himself. Again, like Fighters, Mages have Attack and Parry abilities commensurate with their Fighting Ranks in D&D. Naturally, this ability only applies to the use of Dagger and, perhaps, staff. Campaigns which let Mages use swords are of course welcome to allow Mage use of sword, too. If you wish to open up Magic use to all, consider the first four levels of D&D Spells to be Battle Magic Spells and teach them anywhere. Depending on how much you wish to follow the guidelines of low magic use shown in RUNEQUEST, you may wish to take some of the more powerful spells and convert them into Rune (or Higher Order) Magic. I suggest this latter as the most reasonable system, as Fireballs and Lightning Bolts can get very dangerous, even if limited to their level in dice (i.e. 3D6 damage). They are more reasonable as the special spells of specialized Fire and Storm Cults. I also heavily, urge the Intelligence limits on Spell Knowledge and that Power be the basis for Spell use. This is not absolutely necessary. The RUNEQUEST combat system will fit perfectly well into a regular D&D magic system, as long as multi-dice spells are toned down to their level in damage dice, but the use of the Power system limits Magic sufficiently to keep things on a hand to hand combat basis, which is my own particular prejudice in such things. Cults One can have specialized Cults, or assume that every Higher Order Magician is a member of some great Lodge which knows all Rune Power Spells. Clerics would be a separate Cult. If you wish to keep Magicians and Clerics as specialists with no cross-over abilities in the world, you can eliminate the Power of 18 limitation for joining and simply let the initiates build up in some other way to the Higher Order Spells. If you wish to use the 18-21 Power limits for High Order Mages, with the sacrifice of Power for Higher Order Spells, then equate the following spells as follows: 5th and 6th level Magical, 5th Level Clerical, Spells are 1 Point Higher Magic 7th and 8th level Magical, 6th Level Clerical, Spells are 2 Point Higher Magic 9th level Magical and 7th level Clerical are 3 Point Higher Magic. The concept of Gods supplying the Magical Power for Higher Order Spells can be dropped in a non-Gloranthan world, with the Mages and Clerics "tapping the Mana flow" or some other such rationale. Clerics These are dealt with pretty well as above. They would be tied to Life or Death Rune Cults (or equivalent in religious practices of your campaign). If you wish to keep the 18 Power limitation for their Spells/Prayers/Miracles, there are a number of ways to do it. Assume a Power of 18 to start with, making them earn the Power as Mages, then converting, or perhaps, best of all, forgetting the 18 limitation, at least for minor spells. It's your campaign. Thieves These can use all their D&D or Spartan or whatever skills at the level they have earned already. Mostly they correspond to RUNEQUEST skills in any case. The other Skills available under RUNEQUEST will have to be learned from basics. Combat Abilities are dependent on Fighting Rank, as usual. The Thiefly bonus in damage from hitting from behind is lost, as you might expect. Other Categories Methods of playing Illusionists (Separate Cult), Bards (Matter of Other Skills), Rangers (proficient Fighters), etc. should be obvious from the other guidelines. I will be glad to answer any questions you may have, but feel free to adapt as you will. Magical Items There are two ways to go with these. 1. All magical items work as they do now, having both the Spell(s) Matrix and a never-ceasing Power supply. 2. All items are Spell Matrices and must be Powered. Thus, a Staff of Wizardry would be a Matrix for all the Spells, but must be powered by the user. In this second case, all Power Storing and Spirit Trapping items from the RUNEQUEST rules must be retained, or the characters will never be able to use all the stuff. Items which now have Intelligence and Ego should have Intelligence and Power, being Bound Spirits which will engage a character in Spirit Combat when picked up. Of course, a Spirit can be Chaotic, Lawful, or non-aligned, if your campaign uses such concepts. If a character is taken over by the Spirit in the device, the referee should commence playing the character, for Spirit possession is far more drastic than having a character who is simply "controlled" by his weapon. Specific Examples A Belt of Giant Strength - will not work as it does in D&D. Instead, it will bring the Strength and Mass (Size) of the character to 21 each, giving them extra damage ability, but not a giant’s massive power. Note that this increase of Size is simply an augmentation of the density of the body affected. It will not affect the previous Strike Rank. Magic Armor - acts as Protection Spells of variable Power, depending on the Power brought in. Points are subtracted off damage, not hitting ability. Magic Weapons - Act just as Bladesharp and Bludgeon Spells. You may follow the limitation to +4 or not, as you please. Monsters An article on how to adapt ATWM monsters to RUNEQUEST will be in All The Worlds’ Monsters #3. It’s fairly simple. Money All money is relative. RUNEQUEST uses the Silver Lunar, but those liking gold can just translate the amounts as you please. You may switch to either base as seems reasonable. Just be consistent. Further Note on Magic Items Looking over the previous comments brings to mind one possibility I had not considered, treating the Magic Items as Powered Crystals, each with its own Power which can be used to Power its Spell, but which can be exhausted. For instance, a Wand of Cold might have a Power of 10, and thus be useful for just so many shots a day, although the Power will regenerate over a period of a day. Then again, there is always the further concept of having to attune such an item, and not being able to use any others, but that is rather restrictive for D&D style play. It is my intention to set up two "campaigns." One will be a very loose D&D style campaign with D&D translated to RUNEQUEST terms much the same way (though not necessarily exactly) as I’ve been discussing, with a D&D style money system, monsters, and treasure. This will be mostly a series of dungeons (reworked versions of my D&D dungeons) with sufficient cultural background and above ground terrain to allow for overland travel and some culture interaction. The other will be a full-scale Dragon Pass-Glorantha game, set in the Plains of Prax, but extending everywhere, in the years before the advent of Argath Dragonteeth, when he was a simple Sartar refugee Rune Lord in Pavis. Who knows, perhaps he’ll be killed... This will be a far tighter controlled game, set within an ongoing history. Eventually, the players will begin to influence this history. It should be fun. It could end up with us playing a game of White Bear and Red Moon with different Hero pieces... RUNEQUEST Response I’m looking forward for a lot of constructive criticism on this game. Try not to mention the typos. We tried to catch them all, but I will tell you right now that "buck roll" should read "luck roll."(See chapter X) If you’d like to put your own Cults through A&E, we will be happy to take them from here and put them in any supplements, for appropriate credit. Note that we will be a lot more discriminating about Cults appearing in any RUNEQUEST supplements than Jeff Pimper and I have been about Monsters appearing in ATWM. This was the Chaosium’s first effort with typesetting, and it does seem to have worked out all right, though retyping the tables because the typesetters couldn’t do them was a drag. We’ll have to get used to it. Greg Stafford is thinking of buying a typesetting machine. Then again, I’m told there are computer programs for typesetting. Oog, oog, as Nicolai Shapero would say. Parting shots Rereading some of the above I realize that it makes me sound as if I think RUNEQUEST is the ultimate for FRP games, and far superior to anything else on the market. In many ways I do, yet can understand others’ preoccupation with D&D, C&S, and others. RUNEQUEST satisfies my yearnings for a rational game, as it does my co-authors Ray Turney, Steve Henderson, and Warren James. Greg Stafford likes it too, and he’s the publisher. We are very happy with it. It has a lot of expansion possibilities and I look forward to your comments as to where it should go. Thank you all for reading this cathartic little message. Art Credit By the way, check out the artwork done by my wife, Luise. It is far and away the finest art appearing in any Fantasy Role Playing Game. Prejudiced? Yes, but I have a lot of confirmation on this. See the cover repro on Page two of this contribution. Next Time The list of figures stolen from me at DunDraCon III... Epilogue And there you have it. As Steve said, RuneQuest serves the yearnings for a rational game. Rediscovering this article only a few months after Steve passed away only makes the contents of it all the more bittersweet. I wish I could have chatted with him about this “cathartic little message” and how he felt about it more than 40 years later. In the end, like Steve, I very much look forward to where the newest edition of RuneQuest will go, especially because it has so many expansion possibilities. We all know D&D is by no means a thing of the past, nor is it likely to be, just as much as we know that RuneQuest will be a part of Tabletop Roleplaying games far, far into the future as well. Vale and Farewell, Steve. Your timeless voice still resonates amongst us, reminding us of the humble roots of our passion for stories and the games that allow us to tell them.

They are in the US warehouse, but shipping them overseas to our other warehouses is proving to be quite expensive.

Unfortunately, we are not offering a discount on the printed version.

I had the pleasure of occasionally cornering Greg and getting the chance to ask him about these sorts of things. In general, Glorantha is full of a lot of "one-liner" references that never really got fleshed out. By "one-liners" I mean that they are mentioned only once or twice and often with just a single sentence. Another such example of a one-liner would be Falangian Wine in King of Sartar. When I asked about that Greg just said, "That's up to the reader to decide what it is".

There is a chance that we could sell a few more, but when we have been selling these books at $3000 a set, we aren't planning on selling the 6 books at $50 each. Please note, this is honoring the author's (Greg's) firm and long standing desire. Greg could have sold these books at $25 each, but he didn't want to do that. He passed on selling them like his unfinished works books (at $25 each) for about two decades. He finally sold the first series of 12 or so books in 2007 in extremely limited quantities for about $250 each. He let us sell a repacked 6 volume set of them for $3000, because that was the approximate total price of them previously. Note: Greg lived on a very low income for quite a few years, and even that didn't motivate them to publish these books at lower prices, even when he really could have used the money. The good news is that the good material they contain often ended up in the Guide to Glorantha, the Gloranthan Sourcebook, and forthcoming RQG books as applicable. As and when Western material gets published this will be even more true, as much of these Roots of Glorantha books involve Malkioni related info.

Unfortunately, we have no plans to sell them as PDFs.

It hasn't gone to the printers yet, so at least 4 months or more.

The latest from the Devon warehouse is that final delivery is scheduled for Monday, December 6th. I was cc'd on the email from the shipping company.

"Sharing" that content shouldn't happen as that would involve our Gloranthan IP. If you mean, "purchasing", we are working on it.

Sales volume exceeded what we expected, based on past experience. We have sent more RQ product, including the Starter set and the RBoM, so they will be available for purchase in the UK soon.

While we are happy to talk about how far along a project is in development, please do not ask us "when". That said, the book is still being written, and has not gone to art or layout yet, so I know it is at least a year away from being ready, if not far longer.

While we have a licensee for CoC in Japanese and Chinese, we do not have one for RQ in either of those languages.

Yes, we are planning on getting all of our game systems onto Foundry VTT, starting with CoC. We only have limited resources to do that right now, so we have no ETA for when.

If you are merely expressing how this could not work in the real world, I'll just agree and save time. If you are saying this can't work in a world where the gods are real, magic is plentiful, and all of the physics/geology/similar do not necessarily apply in exactly the same way, then I disagree. The food situation is different when you have spells that can help grow it, find it and preserve it. To me this is akin to saying how Gloranthans are screwed without the modern medicine we enjoy today while not factoring in the affects of magic spells. I've never felt that Glorantha works well because it adheres to all of the real world realities. After all, Glorantha isn't a planet, and it doesn't orbit around a sun, so not having a creature's digestion fit with how things work in real life falls pretty far down the list of my concerns. Maybe Waha changed how their stomachs work. Maybe their teeth can chew things differently as part of the covenant. I'm more into how the Morokanth have to deal with being mistrusted and despised, and how they also present some very cool roleplaying opportunities. It's been that way for me since I first played through Borderlands. I didn't stop playing because I thought pizza would upset their stomach, or that they didn't have a silo to store surplus grain in, and certainly not how neolithic hunter/gatherer theories ruined my willing suspension of disbelief. When my character visited Gonn Orta he thought Mr. Greatness, the morokanth with the one magical thumb, was super interesting. That's why I asked Simon Bray to draw a picture of him giving the thumbs up in the Gloranthan Classic version of Griffin Mountain. I didn't contemplate whether it meant he could now use a hoe more effectively to gather roots. In the end, please continue playing the morokanth however you want to in your game.

All of the four volumes of the Classics contain extra bits from various sources. You would certainly be hard pressed to call the Cult Compendium "just a reprint". It's wonderful that if you have only one of the books it is the hardcover of P&BR. It is the rarest and most sought after.

No, it really isn't.