Just how revolutionary was RuneQuest when it first came out?

[brionl]

37 minutes ago, Frp said:

We mostly played Melee (proto GURPS I believe) back in the early '80's. All I ever saw were mimeographed pages about character creation. I've never set eyes on the actual rulebook. But even that was a vast improvement over D&D. 

Runequest was around but it took us awhile to warm to the idea of ongoing plots and characters. 

Kinda sorta proto GURPS. Melee was designed by Steve Jackson and published by Metagaming. When Metagaming went under, SJ was able to pry loose the rights for Ogre/GEV but not Melee/TFT. So he implemented a new design of GURPS that coincidently looked  a bit like Melee. It came out in ~76 or maybe a little after, because the aforementioned "Chess Club" I was in played it between games of D&D sometimes.

Just a couple of years ago, the rights reverted to Steve Jackson, and a new editions of Melee, Wizard, The Fantasy Trip and most (all?) of the supplements have been re-issued by SJ Games, with good old pocket boxes. Or ebooks if you roll that way.

[g33k]

On 1/12/2022 at 12:40 PM, Rick Meints said:

RQ1 had a print run of 5000 copies, and it sold out by May of 1979... 

I had thought it was just out in time for one of the big gaming conventions, and mostly sold there...?

Do you know how many of those 5000 RQ1's went out to the distributor/retail channel?
(Or have I misunderstood, and there was not a majority sold at a Con?)

 

[Bill the barbarian]

On 1/13/2022 at 11:12 PM, brionl said:

Kinda sorta proto GURPS. Melee was designed by Steve Jackson and published by Metagaming. When Metagaming went under, SJ was able to pry loose the rights for Ogre/GEV but not Melee/TFT. So he implemented a new design of GURPS that coincidently looked  a bit like Melee. It came out in ~76 or maybe a little after, because the aforementioned "Chess Club" I was in played it between games of D&D sometimes.

 

Very cool, a bit of thought and the SJ connection might have clicked for me. Thanks for the reminder, brionl!

 

30 minutes ago, g33k said:

I had thought it was just out in time for one of the big gaming conventions, and mostly sold there...?

I had heard this as well. But thanks Rick for the info.

[d(sqrt(-1))]

5 hours ago, g33k said:

I had thought it was just out in time for one of the big gaming conventions, and mostly sold there...?

Do you know how many of those 5000 RQ1's went out to the distributor/retail channel?
(Or have I misunderstood, and there was not a majority sold at a Con?)

 

 

I certainly managed to get a copy of RQ1 in the UK when it came out, I think as a result of seeing adverts in White Dwarf. Can't remember if it was by post or in a shop though! The RQ2 box set I have is the Games Workshop version.

Not sure how many of those 5000 copies of RQ1 would have made it to the UK at that time.

Edited January 15, 2022 by d(sqrt(-1))

[Squaredeal Sten]

On 1/13/2022 at 11:38 PM, Bill the barbarian said:

I think Melee was the beginning of The Fantasy Trip when combined with Wizards. My first encounter with RQ was in '83 at the University of Victoria. DnD of course was ever so much larger but there were folk playing DragonQuest, C&S/Bushido and Aftermath (I think).

Yes, Melee and then Wizards came out as little pamphlets in a bag with an arena map and counters.  When The Fantasy Trip (TFT) was published and brought them together (with added rules for character development and non-arena situations) , I began to GM TFT - for close to three years, while i went to grad school.

TFT was quick and easy and fun, even ran on 6-sided dice.  Only three stats; STR, DEX, and INT.  Good times!  However I will say in retrospect, it was just as  oriented to hack and slash as D&D was.  Character development happened only as a result of combat victories.   Therefore Runequest's skill development was clearly better and more sophisticated.

I had already played Runequest 2, but had moved to Austin where no one i knew was playing it.  And at that time i didn't know enough of the Gloranthan  background to feel comfortable GMing it.  However as Avalon Hill published the RQ3 boxes, I bought them - but still knew no one close by who was playing it.  Took me more than 30 years to begin GMing Runequest.

 

[Rick Meints]

On 1/15/2022 at 1:46 AM, g33k said:

I had thought it was just out in time for one of the big gaming conventions, and mostly sold there...?

Do you know how many of those 5000 RQ1's went out to the distributor/retail channel?
(Or have I misunderstood, and there was not a majority sold at a Con?)

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...

[g33k]

2 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

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.

AHHH!  There's my misunderstanding:  Yes they sold out... of the few hundred they brought.  TYVM!
Living up (yet again) to your .sig!

 

2 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

...
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.
...

Well, RPGs themselves were so new!  Of course these pre-existing events (GenCon '68, Origins '72) worked within the framework of the tropes they knew, and served the existing markets (RPGs were a tiny, tiny niche!).  Don't I remember something about RQ itself being a "Best Wargame" contender/winner at one point?

I think DunDraCon 1 (1975) was perhaps the first dedicated "RPG Con."  I know it's where Steve first disseminated "The Perrin Conventions."  (FWIW:  DunDraCon 45, next month, is being called "The Perrin Convention" in memoriam -- any chance of an "official"(ish) Chaosium presence?)
 

 

2 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

... 

In general, most of Chaosium's product is sold through distribution/retail. Convention sales are a tiny % of total sales ...

It's an interesting speculation (I suspect Chaosium itself sometimes speculates, when they "sell out" at a Con/tradeshow event) how much more "might" have sold, had they been brought; particularly if stuff sells out quickly.  But the cost & hassle of getting everything back to the warehouse probably means you're happy to miss a few dozen sales if it means not having that issue, and you can likely be confident that anything selling-out that fast will also move promptly from the warehouse.

 

2 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

... 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...

I know there are USB-connected floppy drives still being sold; but I'm not sure if any are 5.25 (I am certain 3.5" drives are available).
If you WANT the data (for completist, historical, or other reasons) it may be more possible than you think.

[Baron Wulfraed]

18 minutes ago, g33k said:

I know there are USB-connected floppy drives still being sold; but I'm not sure if any are 5.25 (I am certain 3.5" drives are available).

I know I have a 3.5" version -- optional accessory for a laptop that had a CD drive option in the space the floppy would have been.

I'm afraid to go to my storage locker and dig out the TRS-80 mod III/4.. Besides blowing out the dust, I fear the heads on the 5.25" drives might snap off as soon as they are powered up (at least 5.25" heads were "lowered" to the disk surface by the door latch, 8" used solenoids to pop the heads on and off).

Biggest problem with 5.25" (and some 3.5") will be media FORMAT. The file system likely is not FAT... Some drives are hard-sectored (index hole marking start of each sector), others are soft-sector (index hole marks start of track, but sector gap [not quite noise] was written during formatting and detected by the driver). Number of tracks per disk (original TRS-80 used 35 track, later models used 40, and I think I successfully formatted a few at 41 or 42 [to squeeze a densely packed compiler/OS]). Single/double sided, single/double density. Most used fixed sectors per track, though I think Apple had more sectors on the longer outer tracks than the shorter inner ones. The Amiga 3.5" didn't even use the start of track index hole. The driver would read an entire track (something like 1.2 revolutions) and then figure out where the sectors were by examining memory; it also would write an entire track, starting at where ever the disk was in its rotation. This is how the Amiga fit 880K on the same disk that MS-DOS could only fit 720K -- no need for the inter-sector gap to be written (it is also why, with appropriate 3rd party file-system layer [cross-dos], an Amiga could read/write MS-DOS disks).

[Rick Meints]

1 hour ago, g33k said:

Don't I remember something about RQ itself being a "Best Wargame" contender/winner at one point?

I think DunDraCon 1 (1975) was perhaps the first dedicated "RPG Con."  I know it's where Steve first disseminated "The Perrin Conventions."  (FWIW:  DunDraCon 45, next month, is being called "The Perrin Convention" in memoriam -- any chance of an "official"(ish) Chaosium presence?)

It's an interesting speculation (I suspect Chaosium itself sometimes speculates, when they "sell out" at a Con/tradeshow event) how much more "might" have sold, had they been brought; particularly if stuff sells out quickly.  But the cost & hassle of getting everything back to the warehouse probably means you're happy to miss a few dozen sales if it means not having that issue, and you can likely be confident that anything selling-out that fast will also move promptly from the warehouse.

I know there are USB-connected floppy drives still being sold; but I'm not sure if any are 5.25 (I am certain 3.5" drives are available).
If you WANT the data (for completist, historical, or other reasons) it may be more possible than you think.

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.

[brionl]

Before the plague, DunDraCon was over 1,000 usually. But not all that much over. They had just moved to a larger hotel in San Leandro for the '21 show, before it got cancelled. Last time I checked, they had one scheduled for '22, but I'm not going, even if they haven't cancelled it.

I've probably made at least 9 out of 10 DDC since 1978 though.

[Baron Wulfraed]

3 hours ago, brionl said:

Before the plague, DunDraCon was over 1,000 usually. But not all that much over. They had just moved to a larger hotel in San Leandro for the '21 show, before it got cancelled. Last time I checked, they had one scheduled for '22, but I'm not going, even if they haven't cancelled it.

I've probably made at least 9 out of 10 DDC since 1978 though.

Wow... I would have thought it was larger, based on what I was seeing in the late 80s and early 90s, when it was taking up half the "bedrooms" to put in tables for official games (not to mention the open gaming room and dealer room). The invasion of ants infesting the registration system (monsoon season, they came in for the dry heat of the computers and terminals), reports of people crawling into the HVAC ductwork as a crash pad, the SCA lecture when Hilary of Serendip borrowed the /DULL/* sword I'd let them display for variety and got surprised when "Hungry" put a big slice in the cookie tin she'd used to count beats during demos.

The 2000s saw me attending furcons rather than gaming cons, and I'm pretty sure the fursuit parade at the last Further Confusion I attended exceeded 500 costumes alone. There were likely close to that many people cluttering the hallways to watch the parade (a bit more spaced out to make room for cameras)

 

 

* One of the first Museum Replicas models, when they only made 500 of each, in Italy rather than the models made in India. A US Dime could compete as having a sharper edge. Hungry was so named as the balance allows for easy redirection of the blade when wielded -- vs "Reluctant", a bastard sword, that really wants to move in straight lines.

[Bren]

On 1/12/2022 at 1:06 PM, ffilz said:

On the other hand, the little known Space Quest clearly has skills that are separate from its character classes and are clearly improvable with training, so even if we discount Traveller's improvement system, we still have another example that predates RQ.

And Space Quest used the not really all that revolutionary D30. I don't know if the designers thought it made the game 50% better than D&D which used a D20 or that they would commit some sort of IP infringement if they used a D20.

You are the only other person (besides me) I've ever seen reference Space Quest.

[Bill the barbarian]

I remember the D30 more than I remember the game but I do recall them...Mid 80s?

 

[ffilz]

9 hours ago, Bren said:

And Space Quest used the not really all that revolutionary D30. I don't know if the designers thought it made the game 50% better than D&D which used a D20 or that they would commit some sort of IP infringement if they used a D20.

You are the only other person (besides me) I've ever seen reference Space Quest.

And the D30 hadn't even been invented yet. You had to use a d6 and a 0-9 D20 (because the d10 hadn't been invented yet either) if I recall.

I really wish I hadn't got rid of Space Quest, it was definitely a unique game.

[Bren]

50 minutes ago, ffilz said:

And the D30 hadn't even been invented yet. You had to use a d6 and a 0-9 D20 (because the d10 hadn't been invented yet either) if I recall.

Yep. Way back in the day, we had to color half the numbers on the icosahedron to make it function as a D20. (That or roll a D6 to determine high or low.) Later somebody made D20s with a + on half the numbers so coloring or multiple dice wasn't necessary.

 

50 minutes ago, ffilz said:

I really wish I hadn't got rid of Space Quest, it was definitely a unique game.

I have my copy in a box in the basement with my little brown books for D&D. I liked Space Quest's system for determining stellar type, number of planets, etc. and I liked the 3D coordinate system for star charts. I always thought Traveller's 2D galaxy fell a little flat. I've used parts of the Space Quest system generation and coordinates for other space settings.

And having to use square roots to figure out distances was clearly intended as a benefit, not just a feature. It's one reason I assumed the designers were engineers or physics majors. Another was the creation of a metric system for measuring time. None of this Babylonian divisible by 12 time intervals for a space going civilization stuff for the Space Quest civilization, no sir. That focus on precision combined with void sharks and old show Star Trek style space monsters gave the game a quirky, wacky fun vibe.

[Baron Wulfraed]

8 hours ago, ffilz said:

And the D30 hadn't even been invented yet. You had to use a d6 and a 0-9 D20 (because the d10 hadn't been invented yet either) if I recall.

I've never taken a liking to what are sold as D10 these days (and even D8 is pushing it). D4, D6, D12, D20 are platonic polyhedrons -- all faces and all angles are consistent. The D8 and D10 are not, but it is not as noticeable on the D8. D10s are a pair pentagonal-base cones joined at the bases. D8s are a pair of square-based pyramids stuck together.

51 minutes ago, Bren said:

Yep. Way back in the day, we had to color half the numbers on the icosahedron to make it function as a D20. (That or roll a D6 to determine high or low.) Later somebody made D20s with a + on half the numbers so coloring or multiple dice wasn't necessary.

Never saw D20s with "+" notation. "_" to differential 6 from 9 was common. And, at my time (80s), dual (0-9/0-9) and true (1-20) versions were common (and we often had to go the other direction -- ignore the 10s digit to read as a D10).

The other thing I notice is that modern dice tend to have overly rounded edges. My older dice have sharp edges/corners, which can catch on fabric (table cloth) to enhance the tendency to turn over, rather that sliding flat.

[svensson]

I clearly remember my introduction to RuneQuest.

I'd just gotten done playing through the AD&D G-series modules and the D-series hadn't come out yet, or maybe hadn't reached my small town in Washington State yet. I was new to roleplaying and just agog at the possibilities of it. My imagination ran rampant with Conan and Aragorn fantasies. And I had absolutely no idea that there was any other way of doing the FRPG thing.

Then a friend introduced me to RQ and loaned me his RQ2 book for the weekend. I remember spending an hour and a half trying to find the level tables... 😅

I spent probably three hours at the kitchen table on the phone [remember the kitchen phone with the mile-long handset cord?] as my buddy walked me through making a character. My proud 'Orthlanti' [it took a couple tries to get the name right...] died in his second fight, but I was hooked. The whole idea of being able to fight and use magic at the same time with no penalty was just stunning to me, and it definitely scratched that Ray Harryhausen 'Claymation' itch.

I've played a lot of games since then. I drifted away from RQ for awhile, but came back around the time of Avalon Hill's RQ3 effort and got hooked on it again. There's never been a system more adaptable, more understandable, and more teachable than RQ in my experience, and RQ now has a permanent place in geeky 15 year old heart.

[TrippyHippy]

On 1/13/2022 at 5:24 AM, Rick Meints said:

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).

I think it is a system, and would note that the improvement of +1 was immediate. You just had to maintain practice for four years and make a successful roll to implement the bonus. Thing is, this was consistent with the four year terms used in character generation - you checked and gained a level or you didn't. Skill bonuses basically represented bigger chunks of time and expertise than percentiles do in Runequest. So, it doesn’t work like D&D or Runequest, and has different assumptions, but there has always been an Experience system in Traveller.

Shannon Appelcline is basically in error when he wrote that about Classic Traveller, but I do note that he is writing Pioneer (a near future version of Traveller) for Mongoose in the coming year - so all is forgiven!

Edited January 23, 2022 by TrippyHippy

[Kloster]

6 hours ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

Never saw D20s with "+" notation.

I had some: The ones in my AH RQ3 deluxe box.

[Joerg]

8 hours ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

I've never taken a liking to what are sold as D10 these days (and even D8 is pushing it). D4, D6, D12, D20 are platonic polyhedrons -- all faces and all angles are consistent. The D8 and D10 are not, but it is not as noticeable on the D8. D10s are a pair pentagonal-base cones joined at the bases. D8s are a pair of square-based pyramids stuck together.

If those pyramids use equilateral triangles (which some dice might not), the octahedron is a platonic polyhedron - the triangle-sided inner and outer body to the cube, similar to the relationship between dodecahedron and icosahedron.

But yes - I prefer icosahedral D10, too.

[ffilz]

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

If those pyramids use equilateral triangles (which some dice might not), the octahedron is a platonic polyhedron - the triangle-sided inner and outer body to the cube, similar to the relationship between dodecahedron and icosahedron.

But yes - I prefer icosahedral D10, too.

I think there have been some stretched d8s produced, but yes, the original d8 shape, a regular octohedron, is a platonic solid.

I prefer using icosohedral D10 also. Sometimes I'm tempted by those d10 sets with one die numbered 00, 11, .. 99 (and some sets even have a 3rd die for the 100s place), but I prefer my platonic solids.

My one odd one is the Zocchi octohedral D4 since a tetrahedron has always been tricky to properly roll.

Oh, hey, another reason I love RQ1 over later editions... It uses all the polyhedral dice... Later editions got rid of d12 for damage...

[g33k]

19 hours ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

I've never taken a liking to what are sold as D10 these days (and even D8 is pushing it). D4, D6, D12, D20 are platonic polyhedrons -- all faces and all angles are consistent. The D8 and D10 are not, but it is not as noticeable on the D8...

The d8 is indeed one of the classic "Platonic Solids," and has been since... oh, the time of Plato (IIRC, their properties were known before then; Plato didnt "invent/discover" them, he just got the cred).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_solid

If you have d8's that do NOT have congruent angles & faces (and 3D vertices, where more than two faces&angles meet!), then you have warped or skewed d8's.

 

[Rick Meints]

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.

[g33k]

2 minutes ago, Rick Meints said:

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.

Apologies for my contribution to that.

Also possibly thread-drifting, so I'll let this be my last mention (in this thread) on the topic:  DunDraCon was regularly pulling in over 1000 members per year, up to 1800ish iirc; they were being growth-limited by the venue (hence the change to the new, larger spot).  I suspect the numbers will be down this year (because covid), so it's probably a decent year to miss.  HOWEVER, I urge you not to think of it as "just another" Con.  DDC is the "home" event for RQ & Chaosium.  The SF Bay Area almost certainly has the highest density of RQ players anywhere, simply because it's where Chaosium "lived" for so long, where the House Games were played, where all *those* players in turn evangelized and spread the word (my own 1st GM was Steve Maurer (who I met in Santa Cruz, just over the hill from the Bay Area), and I'm pretty sure he played in either a Chaosium house-game or a game run by one of those players).

[DreadDomain]

I made a comment in another topic that feels relevant here. RQ is really the game that hooked me to rpg and framed my vision on how a character was created, a race (mostly human), a culture and connection to community, a background, a profession, a religion/belief system, but also how they grew through experience, training or research. Any games lacking these elements always left me wanting more.

It's not only about how RQ revolutionized rpg, it is also that very few games made character creation that interesting and immersive.