"A foundational document for RPGs"

[MOB]

 

RuneQuest is one of two foundational documents for pretty much every fantasy RPG. AD&D and RQ2. There are level-based games and skill-based games, the X and the Y axis of game design, if you will. From the interplay between those two sets of rules you get just about every game, which generally fall into two camps: d20 (D&D and its many successors) and d100 (RQ, the many variants of Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying system, and beyond).

When it first appeared on the scene in 1978 RuneQuest was quickly recognized as revolutionary. Using a skill-based percentile dice system, it cast aside many of the approaches most other games took: no character classes, no experience points, no levels, and far fewer restrictions on how weapons, armor, and spells could be used. As Steve Perrin says in his essay about the original development of the game, "characters could do anything".

Distinctively, RuneQuest also had a rich, internally-consistent and stunningly original fantasy setting built right into the rules, Greg Stafford's mythic world of Glorantha.

RuneQuest directly influenced (or was even the progenitor) of many other games, including Call of Cthulhu, 3rd Edition D&D, GURPS, World of Darkness, the Morrowwind and King of Dragon Pass computer games, Pendragon, Ars Magic, and many more.

Jeff and I talk about this and more in the this week's episode of the Tales of Mythic Adventure podcast: http://www.glorantha.com/tales-of-mythic-adventure-episode-17-a-foundational-document-for-rpgs

[threedeesix]

While I wouldn't want to diminish the part that RQ played on the history of role playing games and agree that it did play a huge part. I would like to point out that Steve Jackson's GURPS followed a different design path, one that predates RQ by as much as one year.

GURPS was an evolution of Steve Jackson's earlier The Fantasy Trip from 1980, which was an expansion of both Wizard (1978) and Melee (1977).

As Melee predated RQ by a year, and included things that were later incorporated by RQ, I would question who got the idea from whom, as Melee had such innovations as non-level based advancement, non-escalating hit points, armor that reduces damage, skill rolls, and a tactical combat system.

Again, I love RuneQuest and all things BRP, but like many of the users on this forum, I was there and remember all to well the early days of the hobby, and just wanted to point out this piece of history.

Rod

[g33k]

I have to agree that the big-pool-of-points character systems is yet another axis of design/style.  I think "Champions" was the foundational game, in 1981?  Or was TFT sufficiently big-pool-of-points-y to feel similar (I never played it, tho it was "on my radar")?  The way "points" built everything -- from raw characteristics like Strength and Intelligence on to super-powers -- certainly felt unique the first time I met it in Champs!

When you look at, a modern game -- say, for example, "Eclipse Phase" -- you point to the d% mechanics and skill-driven characters as "runequest-y" and the big-pool-of-points character-design as "champions-y".  GURPS, I think, took a big piece of the HERO approach in how it evolved from TFT...

Edited December 18, 2015 by g33k

[dragonewt]

Did Classic Traveller (1977) use character classes, or were career paths just a template for creating a character?

[threedeesix]

The professions in Traveller were just templates to begin your game. Actually, the original Traveller "little black books" didn't even have a character advancement system after the game began if I recall. All character advancement took place during character creation and there was no actual change once play began. It's been a while however, so I could be wrong.

Rod

Edited December 18, 2015 by threedeesix

[Sean_RDP]

I always thought RoleMaster was an interesting reflection of the early styles of rpg, though I say that now not having played it back in the day. I picked up RM in the 90s and enjoyed it enough that some of it has come back into the design for my own games. There are definitely elements of both D&D and RQ (and some others) in there.

[threedeesix]

I played my fair share of RoleMaster and MERP back in the day. I did enjoy the level of lethality it offered, something not common to other level based systems.

I still remember a poster for RoleMaster in the local hobby shop, it read:

RoleMaster; Because Fighters Don't Kill Dragons... Criticals Kill Dragons.

Rod

Edited December 18, 2015 by threedeesix

[Baragei]

24 minutes ago, threedeesix said:

RoleMaster; Because Fighters Don't Kill Dragons... Criticals Kill Dragons.

As I remember, they did a decent number on PC's as well.

[MOB]

6 hours ago, threedeesix said:

The professions in Traveller were just templates to begin your game. Actually, the original Traveller "little black books" didn't even have a character advancement system after the game began if I recall. All character advancement took place during character creation and there was no actual change once play began. It's been a while however, so I could be wrong.

Rod

Traveller also introduced the interesting concept that absolutely every player character was a retiree or pensioner!

[Simlasa]

7 hours ago, threedeesix said:

Actually, the original Traveller "little black books" didn't even have a character advancement system after the game began if I recall. All character advancement took place during character creation and there was no actual change once play began. It's been a while however, so I could be wrong.

I think there might have been some mechanism for improving skills... but it was very limited. That was something I always liked about Traveller... doing away with the whole scheme of mechanical advancement and instead favoring the gathering of in-game resources and reputations and contacts. The zero-to-hero approach is kind of overplayed for my tastes.

[Questbird]

8 hours ago, MOB said:

Traveller also introduced the interesting concept that absolutely every player character was a retiree or pensioner!

Well, you had a choice of playing a pensioner with several skills or a strapping young person with just a few. Also you could kiss goodbye your chance of getting a starship if you retired young.

[nDervish]

8 hours ago, Simlasa said:

I think there might have been some mechanism for improving skills... but it was very limited. That was something I always liked about Traveller... doing away with the whole scheme of mechanical advancement and instead favoring the gathering of in-game resources and reputations and contacts. The zero-to-hero approach is kind of overplayed for my tastes.

There was a system early on, but, like the initial character creation, it was based on taking 4 years to increase a skill by one level.  Something like pick a skill to work on (you can only be working on one skill at a time) and it immediately improves by 1, and then 4 years later the increase becomes permanent.  If you stop training that skill for any reason (including, but not limited to, developing another skill), the bonus is lost and the 4-year clock resets to zero.  I think there may have also been some kind of roll (vs. EDU, maybe?) at the end of the 4 years before it becomes permanent and, if you blow the roll, you have to wait another 4 years to try again.  Obviously, this is from memory and I may have gotten some house rules mixed in with the real ones.

I'm not sure whether that was in the original three LBBs, though.  I think it may have been added in the next GDW release.  (Traveller Compendium, I think it was called?  A condensation of the 3 LBBs into a single 8.5x11 book.)  This was all too many years ago for all the details to still stick...

[Rhialto the Marvellous]

On quick inspection it's not in the rules until The Traveller Book, the one-volume rulebook of 8.5" x 11" you refer to.

[Baulderstone]

2 hours ago, Rhialto the Marvellous said:

On quick inspection it's not in the rules until The Traveller Book, the one-volume rulebook of 8.5" x 11" you refer to.

Yes. People often think of The Traveller Book as a collection of the original LBBs, but it has its differences. It also makes a lot of changes to center the game specifically on the Imperium, whereas the original books are more generic in nature. 

As I started gaming in 1983, I first encountered percentile skills in Star Frontiers and various Palladium games. I still managed to be impressed with the way BRP did it when I discovered Call of Cthulhu, even though it's a weaker implementation of the idea due to lacking training rules. It's seemed odd to me as CoC is such a downtime heavy game. We'd usually have months between run-ins with the Mythos to preserve plausibility. Of course, recovery times were a factor too. I spent a few months in a coma after my first adventure thanks to that damnable Walter Corbitt.

[Uristocles]

Love it guys!

(I wonder if there's anything that can be done to troubleshoot the weird clipping/static sound on the podcast recordings?)

[Rangos]

On 12/18/2015 at 6:05 AM, ReignDragonSMH said:

I always thought RoleMaster was an interesting reflection of the early styles of rpg,........ There are definitely elements of both D&D and RQ (and some others) in there.

Agreed.  I played both RQ & RoleMaster from the mid 80's.  RoleMaster was great for bridging between RQ & D&D, it offered the level based structure from D&D with the skill flexibility that is an inherent part of RQ..........not sure where the background options came from though. 

Anyway, another great podcast from Jeff & MOB.

 

[Mankcam]

On 2015-12-19 at 6:47 AM, threedeesix said:

I played my fair share of RoleMaster and MERP back in the day. I did enjoy the level of lethality it offered, something not common to other level based systems.

Yeah, between RM's crit tables and RQ Hit Locations, not many other systems even came close to being plausible to me for a good many years. Actually when I think of 'Old School Grognard RPGs', I know the rest of the world thinks about Basic D&D and AD&D (sometimes also T&T and Traveller), but I tend to think of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, MERP/RM and RQ2; they're my old school games

Edited May 11, 2017 by Mankcam

[fmitchell]

On 12/18/2015 at 0:10 PM, g33k said:

Or was TFT sufficiently big-pool-of-points-y to feel similar (I never played it, tho it was "on my radar")?

It had a small pool of points: for humans, 32, split between ST, DX, and IQ with a minimum of 8 in each.  Wizards could take up to their IQ in spells; spells also had a minimum IQ, somewhat like Tunnels & Trolls.  Full TFT added Talents, which were (in modern terms) a mix of skills and feats; mechanically they worked like spells for non-wizards except some took up two or three IQ.  In some ways TFT was more like the system in Fighting Fantasy books, co-written by the U.K. Steve Jackson.

I played a full TFT campaign in my first year in college.  It was fun, although some parts were a bit broken, e.g. you could "see through the eyes" of illusions so I used illusions of birds to scout out an entire freaking castle.  It betrays its roots as a skirmish-level wargame: detailed rules for combat, virtually none for social interaction.  Still, it's the first RPG I really played, though -- the White Box just confused me, AD&D was a chore, BD&D seemed easier but too limited -- and along with Traveller it's my old school.  (I missed RuneQuest until college.)

BTW, the rights to TFT belong to the former owner of Metagaming, who dropped off the grid, so SJ Games will never republish it.  Dark City Games makes TFT-compatible solo modules and a free TFT retro-clone that replaces Talents with a more conventional skill system.  I don't know if I'd ever run it again, even as a one-shot, although talking about it makes me really nostalgic.  Maybe if I tinkered with the skill rules and replaced hex-based movement with Fate-style zones ...

Honestly, though, I have trouble enough selling d100 to the whippersnappers I game with these days.

[TrippyHippy]

To me, the 'foundation document' really still has to be the original D&D (brown box rules) as we can see from the original stat base (Strength, Dexterity, etc) which was largely adopted by other games. Traveller and RuneQuest then built the second wave of systems which established pretty much most of what went down for the decades that followed. You could argue that The Fantasy Trip established another fundamental idea in the Points Buy system, which reached fruition with Champions. I'd argue that another alternative path was established with the Amber Diceless RPG, which was very minimalistic and a prototype 'indie narrativist' system although this is disputable (as is everything else). For me, the genealogy of games after RQ includes:

RuneQuest --> Stormbringer, Call of Cthulhu, Worlds of Wonder (BRP et al), Paranoia (though not it's most recent edition), WFRP (and following on Dark Heresy et al.), Pendragon, Ars Magica, Vampire: The Masquerade et al., HeroQuest, D&D 3rd Edition, d20/OGL/Pathfinder et al, Delta Green, Kult, Unknown Armies, Aquelarre, etc.

That's quite significant.

Traveller's influence was more subtle in some ways, but it can be seen in GURPS, Cyberpunk and Shadowrun amongst others and even things like Fiasco to a degree (all those generation tables). And it's not all about system, either. The seminal idea in RuneQuest is really about the human connection to myths and mysticism. The World of Darkness games (Vampire, et al) attempts the same idea through a modern context, but the influence is clear. The seminal idea in Traveller is the notion that the universe can be codified and explored - hence it's clear connection to GURPS for me.

Edited January 3, 2016 by TrippyHippy

[Baulderstone]

19 hours ago, TrippyHippy said:

RuneQuest --> Stormbringer, Call of Cthulhu, Worlds of Wonder (BRP et al), Paranoia (though not it's most recent edition), WFRP (and following on Dark Heresy et al.), Pendragon, Ars Magica, Vampire: The Masquerade et al., HeroQuest, D&D 3rd Edition, d20/OGL/Pathfinder et al, Delta Green, Kult, Unknown Armies, Aquelarre, etc.

If we are casting that wide a net, I would throw Reign in there as well. It's core mechanic is very different, but I felt a lot of philosophical similarities to RuneQuest. It's schools of magic are very tied to either societies or philosophies within the world, rather than just being bags of PC power. Both the schools of magic and the company rules encourage PCs that have a place within the world rather than being vagabonds. Mechanically, it does have hit locations as well. I've never heard anyone else mention it, but the game had a real RuneQuest vibe for me when I read it. 

[g33k]

I wouldn't put Ars Magica on the list of "mostly" RQ-derived games...

Clearly having character-advancement be by way of individual skills, that are individually improved, is entirely RQ-like!  Similarly the broad use of a signle skills-mechanism, as opposed to different funky little subsystems (like when some "Thief Skills" were rolled percentile in AD&D).

But ArM supposdly began life as the suite of D&D House Rules for one particular RPG-playing group. It's "wizards the way they are supposed to be" (in a contrast to D&D's adventure/experience model of wizards getting better... despite D&D wizards being the "learned sage in the tower" type of wizard)..  Many spells are clearly just ported D&D spells, and "classes" are seen in the Magi/Companions/Grogs division, and the 15 "Arts" are more thematically-akin to AD&D "Schools/Spheres" of magic (Enchantment/ Illusion/ Evocation/ etc) than to anything RQish.

It's true there are no "levels" per se, but ArM's d10+Stat+Skill is much closer, mechanically, to D&D's d20+StatModifier+Skill, than to the BRP-derived d% mechanics; ArM's pyramidal XP table is much more D&D-like than it is like a BRP skill-check system.

It'd be hard to deny some RQ influence... but overall, I have to consider it more D&D-derived than RQ-derived... but of course, there's a tremendous amount of originality, too!  8^)

 

[Baulderstone]

1 minute ago, g33k said:

It's true there are no "levels" per se, but ArM's d10+Stat+Skill is much closer, mechanically, to D&D's d20+StatModifier+Skill, than to the BRP-derived d% mechanics

You have your gaming history backwards here. ArM is a product of the '80s, around the time that AD&D 2nd came out. It was more than a decade before D&D 3e began using the d20+StatMod+Skill method. In fact, ArM was co-designed by Jonathan Tweet, who went on to be lead designer on D&D 3e.  What you are citing here is a case of ArM influencing D&D, not the other way around. 

[g33k]

@Baulderrstone,

I was afraid I was being too glib, there; that'l larn me!

It's true that D&D 3e formalized it at "d20 + StatMod + SkillLevel" (and in fact JoT stated that he thought that D&D3's "d20" ruleset (largely his design) was more derived from ArM (and would have been a natural "ArM Next" if he had designed that) than AD&D)..  Nevertheless, AD&D 1e used the same concept with d20 roll + StatMod + <some skill/level number, or sometimes vs-some-level-dependent-number, which is mechanically-equivalent> .  I maintain that the ArM way to figure a skill-roll (not skill-improvement, but skill-use) is (much!) more akin to AD&D1e than it is to any BRP game up until then, and that ArM's pyramidal skill-improvement table looks more like a D&D "XP/level" table, than anything BRPesqiue.

 

[TrippyHippy]

The authors of Ars Magica, Mark Rein-Hagen and Jonathan Tweet have both cited RuneQuest as a major influence on the design of Ars Magica in various interviews, blogs and the like. The system and setting deviate, obviously, but the notion of 'Mythic Earth' and other ideas have anticedents in RuneQuest ('Splat' affiliations like Houses/Cults for example, or the iconisation of magic as in Arts/Runes). Both were long term RQ GMs before they embarked on their own games. The main system designer was Jonathan Tweet who was critical of the limitations of a roll-under system, and wanted to try something different for Ars Magica.

Jonathan Tweet's own words:

"I never could have done D&D 3E without a lot of pro experience. RuneQuest in particular was a big influence on me and my design approach. I'm very happy with how well the gaming audience has responded to my work on 3E.

For years I thought that D&D was a bad game, and I wanted my games to be better. Working on 3E gave the the opportunity to see what is actually really strong about the game. I used to hate hit points. Now I think they are good for play. With 3E, we could eliminate what I disliked most about the game and emphasize what was good about it. And we really played up the D&D feel and heritage."

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/29o071/i_am_jonathan_tweet_i_was_a_designer_on_dungeons/

Edited January 4, 2016 by TrippyHippy