RQ - "one of the Great Games, a defining thing for our hobby"

[MOB]

Ron Edwards, influential game design theorist, Diana Jones award winner, co-founder of The Forge (and recent emigrant to Sweden) is currently running an on line RuneQuest Classic game, posting the videos of the sessions and writing up his thoughts. Three sessions in, Ron describes RuneQuest as "one of the Great Games, a defining thing for our hobby, and still one of its most ambitious on a number of levels".

You can see more about these sessions at Ron's site, Adept Play. (Ian Cooper, Chaosium's line editor for HeroQuest, is one of the players.)

http://adeptplay.com/games/runequest

Another good quote from Ron: "Cults of Terror is a not merely a landmark in role-playing history, it's a giant. Coupled with the rules it was written to support, RuneQuest 1980, and the supplement that immediately preceded it, Cults of Prax, it established a new-and-different bar for play which defined "I play RuneQuest" into almost its own sector and subculture to the present day."

Edited February 27, 2018 by MOB

[styopa]

Entirely agree.

Don't get me wrong; D&D is a great game, and deserves its place as the 'default' RPG in the constellation of alternatives.

But RuneQuest/Glorantha brought so *many* novel ideas, concepts, approaches to the RPG table it's fundamental in its own right:

- organic character development (vs. classes)

- a world that wasn't a pastische of Medieval Europe

- damage reduced by armor

- location hit points

- skills based on stats (or modified by them, anyway) 

- MP based magic (vs Vancian)

(etc.)

 

When someone says "I play Runequest" what does that mean to you?

To me, it means in so many words "I want to have a more realistic system" and "I want a gameworld that feels thought-through; something other then Europe-with-magic-bolted-on".

 

[simonh]

For it’s time, Cults of Terror was mind blowing. Over in the pages of magazines like White Dwarf players of other games were saying things like ‘you know, would it be a good idea if these monsters had, like, a reason for being bad guys, and a culture or something’, we had to this day the single most groundbreaking in depth dive into the mythology, culture and lives of utterly believable monstrousness born of desperation, outrage, fear and heartbreaking pain.

Simon Hibbs

Edited February 28, 2018 by simonh

[Psullie]

For me all the great games were the ones where the rules encouraged play that reflected it's own universe. Call of Cthulhu for instance, while BRP at it's core and just enough nuace to make it work. WEG's Star Wars, R Talsorian's Castle Falkenstien and GDW's Traveller were in my opinion all landmark games for the mechanics capturing the spirit. 

D&D today holds little resemblance to it's earlier editions, one could argue that it has become a polymorph RPG that reflects the trend. However it was always vanilla, a great staple and east to get into. Every time I D&D is mentioned on TV I smile, because of it's success other games like RuneQuest will continue.

One last though, RQ's first great innovation was thinking differently about RPG's. Glorantha, as rich sand box to play in was the second. Little has changed in that regard in 50 years (compared to D&D) the core is still very much the same which is great. This new renaissance for Glorantha materials and RQ is great, the new Sourcebook is fabulous so perhaps developing our favourite lozenge as a system free world is the next innovation.

Let's place nostalgia aside and look to making these new products something bloggers will refer to in 2055, what do you see as the what makes RQ/Glorantha work today?

[g33k]

3 hours ago, Psullie said:

... RQ's first great innovation was thinking differently about RPG's. Glorantha, as rich sand box to play in was the second...

Chronologically backwards, fwiw...  Glorantha predates RQ (or RPG's in general, if you go back to GS' earliest stuff).

[Richard S.]

6 hours ago, styopa said:

But RuneQuest/Glorantha brought so *many* novel ideas, concepts, approaches to the RPG table it's fundamental in its own right:

- organic character development (vs. classes)

- a world that wasn't a pastische of Medieval Europe

- damage reduced by armor

- location hit points

- skills based on stats (or modified by them, anyway) 

- MP based magic (vs Vancian)

Valid points, but me being a stickler for accuracy I'm going to point out that organic character development, damage reduced by armor, and (technically) mp based magic were originally introduced by Melee and Tunnels & Trolls. Still, RQ certainly helped promote those ideas.

[g33k]

26 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Valid points, but me being a stickler for accuracy I'm going to point out that organic character development, damage reduced by armor, and (technically) mp based magic were originally introduced by Melee and Tunnels & Trolls. Still, RQ certainly helped promote those ideas.

Microgame3 (which was effectively Melee1e) actually came out after RQ1; and was only a combat-ruleset not a full "RPG".

If we're stickling.

Gotta give you T&T for armor as damage-reduction, though!  But it's classy, unlike RQ, so it fails the "organic" claim.  Don't recall the magic system, sorry!

[Richard S.]

3 minutes ago, g33k said:

Microgame3 (which was effectively Melee1e) actually came out after RQ1; and was only a combat-ruleset not a full "RPG".

If we're stickling.

Gotta give you T&T for armor as damage-reduction, though!  But it's classy, unlike RQ, so it fails the "organic" claim.  Don't recall the magic system, sorry!

Ah, I was pretty sure it came out before, my bad. T&T's magic system was strength-point based, which is functionally the same as magic points.

[Revilo Divad Of Dyoll]

14 hours ago, g33k said:

Gotta give you T&T for armor as damage-reduction, though!  But it's classy, unlike RQ, so it fails the "organic" claim.  Don't recall the magic system, sorry!

I don't think any system in which the best spell is "Take that, You Fiend" is classy :-)  Or did you mean that it uses character classes?

[simonh]

5 hours ago, Revilo Divad Of Dyoll said:

I don't think any system in which the best spell is "Take that, You Fiend" is classy :-)  Or did you mean that it uses character classes?

Oh come on, T&T is pure class. Just check the dedication at the very beginning of RQ2.

Simon Hibbs

[g33k]

6 hours ago, Revilo Divad Of Dyoll said:

I don't think any system in which the best spell is "Take that, You Fiend" is classy :-)  Or did you mean that it uses character classes?

"Classy" as in the opposite of "classless".    

An' don' you go dissin' that line -- "Take that, you fiend!" is a classic line!                 

 

But it's wandering a bit far OT from the OP ...    BTW, is there anyone else feeling a bit envious about that game?  I mean... geez... Ron Edwards & Ian Cooper ...