Out the Suitcase: Chaosium President Rick Meints's stories from a life-time as a collector of all things Chaosium

[jajagappa]

On 8/18/2021 at 10:34 PM, MOB said:

Today, something very obscure from the Danbury Mint...

The artwork itself was also used on a publicity postcard.  I don't recall if those were delivered with some of the Issaries books, but that seems likely as I think I have two of them.

[MOB]

Lawrence Schick, the author of 'Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Roleplaying Games' (1991), described TSR's MONSTER MANUAL with the phrase "As nothing is easier to design than new monsters, it has spawned a host of imitations." He wouldn't be able to say that about Chaosium's ALL THE WORLDS' MONSTERS, because it came first.

 

Rick tells more about this early work of Steve Perrin's in his latest 'Out of the Suitcase' post:

 

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-21-the-first-manual-of-monsters

 

[Ian Absentia]

To this day, I marvel at that gaping hole of negative space in the middle of the cover of the first D&D Monster Manual.

By the way, though it featured Tunnels & Trolls stats and was technically a game unto itself, where did Flying Buffalo's Monsters! Monsters! fit into the timeline?

!i!

[Rick Meints]

22 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

To this day, I marvel at that gaping hole of negative space in the middle of the cover of the first D&D Monster Manual. By the way, though it featured Tunnels & Trolls stats and was technically a game unto itself, where did Flying Buffalo's Monsters! Monsters! fit into the timeline?

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.

[MOB]

The 1981 release Thieves' World is the topic of Rick's latest 'Out of the Suitcase' post, where he shares stories from a life-time as a collector of all things Chaosium. Although Call of Cthulhu debuted in late 1981, this boxed set - based on Robert Asprin's shared world fantasy series, and which featured game rules from seven(!) different RPG systems - was actually Chaosium's biggest seller that year.

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-suitcase-22-thieves-world-a-classic-case-of-being-the-chaosium-not-the-orderium

[MOB]

In his latest 'Out of the Suitcase' post, Chaosium president president Rick Meints goes back to the founding of the company and earlier to try to discover why our iconic dragon logo, usually facing left, sometimes faces to the right...

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-23-facing-the-facts-of-a-chaotic-past

[David Scott]

3 hours ago, MOB said:

In his latest 'Out of the Suitcase' post, Chaosium president president Rick Meints goes back to the founding of the company and earlier to try to discover why our iconic dragon logo, usually facing left, sometimes faces to the right...

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-23-facing-the-facts-of-a-chaotic-past

I like the additional chaos of Franis too...

[Ian Absentia]

16 hours ago, David Scott said:

I like the additional chaos of Franis too...

In the Red-Shift Timeline, Frank Stafford's RuneQuest emerged as the pre-eminent RPG of the '70s, prompting Ernie G. Gygax toward more nimble innovations in his Midwest-indie Dungeons & Dragons as an alternative to the West Coast dominance of the fledgling RPG market.

!i!

[MOB]

In his latest 'Out of the Suitcase' post, Chaosium president Rick Meints shows off the back cover of his new edition of the Meints Index of Glorantha ("if it was produced between 1975 and 2015 you'll find it herein"). For this edition Rick decided to use a back cover style and format that might look a bit familiar to many long-time RuneQuest fans: 

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-24-wherein-the-back-cover-gets-finished

Edited November 5, 2021 by MOB

[jajagappa]

That exception probably should include $ as well as dice!

[MOB]

Of the eclectic things published by Chaosium over the years 1978's Authentic Thaumaturgy is probably the most gonzo.

In his newest 'Out of the Suitcase' post, company president Rick Meints talks about the two Chaosium editions of the book, which was the written by P.E.I. Bonewits, "the world’s only academically accredited occultist".

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-25-as-authentic-as-thaumaturgy-can-get

[MOB]

Chaosium founder Greg Stafford loved King Arthur and wanted to do a game based on the legend. And he did. But this was before the Pendragon RPG was first published 1985; in 1981 Chaosium published Greg's King Arthur's Knights. In his latest 'Out of the Suitcase' post Chaosium president Rick Meints talks about this long out-of-print board game.

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-26-chaosiums-first-arthurian-game-king-arthurs-knights

[MOB]

In his latest "Out of the Suitcase" post, Chaosium president Rick Meints tracks down the article RuneQuest co-creator Steve Perrin wrote in 1978, entitled 'D&D is a thing of the past'. Here Steve described how RuneQuest, Chaosium’s first RPG, blazed a new trail away from the main RPG that dominated the market.

 

RQ 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, Rick shares how Steve explained it all those years ago...

 

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-27-dd-is-a-thing-of-the-past-rediscovering-how-revolutionary-runequest-was-

 

[MOB]

In his latest 'Out of the Suitcase' post Chaosium president Rick Meints tells the story about how Griffin Mountain came to be. As luck would have it, the actual original layout still exists, and is part of our company archives.

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-28-how-beyond-the-pass-became-griffin-mountain

[MOB]

In his latest 'Out of the Suitcase' post Chaosium president Rick Meints talks to 1990s Chaosium staffer Sam Shirley about the layout process back then, which was literally cut and paste, with glue. Kids, that's how layout was done back in those days..

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-29-kids-thats-how-layout-was-done-back-in-those-days

[MOB]

In his latest 'Out of the Suitcase' post, Chaosium president Rick Meints notes that the Glorantha-themed jokes included on the back side of the Jan/Feb 1981 Chaosium order form are as corny now as they were 40 years ago...

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-30-a-few-jokes-at-gloranthas-expense

[MOB]

In his latest 'Out of the Suitcase' post, Chaosium president Rick Meints says he can't imagine playing RuneQuest in Glorantha without Cults of Prax; it's one for the ages. Although first released way back in 1979, it is still considered one of the best treatments of religion in a fantasy RPG ever written. 

From the archives, this is William Church's original map for the cover of the second printing, done in ink and watercolors.

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-31-cults-of-prax-one-for-the-ages

 

Edited March 9, 2022 by MOB

[MOB]

In his latest 'Out of the Suitcase' post, Chaosium president Rick Meints shares a small example of how Chaosium earned its "quirky game company" reputation back in the 1980s. Plus, Rick speaks to the God Learners podcast about his lifelong passion of collecting Gloranthan books, his work on the Meints Index to Glorantha, ChaosiumCon 2022, and much more.

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-32-a-quirky-game-company-indeed-plus-rick-talks-to-the-god-learners

[MOB]

"One of the joys and curses of being a completist collector means you seek out every printing, edition, and variant of each item." In his latest 'Out of the Suitcase' post, Chaosium president Rick Meints uses Citadel's RuneQuest Minies from the 1980s to show what he means...

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-33-collecting-and-dealing-with-personal-demons

[MOB]

 

Back in the 1980s, Citadel's RuneQuest minies were imported into the US under the Trollkin Forge brand. But Chaosium president and super-collector Rick Meints was never sure how big the range was, as he'd never seen any sort of Trollkin Forge catalog or product list for the line.

 

That is until today, as he describes in his latest 'Out of the Suitcase' post:

 

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-34-reforging-friendships-by-chance

 

 

[MOB]

To mark the fourth anniversary of Greg Stafford's passing, yesterday we released The Stafford House Campaign, a collection of Greg Stafford's RuneQuest Campaign Essays from 1978-1981.

In this accompanying 'Out of the Suitcase' post, Chaosium president Rick Meints shares where he tracked down this wealth of unparalleled insights into the birth of RuneQuest from: obscure zine articles, published on mimeograph machines 40 years ago and now released as a new 84 page collection.

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-35-from-the-archives-sage-advice-from-greg-stafford

 

Edited October 11, 2022 by MOB

[soltakss]

Excellent, thanks for making these available to a wider audience.

[Mark Morrison]

This is a very late post on a question of yore:

Penny used the Stormbringer (or Elric) rules to run a campaign set in the Castle of Eyes while she was exploring the plot and setting for the book, as a way of finding her way through the castle. The players loved it, particularly her friend who had never roleplayed before but absolutely loved being utterly outrageous and whaling away with a greatsword. I cannot recall at what point we decided not to proceed with the RPG setting. 

Best,

Mark

Edited November 5, 2022 by Mark Morrison

[MOB]

Rick's new 'Out of the Suitcase' post begins with Greg Stafford telling him "You should become our RuneQuest historian". That was in 1994. Now, in 2022, Rick has released the third edition of his Meints Index to Glorantha, his magisterial compendium of products, supplements, and articles about RuneQuest and Glorantha.

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-36-you-should-become-our-runequest-historian

[MOB]

After inadvertently insulting the president of the Avalon Hill Game Company, Rick Meints missed out on a picking up a small piece of RuneQuest history. In his latest 'Out of the Suitcase' post, he talks about how it took him nearly 29 years to finally get a copy for his collection.

https://www.chaosium.com/blogout-of-the-suitcase-37-a-recent-addition-to-my-collection-29-years-after-unknowingly-insulting-the-president-of-avalon-hill