RUNEQUEST was not the only "Quest" first launched in 1978...

[MOB]

RUNEQUEST was not the only "Quest" first launched in 1978 - that's when husband and wife team Richard and Wendy Pini turned the genre of fantasy comics on its head with the creation of ElfQuest. Later, Chaosium published the tabletop RPG of their creation, now long out-of-print but still fondly remembered.

http://scoop.previewsworld.com/Home/4/1/73/1013?articleID=218805

[seneschal]

Got the Warp Graphics original first issue many moons ago at a comic book convention.  Never dreamed it would morph into a sprawling soap opera saga.  Too bad the game designers didn't have more background material to build the setting, but that stuff was still being dreamed up and written by the comic’s authors. It would be like coming up with a Fantastic Four RPG with only the first issue to work with.  Could you use the rules as is with an omnibus volume of the comics as source material? 

Edited September 26, 2018 by seneschal

[seneschal]

That Cutter is just too intense.  Dude has Leetah on his arm and still can’t crack a smile.  Put Treestump in charge and take a day off, man!

[Joerg]

33 minutes ago, seneschal said:

Got the Warp Graphics original first issue many moons ago at a comic book convention.  Never dreamed it would morph into a sprawling soap opera saga.  Too bad the game designers didn't have more background material to build the setting, but that stuff was still being dreamed up and written by the comic’s authors. It would be like coming up with a Fantastic Four RPG with only the first issue to work with.  Could you use the rules as is with an omnibus volume of the comics as source material? 

The setting has produced several spin-offs which would be nice to game in, too - not just the science-fantasy setting of the stranded spaceship, but also two (contemporary, sort of shared setting) "near" SF spin-offs with a very interesting human culture and quite inhuman psionic aliens, and a number of other fantasy cultures of these elves, trolls, and fairies.

I think the first two omnibus books of the series (half of the original series) were covered by the rules, with e.g. a modification of the wood-shaping ability to work on dead wood, too. The rules cover everything that is specific to that early setting.

The supplement Sea-elves is probably where Chaosium and WARP parted ways. The later spin-offs had sea-elves quite unrelated to the rpg supplement.

Between the original rules and the BGB and possibly one set of rules for spaceships, you ought to have everything but gazetteers and game data for the aliens to start with.

[Michael Hopcroft]

I actually picked up a copy of Chaosium's ElfQuest RPG (the second edition, I believe -- one softcover volume) at Gamestorm this year. It had been untouched as a prize for a game lab for a few years. I was stunned when I saw it and reminded the guy in charge of the prize pool what he had. He ended up selling it to me for $30. (The game lab was for boardgames, so it should be less surprising that there was little interest in an older RPG. Still, do you have any idea how hard it is to find a copy of this in the wild?)

The guy manning Chaosium's booth at the con was equally impressed at my find. He gave me a bag to carry it in. By then, he had completely sold out of the new RuneQuest books.

Looks like a pretty good purchase.

[seneschal]

Great find!  You’ll have to let us know what you think of it once you’ve had a chance to examine it more closely.