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What is the status of RQ6 Glorantha?


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4 minutes ago, Mankcam said:

The new CoC 7E looks great, but I just feel that the skill structure from RQ6 works better for me. To base the new BRP on CoC 7E or RQ2 is a very unusual decision, and I am quite disappointed by it, and almost feel the same sense of betray that many felt when they saw MW being shelved.

We RQ6 fans don't have it quite as bad as the MW fans. We still have TDM to put out professional books for us, even if we are sadly losing the cool name. The MW guys don't have that, even in hardcore fans like Tooley are doing their best to make up for it. 

I don't really feel betrayed, but I am a little confused. It feels like Moon Design quickly pulled back the Runequest name from the successful TDM line without really even having a plan together yet. Runequest has been building a lot of momentum under TDM. They put out three great books in the last year, and it would have been four if MD hadn't killed AiG. That kind of momentum is important to a game line, and while Moon Design does quality work, they have never been great at keeping a tight schedule.

My biggest fear about this situation was that Runequest would shift to the kind of slow schedule that HeroQuest has. Considering that four months after they announced their version of Runequest, we are still wavering on what version it is based on makes me think its going to be a long shot for the summer release they were shooting for. 

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4 minutes ago, K Peterson said:

I hope Chaosium/Moon Design come forward on these forums and clarify things. They've expressed a desire to engage with their customers more openly than the last Chaosium regime, and it seems more prudent to make these comments on Chaosium's "official forums" rather than at conventions, which can fire up the rumor mill if some of the facts get clouded.

Yes. Given that conventions keep the companies staff busy, they should at least have a written press statement to put up here on the forums to go along with the announcement. Every step of this drama has been them making an announcement to a group at a con, then letting it spread, grow, and mutate over the web for a few days before they show up to try and set things straight. TDM has a clean, simple statement of their end of the situation on their forum. Chaosium should try to do the same. 

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3 minutes ago, jholen said:

Killed AiG and now no RQ6 based Glorantha specific book? Very disappointed, not in either TDM or Chaosium but simply because we won't get to ever see it. 

 

Doesn't that free up TDM to finish off their work on Adventures in Glorantha and release it before their license expires in July next year? Or is it truly nixed by Mood Design?

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16 minutes ago, Jae said:

 

Doesn't that free up TDM to finish off their work on Adventures in Glorantha and release it before their license expires in July next year? Or is it truly nixed by Mood Design?

We don’t have a license to publish AiG (beyond what was agreed for the GenCon preview), so we won’t be doing any further work in it.

The Design Mechanism: Publishers of Mythras

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Well I think RQG is going to look like RQ2 with new rules for Sorcery to cater for the Malkioni (which will be dramatically different from RQ3 Sorcery or RQ6's Sorcery I think). If the core skill structure is similar to MRQ SRD then I can go with that, as it could branch into RQ6 if needed. Sounds highly unlikely if RQ2 is going to be the core build however.

It's a bit disappointing for fans, but probably a bit more creatively liberating for Design Mechanism to follow it's own path. I will support the Design Mechanism publications with interest, but also likely to follow Glorantha as well (old habits die hard).

Remains to be seen which system I will use at the table for Glorantha, but at this stage its unlikely to be anything other than RQ6 or whatever Design Mechanism rename it.

I wish I had managed to grab a copy of RQ6: AiG now!

 

Edited by Mankcam

" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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55 minutes ago, Baulderstone said:

My biggest fear about this situation was that Runequest would shift to the kind of slow schedule that HeroQuest has. Considering that four months after they announced their version of Runequest, we are still wavering on what version it is based on makes me think its going to be a long shot for the summer release they were shooting for. 

Actually, my fear is the opposite.

For me, I am a happy backer of the Guide to Glorantha, RuneQuest 6 (via Indigogo, anyway) and now RQ2. I have HeroQuest: Glorantha now also, but it's not my preferred system.

I will be backing, or preferably just buying, Chaosium's new RuneQuest edition, with the hope that I can use GtG and other Glorantha material with my preferred RQ6 system. There is plenty of it, but till the nominal Adventures in Glorantha was due to come out, I had no real clue about how to go about using it. The point is that I am mainly interested in using currently latent material I already have in abundance with the new RuneQuest book, rather than adding to it a massive range of extra supplements.

However, I also want to use RQ6 for other things, and it's important for me that TDM have the time to make and support new titles in the Mythic range (Mesapotamia, Greece, Britain, Constantinople, etc), rather than exhausting their talent writing loads of supplements for Glorantha in any given time frame. If Chaosium want to get Pete and Loz to aggressively support the new RuneQuest then it will compromise their time to do anything else.

I do recognise that slow release schedules are frustrating, but for the RuneQuest and Glorantha lines, quality is more important than quantity. If I get maybe one Chaosium Glorantha book each year, and maybe two or three well researched Mythic books per year - that'd be about perfect for me.

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This is a surprising turn of events. But it's not clear exactly what it's happening. So, let's keep calm.

It's ironic that less than two months ago these boards were in turmoil about Chaosium "shelving" Magic World and the Basic Roleplaying gold book to base all BRP on RQ6. Now it turns out that Chaosium splits from the RQ6 crew ....strange.

Relax and keep calm...

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3 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

This is a surprising turn of events. But it's not clear exactly what it's happening. So, let's keep calm.

Never! I came here wallow in baseless speculation and freak out. ;)

3 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

It's ironic that less than two months ago these boards were in turmoil about Chaosium "shelving" Magic World and the Basic Roleplaying gold book to base all BRP on RQ6. Now it turns out that Chaosium splits from the RQ6 crew ....strange.

The pattern is all too obvious. They are turning on the Call of Cthulhu fans next. ;)

 

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1 minute ago, TrippyHippy said:

Chaosium's new edition of RuneQuest is RQ6: Adventures in Glorantha.

It'll be reformatted and made to be a complete rulebook, but the material is directly from those two sources.

That's not the current news Trippy, RQG now looks like its going to be based on RQ2; it doesn't sound like much from RQ6 will make it into it. 

Only time will tell

Edited by Mankcam

" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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22 minutes ago, Mankcam said:

That's not the current news Trippy, RQG now looks like its going to be based on RQ2; it doesn't sound like much from RQ6 will make it into it. 

Only time will tell.

Yeah, just read up on it. Strange turn of events.

I'm still excited for what The Design Mechanism are coming up with. I'll be interested in the new Chaosium RuneQuest, but will make a judgment on whether to buy based on what they do. If they go with some loose expansion on RQ2 (what's the point?) or CoC7E (rubbish rules), I'll give it a miss.

Edited by TrippyHippy
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Yep, we must all do what we feel is right, of course, in the ways of The Force :)

Edited by Mankcam
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" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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2 hours ago, Steve said:

Today at Dragonmeet, Jeff didn't say that the new Chaosium Runequest would just be a cleaned-up RQ2. There are a lot of "Chinese whispers" going on here, which is not an unusual thing on the web, of course. Jeff only said a couple of sentences about the new CRQ and all hell has broken loose in some quarters. What Jeff said is that the new CRQ would be built on top of RQ2 but including 30 years of improvements that have been learned over that time. He didn't go into detail, but it doesn't seem impossible to me that some of those improvements might be RQ6 things.

 

Oh, I am not expecting in to be just a cleaned-up RQ2 (actually I would be dumbfounded if it was) but it is still quite strange to state the new game will be based on an edition 30 years old when there is a live edition that is quite excellent.

As for communication, they apparently haven't learned from last time and were not prepared with a timely press release especially when it was so obvious a "the few sentences" uttered would generate a massive traffic of speculation and outrage.

For me, the jury is still out. I will wait and see what CRQ will be made of and I am more than willing to be pleasantly surprised by the new developments brought forward.

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48 minutes ago, TrippyHippy said:

Yeah, just read up on it. Strange turn of events.

I'm still excited for what The Design Mechanism are coming up with. I'll be interested in the new Chaosium RuneQuest, but will make a judgment on whether to buy based on what they do. If they go with some loose expansion on RQ2 (what's the point?) or CoC7E (rubbish rules), I'll give it a miss.

Stop stealing my words! :)

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5 hours ago, Baulderstone said:

It does make the current RQ 2 Kickstarter seem a little odd. When the plan was to come out with an RQ6-based version next year, I could see the logic in giving people a chance to get a look at RQ2. Now, however, it seems they are currently selling a cleaned up version of RQ2 this year, and plan to sell and even more cleaned up version to us again next year. 

Not so much. RQ2 is a reprint, a nostalgia piece. The new RQ will be based on it (as was BRP at first), and I imagine that the specifically gloranthan tweaks will make it look a lot less like it than we imagine. I have to think that Magic will be completely different for example. It might also use single percentile skills rather than 5% chunks.

SDLeary

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1 hour ago, Mankcam said:

Well I think RQG is going to look like RQ2 with new rules for Sorcery to cater for the Malkioni (which will be dramatically different from RQ3 Sorcery or RQ6's Sorcery I think). If the core skill structure is similar to MRQ SRD then I can go with that, as it could branch into RQ6 if needed. Sounds highly unlikely if RQ2 is going to be the core build however.

It's a bit disappointing for fans, but probably a bit more creatively liberating for Design Mechanism to follow it's own path. I will support the Design Mechanism publications with interest, but also likely to follow Glorantha as well (old habits die hard).

Remains to be seen which system I will use at the table for Glorantha, but at this stage its unlikely to be anything other than RQ6 or whatever Design Mechanism rename it.

I wish I had managed to grab a copy of RQ6: AiG now!

 

I imagine that ALL the magic will be different. Greg never seemed to be happy with how magic was portrayed in RQ2.

SDLeary

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God knows what '30 years of improvements' might harken... who's subjective version of 'improvement' are we going by?

Meanwhile we HAD the BGB and that worked... chock full of options... but nope, it had to go...  in favor of what? 'Answer murky, try again later'

 

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Guest Vile Traveller

This is all good as far as I can see. RQ2 back in print, a RQ2-like new game from Chaosium going forward (not that I'm likely to pick up much new Glorantha material, I moved on 20 years ago), and a completely independent game from The Design Mechanism to support their other existing lines Luther Arkwright. This clearly means Loz and Pete will be pumping out their own material much faster than would have been the case if they had to split their time between Chaosium and TDM. I sincerely hope there is not a drop in market visibility because of the loss of the RuneQuest name, but that was coming anyway. Fans have their part to play in spreading the word.

With the new Chaosium management's familiarity with RQ2 and Glorantha I think it's actually a logical choice for them. Plus, with the RQ2 Kickstarter and the new RQ2-derived RQ7 and BRP new life has been breathed into a great game - I love RQ2 and that's not a nostalgia thing because I have used it continuously for games in every imaginable setting. I very much doubt there will be a splitting of the fan base, and if it is, so what - some people like vanilla, some like chocolate, most like both. This is consumer choice! :) 

It does mean that I'll be buying more RPG products that I'd hoped. :mellow:

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My preferences certainly lay with RQ6 at present, but up until this year I was running the BRP BGB as my base system, with my Glorantha fantasy setting running a RQ3/BGB mix. Seemed to work well.

I started on RQ2 in the early 80s and jumped to RQ3 in the late 80s, it just seemed like the way to go. I grasped the RQ3 rules better as I was in my mid to late teens by then, so I didn't really reflect on what may have been lost in RQ2 during that transition. I had always assumed that the RQ3 mechanics were a progression from RQ2, rather than a sidestep. I knew hat a lot of Gloranthan richness had been lost, but mechanically I simply assumed RQ3 had been a logical successor.

I do prefer the slim size of RQ2 as opposed to later publications. However, this has also been achieved with more contemporary BRP systems, look at Renaissance for example, and also OpenQuest Basic, and perhaps even GORE.

When the BGB and MW lines were discontinued, I knew there was an effort to streamline the systems for the sake of consistency. I originally assumed that it would be a system consistent with CoC 7E, considering it will be a flagship game.

I was happily surprised when it was announced that RQ6 would be involved in the Glorantha line. It didn't make commercial sense to have a system rivalling CoC 7E, yet I was happy all the same.

Now it kinda looks murky again.

So what are the obvious benefits of basing a contempoary rule set on RQ2 as opposed to game mechanics from RQ6, or even RQ3 and the recently shelved BGB?

(I ask this in all honesty, as I want to know what the attraction is)

Edited by Mankcam
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" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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2 hours ago, Vile said:

This is all good as far as I can see. RQ2 back in print, a RQ2-like new game from Chaosium going forward (not that I'm likely to pick up much new Glorantha material, I moved on 20 years ago), and a completely independent game from The Design Mechanism to support their other existing lines Luther Arkwright. This clearly means Loz and Pete will be pumping out their own material much faster than would have been the case if they had to split their time between Chaosium and TDM. I sincerely hope there is not a drop in market visibility because of the loss of the RuneQuest name, but that was coming anyway. Fans have their part to play in spreading the word.

With the new Chaosium management's familiarity with RQ2 and Glorantha I think it's actually a logical choice for them. Plus, with the RQ2 Kickstarter and the new RQ2-derived RQ7 and BRP new life has been breathed into a great game - I love RQ2 and that's not a nostalgia thing because I have used it continuously for games in every imaginable setting. I very much doubt there will be a splitting of the fan base, and if it is, so what - some people like vanilla, some like chocolate, most like both. This is consumer choice! :) 

It does mean that I'll be buying more RPG products that I'd hoped. :mellow:

I'll have to process this a bit more, but to me there is irritation on a number of fronts:

1) I feel that Pete and Loz are getting screwed over. They've done more to promote the RuneQuest brand than anyone over the last few years, and I don't think that is being acknowledged at all by Chaosimoon.

2) It feels like we are about to just get yet another new version of the RQ/BRP rules. How many is that now? Moreover, if we are getting a new version of the old version of the game again, it simply feels like 35 years of development has been for nothing. Flatly, I don't want to play in a game that was cutting edge 35 years ago, but still clings to table-referencing combat and the like. I want to play with a system that has evolved.to where we are at now.  

3) If it's a case of needing to use RQ2 style rules to get the most out of Guide to Glorantha, well, I'm starting to think that perhaps the easiest thing now is just to sell up  my GtG and be done with it. My initial draw to the RQ system was actually towards the historical/mythic settings.  I've been holding out for the RQ6 rules to give me an intro into this setting with a ruleset I wanted for a solid couple of years, but not at the expense of the historical settings. I feel messed around on the matter.

4) There hasn't been any clear communication from Chaosimoon about this situation - just communication from the third parties affected. Once again, I feel like the customers are not being communicated with well, and my gaming preferences are in limbo.  

Edited by TrippyHippy
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Hey all - just a few quick comments before I head to the airport to head home:

We are big believers in starting from first principles whenever we do a book, and in the case of RuneQuest, RQ2 is that foundational document. We are then building up from RQ2, incorporating concepts learned from RQ3, RQ6, Pendragon Pass, Call of Cthulhu, Ringworld, the Epic System, and the RQ Dragon Pass campaign (what? haven't heard of the last two? That's because they were never published!). Sandy Petersen and Ken Rolston are both involved with this project, as is the entire Moon Design team, and as with the Guide to Glorantha, we are working with twenty years of Greg's design notes.
RuneQuest incorporates many elements of RQ6 (combined Attack & Parry skills, opposed rolls, combat styles such as Sword and Shield, hit locations instead of general hit points, 100%+ scalability, actions, adding two characteristics to determine the starting values of skills, etc) while keeping the rhythm of RQ2 combat. Because RuneQuest is NOT generic, we avoid many elements of RQ3 that its own writers considered to be significant design flaws.
Finally, an important design goal for us is that the rules system needs to be integrated with the setting and should reinforce and reward the player's interaction with the setting.
We'll be sharing design aspects of the new RuneQuest in due course - but you are going to need to have a little faith in the ability of the Moon Design team (with lots of input from Ken, Sandy, and others) to finish writing the new RuneQuest.

Edited by Jeff
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1 hour ago, Jeff said:


RuneQuest incorporates many elements of RQ6 (combined Attack & Parry skills, opposed rolls, combat styles such as Sword and Shield, hit locations instead of general hit points, 100%+ scalability, actions, adding two characteristics to determine the starting values of skills, etc) while keeping the rhythm of RQ2 combat. 

Well this certainly doesn't sound anywhere near as grim as the news was earlier with RQ Glorantha being pretty much predominantly based on RQ2 mechanics.

The adding two characteristics for skill bases certainly appeals to me, as do much of the design elements mentioned such as combat styles, hit locations, etc. Sounds more like a scaled-down version of RQ6 than it does a RQ2 clone. Which is not a bad thing, especially if it can be loosely compatible with RQ6. 

Well I will be the first to say this is much more welcome news than what greeted me this morning! 

Edited by Mankcam
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" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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