What's going on with RQG & Chaosium

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Mugen said:

In his defence, it was difficult to not be frustrated as a French Glorantha fan, as most of the available material was translations of RQ3 publications. Even if it included excellent stuff such as Sun County, most of the time it felt like authors only scratched the surface. We had to wait for Elder Sign to hear of Cristals !

Elder Secrets, not Elder Sign, but what you describe is the common experience of people who started with RQ3. Troll Pak was sort of the only glimpse into the RQ2 era that a player of RQ3 could acquire via a FLGS.

[Mugen]

8 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Elder Secrets, not Elder Sign, (...)

Wow... I remember that I had "Elder Secrets" in mind while writing my post. 😅

10 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Elder Secrets, not Elder Sign, but what you describe is the common experience of people who started with RQ3. Troll Pak was sort of the only glimpse into the RQ2 era that a player of RQ3 could acquire via a FLGS.

Still, it was possible to have access to second hand copies of RQ2 material in english.

However, we had some articles in french "Tatou" magazine from RQ3's publisher, which offered glimpses of RQ2 content.

[RandomNumber]

11 hours ago, FlamingCatOfDeath said:

Hero quest rules refers to the rules for Heroquesting within the Runequest rules. It doesn’t refer to the heroquest game

Yes, I was referring to the HQ rules expansion for use within RQG, not the other games that have also borne that title.

3 hours ago, AndreJarosch said:

I wrote about the Heroquesting rules for RQG, which will be a chapter in the upcoming GM Book (and later on being expanded into its own supplement, as far as i have understood the current status). 
There is no gloranthan game called HeroQuest anymore. HeroQuest is the MB/Wizards of the Coast boardgame. The "other gloranthan RPG" is QuestWorlds. 
I don´t refer to neither of them. 

I was also referring to the HQ rules for use with RQG.  My misunderstanding was that they are currently intended to be a chapter of another supplement, namely the GM Book.  I had thought they were to be a publication in their own right. I stand corrected, thank you. 

[Kloster]

4 hours ago, Mugen said:

In his defence, it was difficult to not be frustrated as a French Glorantha fan, as most of the available material was translations of RQ3 publications. Even if it included excellent stuff such as Sun County, most of the time it felt like authors only scratched the surface. We had to wait for Elder Sign to hear of Cristals !

The only official french language RQ products were Oriflam's translation of RQ3 products. There never was any french translation of any RQ2 product. RQ3 AH products were easy to obtain, but horrendously expensive. RQ2 english language, whether from Chaosium or Games Workshop, were very difficult to obtain.

[Kloster]

2 hours ago, Mugen said:

Still, it was possible to have access to second hand copies of RQ2 material in english.

In Paris, perhaps. Elsewhere, you could forget it.

2 hours ago, Mugen said:

However, we had some articles in french "Tatou" magazine from RQ3's publisher, which offered glimpses of RQ2 content.

Tatou was Oriflam's magazine. It's RQ content was only about RQ3. The last parts were translated from 'Tales of the Reaching Moon'. For french language RQ2 magazine content, there was only Runes and some very old Casus Belli.

[M Helsdon]

7 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

(oddly, compare that to Arms & Armies of DP.... which is treated as virtually canon by Chaosium)

This is news to me.🙂

[Mugen]

1 minute ago, Kloster said:

In Paris, perhaps. Elsewhere, you could forget it.

I was in fact not referring to french players in this part of my post, but rather all english speaking players. 🙂

5 minutes ago, Kloster said:

Tatou was Oriflam's magazine. It's RQ content was only about RQ3. The last parts were translated from 'Tales of the Reaching Moon'.

Sort of. Early issues of the magazine had material that was clearly based on RQ2 publications.

For instance, this famous map of Dragon Pass was present in the first issue. It also had articles in the first issues about Sartar, Tarsh and other countries that expanded beyond the scope of what was available in french.

 

[Bill the barbarian]

5 hours ago, Mugen said:

In his defence, it was difficult to not be frustrated as a French Glorantha fan, as most of the available material was translations of RQ3 publications

 And yes, Mugen, as a RQ 2 player (moved on to RQ 3 in the very late 80s) back in the day, alas, my experience here in North America was no different... 

29 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

This is news to me.🙂

There, there Mr Heldon... I will still treat you like canon!

 

Edited June 17, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[Steve]

3 hours ago, RandomNumber said:

I was also referring to the HQ rules for use with RQG.  My misunderstanding was that they are currently intended to be a chapter of another supplement, namely the GM Book.  I had thought they were to be a publication in their own right. I stand corrected, thank you. 

Both are true. The GM Book will have heroquesting rules, and there's a separate book coming out to focus on heroquesting. See :

 

[PhilHibbs]

13 minutes ago, Steve said:

Both are true. The GM Book will have heroquesting rules, and there's a separate book coming out to focus on heroquesting.

On 5/24/2022 at 10:48 AM, Steve said:

Other RQ releases coming later on:

The RQ Campaign - along the lines of the Boy King campaign for Pendragon
Heroquesting (a "full-fledged heroquesting book")
...

Oh, I didn't know about that!

Is this "Heroquesting" book still on the to do list? Any word on current status or relative position in the priorities?

[Scorus]

23 hours ago, AndreJarosch said:

IMHO the Heroquesting book is more important to get published soon than another adventure collection. 
If the HeroQuesting book is available future adventure collections can include heroquests (which will be more and more common as the Hero Wars continue to unfold), which will be a big plus for an adventure book.

Nothing is more important to the success of RQ than publishing GoG, but finally putting forth heroquesting rules after 40 years is a close second. They allow GMs and players to create their own campaigns and history, which is SO much more important than spoon-feeding us history and adventures. And this is coming from someone that generally adapts other's adventures instead of writing my own!

[g33k]

16 hours ago, RandomNumber said:

... I can't much see the sense of producing mixed scenario books that require the RQG rules and the HQ expansion unless you're confident that the HQ rules expansion has penetrated the player base sufficiently well that the set of RQG GM's who are not also HQ GMs is small. Otherwise such a book has material that is perhaps interesting but otherwise redundant to an RQG GM - it appeals only to the set of GMs of RQG who also are also GM's of HQ ...

n.b. you seem to be conflating the set of rules for the Heroquest RPG (now called QuestWorlds, SRD-complete and approaching publication) with the Gloranthan in-character activity called "heroquesting" (for which no canonical rules have yet been published, only JC and other fan/unofficial content).

We are expecting heroquesting rules for RQG in the upcoming GMs' book; these will not be rules for the HQ/QW RPG.

I do not think the prior material in this thread was intended to reference the HQ/QW RPG, but the in-character activity.

[Steve]

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

Oh, I didn't know about that!

Is this "Heroquesting" book still on the to do list? Any word on current status or relative position in the priorities?

This was posted pretty recently on Facebook by Somone Who Should Know (either Jason or Jeff, though my memory might be wrong), so it's still happening.

[soltakss]

11 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

Simon's work is great, I never said anything else. And I don't say "don't buy JC book"

Thanks! I appreciate every mention.

11 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

What I say is JC cannot (for me) replace chaosium publication.

Sometimes Jc proposes some background, scenario, characters or even new spells. No issue, I pick or not depending on my taste.

Sometimes JC tries to fill some void (heroquest rules for example) and it is good, but it remains a potential risk of contradiction with further chaosium product.

 

That is the difference for me between JC and chaosium. JC may be contradicted by chaosium or other JC stuff.

I agree.

The Jonstown Compendium work is not supposed to replace Chaosium's work, or even be treated as part of Chaosium's work.

Instead it allows people to produce scenarios and background material while Chaosium are producing masterpieces.

As we know, masterpieces take time and effort to produce, so Chaosium's throughput is going to be slower than that of the Jonstown Compendium.

In my opinion, as a GM, I use and abuse anything that comes out. If someone posts a good idea about an area here, on Facebook, on a blog or elsewhere, and I like it then I'll use it, whether it is official or not. If Chaosium then come out with something that is different, then great, I'll use that as well.

I am not the GM who throws everything away because Chaosium say something different. One of my skills is blending ideas, so I'll blend official, Jonstown Compendium, web-based ideas and so on into a whole that treats all of them differently but as parts of a whole.

I wrote half of my Dorastor Campaign before Chaosium brought out Dorastor Land of Doom. When that came out, I used some bits of it in my Dorastor, threw some things away and pretended some bits were just the same as DLOD but seen differently.

That is how I would like people to see Jonstown Compendium supplements.

23 hours ago, Orlanthatemyhamster said:

In fact I should imagine unless they are central places, characters, what have you, Chaosium will avoid contradicting the JC stuff, cause unless it is very bad it will have done Chaosium's work for it. 

Personally, I think that Chaosium will write their stuff as they want it. If it fits in with Jonstown Compendium supplements then great, if it doesn't then great.

They will contradict a lot of Jonstown Compendium material and, for me as a GM, that is also great. I'll have two sets of material to use and can pick good ideas from both.

For example, the HeroQuesting material will be very different from mine. If Chaosium redid Dorastor, it would be very different from mine.

12 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

With respect to this, two of my most favouritest JC books fall very much into this gap - Book of Doom and Secrets of Heroquesting. I'd absolutely love to be in a game where I could show up with them, and know that they are automatically accepted by the GM as virtually canon - because they have Chaosium's seal of total and complete approval.

Funnily enough, I don't really care if people accept them or not. If someone buys them and uses them in their games, then great. If someone buys them and doesn't like them so doesn't use them in their games, also great. If someone doesn't buy them because they are not official, then that is great as well.

12 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Instead, I know that most GMs are going to glance sideways and grimace. (The HQ stuff might get used, as the general ideas have been around for a while)

If someone brought an Adventurer to my game with spells I didn't know about, I'd probably grimace as well.

That is why each GM's game is their game.

 

[soltakss]

3 hours ago, Scorus said:

Nothing is more important to the success of RQ than publishing GoG, but finally putting forth heroquesting rules after 40 years is a close second. They allow GMs and players to create their own campaigns and history, which is SO much more important than spoon-feeding us history and adventures. And this is coming from someone that generally adapts other's adventures instead of writing my own!

You would probably be surprised about how many GMs have absolutely no interest in HeroQuesting in their games.

They think of HeroQuesting as being too powerful for their games, or not having the right feel, or just being too alien.

Hopefully, the official rules will change their minds.

[Bill the barbarian]

7 minutes ago, soltakss said:

You would probably be surprised about how many GMs have absolutely no interest in HeroQuesting in their games.

 

Having played HQ with a great GM, Harald Smith, I can safely say it is not my cup of tea.

[AndreJarosch]

16 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Having played HQ with a great GM, Harald Smith, I can safely say it is not my cup of tea.

You would not include a HQ in your RQ game?
Or do you only not like to be part of a HQ when you are a PLAYER?

[Bill the barbarian]

I have yet to run HQ... but based on playing, I will just say, currently I am not an enthusiast. The lack of hard benchmarks ( I think this is the word I seek) makes HQ a bit too willy nilly and hard to grok for me. I prefer a more set-in-stone set of rules than I have found with HQ.

Edited June 17, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[soltakss]

40 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Having played HQ with a great GM, Harald Smith, I can safely say it is not my cup of tea.

Not HeroQuest the game, but HeroQuesting.

HeroQuest the game had very little to do with HeroQuesting.

 

[Bill the barbarian]

9 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Not HeroQuest the game, but HeroQuesting.

HeroQuest the game had very little to do with HeroQuesting.

 

Will there be a difference twixt HQing™ and HQ/QW™?

[jajagappa]

3 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Will there be a difference twixt HQing™ and HQ/QW™?

Of course!

HQ/QW is a game system that utilizes a narrative approach with levels of difficulty to advance the story or plot.  Its great feature is that there is absolutely no difference in applying the game system whether engaged in a clan-based setting, digging through the Big Rubble, or questing through the Underworld.

Heroquesting in RQG will be the approach used specifically to enter and traverse the Otherworld (in RQG terms).  From what I've gleaned of Jeff's posts, it will provide a framework for developing and interacting with myths. 

[soltakss]

11 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Will there be a difference twixt HQing™ and HQ/QW™?

Yes.

HQ/QW is a game system, in the same way that RQG is a game system. 

HeroQuesting is something that can be done in HQ/QW, RQG, 13AG and any other game system. It is a framework of approaches to the subject. At least, that is what I hope it will be.

[Lordabdul]

For those who want to get a sneak peek at the heroquesting rules in RQG, Bryon has recorded the game that he and I played with Jeff Richard at ChaosiumCon (with a couple other players of course). The adventure was almost entirely an accidental heroquest, using the RQG pre-gens. You can cross-reference it with the previously shared heroquesting character sheet, and a previously shared map of the Hero Plane. If you have a burning curiosity and don't want to listen to 2 hours of bad audio and horrible French accent, PM me and I'll share you my notes.

Edited June 17, 2022 by Ludovic aka Lordabdul

[Pentallion]

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

You would probably be surprised about how many GMs have absolutely no interest in HeroQuesting in their games.

They think of HeroQuesting as being too powerful for their games, or not having the right feel, or just being too alien.

Hopefully, the official rules will change their minds.

I know I would be because I've run tons of heroquests in my games and that's the payday adventures. That's what my players live for.

[soltakss]

4 minutes ago, Pentallion said:

I know I would be because I've run tons of heroquests in my games and that's the payday adventures. That's what my players live for.

Me too, but a lot of people won't go anywhere near them.