RQG—New RuneQuest edition to be known as RUNEQUEST: ROLEPLAYING IN GLORANTHA

[Beornvig]

1 hour ago, Yelm's Light said:

I tend to prefer Griffin Mountain for that very reason; it gives the raw materials for scenario-building without everyone and his brother knowing the particulars of the campaign I'm running.  More room for creativity, too.

Heh... I pulled out my TotRM's to do a little refreshing on things Praxian, and what do I see at the top of Beornvig's desk stack?  #14.

Pure gold man, pure gold.  Don't forget part deux of Prax in TotRM #15.

And I hear you regarding Griffin Mountain, I'm warming up to it the further along I get.  But you have to realize we're crazy, and most people will find something like Borderlands a more accessible way to get in to a given region of Glorantha.  And if you don't have Borderlands in its "Gloranthan Classics" incarnation, snag it.  I believe they still have softbacks in print.  Getting Plunder and Runemasters included is a nice perk.

[Yelm's Light]

3 hours ago, Beornvig said:

Pure gold man, pure gold.  Don't forget part deux of Prax in TotRM #15.

And I hear you regarding Griffin Mountain, I'm warming up to it the further along I get.  But you have to realize we're crazy, and most people will find something like Borderlands a more accessible way to get in to a given region of Glorantha.  And if you don't have Borderlands in its "Gloranthan Classics" incarnation, snag it.  I believe they still have softbacks in print.  Getting Plunder and Runemasters included is a nice perk.

Not having Part deux is like the ice cream cone without the sprinkles, nuts, and chocolate dip.

Oddly enough, Borderlands is the only one of the Classics books I don't have (and never got around to getting the original).  I had both Plunder and Runemasters before they were unceremoniously waterlogged in a garage flood, but I don;t miss them all that much.  I'm good at coming up with maguffins and NPC's.

[Roko Joko]

15 hours ago, styopa said:

I guess it depends on your definition of "official"?  [snip]  Or does the "canonical" world of Glorantha now begin with the Guide?

Moon Design defined Glorantha canon here: Canon and YGWV.  

The article is a few years old but it's still just about definitive, based on a few public comments I've seen since then.

[Guest Vile Traveller]

4 hours ago, Beornvig said:

And if you don't have Borderlands in its "Gloranthan Classics" incarnation, snag it.  I believe they still have softbacks in print.

You can still get the PDFs: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?keywords=gloranthan+classics&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=

Edited April 8, 2017 by Vile

[Mankcam]

15 minutes ago, Roko Joko said:

Moon Design defined Glorantha canon here: Canon and YGWV.  The article is a few years old but it's still just about definitive, based on a few public comments I've seen since then.

I think all this still pretty much holds up as canon, although I did read a while ago that Moon Design may prefer for about half of the art in the Sartar books to be replaced with conceptual art more consistent with the contemporary portrayal of Orlanthi. However I suspect the actual text in those books remains canon.

Although not on that list, I think that the same would go for most of the RQ2 Gloranthan Classics series and the RQ3 Gloranthan Renaissance titles. It would be more that some of the art direction would change rather than most of the actual text.

Edited April 8, 2017 by Mankcam

[d(sqrt(-1))]

 

I'm looking forward to new RQ. However I really don't like the cover much - the lizard is fine but the warrior is FAR too clean and tidy.

[jajagappa]

17 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Plus, I believe it was mentioned in some of the ads for RQ3 that AH wanted to shift the emphasis away from Glorantha and make RQ a more generic game that could be adapted to handle other settings

This was very clear when RQ3 came out.  Generic players book, generic GM book, generic characters, boring Cormac's saga (where did Rurik go!!!).  And the first materials that came out were Monster Coliseum, Vikings, and Land of Ninja (and annoying boxed sets of character sheets only).  And then when Glorantha material came out, it was repackaged from RQ2.

[Atgxtg]

5 hours ago, jajagappa said:

This was very clear when RQ3 came out.  Generic players book, generic GM book, generic characters, boring Cormac's saga (where did Rurik go!!!).  And the first materials that came out were Monster Coliseum, Vikings, and Land of Ninja (and annoying boxed sets of character sheets only).  And then when Glorantha material came out, it was repackaged from RQ2.

I pretty much agree with you, although I didn't mind Cormac's saga that much. It was the playtest for RQ Vikings- which IMO was probably the best of the non-Gloranthan RQ3 supplements. 

I think what RQ3 desparely needed was some sort of setting to work with. All the RQ2ers were used to and expected it. I was hoping that we might had gotten a Mythic Europe book. I didn't mind expanding RQ beyond Gloratha, but I did mind that Glorantha kinda got put on hold. Most of the early RQ3 supplements were either reprints of RQ2 stuff, or were so all encompassing that they lacked the level of detail that made RQ2 great.

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

It was the playtest for RQ Vikings- which IMO was probably the best of the non-Gloranthan RQ3 supplements.

I found Vikings and Land of Ninja to have good material, they just weren't Glorantha, which is what I really wanted.

[Khedrac]

8 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I think what RQ3 desparely needed was some sort of setting to work with. All the RQ2ers were used to and expected it. I was hoping that we might had gotten a Mythic Europe book. I didn't mind expanding RQ beyond Gloratha, but I did mind that Glorantha kinda got put on hold. Most of the early RQ3 supplements were either reprints of RQ2 stuff, or were so all encompassing that they lacked the level of detail that made RQ2 great.

I think that may have depended on what you already knew about Glorantha...

For me (in the UK) what complicated things was that the core Glorthantha information (i.e. what was in book 5 of the Deluxe box - things like the Chaos Feature table) wasn't readily available.

The primary available version of RQ3 in the UK was the Games Workshop re-book which was basically Deluxe RQ without the Glorantha bits.  The Deluxe box was available, but it was rare and it was not obvious that you needed it.

At school we playing in Fantasy Europe, and didn't have any problems.  At University (where there was a running group Glorantha campaign) my first GM used his own world maps for the initial major campaign arc (because he didn't have access to a Glorantha map) and then threw us a "200-year jump" to put us in the common Glorantha at the end of it (as now he did).  About the only genuine Gloranthan material used for that first camapign arc was the deities - because Gods of Glorantha was available.

People have complained that it didn't really give the "feel" of Glorantha because the cult descriptions were too short.  I would revise this - it didn't give the feel of Greg's Glorantha; for those of us who had no other Glorantha material it gave a definite wonderful new and different feel that to us was "Glorantha", there had been nothing like it before (if you had never seen 2nd Ed.).

The other early Glorantha products were of much less use, Elder Secrets definitely had interesting bits, but most of it was only of limited applicability to any given campaign (starting with the point it makes that if the party gains decent contacts with any elder race the others will avoid them - means you only get to use one section at a time).  The Genertela box had huge amounts of brief information (the main thing we used it for were starting skill bases) but a number of them (e.g. mine) had a large block of pages missing with another block re-printed in their place (thankfully a friend was able to give my photocpoies of the pages from his book - and if anyone tried to sue of copyright grounds I will point out that I have a fully legal right to those pages from my copy, I just don't actually have the originals). Etc.

I now have a copy of book 5 (I managed to buy Deluxe RQ second hand, though it came in 2 boxes not 1), and I would say that publishing the standard RQ without the Glorantha book was a major impediment to developing Glorantha later, but those of us who were new to RQ were quite happy gaming in Mythic Europe.

Look also at AD&D at the time - Forgotten Realms was coming out, Greyhawk was out, but unless you read Dragon you had no information beyond the boxed set. Most games operated in the DM's own creation.  Mythic Europe had some huge advantages as a world - everyone had a fair idea of the map and what the countries might be!

Edited April 9, 2017 by Khedrac

[Arnold-C]

On ‎08‎.‎04‎.‎2017 at 1:56 AM, Atgxtg said:

Plus, I believe it was mentioned in some of the ads for RQ3 that AH wanted to shift the emphasis away from Glorantha and make RQ a more generic game that could be adapted to handle other settings- specifically so that they could sell it as more of a fantasy RPG. There was a Glorantha book in the RQ boxed set, and they did reprint a lot of RQ2 Glorantha stuff for RQ3, but I think that was more to keep the existing fanbase on board while they shot for a bigger market. 

 

 

21 hours ago, jajagappa said:

This was very clear when RQ3 came out.  Generic players book, generic GM book, generic characters, boring Cormac's saga (where did Rurik go!!!).  And the first materials that came out were Monster Coliseum, Vikings, and Land of Ninja (and annoying boxed sets of character sheets only).  And then when Glorantha material came out, it was repackaged from RQ2.

From my POV it would have been more the question what Chaosium wanted, rather than Avalon Hill. If you take a look at the copyright pages of the Deluxe RQ3 booklets, they were written and edited inhouse, and even the copyright for the published material stayed with Chaosium Inc. IMHO it's a bit too easy to blame AH all the way for the weaknesses and glitches RQ3 had.

At that time, the development of a generic and fully interchangeable rules system would have make sense, if you look at the different RPGs Chaosium had given birth: RuneQuest, Stombringer, Call of Cthulhu, Superworld, ElfQuest... all based more or less on the original RQ rules system, but each had slightly different skill starting percentages and methods to define previous experience for the Player Characters f.e. With a true generic basic rules system all you'd have to do is add a background and add or take away something here and there.

Edited April 9, 2017 by Arnold-C

[Atgxtg]

15 hours ago, jajagappa said:

I found Vikings and Land of Ninja to have good material, they just weren't Glorantha, which is what I really wanted.

Land of the Nija looked incomplete to me. I owed Busido, so I was aware of how much more info the author could have put into LoN but didn't. 

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, Arnold-C said:

 

From my POV it would have been more the question what Chaosium wanted, rather than Avalon Hill. If you take a look at the copyright pages of the Deluxe RQ3 booklets, they were written and edited inhouse, and even the copyright for the published material stayed with Chaosium Inc. IMHO it's a bit too easy to blame AH all the way for the weaknesses and glitches RQ3 had.

Chaosium might have wrote it, but I believe AH had the final say on what went out, and they were pushing for something to be more generic fantasy-like D&D. mOst of the glitches (there weren't that many, were there?) you can blame on the designers. And certainly some of the blame should go to Chaosium, especially Greg, for what came out and what didn't. 

[Atgxtg]

8 hours ago, Khedrac said:

I think that may have depended on what you already knew about Glorantha...

That's pretty much true of just about anything. If you aren't aware of or familiar with what came before it, you don't know what's missing. 

The thing with Mythic Europe is that you didn't get enough info on the various Mythic European cultures to do the character justice. Nor did you get enough for Mythic European religions. 

 

[Paid a bod yn dwp]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Land of the Nija looked incomplete to me. I owed Busido, so I was aware of how much more info the author could have put into LoN but didn't. 

Interesting that hadn't occurred to me. So land of Ninja was basically a Busido conversion to RQ3. Is it possible to generalise what was left out? 

Edited April 9, 2017 by Paid a bod yn dwp

[Atgxtg]

42 minutes ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Interesting that hadn't occurred to me. So land of Ninja was basically a Busido conversion to RQ3. Is it possible to generalise what was left out? 

No, it wasn't a "Bushido conversion", far from it. Its just that Bushido covered a lot more. LoN didn't cover the culture, setting, histoy, politics, etc. in much detail. It didn't give much help to GMs. If I were to run an RQ3/LoN campaign now, I'd pull in stuff from other RPGs and probably port over some rules as well. Both Bushido and Sengoku have information on organizations/clans that could be helpful to an LoN campaign.

 

Hmm, you got me thinking. I love the combat options and "crticals" (read special successes) in the Sanguine version of Usagi Yojumbo RPG. They are somewhat similar to what they did with RQ6. It could make for a very interesting RQ Japanese RPG. 

[styopa]

13 hours ago, Khedrac said:

People have complained that it didn't really give the "feel" of Glorantha because the cult descriptions were too short.  I would revise this - it didn't give the feel of Greg's Glorantha; for those of us who had no other Glorantha material it gave a definite wonderful new and different feel that to us was "Glorantha", there had been nothing like it before (if you had never seen 2nd Ed.).

Not to mention the fact that CoP, CoT covered 23 deities in total.

GoG covered 60+ and alluded to what, another 20?  Maybe more in the prospaedia? It's a little harsh to say that a work like that didn't cover them as comprehensively as CoP/CoT when (to do so) would have made it a 300-page tome.

Hell, there were those of us reasonably involved in the Gloranthan community at the time who learned a TON from that publication about gods we'd never even heard of.

PERSONALLY, I think the "official" opinion on AH's tenure is pretty unfair but that's water under the bridge.

The future of RQ is RQG, and we're all healthier and happier looking forward to that, and a general RQ rennaissance under its banner.   Then we all win.

[Atgxtg]

29 minutes ago, styopa said:

Not to mention the fact that CoP, CoT covered 23 deities in total.

GoG covered 60+ and alluded to what, another 20?  Maybe more in the prospaedia? It's a little harsh to say that a work like that didn't cover them as comprehensively as CoP/CoT when (to do so) would have made it a 300-page tome.

So quantity over quality? I don't think it's harsh at all. They didn't have to cover 60+ deities. CoP/CoT might have only covered 23 cults, but they were the the major ones for the area. I'd much rather have one campaign area that is well fleshed out and detailed, than a couple dozen area that get cursory coverage. 

Since RQ3 was supposed to be the continuation of the RQ line, then they should have updated CoP to 3rd edition. It woulnd't have been all that hard for them to do.

[styopa]

3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Since RQ3 was supposed to be the continuation of the RQ line, then they should have updated CoP to 3rd edition. It woulnd't have been all that hard for them to do.

Except we have several folks here specifically complaining that the only stuff AH brought out for Glorantha was reprints of old material...exactly what you're asking for?

[Mankcam]

I think I read that the RQG stat block is near-identical to the RQ2 stat block (obviously without Runes and also without separate A% and P%).

If thats the case, then the RQ2 reprints fron the RQ Classic line can be used as they are for RQG, no need for a new reprint in terms of playability. 

However for some of those RQ2 books it might  be good if republished for RQG with some updated artwork here and there (ie: for example, no 'Renaissance Era' characters in the Pavis book, portray them all consistently looking very 'ancient') 

 

Edited April 10, 2017 by Mankcam

[Flesh Man]

On 08/04/2017 at 8:44 AM, d(sqrt(-1)) said:

 

I'm looking forward to new RQ. However I really don't like the cover much - the lizard is fine but the warrior is FAR too clean and tidy.

Isn't she the wrong skin tone too since there are no white humans in Glorantha.

[Paid a bod yn dwp]

On 8 April 2017 at 8:44 AM, d(sqrt(-1)) said:

 

I'm looking forward to new RQ. However I really don't like the cover much - the lizard is fine but the warrior is FAR too clean and tidy.

If you compare with the final layout on the warm grey, instead of white background, the outfit doesn't look as gleaming white as before. The greys in the white are accentuated by the grey background.  Also there have been some nice subtle adjustments to some of the tones in the armour a slight cooling of colour, and change of contrast. Could be a trick of the eye, but it works very well I think. 

[Atgxtg]

12 hours ago, styopa said:

Except we have several folks here specifically complaining that the only stuff AH brought out for Glorantha was reprints of old material...exactly what you're asking for?

That the old stuff that was needed to run a camaign (and CoP was just that) were brought up to 3rd edition specs, and that new adventures campaign packs would have been released. 

 

In other words just what Chaosium seems to be trying to do with the latest edition. 

[Jeff]

We are doing something quite different - we are keeping the new rules as compatible as possible with the recently released old material AND coming out with new scenarios, campaigns, cult writeups, and more. Keep in mind that it took Avalon Hill 8 years to come out with a new Gloranthan scenario. 

None of this is new criticism of Avalon Hill as a publisher. You can check out MOB's earliest articles in TotRM as a draft blue print for what we are doing. 

[MOB]

7 minutes ago, Jeff said:

We are doing something quite different - we are keeping the new rules as compatible as possible with the recently released old material AND coming out with new scenarios, campaigns, cult writeups, and more. Keep in mind that it took Avalon Hill 8 years to come out with a new Gloranthan scenario. 

None of this is new criticism of Avalon Hill as a publisher. You can check out MOB's earliest articles in TotRM as a draft blue print for what we are doing. 

Ah - The Reaching Moon Megacorp 11 Point Plan for Productivity and Prosperity. Tales #5, 1991.