Chaosium Announces the return of ElfQuest: The Roleplaying Game

[MOB]

For immediate release.

Ann Arbor MI, September 16, 2024 — Chaosium Inc. and ElfQuest creators Wendy and Richard Pini announced today that Chaosium will produce a classic reissue of the ElfQuest tabletop roleplaying game, first published by Chaosium in 1984 and based on the popular comic book series.

Using Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying system (BRP) as its core, ElfQuest: The Official Roleplaying Gamewas written by Steve Perrin, Sandy Petersen, and Yurek Chodak, based on the characters and setting created by Wendy and Richard Pini. The ElfQuest RPG was published in 1984, and was followed by several supplements. All featured Wendy Pini’s distinctive artwork, beloved by ElfQuest fans for over forty-five years.

The Chaosium team working on the ElfQuest Classic reissue will be led by Rick Meints, who oversaw the highly successful releases of 2021’s Call of Cthulhu Classic, reissuing Call of Cthulhu first edition from 1981, and 2016’s RuneQuest Classic, reissuing RuneQuest second edition from 1978. The Chaosium team will be working closely with Wendy and Richard Pini on the project’s development and presentation.

Chaosium President Rick Meints said, “For years ElfQuest fans have asked us to bring the game back into print. Based on all we’ve learned from our previous Classic projects we are ready to add ElfQuest Classic as the next in this series. We all look forward to revisiting, rediscovering, and further exploring the Pinis’ World of Two Moons.”

“ElfQuest has from its inception been about the value and strength of family and tribe,” said co-creator Richard Pini. “We can’t think of a better way to encourage community than through people coming together to enjoy the world-building challenges that role-playing offers.”

Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the ElfQuest RPG, Chaosium will be launching a Kickstarter campaign in October 2024 to bring back the vintage game in its original box edition format with the later supplements included. All the 1984 Chaosium ElfQuest publications will be brought back to life.

Sign up here to be notified when the Kickstarter goes live:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chaosium/elfquest-classic

 

About Chaosium

Since the company’s founding by Greg Stafford in 1975, Chaosium Inc. has been an innovative force in hobby game publishing, captivating gamers, readers and mythic adventurers worldwide, and winning numerous of awards.

The investigatory horror game Call of Cthulhu remains Chaosium’s most well-known line, with a recent Critical Role/Call of Cthulhu collaboration racking up three million views on YouTube. The company’s other award-winning RPGs include RuneQuest, Pendragon, and 7th Sea. Chaosium also publishes boardgames and fiction. Its games are translated around the globe and licensed for everything from T-shirts to computer games.

chaosium.com

About ElfQuest

ElfQuest is the ongoing epic fantasy graphic novel series created in 1978 by Wendy and Richard Pini. It tells the adventures of elfin chief Cutter and the Wolfriders — a tribe of feral, forest-dwelling elves allied with wolves — as they strive to find their true place in a dangerous world.

A New York Times Best Seller, ElfQuest is the longest-running American fantasy comic-book title. At first self-published by the Pinis, ElfQuest has subsequently been licensed by the “big three” comics publishers: Marvel, DC Comics, and currently Dark Horse Comics. More than 25 million ElfQuest publications have been sold worldwide with translations into over a dozen foreign languages.

ElfQuest has been adapted into prose novels and short story anthologies, action figures, role-playing games, music albums, apparel, and most recently a full-cast dramatic audio dramatization.

elfquest.com

ElfQuest and the Warp Wolf logo are registered trademarks, and all other logos, characters, situations, related indicia, and their distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Warp Graphics, Inc. All ElfQuest art © 1978-2024 Warp Graphics Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.

[Bill the barbarian]

Whoot!

 

[Starcarr]

Wow! Loved the game. It got me into the comics. Will new supplements be made or is it just a one off reprint of the old stuff?

[smiorgan]

5 hours ago, Starcarr said:

Wow! Loved the game. It got me into the comics. Will new supplements be made or is it just a one off reprint of the old stuff?

I gather it is a reprint of the whole line, but no new stuff. I'm very happy because I currently only own the core rules (in the French version) but none of the supplements. I think there was the Companion, the Sea Elves and Elf Wars.

 

Edited September 17 by smiorgan

[g33k]

3 hours ago, smiorgan said:

I gather it is a reprint of the whole line, but no new stuff. I'm very happy because I currently only own the core rules (in the French version) but none of the supplements. I think there was the Companion, the Sea Elves and Elf Wars.

If you follow the KS link, you'll see what -- I presume -- the KS will include.
Dunno if they're going to be doing it as an all-inclusive "everything you see," or (like the RQClassic did) make each supplement another stretch-goal.

Read the comics, back in the day.  Never got hold of the RPG, so this is definitely on my radar!

Gonna have to take a good hard look at my gaming budget, though:  RQ is producing regularly now, already nearly my entire RPG budget; and the JC is cranking out great product at an amazing rate... and (shhh!) Chaosium isn't the only one with an interesting lineup (also drooling over Atlas Games' announced "Definitive Edition" for Ars Magica)

Edited September 17 by g33k

[smiorgan]

7 hours ago, g33k said:

Gonna have to take a good hard look at my gaming budget, though:  RQ is producing regularly now, already nearly my entire RPG budget; and the JC is cranking out great product at an amazing rate... and (shhh!) Chaosium isn't the only one with an interesting lineup (also drooling over Atlas Games' announced "Definitive Edition" for Ars Magica)

Same for me. Cannot keep up with all the Chaosium stuff (RQ, BRP, Pendragon and some CoC), all the JC goodness AND Fria Ligan pushing forward with Dragonbane.

To this date, I have resisted getting Rivers of London, but for how long?

[HeartQuintessence]

As a reader of Elfquest *states at her big BW Darkhorse books, and then her Color Final Quest Comics, and then  StarGazers Hunt*.

I am glad they're bringing back Elfquest, hopefully the kickstarter will spurr interest in building a NEW system/game.

[Mark Mohrfield]

Maybe, someday, Chaosium could do this for Ringworld? Probably not I expect, but you got my hopes up.

[smiorgan]

What about an ElfQuest subforum?

[brionl]

Good news. I might even get the printed books this time. These days 90+% of my book purchases are ebooks.

Now do Stormbringer. 😺

[Scotty]

3 hours ago, smiorgan said:

What about an ElfQuest subforum?

Let's get the game into peoples' hands first. Otherwise it will be people like me vaguely remembering the campaign I ran in 1987, and lamenting over my now raggedy books and squashed box. Then we can have a subform!

[Goose]

So what's the usual MO with the Classics line? Is it a straight-up reprint with just technical issues with the actual text and the like cleaned up, or do they do any rules massaging, updates, and the like? (I noticed the last KS offered PDF options, which is already a huge plus given my ever-decreasing shelf space.) Just curious if fans of the old game can expect any of the EQ lore and such to be updated in the reprint edition.

Edited September 21 by Goose
Typo

[Jason D]

On 9/21/2024 at 1:07 AM, Goose said:

So what's the usual MO with the Classics line? Is it a straight-up reprint with just technical issues with the actual text and the like cleaned up, or do they do any rules massaging, updates, and the like? (I noticed the last KS offered PDF options, which is already a huge plus given my ever-decreasing shelf space.) Just curious if fans of the old game can expect any of the EQ lore and such to be updated in the reprint edition.

I believe that it's a re-scanned, re-laid out version of the original material with typos corrected, errata incorporated, etc.

To the best of my knowledge there are no rules changes.

There should be no changes to the IP as that would likely be considered a new edition. 

[Jason D]

On 9/19/2024 at 6:31 PM, brionl said:

Now do Stormbringer. 😺

Believe me, I wish we could. The whole company wants that, but it does not seem achievable. 

[Jason D]

On 9/19/2024 at 5:33 AM, Mark Mohrfield said:

Maybe, someday, Chaosium could do this for Ringworld? Probably not I expect, but you got my hopes up.

I know at a certain point Niven was very much up for it, but the last I heard, the license is not available due to being tied up for some long-idle TV/movie deal. 

Unfortunately, the reality is that while it is possible to get some license renegotiated, a lot of rights-holders (or their agents or lawyers) balk because they feel that it's not worth their time. 

I know of some IPs where every party involved in the creation and development wants an RPG to happen, but the corporation sitting on the rights doesn't think even drawing up a contract is worth their time. 

[Rick Meints]

On 9/20/2024 at 7:07 PM, Goose said:

So what's the usual MO with the Classics line? Is it a straight-up reprint with just technical issues with the actual text and the like cleaned up, or do they do any rules massaging, updates, and the like? (I noticed the last KS offered PDF options, which is already a huge plus given my ever-decreasing shelf space.) Just curious if fans of the old game can expect any of the EQ lore and such to be updated in the reprint edition.

This is very much like what we did for Call of Cthulhu Classic. Because the ElfQuest line was short lived in the 80s, we are able to offer a 2" deluxe box with all of the original material: Rules set, handouts, ElfQuest Companion, Sea Elves, and Elf War. We are not updating the rules beyond incorporating all of the errata actually into the text, which was something not done with the 2nd edition book (they just put the errata sheet in the back of the book). We have stretch goals which will be announced after launch.

[Rick Meints]

We appreciate people wanting other out-of-print RPG products to get back in print. Short answer is we don't have a license to reprint the Stormbringer or Ringworld RPGs. It's not a lack of desire. Some other RPG products we probably will do at some point, but it's down to time and resources.

We have managed to get a lot of the older products back into print: All of RQ2, CoC 2nd ed. plus 5 early supplements, Beyond the Mountains of Madness, and a few more like Wyrms Footnotes available as PDF. That's not a bad start.

[Goose]

On 9/23/2024 at 8:57 AM, Rick Meints said:

This is very much like what we did for Call of Cthulhu Classic. Because the ElfQuest line was short lived in the 80s, we are able to offer a 2" deluxe box with all of the original material: Rules set, handouts, ElfQuest Companion, Sea Elves, and Elf War. We are not updating the rules beyond incorporating all of the errata actually into the text, which was something not done with the 2nd edition book (they just put the errata sheet in the back of the book). We have stretch goals which will be announced after launch.

Thanks - that's very helpful! Looking forward to the campaign.