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

[Susimetsa]

I got it from Santa, amongst other treasures close to my heart. 😄

[Kloster]

Santa Post Office was on time, so I got mine yesterday.

[Kargzant]

I got mine earlier this month. I'm getting a group together and I plan to use the pregens and starter rules to gauge their interest in a game.

[PhilHibbs]

I bought it, played through the solo and ran through it with a player, but other than that haven't used the material yet other than the map. I will probably use some of the adventure material at some time.

Edited December 26, 2021 by PhilHibbs

[Johan W]

For me, I bought it although I already had all the other published RQG stuff. Just the adventure book, solo quest, map and the new character sheet is worth the price.

[Cloud64]

Started playing last week and happy to report the first encounter was fun. Players being players, mine handled it in an unexpected but surprisingly effective manner. For those who may be interested…

Spoiler

Harmast cast Glamour and tried talking to the trolls, but to no avail due to the language barrier. Vishi decided to distract the trolls with more booze and was lucky enough to find a keg of wine, which tempted some of them. To cut a long story short, once the trolls were further sotted, Harmast thought what the hell, I'll sing a lullaby to them – a desperate attempt given the performance of his dice so far. Crooning some Harmony inspired harmonies, Issaries smiled on him and he got a crit, and when is a GM to argue with that? The watch turned up to find a bunch of soporific trolls sat nodding off around a keg of wine, and a more resistant one with Aranda in a headlock. This earned the gang a comfortable night in the Issaries temple.

 

[Beoferret]

In the spirit of Delecti, let me engage in some thread necromancy... 

Since the Starter Set has been out for some months now, it seems like a good time to revisit these questions. How many of you have seen/experienced newcomers to RQG purchasing the Starter Set (and maybe even using it)? How many of you have used the Starter Set to win new (especially younger) players to RQ and/or Glorantha? What really grabbed them about the system and the setting? Any newbies who ended up deciding that RQ and/or Glorantha wasn't for them after trying the Starter Set adventures?

 

[Ryan Kent]

I am getting together with my gaming group from 35 years ago to run them through the new Rainbow Mounds this weekend!

[Cloud64]

I have now run first two scenarios at an RPG club, face-to-face, with 5 players. 2 have played 2nd and 3rd eds., but not much. 2 wanted to try it and have never had the opportunity before, never having known anyone into RuneQuest, and one has been a member of this club for over 15 years! 1 is relatively new to roleplaying and wanted to try it out, most likely due to me wittering on about when I give him a lift. Age range mid 30s to 60+. Myself, I've not run it since the early 80s, and never much back then, and with all the maturation of Glorantha over the years don't didn't consider myself particularly au fait with the setting and I was very rules rusty. 

All would like to play more, so I'll probably run another 8 week slot in a couple,of months' time. It's been an interesting exercise introducing them to Glorantha, which I've tried to do gently, without hitting them over the head with a book of lore. It's also been fun, which is my measure of a game being worthwhile. 

Of the 5, 2 are experienced GMs, 2 occasional and I don't know about the other one. All have said they don't think the scenarios are easy to run and felt they would've struggled themselves, in part due to lack of setting knowledge. All felt the Starter Set would be very difficult for folk completely new to roleplaying – rules complexity, overwhelming amount of character info (especially the amount of rune spells), tricky scenarios. And there's little help in the set for new GMs, for example in the way of box-out hints and tips; the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set does this better. 

We feel – and of course this is a sample of 1 biased by our experience – that the set best suits an experienced GM with some world knowledge, or enough enthusiasm to not be cowed by it, using it with players new to the game. People experienced with Glorantha will enjoy it as well. 

Time wise, A Rough Landing took 4 sessions. Our sessions are 2 hours*. It would have taken another hour or so after they'd defeated the enemies, but I summarised that for fear of not having enough time to get A Fire in the Darkness (AFiD) finished in the remaining 4 sessions of the club slot. In fact, AFiD ran more quickly than expected and could have been finished in 3 sessions (6 hours). As it is, we have the final denouement to take place next week. Our thought is that it was combat that slowed the first scenario. We have all got more competent with it, and other game mechanics, as well.

I've found it challenging to run and found a lot of prep was necessary, though I can be guilty of over prepping. This prep was at times frustrating, revealing flaws in the scenarios, whether that be story logic, desirable handouts not being provided, stat block errors, etc. I'm considering writing a constructive critique of the scenarios, if I find the time and motivation. I'm always wary of reviews from folk who've not actually run a scenario – it's not until you do that a scenario's true nature is revealed. 

We've had fun and everyone wants to play more. By that measure, the set is a success. 

 

* A pet RPG peeve of mine is when a review expresses scenario length in sessions with no indication of how long their sessions are. Without that, the statement is useless. Please don't do it, people. 

 

Edited February 19, 2022 by Cloud64
Not sure why the font was oversized. Pasted in from iOS Notes app. Never been a problem before. Hopefully corrected now. Don't seem to be able to fix the line spacing.

[JustAnotherVingan]

I'm using it with my group. None of us are young anymore, 1 played Runequest 2 with me back in the '80s, and the other 3 are all gaming veterans who have played other Chaosium games.

[Beoferret]

4 hours ago, Cloud64 said:

 

I've found it challenging to run and found a lot of prep was necessary, though I can be guilty of over prepping. This prep was at times frustrating, revealing flaws in the scenarios, whether that be story logic, desirable handouts not being provided, stat block errors, etc. I'm considering writing a constructive critique of the scenarios, if I find the time and motivation.
[...]

* A pet RPG peeve of mine is when a review expresses scenario length in sessions with no indication of how long their sessions are. Without that, the statement is useless. Please don't do it, people.

Good point about how reviewers sometimes do their audience a disservice by neglecting to tell you just how long their sessions are. I'd love to read any reviews you write on the starter scenarios. One aspect of "Rough Landing" I found kinda funny was that

Spoiler

Jorjera is listed as speaking Darktongue (at 35% I believe), so when she's around the players don't really need to speak for the trolls since she can translate perfectly fine on her own. I still allowed my players to receive the more honorable welcome to the city, since they did still try to calm the market situation without resorting to violence (multiple castings of Befuddle along with talking) and did try to understand why the trolls were doing what they were doing.

Which leads me to say that I'm running "Rough Landing" as an introductory one shot for four people who have some experience with TTRPGs (overwhelmingly D&D), age range of late 20's to late 40's (my wife). The provided suggestions on how to play the pregens has been very useful (one player is using Vishi Dunn and has already used Cousin Monkey to good effect.) One important piece of prep I did was to put together a handout for each character providing the descriptions, etc. for each of their spells; I also put together another handout with descriptions of the common Rune spells - all in order to provide players with important info right at their finger tips. I think that really helped, though it took me a long time to do. Everyone seemed intrigued by aspects of the system. I'll know more after our next session, when they actually start exploring Menyr's Landing. I'm curious to see what they think of the combat system.

Edited February 18, 2022 by Beoferret
Noticed grammar error. Then forgot to put spoiler in spoiler box.

[Bill the barbarian]

12 minutes ago, Beoferret said:

. One aspect of "Rough Landing" I found kinda funny was that Jorjera is listed as speaking Darktongue (at 35% I believe), so when she's around the players don't really need to speak for the trolls since she can translate perfectly fine on her own.

Spoilers please...

Edited February 18, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[Beoferret]

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Spoilers please...

Whoops!

[albesias]

I'm a grognard brphead slowly falling in love with Glorantha. I bought the starter set to get a basic introduction to the setting and maybe run a couple adventures at my local association. 

Finally, I gm "stealing the eye" and felt comfortable explaining some aspects of the settings. I had so much fun but maybe will prefer a pack of glorantha grognards for a more all aboard experience. 

[Shiningbrow]

I bought the Starter Set almost as soon as it was available, mostly with the hope of introducing some of my colleagues to it (who normally play D&D).

Unfortunately, I was too lazy to organise anything during the recent Spring Festival break (bad me!)

However, last Tuesday, I got a couple of students at my uni (part of the university boardgames club, and general gaming group) to participate. One had played some D&D and CoC, and the other was completely new to RPGs (and, largely, to board games as well). Both are Chinese, and thus English is their second (or third) language, and so I GM'ed the Soloquest, making a few alterations to the script for easier understanding.

 

NOTE - MILD spoilers below (but, given that you can run the Soloquest many times and have vastly different results, it shouldn't be too bad... different choices and rolls...)

I started by giving them a general intro to the game, character sheet, stats, etc. The CoC player was about 20 mins earlier than the newb, so that went fairly quick.

A couple of bad rolls had Vasana embarrass herself in front of the Starbrow and her generals, get a bit rebuffed/ignored by Vinga, and the only thing that took a hit during the Lunar charge was her pride.

A 03 to the abdomen, OTOH, was enough to put her out, and meeting Daka Fal.... We stopped just as the White Lady priestess was chanting away.

To be continued next Tuesday!

 

A note to Chaosium.. the Starter Set (and probably all Chaosium products) are great for native language speakers of the language they're printed in... but somewhat difficult for non-native speakers! Maybe something to consider....

[Rick Meints]

On 3/12/2022 at 1:05 AM, Shiningbrow said:

A note to Chaosium.. the Starter Set (and probably all Chaosium products) are great for native language speakers of the language they're printed in... but somewhat difficult for non-native speakers! Maybe something to consider....

That is why we license other companies to produce our games in their native languages, which include: German, Spanish, French, Swedish, Hungarian, Portuguese, Polish, Italian, Russian, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. We don't have every one of our games in all of those languages, but our licensed partners certainly have the opportunity to license most, if not all of our games in their local language.

[albesias]

16 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

That is why we license other companies to produce our games in their native languages, which include: German, Spanish, French, Swedish, Hungarian, Portuguese, Polish, Italian, Russian, Korean, Chinese, and Japanese. We don't have every one of our games in all of those languages, but our licensed partners certainly have the opportunity to license most, if not all of our games in their local language.

I get the spanish edition of rqg but still waiting for the bestiary. I envy french edition so hard! Probably I will continue purchasing directly from chaosium and improving my poor english.

[Kloster]

I didn't knew that the spanish edition is even more late than the french one, but I agree. Even french one is very late and I am using only US elements, even with my non english speakers, translating myself everything that is needed.