Why so few monsters published for 7th edition.

[General Ork]

43 minutes ago, Jeff said:

RuneQuest is not marketed as a generic fantasy roleplaying game system by us - RuneQuest is our game set in Glorantha. Basic Roleplaying, on the other hand, is precisely that. It is the engine that underlies RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, and Pendragon. And we are doing quite a bit more with Basic Roleplaying.

I guess then I had the wrong idea about what Runequest is.

I will stick with the basic rules set I bought and not buy anything further and move to Mythras. At least I did not buy too many products as while I like the game I honestly do not want to be so severely constrained as to just Glorantha. 😢

[soltakss]

1 hour ago, General Ork said:

But Runequest is more than just Glorantha. While it is great that Runequest is based strongly on Glorantha it is more.

I agree and have been championing Alternate Earth RuneQuest for many years.

1 hour ago, General Ork said:

Sounds honestly like a great resource to
1) Develop as a significant product on Jonstown Compendium with several collaborating authors with high quality art and production. If you want a monster book to compete with other RPG books it absolutely requires very good colour art and good descriptions for every monster in 2023.
2) Kickstarter it.
3) Ideally this could be done working with Chaosium with them editing and setting art standards to meet consistency with official Runequest 7E existing monster compendium.
4) Include "generic" creatures to allow the game to be used in other non Glorantha campaigns. And add to such creatures how they could fit into Glorantha or if not why in cannon Glorantha this creature is not reccomended.
5) Add more bronze age, Indo European, Sumerian, Indian, creatures that can be used for monster hunts.
6) Expand on spirits and demons, the Sumerians had over 3000 distinct demons listed, same for Egypt, bronze age Greece had many spirits and Demons (the kind that could be good or evil, not teh Demons of evil in modern times), then there were extensive lists of Genie that existed long before Islam, good and evil Genie, the hordes of Undead from ancient Bronze age Hells that became the many Buddhist hells. Then spirit animal and animist animals, such as teh dozens of snake types, and Naga. Sea creatures, mythical underground creatures.

Kickstarters aren't allowed but Jonstown Compendium Bestiaries are allowed. 

The Jonstown Bestiary is a good idea, but it takes time and effort. Many of us have other projects at the moment, and I'm not sure I can take on another one at the moment. The idea of a Bronze Age Bestiary sounds really appealing though.

1 hour ago, General Ork said:

Point is there is in a bronze age world justification for hundreds of creatures more, and mythology behind each and every one, complex histories and heor quests in myth involving them.

Unless we are 100.00 % bound to present cannon of Glorantha.

I've included a number of creatures in my supplements and will probably include more. They could be used as the basis of a bestiary, I suppose. I have never adhered to canon in the "That isn't in Glorantha" sense, but have done in the "That doesn't fit established lore" sense, most of the time. It isn't a canon thing, it's a time and effort thing. I am not sure how well they would sell, so it might be time and effort that doesn't recoup the cost of the arftwork.

1 hour ago, General Ork said:

I am not a game designer, so not something i could do as I have a full time very busy job.

So, do I, so do I.

40 minutes ago, General Ork said:

I guess then I had the wrong idea about what Runequest is.

The RuneQuest Family includes Basic Roleplaying, OpenQuest, Revolution D100, Legend, Mythras and more. It has been used for historical supplements, SciFi supplements, Multiverse Supplements and more. The core is a very flexible one that can be used for other settings. I can't believe that Passions, for example, only work in Glorantha.

 

42 minutes ago, General Ork said:

I will stick with the basic rules set I bought and not buy anything further and move to Mythras. At least I did not buy too many products as while I like the game I honestly do not want to be so severely constrained as to just Glorantha. 😢

That is a real shame, as RuneQuest has a lot to offer.

You are likely to encounter similar issues with the Bestiary, as the various incarnations have Monsters in their various core rulebooks but I cannot remember having seen a bestiary such as you need for any of them.

[Soccercalle]

35 minutes ago, General Ork said:

I guess then I had the wrong idea about what Runequest is.

I will stick with the basic rules set I bought and not buy anything further and move to Mythras. At least I did not buy too many products as while I like the game I honestly do not want to be so severely constrained as to just Glorantha. 😢

There is, as fas as I know, no Bestiary for Mythras. It is an excellent system (very close to RQ) but most sourcebooks is for our world in historic times. That means magic but no trolls, elves, orcs or monsters.

Decide if you would like to play in Glorantha or not.

If you use Glorantha you should use RQG Rules but ”steal” monsters (if you need to) from Mythras, BRP, Magic World, Call of Cthulhu and other systems with the same ”engine”. Its very easy to translate monsters and species between this systems. If you want orcs in Glorantha, use orcs in Glorantha (I would not. The strength of Glorantha is the mythology. In Tolkiens Middle-Earth you have a good back-story for orcs. Glorantha has its own back-stories for its different species.

Mythras is a very good generic system. But actually lacks good fantasy settings and/or a large Bestiary. But RQG can also be used as a generic system. The only things in the rules that may be difficult to use are the Runes.

 

 

 

 

[General Ork]

"That is a real shame, as RuneQuest has a lot to offer. "

I think I will take Runequest for myself and my group and make the game and world mine. Future Runequest books I buy I will get with the idea of extracting what is useful to me.

The only problem with Basic Fantasy, is I can't purchase a book in South Africa where i live and I am not a PDF fan.

I will use the game and Glorantha but adapt it to being more of a fantasy Bronze Age world with fantastic elements from Sumerian and Indian Mythology. For monsters I will mine old editions, and just design my own.

I like Glorantha, but honestly, cannot see myself ever rigorously following the game world, and game world, as I love adapting any game world significantly. So it will be in my game a parallel / multiverse version of Glorantha with Gateways into other fantasy worlds and even this Earth's ancient past.

Making the game, and game worlds ones own and home brewing the system to me is a lot of the fun.

So I will carry on down the Runequest path, but with adaptions to what I want. And yes, I will be putting Orcs in, but the ancient Roman legend version. Same with Elfs, but again the Elfs or Eldritch Chidren as they were known as Folk Horror elements from the ancient Celts and Scandanavian mythology from about 2000 BCE. Why. Well they are actually in legend based on being the children of Orcus. Orcus was a Roman God of the Earth and underworld and predated Rome and may be an ancient Proto Indo European God from the early Bronze age or even earlier. As such Orcs actually formed a part of ancient mythology and were NOT invented by Tolkien. Either way, it will be my adapted and redone Glorantha. This may horrify a Glorantha purist, but they will not be playing in my campaign and my players will have no issue. And I will be introducing my 5E players into Runequest. My Elfs, Orcs and Goblins will not be generic in any Tolkien fantasy sense, but rather be their bronze age legends.

In any case, thats my take.

I am glad I started this thread as now I understand much better the Runequest eco system and what I want and do not want from it.

[Agentorange]

Seems reasonable enough....Mythras does have a Mythic Babylon supplement. You might want to check out the  Jackals RPG which has a bronze age feel to it. There's plenty of bronze age( ish ) stuff on DTRPG - though it is for other systems and would need conversion.

[Soccercalle]

I would also recommend Magic World that is for sale for less than 3 USD on DriveThru at the moment. It includes a Bestiary of approximately 60 pages. It's not long but it's a lot of generic monsters and species that you dont think in the RQ Bestiary. It has Orcs, Tolkienesque Elves, Halflings, Manticores, Ghouls Skeletons and other undeads and a lot of other interesting stuff. The feel is more medieval than Bronze Age but it would definitely work together with Glorantha. The stats, hit points, skills and damages are the same (like in all BRP-based RPGs).

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/128323/Magic-World 

Edited February 19, 2023 by Soccercalle
missed some

[Bohemond]

7 hours ago, General Ork said:

180 is not a lot, compared to other major RPGs its quite a few. And using only a quarter, In 1 year of playing I have used half. Each person has there own style of play and GM style.

 

Keep in mind that most fantasy RPGs emphasize 'killing monsters'--the PCs are humans or elves or dwarves and just about everything else are 'bad guys' who exist for the PCs to 'kill and take their stuff'. That's never really been RQ's main focus. One of Stafford's many great innovations was to situate the opposition species as having their own complex cultures. The trolls have a rich and complex society. So do the elves. And the dwarves. And the Telmori. And the Scorpion Men and the Broos and so on. (OK, those last two are chaotic and mostly monster species, but still have some sort of culture). And the humans have a lot of variation. So the things you are able to fight aren't just 'kill and take their stuff' baddies. They exist in their own eco-systems and if you are in conflict with them, you might wind up fighting them for their stuff, but you also might wind up negotiating with them for co-existence, or heroquesting to win them over as allies, or having to team up with them against some common enemies that seem even worse. And those other species have their own political and social and religious divisions and while you're fighting a species, another group of that same species might be willing to work with you. The recent thrust of RQ has been to sharply move away from PC murderhobos to PCs that exist within a community of some sort, and that community can be a rich sort of conflict and story-telling all on its own. 

You can certainly run RQ in a 'kill them and take their stuff' mode, but that's just one facet of the game world. That's why there are only 180 pages of monsters--the game is inviting you to stop viewing them just as monsters and more as antagonists of a much more complex type, with whom you can tell much more complicated and nuanced stories. In fact, you can run whole campaigns in which the enemies are entirely human and in which non-humans have only occasional guest-starring roles. Figuring out how to ruin the clan your clan has hated for centuries can be way more interesting than killing the goblins for their treasure.  

Edited February 19, 2023 by Bohemond

[Joerg]

RuneQuest monsters or beasts are rather easy to design. The Third Edition had a range of tables for hit locations which calculated hit points by simple fractions, but the current edition has switched back to less mathematically elegant lookup tables that scale better at extreme values of SIZ and/or CON.

If you can find it second hand, the Games Workshop hardcover of the generic RQ3 bestiary is a good set of examples to modify for other creatures of a less Gloranthan spin, and the Alternate Earth RQ3 boxes for Vikings and Land of Ninja have adaptations to those myths and ecologies.

What really makes RuneQuest monsters apart is their role in myth and ecology, and the resulting typical behaviors upon contacting them. Those take some work if you create your own or if you want to flesh out why this species from game X (say Talislanta) appears in your game setting, if your game and your players need any such justifications.

Human opponents are a lot more typical in RuneQuest than in other rpgs. With significantly different background cultures., and cults, this human variability replaces a lot of the humanoid monsters say from the goblin range.

Glorantha outside of Dragon Pass has plenty monsters which aren't that hard to put into stats. Some have been statted out in RQ2 or RQ3, or have just received descriptions like e.g. the Pamaltelan Hoolars. There are various antigod races with a generally humanoid body (although parts may be grotesquely enlarged), like the huan-to of the Shan Shan mountains separating Kralorela from Pent and Genert's Wastes, or the gorgers of Kimos. We have other names, with other grotesque details hinted, that can easily be extrapolated from that, or from troll stats (just another race of underworld humanoids, after all).

Do you want the Starspawn of Cthulhu as RuneQuest monsters? We have hit locations for Walktapi and for winged dragonewts pr Wind Children to adapt. Balrogs? Use Cacodemon, or in case of doubt dragonewt ruler hit locations.

 

[Nick Brooke]

8 hours ago, General Ork said:

I like Glorantha, but honestly, cannot see myself ever rigorously following the game world, and game world, as I love adapting any game world significantly. So it will be in my game a parallel / multiverse version of Glorantha with Gateways into other fantasy worlds and even this Earth's ancient past.

That’s how Chaosium’s own games ran, back in the late seventies / early eighties. And nowadays the creators encourage and expect every game set in Glorantha to do its own thing. Have you never heard the phrase, “Your Glorantha Will Vary”? Because you’re independently reinventing it.

[Nick Brooke]

So the other thing that hasn’t been emphasised enough in this thread (IMO, I might have missed a nuance) is that the RQ elder races (intelligent non-humans) all have homelands, occupations and cults, and “level-up” in all three the same way player characters do. Your new adventurer may be battling grunt Trollkin, but a Rune Lord will be taking on a Dark Troll warrior who’s a Death Lord of Zorak Zoran, with the full panoply of Rune spells, enchanted lead armour, zombie and skeleton hordes, etc., and a clan or warband backing them up (with specialists, healers, trained battle-insects, allies, and the like).

And they have their own mythology, which in RuneQuest means there are special rituals they can do to “power up” or thwart their enemies, entities from the Spirit World and God World they can bring into play as disconcertingly powerful allies or manifestations, holy days and sacred places and temples and artefacts that carry special meaning for them.

All of which means that RuneQuest games don’t have the same need for “101 ways to spell Orc” that you found in older editions of D&D (NB: I got started between Original, Basic and Advanced, I know the terrain is somewhat different nowadays). Instead, our games can be driven by story and character and politics. It makes for a more immersive world.

Check out Trollpak to see what I’m on about. (And if you want to proliferate monsters, think about how different litters of Trollkin could vary over time)

[g33k]

I may have read a bit too quickly, but... one point I thought should have been stressed more is that there's a huge amount of variety available from each intelligent species.

Just humans may have tribes who run heavy to dangerous Storm Bull initiates, unpredictable Orlanthi, pragmatic Ernaldan's, etc.  Similarly with the Trolls -- KL may Bosslady all situations where they're present, but maybe you're meeting an AA trade-caravan, or a Gorakikki looking for a good place to set up a ham-beetle brood, or etc... 

[Soccercalle]

The group I am GMing has now had appr 25 scenarios played during one ”real” year and two Glorantha years.

80% of fights have been with other human (mostly Lunar but also Prax nomads and Greydogs from the Lismelder Clan.

10% have been with trolls (dark, great and trollkin), broos, Telmori, ducks, scorpion men and dragonewt.

10% have been with different ”monsters” like Dream Dragons, Ghosts, Vampires, Kharshtkids and other, mostly Chaotic, monsters. 

They have interacted with dwarves/Mostali, elves/Aldryami and Beast People. 

The ”best” enemies are the ones you meet many times. My PCs are hunted by Prince Temertain, King Kangharl, the Lunar Vitch Ashangara and Governor Sor-Eel. And they are in s feud with the Greydogs.

[Martin]

I will argue that....

The most dangerous and most terriying monsters in Glorantha are the morlal races, including Humans....after  all the Feeding or Fighting the Monster Within is a stuggle for EVERY being

[French Desperate WindChild]

think your needs differently :

you want to play some d100 system, with skills, characteristics, etc, in a way there is no class defining your character.

Then you have the choice of a lot of worlds and supplements :

cthulu, glorantha, pendragon, hawkmoon, stormbringer, etc...

each of these differents worlds propose their own bestiary and there specific rules. And there is no issue for a GM to create some "portals" between the world, allowing pc to visit a total another world after all (not my taste i m glorantha mono maniac 😛 )

 

So if you compare today rqg with today ad&d, that's not the same level.

Compare rqg with some specific world maybe Lankhmar ? (I don't know a lot Ad&D, typically because my taste has been for 30+ years the opposite of yours, I dislike a list of monsters with there stats, as a player I m not a monster hunter.  I want to understand why there is this monster, how it interacts with the world, etc... so don't need a big list, need more big details on few - but enough - diversity)

 

17 hours ago, General Ork said:

This may horrify a Glorantha purist, but they will not be playing in my campaign and my players will have no issue.

that will horrify noone 😛 it will be your world, base on d100 / runequest rules system, with your races, your background, etc... And it will be fine for everybody.

[General Ork]

After reading through all the replies to my question, I think I will try play Runequest in the style of play that everyone has spoken of.

I do disagree with some peoples analysis of other styles of playing an RPG, and they seem to almost trivialize these manners of play as less in depth or less immersive, such has not been my experience or that of other gamers, but each to their own.

However I have played many different RPGs and even styles of gaming since 1981, and have no favorite feeling variety is my spice.

In any case I will give Glorantha style adventuring as people have exposed here a good try and I am sure I will have a great time in the process.

Maybe I will come out of it feeling that truly a more extensive "Monster manual" is totally pointless for Runequest and that the present book is all the game will ever need.

I am open minded and have learnt a lot from the responses.
 

[radmonger]

By way of comparison, D&D 5e has by my count 728 monsters, split over three bestiaries (Monster Manual, Fizban's Treasury of Dagons, Monsters of the Multiverse). That includes the likes of 'bandit' and 'archer', and also young/adult/ancient varieties of many of them.

So the two systems are really not that far off in terms of officially-published monsters. RQ has 180 in Glorantha bestiary, 99 in gateway. There would perhaps be room to publish a  second volume of the Glorantha bestiary. But if even D&D can't support more than that, with its massive playerbase and greater focus on monster-bashing, then I wouldn't count that a high priority.

 

https://www.aidedd.org/dnd-filters/monsters.php

[EpicureanDM]

12 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Your new adventurer may be battling grunt Trollkin, but a Rune Lord will be taking on a Dark Troll warrior who’s a Death Lord of Zorak Zoran, with the full panoply of Rune spells, enchanted lead armour, zombie and skeleton hordes, etc., and a clan or warband backing them up (with specialists, healers, trained battle-insects, allies, and the like).

And they have their own mythology, which in RuneQuest means there are special rituals they can do to “power up” or thwart their enemies, entities from the Spirit World and God World they can bring into play as disconcertingly powerful allies or manifestations, holy days and sacred places and temples and artefacts that carry special meaning for them.

This is perhaps true in the abstract, but Chaosium has published little guidance to help GMs actually run battles of this complexity. It's no surprise that newcomers can't grasp this sort of nuance when the game's publishers don't support it.

[Agentorange]

29 minutes ago, radmonger said:

By way of comparison, D&D 5e has by my count 728 monsters, split over three bestiaries (Monster Manual, Fizban's Treasury of Dagons, Monsters of the Multiverse). That includes the likes of 'bandit' and 'archer', and also young/adult/ancient varieties of many of them.

So the two systems are really not that far off in terms of officially-published monsters. RQ has 180 in Glorantha bestiary, 99 in gateway. There would perhaps be room to publish a  second volume of the Glorantha bestiary. But if even D&D can't support more than that, with its massive playerbase and greater focus on monster-bashing, then I wouldn't count that a high priority.

 

https://www.aidedd.org/dnd-filters/monsters.php

Worth pointing out that there is considerable  overlap between the RQG bestiary and the Gateway Bestiary.

 

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, EpicureanDM said:

This is perhaps true in the abstract, but Chaosium has published little guidance to help GMs actually run battles of this complexity. It's no surprise that newcomers can't grasp this sort of nuance when the game's publishers don't support it.

How would such "support" have to look to satisfy your demand for guidance? An actual play of such a complex battle?

(Note that there is a sample of guidance in the third scenario of The Smoking Ruins, for the antagonists of the first year.)

In the past, GMs have improvised and winged this, e.g. in the Haunted Ruins module that got played by the Temple of the Wooden Sword cast of characters. The scenario is in RQ2 Troll Pak, an action report (though rather un-detailed) is in the Stafford Campaign notes. Both are available from Chaosium.

Especially these troll tactics have been explored in some detail, both in Troll Pak and in the Big Rubble.

 

How such situations play out depends on the GM and the players about as much as on the context given by the scenario material.

I made my first steps in such a direction with the RQ3 Vikings box, which had a very useful booklet with pre-rolled adversary or allied vikings for the GM to pick individuals from and to send into the breach.

RQG has something similar in the Starter Set - generalized stat blocks for normal residents of Jonstown and some more experienced upgrades thereof. It also has the sample characters.

The rest is a learning experience, taking into account the possible consequences of e.g. Divine Intervention or of coordinated NPC tactics, or of less well known rune spells suddenly landing in the situation.

[EpicureanDM]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

How would such "support" have to look to satisfy your demand for guidance? An actual play of such a complex battle?

(Note that there is a sample of guidance in the third scenario of The Smoking Ruins, for the antagonists of the first year.)

In the past, GMs have improvised and winged this, e.g. in the Haunted Ruins module that got played by the Temple of the Wooden Sword cast of characters. The scenario is in RQ2 Troll Pak, an action report (though rather un-detailed) is in the Stafford Campaign notes. Both are available from Chaosium.

Especially these troll tactics have been explored in some detail, both in Troll Pak and in the Big Rubble.

Yes, of course through an actual play of such a complex battle at the very least. So many RQ and Glorantha veterans talk a big, abstract, high-level game on this forum about how to run these complex battles with multiple spirits on each side, support NPCs, and henchmen. But no one actually tries to explain how it works using the game's rules, round-by-round, as it would actually look if you were playing a game at a table with friends. New players are told that there are these rich game experiences available, but no one talks about them concretely, least of all the game's designers and publishers. 

What's the sample of guidance you're referring to in The Smoking Ruins? 

It does a newcomer little good to mention that GMs improvised and winged this thirty years ago. What parts of the current rules do veteran RQ GMs know to improvise around that aren't communicated to new players and GMs? RQG has been in print for five years, an edition that leans heavily on RQ2. Did anyone involved in the current edition actually play RQ2 at the level of complexity being referenced? If so, why are they hoarding the knowledge of how to run these amazing battles? 

I know that these tidbits are sometimes buried in old RQ2 books. Just recently, I found a reference in River of Cradles to using Countermagic to defeat Detect spells. I had a little difficulty managing the Detect Enemies spell in a recent game and it would have been nice to have this interaction in my GMing toolbox. It's obvious in hindsight, but newcomers don't know how to think in those terms yet. And I had to stumble across this reference deep in the text of Cradles. 

Only veterans steeped in Glorantha and RQ2 would miss the absurdity of telling your new RQG fans that they need to read books from a 20th century edition of the game to maybe figure out how to best use the edition they bought in the 21st century.

 

[radmonger]

Well, at least it is easier to go look up 30-year old supplements than it was in the past to wait for current ones to come out;-0

But yes, once the cults books are out, the gm's guide is the next real missing piece. Hopefully this will have a section on the how, why and whether of detailed tactical combat i get the impression few if any of the current Chaosium staff enjoy that style of play, so maybe it will be something they need to outsource.

 

 

[Professor Chaos]

A good point - while for commercial reasons Glorantha has returned to a high crunch ultra-tactical system for nearly two decades Greg and Jeff told us RQ was not the ideal system to represent Glorantha at all.

Unfortunately most of the fans myself included never accepted that Hero Wars/Quest was the ideal system either which is why we all are where we are again.

But it is now a highly tactical game where combat run by the book needs to be avoided not just because it is deadly but because it takes forever.

Which is a problem that no Minius Maximus's Guide to Combat in RuneQuest is going to solve - there are just too many moving parts in RQG and with each new publication - not one or two but TEN cults books! - more and more are added. 

So we all just have to muddle along.

 

 

[EpicureanDM]

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

Hopefully this will have a section on the how, why and whether of detailed tactical combat i get the impression few if any of the current Chaosium staff enjoy that style of play, so maybe it will be something they need to outsource.

I don't think they enjoy that style of play, either, but they revived a forty-year-old game designed to support that sort of play. 

It's wild to me that the current Chaosium staff probably prefer to explore Glorantha in a Heroquest-style game, but have poured all this energy and money into RQ2.5.

[Mark Mohrfield]

16 minutes ago, EpicureanDM said:

It's wild to me that the current Chaosium staff probably prefer to explore Glorantha in a Heroquest-style game, but have poured all this energy and money into RQ2.5.

I suspect that the reason for this is economic reality, much as I personally regret it.

[GMKen]

Don’t know about big battles, but there is a very nice blow-by-blow description of “How Runequest Combat Works” by Rudy Kraft in The Dungeoneer Journal #23.  Not too long ago I would have suggested looking it up in The Trove, but unfortunately that’s been taken down.  Since Judge’s Guild is out of favor, used copies can be had for not too ridiculous a price on EBay.

Me, I just like dungeon and hex crawling and Paladinning on the bad guys.  Don’t need Hero Wars or any of that, which is why I like Balazar and the Elder Wilds from the Griffin Mountain (GM) supplement.  A big giant sandbox where you can go do your own thing.  Not entirely sure, but I don’t think you -need- Cults of Prax to run GM, as all or almost all of the spells are described in the base rule book.

I like the RQ combat mechanics and the skills system, as well as the lack of classing and alignmenting.  IMNSHO, I feel that RQ (2) wasn’t broken and didn’t need fixing (much), so I haven’t made the move to adopting the latest iteration.

My wish list is not for more monsters, but more adventures.  I’m still waiting with bated breath for the “Expedition to Miskander’s Tower” possibly promised in the “Sea Cave” adventure (which I’ve parked on the Elf Sea) as well as “The Howling Tower” and “Illyssia’s Grove”.  I’m pretty sure the Expedition adventure is what leads to the current state of the tower in the Grey Crane adventure in Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories, but I would park it somewhere in the Elder Wilds.  Don’t need more backgrounders, need more adventures.

While the Jonstown Compendium is nice, few of the the publications make it to print status.  I’m not a big fan of PDFs, as there is no aftermarket for them and I don’t trust electrons.  Too much of my stuff over the years has gone poof into the aether and I’ve got a stack of old hard drives with stuff I can’t get to.  So...print.

Just my two cents.