RQG Starter Set - who's buying and/or using it?

[Beoferret]

Hey everyone. Do any of you have a sense of whether a sizeable number of new gamers or younger gamers new to RuneQuest are getting their hands on the Starter Set or is it primarily (perhaps overwhelmingly) RQ grognards? What do the aforementioned new and/or younger gamers think of their intro to RuneQuest and Glorantha?

* For my part, I bought a Starter Set for a co-worker/friend (mid-20's), who seems to like what they've seen so far from their as-of-yet partial read.

[Alex]

2 minutes ago, Beoferret said:

Hey everyone. Do any of you have a sense of whether a sizeable number of new gamers or younger gamers new to RuneQuest are getting their hands on the Starter Set or is it primarily (perhaps overwhelmingly) RQ grognards? What do the aforementioned new and/or younger gamers think of their intro to RuneQuest and Glorantha?

It's a great question, and one of interesting even to we grognards (RQ and otherwise) that wonder how our interest is surviving its Aging Rolls.  On the other hand, you might be asking in exactly the wrong place!  Mind you, it may be that the real "outreach" reaction will happen as physical copies hit mailboxes, and even moreso as they hit gamestore shelves.  If it gets good word-of-mouth, and I have every hope it will.

2 minutes ago, Beoferret said:

* For my part, I bought a Starter Set for a co-worker/friend (mid-20's), who seems to like what they've seen so far from their as-of-yet partial read.

You very generous person/sly pusher, you. 😄  Any early signs if they're falling on the "too... much...  information..." side, or more in the direction of "this is great, only the lack of chariot rules and character generation is a real deal-breaker for me"?

[g33k]

I expect *most* of the sales -- thus far -- will be to the grognards.


This may change; it's well-timed.  When US Turkey Day is over, the shoppers will hit the stores heavily.

There's enough time for the FLGS's to have ordered these, and begun getting (hopefully positive) feedback, so they'll recommend this as a solid offering when Aunt Edith asks for "something D&D-ish, but not D&D," or people look to branch out, etc...

 

[Shiningbrow]

I'll come back to this thread in a few week/couple of months, after I've introduced RQ to some of my colleagues and students at this Chinese university I'm teaching at.

CoC is apparently big in China, so pointing out the similarities has already helped.

The only current downside at the moment seems to be language... Nothing in RQ has been translated.

[David Scott]

It's an ideal xmas present. The more you give to potential new players the better. 

[Rick Meints]

5 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I'll come back to this thread in a few week/couple of months, after I've introduced RQ to some of my colleagues and students at this Chinese university I'm teaching at.

CoC is apparently big in China, so pointing out the similarities has already helped.

The only current downside at the moment seems to be language... Nothing in RQ has been translated.

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

[AndreJarosch]

1 hour ago, Rick Meints said:

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

Yet!

In germany the easiest way to get the attention of potential customers is: "RuneQuest is similar in game mechanics to Call of Cthulhu, but based upon fantasy, ancient history and myths, instead of lovecraftan horror and the 1920s." 

Edited November 17, 2021 by AndreJarosch

[Cloud64]

I will be using the Starter Set to run an 8 week slot at an RPG club I joined Jan last year. As a result of the timing I haven't got to know that many of them as we split into a number of online groups during lockdown. We are back FTF now, and last week I asked our table of CoC players if they were interested in RQ and the response was a resounding 'Yes!' all round - basically I've got my players now. One counts as a grognard who, like myself, played it 'back in the day', but the others are two in theirs 30s and one late 20s none of whom have played but all have heard of the game and want to experience it themselves.

I don't have any reputation preceding me with these folk - I joined the club to get to play rather than be forever GM - so I'd say they have solid interest in the game and setting. It will be interesting to see how strong the interest is once the game proposal goes out as a general invite to all in the club, but on the strength of the interest from my casual testing of the waters, I suspect the game may be oversubscribed. I shall, of course, be encouraging them to pick up at least the Starter Set pdfs on the grounds that it's phenomenal value and three of the four books are usable by players, and please please make my life easier by at least attempting to learn  the rules (yeah, I know, but I can dream can't I?)

[Alex]

1 hour ago, Cloud64 said:

I shall, of course, be encouraging them to pick up at least the Starter Set pdfs on the grounds that it's phenomenal value and three of the four books are usable by players, and please please make my life easier by at least attempting to learn  the rules (yeah, I know, but I can dream can't I?)

This is a cunning and yet noble plan to drum up sales, but players being a cheap and lazy lot 🙂 I feel obliged to mention there's also the QSR version, which is free, and only a couple of dozen pages long.   Should anyone's budget not stretch to $15, or their attention span to 60pp!

[g33k]

1 hour ago, Alex said:

This is a cunning and yet noble plan to drum up sales, but players being a cheap and lazy lot 🙂 I feel obliged to mention there's also the QSR version, which is free, and only a couple of dozen pages long.   Should anyone's budget not stretch to $15, or their attention span to 60pp!

And if you have a PDF editor, you can chop the Broken Tower off the end of it; thus making it easier for you to run the BT scenario for your players.

[Beoferret]

21 hours ago, Alex said:

You very generous person/sly pusher, you. 😄  Any early signs if they're falling on the "too... much...  information..." side, or more in the direction of "this is great, only the lack of chariot rules and character generation is a real deal-breaker for me"?

Not sure yet. There's definitely aspects of the system and the setting that she liked right off the bat. I'll have to check in soon and see if there are further impressions.

[Beoferret]

18 hours ago, g33k said:

I expect *most* of the sales -- thus far -- will be to the grognards.

This may change; it's well-timed.  When US Turkey Day is over, the shoppers will hit the stores heavily.

There's enough time for the FLGS's to have ordered these, and begun getting (hopefully positive) feedback, so they'll recommend this as a solid offering when Aunt Edith asks for "something D&D-ish, but not D&D," or people look to branch out, etc...

 

I probably did start this thread too soon. I'll definitely be interested to see what responses are by the end of January '22 - after the shopping season and when folks have had a chance to play a session or two from the Starter Set adventures.

[Cloud64]

2 hours ago, Alex said:

This is a cunning and yet noble plan to drum up sales, but players being a cheap and lazy lot 🙂 I feel obliged to mention there's also the QSR version, which is free, and only a couple of dozen pages long.   Should anyone's budget not stretch to $15, or their attention span to 60pp!

I think the Soloquest could be the big pull for players, and now I've discovered that Chaosium have put up a free, playable online version they won't even have to part with $15 to get some rules drummed into them. Props to Chaosium for their fierce loss leading on this product, let's hope it ultimately pays off.

[g33k]

12 minutes ago, Cloud64 said:

... Soloquest ... I've discovered that Chaosium have put up a free, playable online version ...

waitWHAT???!?
Where?

[Alex]

1 hour ago, g33k said:

And if you have a PDF editor, you can chop the Broken Tower off the end of it; thus making it easier for you to run the BT scenario for your players.

Indeed so, and funnily enough earlier today I spent longer looking for the file i was sure I'd created by this method than it'd have taken to just do it over again!   But you don't even need an editor, just a viewer and a "print to PDF" driver.  For my extra-credit quest I might now work out how to get the file size below 11.7Mb(!)

[Cloud64]

3 minutes ago, g33k said:

waitWHAT???!?
Where?

https://www.chaosium.com/rq-soloquest-the-battle-of-dangerford/
 

[Shiningbrow]

9 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

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're aware of the lack of Chinese... I've been thinking about how to help change that!

One of the students noticed the similarity to Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, so maybe another way to get interest?

[Squaredeal Sten]

 I hope hits on the soloquest will be used to estimate the reach of the BRP RQ forum-

[svensson]

I bought it and plan on using it.

I'm teaching my nieces RuneQuest and hope that the Solo Quest will give them food for thought. Beyond that, the best way to insure that there is more Glorantha coming is buy Glorantha when it comes out.

[Marc]

15 hours ago, g33k said:

And if you have a PDF editor, you can chop the Broken Tower off the end of it; thus making it easier for you to run the BT scenario for your players.

You don't really need a PDF editor for that.  Just a way to Print to PDF( included in Windows 10, probably others ).  Then just print the pages before the BT stuff starts to a new PDF

[Kloster]

I hope that Santa Claus will be generous, even if I'm not anymore a child and that I'm not always nice. According to my wife, it should be delivered on time.

[Alex]

2 hours ago, Marc said:

You don't really need a PDF editor for that.  Just a way to Print to PDF( included in Windows 10, probably others ).

Yeah, can testify to ChromeOS and Linux first hand.  Like I said, 'just a viewer and a "print to PDF" driver' is what's required.  https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/how-to/print-to-pdf.html  Otherviewersarevailable, here's the Chrome built-in:  

[Alex]

1 hour ago, Kloster said:

I hope that Santa Claus will be generous, even if I'm not anymore a child and that I'm not always nice. According to my wife, it should be delivered on time.

She gets a Forgiving tick, or whatever the applicable Passion on her sheet could possibly be. 🙂

[Susimetsa]

18 hours ago, Kloster said:

I hope that Santa Claus will be generous, even if I'm not anymore a child and that I'm not always nice. According to my wife, it should be delivered on time.

Same situation here - although I'm keeping myself in suspense by not asking whether I'm getting it or not. 😄

[svensson]

Bought it, just got it, gonna give it as a present, gonna run my players through the Solo Quest.

And I like it a lot.