RQG: how much RQ3 still in it?

[Madrona]

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

That is probably the one thing about RQG that everyone seems to say. I haven't seen it, but apparently it's gorgeous. But does anybody play an RPG because of it's looks? Do they run a campaign because of it? If they do, great.

Yeah holy crap, I've seen more people throw good books aside due to their art, and pick up bad books specifically for their art. Most notably, I've seen people stare in awe over Dark Sun books in used book stores because of how frickin amazing Brom's art is, similarly I've known Dark Heresy and Time of War be bought purely for artwork. Hell, my local gamestore was giving away Cyberpunk v3.0 for free because literally no one would buy it, usually citing how ugly it was. 14 years after they purchased their sample copies that had become so worn with people flipping through it, that they resembled the 'playable' copies of the game they kept on the non purchase shelf. (for in house games)

Also just, Mouseguard. Mouseguard is so far gone into presentation it is hard to reference as rules and you'd be hard pressed to find a gamer who doesn't think its a masterpiece.
I think the only games that don't need presentation are: GURPS and Traveler. GURPS has its reputation and is either a love it or hate it sort of situation. While Traveler is going to appeal to people who are going to want to play traveler, and not appeal to people who won't like to play Traveler. Playing a middle-aged retired spaceguy in a hard sci fi setting doing hard sci fi stuff isn't the most widely appealing thing out there, but it really appeals to its core.

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

Have you not subscribed to get the samples and seen them?

No. I hate to subscribe to anything these days, or buy something online from a  company that I don't already deal with due to the number of ads that come with it. All I've seen is what's been posted here or in reviews. I downloaded the character conversion sheets from Drivethrugrpg, and the "look" just reminded me of D&D 3.0, but hey those were just conversion sheets. 

[Atgxtg]

33 minutes ago, Madrona said:

Yeah holy crap, I've seen more people throw good books aside due to their art, and pick up bad books specifically for their art.

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

Yes, that certainly goes on at my club. I bought into Exalted because of it's art, they even brought out an art book. Numenera looks amazing too, one of the guys in our group got that and ran a campaign, John Carter of Mars - I went in to that because the art looked amazing. New TORG also looks fantastic, I saw it at UKGE, I didn't go for hard copy as I don't have the room, but the PDFs are fantastic. So call me shallow, yes I play RPGs because of how they look. 

Okay, I'm stunned. I guess people really do buy and play RPGs for the art. Maybe it's a generation thing or something. 

[creativehum]

46 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

No. I hate to subscribe to anything these days, or buy something online from a  company that I don't already deal with...

Okay, this explains at least part of my confusion.

The notion that having an RPG on the shelves of a brick and mortar store is vital to promoting it is, in my estimation, off base.

First of of all, most stores will only carry D&D 5th, and if they carry any other games at all it will be a small selection of game lines, and even then not fully supported. 

D&D is simply the go to game across the United States. It is the default, with a vast market share that most other games can't compete with. Assuming that another RPG line is going to get a lot of shelf space, apart from a few unique circumstances in a few specific stores, is a kind of fool's errand as far as I can tell.

Second, while some people don't like to buy products online (which is fine) the fact is most RPG retail that doesn't involve D&D takes place online. There's no way around this.

Between POD (One Book Shelf, Lulu, and others), game companies with their own retail machine (Chaosium, Evil Hate, and countless others), and secondary sales (eBay, Noble Knight, Amazon, and others)... most games are purchased online and shipped to buyers. I'm looking at my RPG shelves right now and I don't think a single book staring back at me right now came home in my hands from a store.

Chaosium is promoting RQG online via their website, social media, RPG forums... which is what you do these days. Because this media will contain links, which will lead to their online store, which leads to sales, which is how most RPGs are (again) sold these days. The media can contain images from the books, quotes from reviews, links to PDF samples and more. The fact that anyone can easily download the free PDF of the RQG Quickstart with a couple of clicks on links and buttons is how promotion works this days, it is now people can sample the game, the images, the text, and so on without ever having to buy anything.

I suspect that none of this is anything that interests you -- which, again, is fine. But especially for new players, which you seem particularly concerned about, this is how players new to RuneQuest and Glorantha will come across the game. Anyone wanting to see "what else is out there" will enter the wilds of the Web, come across forums, game focused groups on Facebook or G+ , blogs, and so on, and stumble across news about RuneQuest Glorantha as they fall down various rabbit holes, see images, read reviews, and see people talking about it with passion.

The RPG hobby is thriving and busy with the exchange of ideas and content online (as well as playing online, which does wonders for people who do not live in gamer-dense areas). And most of the purchasing is happening online as well.

Edited June 14, 2018 by creativehum

[Richard S.]

41 minutes ago, creativehum said:

Okay, this explains at least part of my confusion.

The notion that having an RPG on the shelves of a brick and mortar store is vital to promoting it is, in my estimation, off base.

First of of all, most stores will only carry D&D 5th, and if they carry any other games at all it will be a small selection of game lines, and even then not fully supported. 

D&D is simply the go to game across the United States. It is the default, with a vast market share that most other games can't compete with. Assuming that another RPG line is going to get a lot of shelf space, apart from a few unique circumstances in a few specific stores, is a kind of fool's errand as far as I can tell.

Really? Now I'm not saying that I've been to a lot of stores, but in all the gaming stores I've visited and in the ones I've heard people talk about D&D, while definitely getting the most shelf space, isn't by far the only game they carry. In fact, the total number of non-D&D games in my LGS outnumber D&D by at least five to one, and they're fairly quick to stock up on new big-name releases (that then get bought out in the span of a day by rabid fans). I'm not disputing that most RPG sales happen online, that's probably a fact given this day and age, but there's plenty of ways to buy it in person still.

Edited June 15, 2018 by Richard S.

[Atgxtg]

48 minutes ago, creativehum said:

Okay, this explains at least part of my confusion.

The notion that having an RPG on the shelves of a brick and mortar store is vital to promoting it is, in my estimation, off base.

First of of all, most stores will only carry D&D 5th, and if they carry any other games at all it will be a small selection of game lines, and even then not fully supported. 

D&D is simply the go to game across the United States. It is the default, with a vast market share that most other games can't compete with. Assuming that another RPG line is going to get a lot of shelf space, apart from a few unique circumstances in a few specific stores, is a kind of fool's errand as far as I can tell.

That matched up with my experience.

 

48 minutes ago, creativehum said:

 

Second, while some people don't like to buy products online (which is fine) the fact is most RPG retail that doesn't involve D&D takes place online. There's no way around this.

Hold it. Slight misunderstanding. I do buy products on line, especially RPGs. Mostly at Drivethrug (for PDFs) and Amazon (hardcopy). What I don't do is buy direct from most companies and get on their lists. In Chaosium's case mostly because I'm not a fan of CoC and that was pretty much all the did (other than dust off Strombringer/Elric for a new edition). 

Now as far as what forums (btw I'm on a couple), rabbit holes and such people go to, that's well and good but around here, regardless of what they might be looking at, they are only playing D&D, Pathfinder o some such.   

 

[Unferth]

14 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I'm sure the same will happen with RQG, there will be runes that have loads of spells and runes that have few. There are no sorcery spells that use the Separate technique, to stretch the definition of "rune" a little for example, and lots that use the Water rune. I might put together a spell/rune matrix to see which are the munchkin runes to go for!

I mentioned this earlier, so - dealing only with sorcery:

9 spells can use any rune. Sometimes in conjunction with a required additional rune, such as Stasis for Castback or Truth for Identify Spell.

2 spells (bind and dominate elemental) require any elemental rune.

Air has 3 spells, Darkness 2, Fire/Sky 8, Earth 2, Water 7. Illusion is required for one spell from each element, Movement shows up for some, and Water has both Harmony and Disharmony spells.

Harmony has 2 spells, Disharmony 1. All require either Water or Fertility.

Fertility has 3 spells, Death has 4.

Movement has 4 spells, Stasis has 4. All the Movement spells also require a specific element.

Truth has 10 spells, Illusion has 7. 5 of those Illusion spells are the basic illusion for each of the five senses, each of which requires the appropriate element.

Of the Form runes, Spirit is well represented with 8 spells. Two are bind and dominate elemental, which as noted above require any elemental rune. Man has 3 spells, Beast 1.

Moon has only one spell, Moonfire. It also requires Fire/Sky. So it's not a great choice at present, but is at least ahead of Plant.

From the techniques:

Command has 24 spells. Combine,  19. Dispel has 8, Summon has 10, and Tap has 2. Separate as has been previously mentioned has none.

So the Lhankor Mhy favored rune of Truth and technique of Command are the most represented, probably reflecting the Dragon Pass/Sartarite emphasis of this book. Of the elemental runes, water unlocks the most total spells through its minors of Air and Fire, but in practice I think Fire is more useful in typical adventures.

Though really the need to work each spell's skill up independently looks like a major constraint as well. Unless you can always count on having the spare MP and time to do ritual behavior at sympathetic times and places.

 

Edited June 15, 2018 by Unferth

[Atgxtg]

13 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Really? Now I'm not saying that I've been to a lot of stores, but in all the gaming stores I've visited and in the ones I've heard people talk about D&D, while definitely getting the most shelf space, isn't by far the only game they carry. In fact, the total number of non-D&D games in my LGS outnumber D&D by at least five to one, and they're fairly quick to stock up on new big-name releases (that then get bought out in the span of a day by rabid fans). I'm not disputing that most RPG sales happen online, that's probably a fact given this day and age, but there's plenty of ways to buy it in person still.

That's how my local gaming stores used to be, but now most the stores have gone out of business, and the ones that remain have other things going on, and RPGs have very little shelf space, with only D&D, and Pathfinder getting any sort of shelf space. Heck they are the only games that get any frontage. All my local RPG shops are comic shops and RPGs are just a tiny sideline.

And staff knowledge on RPGs has dropped to the point where special ordering something is risky. If I were to go to a local shop and special order RQG, I'd probably end up with something for MRQ, or the RQ3: Glorantha box set. And they wouldn't understand that it was the wrong item ("Whaddaya mean, It says RuneQuest Glorantha right on the box"). 

[creativehum]

1 hour ago, Richard S. said:

and in the ones I've heard people talk about...

There are some amazing game stores out there with deep shelves. And then there are many, many others that don't. (I live in Los Angeles, and across Los Angeles County I have a mix of both. So I'm not saying the kinds of stores you describe don't exist. I'm saying they are rare -- and awesome.

[creativehum]

50 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Hold it. Slight misunderstanding. I do buy products on line, especially RPGs..

 

Well, then, I'm confused afresh, since several posts back you seemed very concerned that your local game store wouldn't carry RQG material because of the price point. But price point or not, either it matters brick and mortar carries games these days... or it doesn't. And I don't think it does. 

So I don't quite understand your points or concerns about... well... I really don't understand. But it's all good.

[Atgxtg]

18 minutes ago, creativehum said:

Well, then, I'm confused afresh, since several posts back you seemed very concerned that your local game store wouldn't carry RQG material because of the price point. But price point or not, either it matters brick and mortar carries games these days... or it doesn't. And I don't think it does. 

I am concerned. You see if they don't carry it then most likely nobody runs it. The store has a gaming area, and a bulletin board for those looking for groups, and, basically ,if it ain't D&D it ain't getting played around here. So for all appearances, anyway, if the brick & mortar shops don't carry it, a gamer is pretty much on their own as far as getting it or getting a group to play it.Now as a RQ ol' timer, that's been the status quo since the mid 80s. That's what I really hope changes, because otherwise D&D is the only game in town. 

Hope this unconfuses things. 

 

[creativehum]

No. Not at all... because I don't think most people learn about games, talk about games, buy games, or find fellow players in stores.

As noted in my lengthy post above, I believe most of the above is handled online. 

I play a weekly game face-to-face. We play a wide selection of games. We've been playing for two and a half years regularly.

The games are discovered online (kickstarters, blog posts, forums), purchased online (variety of sources), and the group was partially formed online (I invited friends I knew, but also found some players through Meetup.com). 

A local game store greased no wheels and had no impact in facilitating play at all. 

I'm not saying a local game store can't be a wonderful thing, and can't be helpful.

I am saying I have no idea how a local game store is vital or needed for the discovery of games or for the play of new games to occur.

If my group ends up playing RQG it is because I found out about it online... and a local game store will have nothing to do with it. 

(And I'm not into RuneQuest because I played it years ago. I've never played RuneQuest. I would be a new player too! I decided check out Glorantha when Hero Wars was released, which I heard about online. Really, all my interaction with RuneQuest and Glorantha has come about because of things I've read online.)

Edited June 15, 2018 by creativehum

[Gene M.]

My local game store stocked the Coming Storm for some reason, which my wife impulse bought for me because of Glorantha and the cover art. I only play with friends and do not go to the local store. It seems geared more towards Pathfinder and Warhammer, and I'm not into either.  

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, creativehum said:

No. Not at all... because I don't think most people learn about games, talk about games, buy games, or find fellow players in stores.

Things have changed. For us the local gaming store was the place we did all those things. In fact I learned to play gaming with the owners of the local gaming stores, and today half the people in my gaming groups are those I met that way. 

I suppose if you are shopping RPGs online then visuals become much more important. 

 

1 hour ago, Gene M. said:

My local game store stocked the Coming Storm for some reason, which my wife impulse bought for me because of Glorantha and the cover art. I only play with friends and do not go to the local store. It seems geared more towards Pathfinder and Warhammer, and I'm not into either.  

Yeah, that's pretty much what it is like here. My local shop devotes more space to board games now than RPGs. 

[Atgxtg]

So anyway, to cease the threadjacking for which I am responsible...

Does RQG use RQ2 or RQ3 armor values?

Do you an a bonus based on INT to experience rolls or the category modifiers?

Do animals have an INT score, fixed otherwise (guess we have to wait for the bestiary)?

[Richard S.]

2 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

So anyway, to cease the threadjacking for which I am responsible...

Does RQG use RQ2 or RQ3 armor values?

Do you an a bonus based on INT to experience rolls or the category modifiers?

Do animals have an INT score, fixed otherwise (guess we have to wait for the bestiary)?

The Bestiary preview for the Aldryami said that Dryads can control incomplete creatures so I think animals will be using RQ3 rules like fixed int. 

Note: I know next to nothing about rq3 so I may be wrong about any comparisons I make.

[MOB]

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I am concerned. You see if they don't carry it then most likely nobody runs it. The store has a gaming area, and a bulletin board for those looking for groups, and, basically ,if it ain't D&D it ain't getting played around here. So for all appearances, anyway, if the brick & mortar shops don't carry it, a gamer is pretty much on their own as far as getting it or getting a group to play it.

Your concern is a bit premature. RQG is not yet available in game stores. It won't be any time soon because of course it has only been out in PDF pre-release for less than two weeks (in which time, as Jeff noted earlier, it has sold more copies than the BGB did in its entire run; indeed, the BGB and Magic World combined.)  Chaosium is a strong supporter of brick and mortar FLGSs, as evidenced by our participation in the Bits and Mortar initiative, Free RPG Day etc, but the commercial success of RQG is not dependent on game store sales alone. These days no game company could hope to thrive and prosper solely through retail distribution. 

2 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

So anyway, to cease the threadjacking for which I am responsible...

Great, as you're self-aware that many of your posts here strayed a long way from the topic, this means we won't have to put a moderator hat on and ask you not to do it again. Start a new thread instead.

[DreadDomain]

1 hour ago, MOB said:

it has only been out in PDF pre-release for less than two weeks (in which time, as Jeff noted earlier, it has sold more copies than the BGB did in its entire run; indeed, the BGB and Magic World combined.) 

That in itself is a good indication of two things I believe; the brand recognition of RuneQuest but also your communication strategy, more specifically during the few weeks prior of the release. I believe you have done a good job at building anticipation (and of course, the quality of the artwork could only help raise interest).

Have you any datapoint regarding how well RQG is doing after two weeks compared to how CoC 7th has done in a similar period? CoC also has a good brand and that would potentially be a fairer comparison.    

[Malc]

3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

So anyway, to cease the threadjacking for which I am responsible...

Does RQG use RQ2 or RQ3 armor values?

Looks like RQ2 armour, for the most part. Plate is 6AP. 

Quote

Do you an a bonus based on INT to experience rolls or the category modifiers?

Experience rolls are RQ3 style, roll d100 + category modifier, try to get over the skill value (or 100, if lower).

Quote

Do animals have an INT score, fixed otherwise (guess we have to wait for the bestiary)?

Horses in the Bestiary preview don’t have an INT score listed, so I guess not.

Cheers

[MOB]

1 hour ago, DreadDomain said:

That in itself is a good indication of two things I believe; the brand recognition of RuneQuest but also your communication strategy, more specifically during the few weeks prior of the release. I believe you have done a good job at building anticipation (and of course, the quality of the artwork could only help raise interest).

Have you any datapoint regarding how well RQG is doing after two weeks compared to how CoC 7th has done in a similar period? CoC also has a good brand and that would potentially be a fairer comparison.    

A straightforward comparison between the two is difficult, because Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed was Kickstarted and RQG wasn't. But as a point of comparison, the CoC 7th Ed Kickstarter had 3668 backers (June 2013), pledging for both the physical books and PDFs (and a bewilderingly complex pile of bling). The RQG preview list was started in early May and is getting close to that number. Of course, people on the RQG list have not paid any money or have any obligation to buy, though presumably many have.

[Prinz Slasar]

2 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

(and of course, the quality of the artwork could only help raise interest). 

Indeed.
It was the best idea to invest money in excellent artworkers.
In times of Open Quest, Mythras, PDFs, the availability of RQ2 and RQ3 material, and the ability to easily write, compile and print RPG texts using text programs and other services; How does a modern (d100-)RPG reach the surfeited crowd?

Through artwork. Because artwork is something nobody can knock out on the fly. Unless he is an artworker himself or takes a lot of money and pay for it.

To stand out of the multitude of RPGs and get attention, you need good artwork. Best of all, artwork which is different from everything else that is currently seen.


 

Edited June 15, 2018 by prinz.slasar

[David Scott]

10 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Okay, I'm stunned. I guess people really do buy and play RPGs for the art. Maybe it's a generation thing or something. 

Its not a generational thing - our club has an age range of 20s to late 50s, I was born in the mid 60s and I buy stuff for the art. We also buy games that are awful, some with bad art, some with good art. We play old stuff too, some of that doesn’t look good, but it’s fun. 

[Mankcam]

I play games regardless of their art.

But I do buy books because of their art and production, and nice hardcovers are conversation pieces. Having great art in a hardcover book is definitely going to grab more people's attention these days.

 

Edited June 15, 2018 by Mankcam

[Richard S.]

11 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Okay, I'm stunned. I guess people really do buy and play RPGs for the art. Maybe it's a generation thing or something. 

I know it's not a thing for my generation. You'll be lucky to find someone who even knows about games other than D&D, and only a very few of people actually buy that, so I doubt they'll be picking other games up for good art.

[creativehum]

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Okay, I'm stunned. I guess people really do buy and play RPGs for the art. Maybe it's a generation thing or something. 

Do some people buy and play a game only because of the art? I suppose so.

Does art influence whether or not some people buy and play a game? Probably!

Are there people for whom art in an RPG doesn't matter at all? Wouldn't doubt it.

Is it a generational thing? No.

Welcome to living on a planet with seven billion different people.

Edited June 15, 2018 by creativehum