TheRPGSite

I ask because if you read through, early critiques of the game and current threads, here (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=27413), the multi-class one here (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=27428) and hit-points one here (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=27215) you would think that RuneQuest/BRP solves all the problems! Yet despite doing well early on (as affirmed by Greg Stafford) RuneQuest isn't holding a GenCon and never had an 80s cartoon etc. So I ask why not?

For me I can think that the D&D settings such as Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft may have been bigger pulls than the perhaps niche Glorantha, but that doesn't explain all.

Because all these so-called "problems" are not as much of an issue as some would like to believe, and because D&D has strengths, regarding play structures, with the dungeon, the wilderness, the way you create your adventure in concrete terms using your imagination on a piece of graph paper, the explorative nature of the game, the concrete rewards like gold and experience and levels, that many tried to copy or worse, to fix, but none truly ever matched.

Quote from: Benoist;680966Because all these so-called "problems" are not as much of an issue as some would like to believe, and because D&D has strengths, regarding play structures, with the dungeon, the wilderness, the way you create your adventure in concrete terms using your imagination on a piece of graph paper, the explorative nature of the game, the concrete rewards like gold and experience and levels, that many tried to copy or worse, to fix, but none truly ever matched.

Yup.

The stuff that makes RQ 'better' is stuff that most gamers didn't or don't care about.

Quote from: J Arcane;680967The stuff that makes RQ 'better' is stuff that most gamers didn't or don't care about.

Well, I beg to differ. I care. Special snowflake me:D

I like both D&D and RQ a lot.  I actually think that RQ is the superior game overall (especially after it ceased being based on Glorantha), but it is no mystery to me that D&D is more popular.

1. The class+level structure of D&D is very straightforward (at least in TSR-era D&D).  It is easy for new players to grok.  It provides a helpful guide to DMs when designing adventures.

2. Levels provide a form of 'reward' that is hard to match in RQ/BRP games (with its small % increases to skills, no increases in hit points, etc.).

3. D&D is a mish-mash of fantasy ideas that are widely familiar (Tolkien-esque races, Moorcock-ish multiverse and alignment, vaguely Medieval setting assumptions, etc.), whereas RQ's original setting was Glorantha, which is a rather unusual world to say the least, and not to all tastes.  It's easier for players to grasp the implied setting of D&D.

4. It's a lot easier for starting DMs to design basic D&D adventures (dungeons that conform to the kill+loot model) than it is for GMs to design RQ adventures.

5. The importance of being first cannot be overstated.

Quote from: elfandghostHow did RuneQuest never overtake D&D?

Yup, thats the same question I always asked myself.

As did this guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=relmfu&v=mdo5ErnXH3E&nomobile=1).

Quote from: silva;680972As did this guy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=relmfu&v=mdo5ErnXH3E&nomobile=1).

Almost posted that video myself, except I was going to make fun of him for it.  MUH CHARACTER DIES TOO EASY, WOT IS THIS RUBBISH

Accessibility.  For myself and I'm guessing a lot of other kids in the late 70's and early 80's, my parents bought the basic set for me for Christmas.  I'm sure the only way they even knew about the game was when they saw it in the mall toy store.  After I got it, my small town game store mainly carried DnD.  I cannot recall even seeing RQ back then. Wish I had; I certainly would have picked it up.

Older D&D is a better game than Runequest. Always has been, always will be. And I like RQ, but older D&D is just plain better.

Quote from: Benoist;680966Because all these so-called "problems" are not as much of an issue as some would like to believe, and because D&D has strengths, regarding play structures, with the dungeon, the wilderness, the way you create your adventure in concrete terms using your imagination on a piece of graph paper, the explorative nature of the game, the concrete rewards like gold and experience and levels, that many tried to copy or worse, to fix, but none truly ever matched.

Agreed.  I am also sure that there were benefits to some of the easy to learn options for D&D (i.e. B/X was a very well written version of the game and rather ideal for folks who are learning the game).  Runequest was more complex, and I think complexity is it's own barrier.  

That said, once easy to learn version of D&D popped up, you also have some amazing network effects.  I've moved a lot as an adult.  The only game system that I have never had trouble with finding a group to play with is D&D.  I have done it on opposite ends of the United States and abroad.  

Everything else has been tricky . . .  Not impossible, but tricky.  And much harder once I left college, where RPG clubs felt almost like cheating for finding niche games.

For one, Runequest is not very good. Overrated piece of crap. Like an artsy version of Arduin, only minus the charm.

For another, most of the "problems" of D&D are still found in the vast majority of computer RPGs.

Okay, they dumped the Vancian spellcasting system, but how many RPGs don't feature levels, hit points, classes? And many of those things have spread to other games. Most of those "problems" are strengths of D&D.

It's actually kind of hilarious, the recent Shadowrun Returns game dumps the traditional SR health system in favor of hit points. And they also have something of a level system for ranking difficulty.

Quote from: JeremyR;680994For one, Runequest is not very good. Overrated piece of crap. Like an artsy version of Arduin, only minus the charm.

I take it you don't like RuneQuest then.

Quote from: JeremyR;680994For another, most of the "problems" of D&D are still found in the vast majority of computer RPGs.

Okay, they dumped the Vancian spellcasting system, but how many RPGs don't feature levels, hit points, classes? And many of those things have spread to other games. Most of those "problems" are strengths of D&D.

It's actually kind of hilarious, the recent Shadowrun Returns game dumps the traditional SR health system in favor of hit points. And they also have something of a level system for ranking difficulty.

That is hardly endorsement - it being adopted by computer RPGs. But I do see your point. D&D offers reward.

Quote from: elfandghost;681001That is hardly endorsement - it being adopted by computer RPGs. But I do see your point. D&D offers reward.

D&D, the Pavlov's game.

:D

Quote from: JeremyR;680994For one, Runequest is not very good. Overrated piece of crap. Like an artsy version of Arduin, only minus the charm.

I can't think of two RPGs more dissimilar than RQ and Arduin.  To even draw the comparison is hilariously ignorant!

D&D is aimed more for the general public.

"Better" or "worse" is really only definable in terms of meeting certain desired goals.

RuneQuest may have been better at meeting your desired goals, but that doesn't mean that other people share those goals.

Quote from: elfandghost;680961I ask because if you read through, early critiques of the game and current threads, here (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=27413), the multi-class one here (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=27428) and hit-points one here (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=27215) you would think that RuneQuest/BRP solves all the problems! Yet despite doing well early on (as affirmed by Greg Stafford) RuneQuest isn't holding a GenCon and never had an 80s cartoon etc. So I ask why not?

For me I can think that the D&D settings such as Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft may have been bigger pulls than the perhaps niche Glorantha, but that doesn't explain all.

Because the combination of mechanics and the implied setting of classic D&D is more than good enough. Combined with first mover advantage allowed classic D&D to dominate.

Due to missteps by TSR D&D could have been overtaken by the late 90s but the 3.X edition effectively addressed the issues of customization and tactical detail for D&D fans. This combined with the network effect ensured D&D's dominance to the present.

In short if you wanted to teach somebody how to referee and play a tabletop roleplaying game classic D&D resides in the ideal spot.

Doesn't mean Classic D&D is perfect or better alternatives can't be created but Classic D&D is more than good enough. 3.X D&D/Pathfinder likewise is more than good enough.

Quote from: JeremyR;680994For one, Runequest is not very good. Overrated piece of crap. Like an artsy version of Arduin, only minus the charm.

The only issue of classic Runequest is the fact it was the house rules for Glorantha. By time it was made into a general RPG it had a lot of competition for second place.

Quote from: Benoist;680966Because all these so-called "problems" are not as much of an issue as some would like to believe,

And they were addressed by 3.X anyway cementing D&D's dominance to the present.

Quote from: elfandghost;680961Yet despite doing well early on (as affirmed by Greg Stafford) RuneQuest isn't holding a GenCon and never had an 80s cartoon etc. So I ask why not?

Avalon Hill mismanaged the property.

The decision to emphasize Glorantha was also, IMO, a mistake. Both Traveller and RuneQuest took nosedives in popularity shortly after they shifted to a default setting. That might be coincidental, but I don't think it is: At a time when D&D was offering multiple official settings and was still primarily focused on supporting homebrews, RuneQuest became the Glorantha Game.

Quite a few of RuneQuest's features also made it less accessible for new players: It was never going to overtake D&D because it relied heavily on D&D to be the gateway game that people would pass through to come to RuneQuest.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;681015Avalon Hill mismanaged the property.

Well, the secret is out.  Everyone has heard of Runequest by now.  But D&D/Pathfinder is way more popular.  Kind of like Michael Jackson.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;681015Avalon Hill mismanaged the property.

The decision to emphasize Glorantha was also, IMO, a mistake. Both Traveller and RuneQuest took nosedives in popularity shortly after they shifted to a default setting. That might be coincidental, but I don't think it is: At a time when D&D was offering multiple official settings and was still primarily focused on supporting homebrews, RuneQuest became the Glorantha Game.

Quite a few of RuneQuest's features also made it less accessible for new players: It was never going to overtake D&D because it relied heavily on D&D to be the gateway game that people would pass through to come to RuneQuest.

Good answer! I don't care for Glorantha myself, yet I still think RuneQuest needs its own kitchen-sink fantasy world but one that is more like Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk etc. Even if they are liked by everyone; they are obviously liked! I wonder what would have happened if Warhammer had been released for RuneQuest 3 rather than GW inventing its own ruleset.

I'm sure distribution/shelf space helped D&D a lot.

The only place where I ever saw anything RuneQuest was in Dragon Magazine, the occasional ad. It simply wasn't on the shelf where I lived.

D&D was first.

The number of people for whom D&D was subjectively right was more than the number of people for whom Runequest was subjectively right. You are asking from a subjective standpoint as if it were objective.

-clash

There are a lot of things that D&D got very, very right that helped spark RPGs as an ongoing hobby. Those things are levels, hit points, and classes.

Until the d20 license came out, RPG publishers spent 26 years trying to prove that levels, hit points, and classes were bad. They appealed to hard core gamers, but that's about it.

I think if you played D&D and didn't like those things, you were much more likely to make your own game. Hence all these games that try to do away with them.

Ducks?

Actually for me the random experience and the magic system.  I like some of the fundamentals of RQ magic but the actual spirit / divine split and utterly broken sorcery really bug me.

I do love the magic system from Worlds of Wonder.  One of the very best ever.

Quote from: David Johansen;681076I like some of the fundamentals of RQ magic but the actual spirit / divine split and utterly broken sorcery really bug me.

The reason for that is antropological (ike most things in RQ, really). Spirit magic reflects animist societies religious beliefs, while divine reflects theist ones, and sorcery reflects.. well, sorcery shouldnt exist in the first place. :p

I think it's a combination of several reasons cited thus far.

1) Glorantha as the "default": Glorantha is a heavily detailed world; while I like that, it isn't everyone's cup of tea. Also, it's more swords and sorcery (IMO), whereas D&D was influenced by Tolkien (despite EGG's constant denials). That in and of itself makes it more of a niche product. Second edition and the d20 boom expanded D&D's horizons with the likes of Dark Sun, Masque of the Red Death, Ravenloft, Scarred Lands, Eberron, and the Conan license.

2) Avalon Hill: Yeah, they really dropped the ball. RQIII has some problems with the mechanics, but shoehorning "Mythic Europe" into the mix took it from bad to worse. Of course, the post-AH mess wasn't any better...

3) Ducks: Yeah, they're the red-headed stepchildren of FRP races. I have my own love/hate relationship with them. I like them because they stand out from the standard gnome/elf/half-elf/half-orc/dwarf mix of non-human races. At the same time I hate them because whenever someone mentions them the answer comes back "WTF?!"... I still remember doing a double-take when I read through Ian Livingstone's "Dicing With Dragons" and came across the reference to ducks in RQ. :)

Now that RQ is no longer joined to Glorantha's hip and the system has had a good overhaul, it will be interesting to see if it can gain more traction rather than staying in the shadows.

Later...

Harl

Why did RQ not overtake DND?

I would assume mainly because dnd got there first.

Both games have appeal to me, but the one you play first has an 'edge'

I would also make a case for avaliability.

Around here in the late 80s/early 90s, the translated version of RuneQuest (Drager & Dæmoner) was as big as D&D, that was also translated (red basic and blue expert box).
Why, because it was out there. In the shops, in the libraries and on the conventions. A lot of the D&D players moved on to AD&D, but the RQ players stayed with RuneQuest for quite some time.
Then the stream of moduls and books in Danish for RuneQuest dried out as the publisher stopped supporting the game, and so did the interest and D&D slowly took over as the most widespread game used by young/new roleplayers.

Quote from: DKChannelBoredom;681169I would also make a case for avaliability.

Around here in the late 80s/early 90s, the translated version of RuneQuest (Drager & Dæmoner) was as big as D&D, that was also translated (red basic and blue expert box).
Why, because it was out there. In the shops, in the libraries and on the conventions. A lot of the D&D players moved on to AD&D, but the RQ players stayed with RuneQuest for quite some time.
Then the stream of moduls and books in Danish for RuneQuest dried out as the publisher stopped supporting the game, and so did the interest and D&D slowly took over as the most widespread game used by young/new roleplayers.

I got one of the older versions of Drakar & Demoner (the Swedish version) myself.

Quote from: The Ent;681172I got one of the older versions of Drakar & Demoner (the Swedish version) myself.

All the Danish stuff was translated from Swedish - it's a great version of RuneQuest/Stormbringer.

And with the Swedish edition it also shows how important support for a system and its fanbase is. When the publishing og Drager & Dæmoner stopped in Denmark, they kept publishing new stuff in Sweden, where the game, if I'm not mistaken, have had several new edition is still supported and still is a major game in the Swedish rpg market (correct me if I'm wrong, Swedish rpgsiters!).

There are a ton of factors in D&D's favor, it's so overwhelming that you'd need for TSR to have gone bankrupt in 1976 for Runequest to take over. And if that happened, RPGs would probably have been much smaller.

So, first: The Basic Set. D&D, from 1977 to 1994, always had in print a set of simple rules that 10 year old kids could read, understand and start playing, that contained all the dice you needed, and a module. It was these boxed sets that sold millions of copies when the game became a fad. Were most only played once or twice? Probably. But having the single most popular product ever in the hobby's history really fell to D&D's advantage. Runequest had a much more crunchy rulebook.

Second: The Lord of the Rings. D&D has elves, dwarves and hobbits (even if they're called "halflings") and you could basically play in Middle-Earth, straight up or sideways. This was a much more immediately accessible form of fantasy than the Bronze Age mythological approach that Runequest takes. This is compounded by the fact that D&D grew to have as its setting the Known World / Mystara for the D&D line (an accessible mishmash), while AD&D had the familiar vanilla fantasy Greyhawk and then Forgotten Realms. Runequest's Glorantha is a really interesting setting but it's a stumbling block for large-scale interest.

Third: Game versus simulation. Runequest is clearly a better simulation; the D&D combat system is based on rules Dave Arneson had made for naval combat with ships broadsiding each other. Just the fact that D&D armor makes you hard to hit doesn't make sense. But for a game, it's an abstraction and it's one that is quick and works in practice. Runequest has you figuring out a whole bunch of stuff about hit locaiton every time you swing. D&D, being simpler, is more immediately accessible.

Fourth: Dungeons. D&D is great at making dungeons, and dungeons are great environments for a roleplaying game. Specifically because the maps are easy to draw ("put some squares on graph paper, connect them and number them") and the stocking is simple and fun. Sure it leads to a simplistic funhouse dungeon if you don't add any other steps, but that's a straightforward way to run a sandbox game where the referee knows every place the players can go.

Fifth: Support. D&D had tremendously popular modules. Once you were into D&D, you had a lot of places to go without leaving the brand.

Sixth: Visibility. D&D was the game that became a phenomenon, largely by a series of accidents such as the "steam tunnel" incidents. There was a much better chance of finding other D&D players than of finding other teenage Runequest enthusiasts. This also combined with the noted conservatism of RPG groups with regard to system (they don't like switching) to produce an ecosystem where D&D and AD&D absolutely ruled the roost and everything else glommed on.

So ... Runequest, or anything else for that matter, didn't really stand a chance. D&D had everything in its favor and its perceived weaknesses were the very things that helped it catch on among a really broad swath of players.

D&D's a game of the high fantasy trilogy.  You can be a wizard with a long grey beard and a staff and not suck; you can kill 100 orcs with your axe and not think it too many; you can kill a dragon and save the world.  It includes experience points, a mechanism tailor-made to "hook" you and draw you in, and classes, a mechanism tailor-made to give you a role in the party so you feel like your participation in the game really matters.

Runequest's a game of the gritty crossover between sword-and-sorcery and sword-and-sandal.  Combat is bloodier and more realistic, and things are small-scale and relatively detailed and therefore (necessarily) slower.  It's a game designed to fix perceived flaws in D&D, and in the process it eliminates "hook" factors.  So it's primarily a game for the already-hooked-on-roleplaying.  An alternative.

Quote from: Akrasia;6809715. The importance of being first cannot be overstated.

Having had a front row seat for that brief period in the late 70s when it seemed to many that RQ had a credible chance of overcoming D&D, this is first and foremost.

I discount a lot of the other factors people mention: if (for instance), levels and character classes are such an overwhelming draw, how come they're not dominant in SF or supers games?  Simply put, the first widely popular SF RPG and the first widely popular supers RPG had neither.  RQ certainly was supported at *least* as well as D&D.

My other votes:

* RQ really wasn't a very good system, and it was granular in somewhat silly ways.  It was a lot more coherent than OD&D, but that doesn't equate to good.  It also wasn't as roleplaying-friendly as it should have been: I was badly startled by the fiction sections of a couple of the products when the characters discussed system mechanics as in-character dialog.

* For every player jazzed about a RPG that genuinely cared about religion, there had to have been a player turned off by it.  The United States in the 1970s was relatively irreligious, and gamers weren't as a group that much different: how many early gamer stereotypes were as true as the player of the 17th level cleric who could babble on about his +5 Robes of Wondrous Protection and +3 Mace of Evildoer Smiting, but who couldn't even name the deity he purportedly worshiped except to stammer out, "But ... well, he's Lawful Good!"

* AD&D arrived, and suddenly the competitor was a lot tighter, with much improved production values, and a much improved game system.

Welcome Ravenswing!

Quote from: One Horse Town;681188Welcome Ravenswing!

Why thankew!  Don't mind me, just another gamer driven away from RPGnet by the increasingly insane jackbooted mods ...

Quote from: Ravenswing;681221Why thankew!  Don't mind me, just another gamer driven away from RPGnet by the increasingly insane jackbooted mods ...

You're not alone. Welcome! :)

Quote from: Cadriel;681181There are a ton of factors in D&D's favor, it's so overwhelming that you'd need for TSR to have gone bankrupt in 1976 for Runequest to take over. And if that happened, RPGs would probably have been much smaller...

So ... Runequest, or anything else for that matter, didn't really stand a chance. D&D had everything in its favor and its perceived weaknesses were the very things that helped it catch on among a really broad swath of players.

Exactly. The advantage of being first is way overstated. If Runequest comes out in 1975 it stays nothing more than a fringe game. It just wasn't going to make a mass market splash the way D&D did. The weird setting, fiddly system, lack of dungeons, lack of obvious rewards. It's missing about 4 out of the 5 things that made D&D so accessible and appealing.

Quote from: David Johansen;681076Ducks?

The Wizard is undeterred... (http://youtu.be/3Oe7Q8OCm5I)

Obviously, RQ rocked too fucking much for this world, so only the manliest gamers could bask in its unadulterated glory.




What?

Accessibility, both in terms of gameplay and distribution channel.

I picked up my copy of Moldvay in a WALGREEN'S, for god's sake.

Runequest is a decent game, but is probably a level or two complexity wise, above D&D (early versions). Better Skills, weapons, more realistic combat and so on, but D&D had prolific, better quality supplement output (compare TSR in the early 80s against anything else. Everyone else punted out pamphlet type things for adventures and the TSR stuff was head and shoulders above the rest) and better game world/s. By the time the BECMI version came out, they were really getting into their stride and only MERP compared with regards quality/quantity with what TSR were putting out.

Glorantha just felt 'odd' to us, and we valued speed of play over detail and crunch. D&D characters could be knocked out in less than a minute, including writing it down on a sheet of paper. Try that with Runequest (seeing as back then photocopies were expensive and home printing was on dot matrix printers if you were lucky).

That said, for anyone burnt out on D&D I'd suggest running Runequest in the D&D game world, and converting the monsters in adventures to RQ, then giving it a run. We did that with MERP and it was brilliant. I'll admit I like MERP better than RQ, but the biggest problem with RQ for us was the Game World. Switch that, and it's pretty good.

As for why RQ (or anything else) never came near D&D, for us in the 80s, 'playing D&D' became the catch all phrase for any RPG we played. It was the one we all knew, when we burned out on it we eventually went back to it, and it was easy to get hold of as opposed to having to mail order stuff. Back then mail order was a pain in the ass, quite the opposite these days thanks to click, click, click. I remember saving up, going to the post office to buy a postal order, cutting my magazine up to get an order form, rummaging about for an envelope, going back to the post office because I forgot the stamp, posting it off, then waiting... and waiting... and waiting... for the 'postage takes 21 days' bullshit.

I'm prepping to run RuneQuest (6th Edition) right now, and it's going to be an interesting thing for the gaming group. I've run StarCluster 3 recently, but not with these guys. Our last few campaigns have been: Savage Worlds, Castles & Crusades, Mongoose Traveller, Stars Without Number, and Microlite 75. It's been a while since we've run Rolemaster, so you could say overall we've been on a more rules-light track in recent campaigns.

But the group is excited about RQ. Percentiles are pretty popular with some of our group, and the detail and depth of RQ chargen sounds like fun, and a nice change besides. Combat looks to be tricky, but I had the Combat Effects app, and I like that those special effects only come into play after a certain degree of success in battle. Plus, the game is very well written, and breaks things up nicely. It just fits for the early Iron Age/Viking/Greek Myth/Earthsea sort of vibe our setting has.  

I know RQ6 =/= 1980s RuneQuest, but I'm ready to try out some more robust skill lists, some divergent magic systems, and some less abstracted combat for a while. That doesn't mean I don't love my C&C and Microlite, but it's nice to change things up.

Fireballs and lightning bolts and vorpal swords, oh my.


In other words:

More versatile and flashy magic for players who like wizards. Only priests getting the cooler magic, which still wasn't as flashy as fireballs and polymorph other, also meant you couldn't just be a wizard, you had to pick a cult.

More cool magic weapons and armor for players who like to get stuck in and chop things to little bits.  Being able to survive getting stuck in for an extended period without losing body parts also helps.


Although you could be a more competent thief and a more realistic "cleric" in RQ. But for hack-slash-BOOM, D&D wins hands down once you get to mid and higher levels.

(First of all, hi! ;) )

I believe it's impossible to underestimate the importance of being the first. Of course, D&D has its own advantages, but who knows - maybe if another game was first, we may see completely different state and image of the hobby.

For example, in Poland WFRP 1e was the first professionally published RPG in Polish language. To this day, dozens of different RPGs were published and supported in Poland (our own and many popular foreign ones like AD&D 2e, D&D 3e/4e, WoD, L5R, CoC and many others), but WFRP 1e/2e is still indisputable the number one in terms of popularity.

IMHO both D&D and WFRP are far from the best RPG ever made, but they are surely good enough to inspire and convince people to stay with them for a long time. All in all, the game is only a tool - the most important are people who are playing with us, our imagination and memories.

The rest is just a business.

This "advantage of being first" is bullshit.

History is littered with companies that went first, only to fail as someone took their ideas and improved on them and took over the marketplace.

In fact, that's almost more the rule than the exception.  The nation of Japan (and since then Korea and Taiwan and a few others) based an important part of their economies on this concept.  Even Edison based a large part of his business plan on improving the inventions of others rather than inventing the base product himself.

Tell Indiegogo about the advantage of going first relative to Kickstarter.  Tell MySpace about the advantage of going first (or probably third or fourth) relative to Facebook.  Heck, look around wherever you are at the things you see, and tell me how many were invented first by the company that made them?

If RuneQuest were objectively a superior game at a better price, it would have likely overtaken the market from D&D.  That's a fundamental operation of capitalism.  It doesn't always work perfectly, but as a general rule (baring some specific reason for it to fail in a particular case), that's how it works.

So no, not buying this "it was first" argument at all.  That sounds more like an excuse by fans of RuneQuest who personally think it's superior and simply can't understand why people like D&D more.

Quote from: Mistwell;681381This "advantage of being first" is bullshit.

It's only "bullshit" if you think being first is sufficient to ensure market dominance.  Only a fool would claim that. But to deny that being first is a significant advantage is to deny reality.  (A company can easily squander that advantage.)  

Quote from: Mistwell;681381If RuneQuest were objectively a superior game at a better price, it would have likely overtaken the market from D&D.  That's a fundamental operation of capitalism.

What a naive view of capitalism.  By that reasoning McDonald's hamburgers are "objectively superior" to food served at Michelin-ranked restaurants.

Economies of scale, market penetration (availability), competitive pricing, and so forth, affect the profitability of a product as much as that product's "objective" superiority/inferiority.  

Quote from: Mistwell;681381So no, not buying this "it was first" argument at all.  That sounds more like an excuse by fans of RuneQuest who personally think it's superior and simply can't understand why people like D&D more.

I'm a fan of RuneQuest and it is no mystery to me why D&D is more popular.  (Of course, it is a mistake to say that "people like D&D more", since most D&D players have never even looked at RQ, and thus cannot make an informed comparison between the two games.)

I also like D&D (well at least TSR-era D&D).  I'm glad both games are available. :)

Quote from: Mistwell;681381This "advantage of being first" is bullshit.

Mostly, but not entirely.  With an entrenched competitor, it raises the bar for how good you have to be to displace them - it's not enough to be "better", you have to be "better enough" for people to pay the switching cost and be willing to accept the loss of the network effect of the market leader.

If you *can* do those things, you can easily displace a market leader.  But being "as good of them" isn't enough, and being just a little bit better isn't enough either.

Quote from: Akrasia;681399What a naive view of capitalism.  By that reasoning McDonald's hamburgers are "objectively superior" to food served at Michelin-ranked restaurants.

Indeed.  Saying that anything is "superior" can really only be done in terms of its fitness to meet specific needs.

McDonald's serves different needs than a 4-star restaurant.  Neither are substitutes for the other, and both satisfy their appropriate needs very well.

The needs that McDonald's satisfies are just more common.

I really think the Basic/Advanced split was a very important part of how D&D grew and spread. Evidence shows that what happened was that Basic was usually played for several sessions, maybe even only one, while small affinity groups of kids between 10 and 13 got into the basic ideas of the game. Many - probably a majority at the height of the fad days - didn't play any more than that. But the ones who did went on to Advanced D&D, which was well aimed at teenagers. It was a modular complexity that bolted on well to basic play methods that had been learned in Basic. There were tons of rules, but you only had to deal with them a bit at a time.

Everything scales well between Basic D&D and AD&D. You go from a tiny bit of customization to a wider variety of options, but basically on the same lines. You get more spells and their descriptions are more in-depth, but you only have to deal with a few spells at most in a session. Same for magic items and all the other additions that Advanced made. It also let the intro version be stripped-down but fully functional, which no game since has really achieved. And it paid off, in terms of absolutely huge sales of the Basic Set.

There was never a conduit into the hobby like Basic D&D, and that virtually guaranteed its place atop the RPG ecosystem. How could Runequest have possibly had a chance at displacing D&D when the Holmes Basic Set actually came out before RQ?

Had TSR not made the Basic Set, the logical candidate for its spot was Tunnels & Trolls. Simpler than OD&D, used only six-sided dice, cost only $5 instead of the $10 of OD&D ($43.40 in 2013 dollars) and was much more adaptable. T&T also has solo gaming going for it. Maybe RQ could've sold itself as the "advanced" sequel to T&T, but I think it wasn't in the right space.

Back in the day, I could sometimes get people to try RQ.  They sort of liked it... then The Ducks came up.  

Killed it dead. Each and every time.

Tried running stuff without Glorantha... then it still came up... "Oh No, that is that duck game."

My sample is small, but yah... other than Ducks and that the setting actually requires you to think and learn... I can't figure out why it didn't do better against D&D.

Quote from: Mistwell;681381History is littered with companies that went first, only to fail as someone took their ideas and improved on them and took over the marketplace.

....

That was RQ's problem - they didn't improve on the things that went on to make D&D popular.

Gorlantha was the first nail in the coffin: They needed a more accessible setting. And all the generic fantasy tropes that would go with it that people would actually be familiar with.

Nail # 2: It didn't get the mass market distribution. My grandma bought me my first D&D game in a bookstore in the early 80's. I've only ever seen runequest in dedicated hobby stores.

Nail# 3: It lacked classic cool & accessible entry modules like Keep on the Borderlands. That came in the box with the rules, an instant "this is what you do with this" adventure right out of the gate...  I've never even heard of a comparable runquest offering.

  Nail # 1 hamstrung the game from the start; nail # 2 ensured it would never get the mass appeal, and nail #3 was just the icing on the cake.

IMO the debate about which system is 'objectively better' is a red herring.

It didn't matter.

The only thing that mattered was that the system was 'good enough' so that it didn't hinder the things that really took D&D to market dominance.

But what the fuck do I know, I'm just random internet guy # 988760


.

Being first was a small part of it, albeit legitimate.

The key was support. You walked into a hobby shop, and you saw D&D books, D&D adventures, D&D supplements. And one box set of RQ.

Even without support and not being first, RQ also has the issue of being more complicated than old D&D. Granted, PF and 3.5 are more complicated than RQ, but at this stage, the support imbalance is uber dominating.

RQ is certainly better in some ways, but it's like that really good hamburger stand a few blocks away from my house; yeah, it's better than McD's, but nobody else in the country has access, and it doesn't do me a lot of good when I'm out of town, either.

Settings seems to be a surprisingly likely place for things to go wrong.  Iron Crown Enterprises had a similar issue in that they had a limited license with Tolkien and when they lost that it took a ton of their best materials off of the market.  

The only edition of Runequest I ever owned had fantasy Europe in it, which I remember quite liking as a setting.

Quote from: Mistwell;681381So no, not buying this "it was first" argument at all.  That sounds more like an excuse by fans of RuneQuest who personally think it's superior and simply can't understand why people like D&D more.

Being first is an advantage - as long as you don't fool yourself into thinking that is all it takes. Or thinking you are unassailable and basically do nothing really innovative after that.

D&D was the first. TSR did a good job marketing it. And they kept putting out (mostly) very good products.

At the time, the setting was sort of weird in a not so good way, and tracking hit locations, armor values, etc seemed like a lot of annoying work. But then that system became that little BRP and rolled into Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer - I got interested in it.

Quote from: Jaeger;681438That was RQ's problem - they didn't improve on the things that went on to make D&D popular.

Gorlantha was the first nail in the coffin: They needed a more accessible setting. And all the generic fantasy tropes that would go with it that people would actually be familiar with.

Nail # 2: It didn't get the mass market distribution. My grandma bought me my first D&D game in a bookstore in the early 80's. I've only ever seen runequest in dedicated hobby stores.

Nail# 3: It lacked classic cool & accessible entry modules like Keep on the Borderlands. That came in the box with the rules, an instant "this is what you do with this" adventure right out of the gate...  I've never even heard of a comparable runquest offering.

  Nail # 1 hamstrung the game from the start; nail # 2 ensured it would never get the mass appeal, and nail #3 was just the icing on the cake.

And of course, outside of the US some of this played out differently. The world is sometimes full of natural experiments. For example.

Nail #2. In the UK, RQ did get mass-market distribution by Games Workshop (I got my copy of RQ2 in a convenience store), it was priced cheaper than Basic D&D and there was plenty of support material in White Dwarf.

Nail #3. The box set comes up with Apple Lane/Rainbow Mounds as good a pair of introductory scenarios as anything produced for D&D. Speak to anyone who played RQ2 in the early 80s and they have replayed that scenario pair as often as anyone has replayed Keep on the Borderlands.

Nail #1. In RQ2, Glorantha occupies 2 whole pages. There are also a couple of maps. If you look at Apple Lane/Rainbow mounds, there is one whole duck and he is mentioned only in passing and there is no artwork. The "weirdness" of Glorantha is hardly an issue and, specifically in the UK where it was hard to get any RQ stuff except that Games Workshop reprinted, the focus was all on Brit-style vanilla fantasy.

Result - RQ2 outsold D&D.

So what went wrong? The licence went to Avalon Hill, Games Workshop stopped publishing it and started with Warhammer, there was no new material for 18 months just as D&D kicked into gear and the rpg market boomed. Result, RQ imploded.

And another natural experiment. Games Workshop also published CoC under licence at the same price point. CoC was the first of its type despite having a "weird" game world (Lovecraft was not mainstream in 1980), did not have any player rewards in levels and expanding HPs etc, and wasn't paused for 18 months at the height of the rpg boom. Result, it's still the #1 selling rpg in its genre and has spawned as many offshoots and variations as D&D.

Generally, I think the different experiences outside of the US in the early 80s show that if you're first, "good enough" and keep the product live and accessible in the mass market, that it's really hard to overtake you. Of course if you implode (aka Blackberry) anyone can fill the gap. All the product needs to be is "good enough."

Quote from: Lynn;681507At the time, the setting was sort of weird in a not so good way, and tracking hit locations, armor values, etc seemed like a lot of annoying work. But then that system became that little BRP and rolled into Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer - I got interested in it.

Agreed (well CoC and Elric! in my case but Elric! = Stormbringer right?).

CoC and Elric! are both way easier to game, I'd say, than classic RQ. Skills are handled in a more streamlined way, magic is cooler, combat is simpler (and more cinematic in Elric!, but obviously not in CoC)...it's a very good ruleset for these games and would probably be a good ruleset for a bunch of other classic fantasy & related genre classics too. I could see it work for LotR, frex, and Conan, and many others. The only stuff I couldn't quite see it work for is completely OTT high-powered crazyness like Malazan Book of the Fallen (yes I know that "OTT high-powered crazyness" is rather front and center in the Elric tales...the system still works perfectly for Elric though!).

One problem with RQ (I got 3rd ed) is that it seems to be more like Elric! but your starting character is more like a CoC starting character...I mean I remember creating some RQ characters back in the day to check out the system (the random character creation stuff looks really cool - like most random cc it's got its fun stuff and its "fun" stuff, though, as I found out).

What I got (basically a party):
1) A dude with fantastic stats, giving mainly fantastic skills...background: civilized peasant. He was great at his skills, sure, just a pity most of them weren't relevant, and his one weapon was, of course, garbage.
2) A civilized noble...with horrible loser stats. The opposite of the above. Cool skills, but sucks at them. Good fighting equipment, but sucks at using them...there's a Marxist moral to be got here, I guess ;)
3) a civilized thief...whose only high stats were Power and Size *headdesk*

Argh.

I could go on I guess. Said trio would likely have worked for a comedy game, mind. :D

Edit to add: it's not that these characters were horrible (the peasant in particular had promise, I'd probably have played him myself), well excepting the thief possibly. It's just the particular ways they sucked, like the game system had it in for them. :D

Quote from: Haffrung;681244Exactly. The advantage of being first is way overstated. If Runequest comes out in 1975 it stays nothing more than a fringe game. It just wasn't going to make a mass market splash the way D&D did. The weird setting, fiddly system, lack of dungeons, lack of obvious rewards. It's missing about 4 out of the 5 things that made D&D so accessible and appealing.

Well, to the D&D Dungeon Fantasy crowd, in 20:20 hindsight, at least.

For my part, I haven't done "dungeons" since the 70s, and neither I nor a couple hundred players of mine have missed them a single jot.  As a setting, Glorantha isn't one jot weirder than any other fantasy setting, Forgotten Worlds included.  Lack of levels -- RQ absolutely has character advancement, just not "levels" -- certainly didn't stop Traveller from becoming the most popular SF system.  And the degree to which OD&D was a great system is measured by the thousands of GMs who promptly tore the sucker apart and houseruled it to death, about fifteen minutes in.

There really are lots of reasons and for everyone who ended up playing D&D instead of RQ, the reasons are different.

For me, without having read it, RQ seemed like a joke game from the advertisements.  Ducks, Walktapus, Dragon Newts (kickass race made cutesie by name)even look at the intro modules "Apple Lane" and "Rainbow Mounds" not "In Search of the Unknown" or "Keep on the Borderlands".

Reading more about it, without a GM to give me the player rundown it was "Too weird to live".  Cube floating in a sea, God-Learners, Heroquests, Wyrm Friends.

System was never an issue, I mean I played RM and Shadowrun 1e. :D What killed RQ for me was Glorantha, more specifically the way it was advertised and presented.  With a good GM where I could focus on my character and explore the setting organically it probably would have worked.

QuoteHistory is littered with companies that went first, only to fail as someone took their ideas and improved on them and took over the marketplace.

Tru dat.

Next to D&D what wad the biggest splash and pretender to D&D's RPG throne? Arguably World of Darkness.

But there was a serious attempt at a vampire PC game that preceded it by a year. Being first helps, but it's not enough by itself.

Quote from: Ravenswing;681184
I discount a lot of the other factors people mention: if (for instance), levels and character classes are such an overwhelming draw, how come they're not dominant in SF or supers games?

"If an aqueous environment is good for fish, why isn't it good for koala bears."

I find the comparison particularly off in the case of supers games. Modeling supers is not particularly well served by class/level systems, but it works just fine for heroic fantasy.

Quote from: deleriad;681531And of course, outside of the US some of this played out differently. The world is sometimes full of natural experiments. For example.

Nail #2. In the UK, RQ did get mass-market distribution by Games Workshop (I got my copy of RQ2 in a convenience store), it was priced cheaper than Basic D&D and there was plenty of support material in White Dwarf.

Nail #3. The box set comes up with Apple Lane/Rainbow Mounds as good a pair of introductory scenarios as anything produced for D&D. Speak to anyone who played RQ2 in the early 80s and they have replayed that scenario pair as often as anyone has replayed Keep on the Borderlands.

Nail #1. In RQ2, Glorantha occupies 2 whole pages. There are also a couple of maps. If you look at Apple Lane/Rainbow mounds, there is one whole duck and he is mentioned only in passing and there is no artwork. The "weirdness" of Glorantha is hardly an issue and, specifically in the UK where it was hard to get any RQ stuff except that Games Workshop reprinted, the focus was all on Brit-style vanilla fantasy.

Result - RQ2 outsold D&D.

So what went wrong? The licence went to Avalon Hill, Games Workshop stopped publishing it and started with Warhammer, there was no new material for 18 months just as D&D kicked into gear and the rpg market boomed. Result, RQ imploded.

And another natural experiment. Games Workshop also published CoC under licence at the same price point. CoC was the first of its type despite having a "weird" game world (Lovecraft was not mainstream in 1980), did not have any player rewards in levels and expanding HPs etc, and wasn't paused for 18 months at the height of the rpg boom. Result, it's still the #1 selling rpg in its genre and has spawned as many offshoots and variations as D&D.
...

This is true, in Britian/Europe TSR/D&D did not have things necessarily go all their way like they did in the states.

The result was that in some countries D&D was/is not number one.

The fact that D&D is now number one anyway in a number of instances has more to do with the native competitors dropping the 'game management' ball than any inherent superiority of D&D as a system.

Quote from: deleriad;681531Generally, I think the different experiences outside of the US in the early 80s show that if you're first, "good enough" and keep the product live and accessible in the mass market, that it's really hard to overtake you. Of course if you implode (aka Blackberry) anyone can fill the gap. All the product needs to be is "good enough."

And the reason the class/level/HP systems are so popular now is due to the fact that D&D has been around a long time combined with the OGL. So the class/level/hp system is now a triple threat...

It is Good Enough, Prolific in what remains of an RPG mass market, and Familiar to the majority of players who tend to be system conservative.

Not an objectively better system, but at this point it doesn't matter.

.

Quote from: Benoist;680966Because all these so-called "problems" are not as much of an issue as some would like to believe, and because D&D has strengths, regarding play structures, with the dungeon, the wilderness, the way you create your adventure in concrete terms using your imagination on a piece of graph paper, the explorative nature of the game, the concrete rewards like gold and experience and levels, that many tried to copy or worse, to fix, but none truly ever matched.

Yep. In a word, D&D of old is accessible.

Quote from: 1989;681731Yep. In a word, D&D of old is accessible.

Let's hope it will be again, one day.

Quote from: The Ent;681757Let's hope it will be again, one day.

To a certain extent, it is.  The bar has moved.  Things like levels, hit points, classes, and AC are all common vocabulary among anybody that's done any type of gaming at all, due to their ubiquitousness in computer games as well as pen and paper.

So while the actual rules of newer version of D&D are certainly more complex, they're also being consumed primarily by people that are already fully grounded in and have fully internalized the basic concepts.

Quote from: Ravenswing;681608Lack of levels -- RQ absolutely has character advancement, just not "levels" -- certainly didn't stop Traveller from becoming the most popular SF system.  

But even Traveller didn't reach anywhere close to the mass popularity of D&D. The remarkable thing about D&D isn't that it was the most popular RPG ever; the remarkable thing is that it had an accessibility and appeal that reached far beyond the geek gamer community and into a popular phenomenon. And that wasn't a fluke.

D&D also was the first RPG to spread beyond the books, and in a way no other game did. Movies, toys, video games, colouring books etc. It really is amazing what they managed when you think back on it. We'll never see the like of that again.

Other games managed to branch out some too of course - Traveller (or rather Megatraveller) with a computer game, Vampire, even Tunnels and Trolls had a dos game out which probably sold about 3 copies but was a free hand out in the 7th edition tin box if I recall.

Runequest was (and is) a niche game (fantasy) within a niche sector (RPGs). I'll admit I only ever knew of its existence thanks to gaming mags which ran adverts  for the amazon on the front with the chainmail bikini, otherwise it wouldn't have appeared on the radar at all for me. Was that only in the UK, or spread elsewhere?

(http://s17.postimg.org/pdt0776un/1373668426163.jpg)

Careful, you could poke someones eye out with one of those.

I'm referring to the sword, of course...

The straightforward answer is that D&D was simply the better game.

Quote from: RPGPundit;682284The straightforward answer is that D&D was simply the better game.

According to that logic Das Schwarze Auge was a better game than D&D...

Quote from: RPGPundit;682284The straightforward answer is that D&D was simply the better game.

You just can't help yourself, can you?:p

D&D had, as has been mentioned throughout the thread, availability, ease of play, momentum and accessibility of settings.
But a better game? No.
I was raised on AD&D. When I thought it was the greatest thing ever, RQ didn't interest me at all. It was just a game with weird monstres and fragile heroes.
Only after I started looking for alternatives to the d20 and found Call of Cthulhu, I got into RQ. By then it was to late, Avalon Hill having pulled the plug on the game. Luckily, Stormbringer stepped in to fill the hole.

Now, RuneQuest is back. While it may not be a top contender(yet), it is actively supported and recognized as the excellent game it has always been, but which young me was to ignorant to realize.

Long live the BRP-renaissance!

Quote from: RPGPundit;682284The straightforward answer is that D&D was simply the better game.

It was more accessible.   Better at certain things.  And it introduced a whole legion of fans to the genre it pretty much created.  It's a very good, streamlined, archetype-filled game.  And much of the terminaology has therefor moved into common use.

RQ and other skill based games are more advanced and better at certain things.  But I think RQ is built for a much more specific game, and has large weaknesses even in terms of skill based games.

Quote from: RPGPundit;682284The straightforward answer is that D&D was simply the better game.

I think at the least it had a broader appeal and thus became the center of the community from which all the other games spread out in one direction or the other.  D&D has been so influential in the fields of fiction and video games that it's central position has been strongly reinforced over time to the point where expectations like paladins that heal people are entrenched across a wide spectrum of media.  Yes yes Malory had that some 600 years earlier but the average person is far more likely to know D&D than Malory and Holywood's attempts at King Arthur are generally stripped of the Christian aspects of the story.  And yes I know that the Christianization of older stories is a big part of why King Arthur's theology is a bit weird.

In my personal experiences with early RQ, I found the RQ crowd I knew to be kinda snobby about other RPGs, so that sort of turned me off it. That and I didn't like Glorantha much.
I appreciate this is just MY experience, but hey.

I did run and play Stormbringer and all it's other names an versions over the years and loved it.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;682313According to that logic Das Schwarze Auge was a better game than D&D...

And Twilight is a better book than Ulysses.

Quote from: LordVreeg;682321RQ and other skill based games are more advanced and better at certain things.  But I think RQ is built for a much more specific game, and has large weaknesses even in terms of skill based games.

I'm curious: what are RQ's weaknesses?  Do you think the current version (RQ6) suffers from them?

I should say that although I own the 2e hardback version of RQ (from ~1980), I only played it a couple of times.  I preferred the other versions of BRP (e.g., CoC, Hawkmoon, Elric!, etc.) in the 1980s and 1990s.

Glorantha was too hard for me to 'grok', and I had issues with both the combat and magic systems.

But MRQII was great, and RQ6 is even better.

Quote from: baragei;682314You just can't help yourself, can you?:p

D&D had, as has been mentioned throughout the thread, availability, ease of play, momentum and accessibility of settings.
But a better game? No.
I was raised on AD&D. When I thought it was the greatest thing ever, RQ didn't interest me at all. It was just a game with weird monstres and fragile heroes.
Only after I started looking for alternatives to the d20 and found Call of Cthulhu, I got into RQ. By then it was to late, Avalon Hill having pulled the plug on the game. Luckily, Stormbringer stepped in to fill the hole.

Now, RuneQuest is back. While it may not be a top contender(yet), it is actively supported and recognized as the excellent game it has always been, but which young me was to ignorant to realize.

Long live the BRP-renaissance!

Part of the issue is that the games focus on different things, and a lot depends on the range of play and edition of D&D.  In terms of a good game out of the box, little has beat Tom Moldvay's edition of Basic (or Mentzer's edition for that matter).  Holmes had some rough edges.  

AD&D had some issues with organization and sometimes there being more than one way to model a specific rule (initiative comes to mind).  

Both games have notable rough patches.  D&D tried to address this with radically redeveloped editions 3.X, Pathfinder, and 4E.  Ironically, the mechanism that was always the toughest to accept (number of hit points for a character) was actually the one that increased in focus over time (as hit point totals got larger relative to weapon damage).  Hit points also got confusing as things like the Warlord's healing mechanism in 4E make it tricky to really sort out what they mean.

I did play a bit of Stormbringer.  On first glance, the issues with the system is that combat seemed to be very complex, hit locations led to a lot of crippling (which tends to disadvantage characters), fumbles seemed to easy, and (maybe this is stormbringer specific) dicing for your innate magic power in a game about working with black sorcery seemed unsatisfying.  

None of this is to say that RQ was a bad system.  It had the advantage of seeing the problems with OD&D and improving on the most egregious.  It's certainly better than the original D&D set.  

But both systems have their advantages.  As somebody who has moved a lot in my adult life, I have a huge bias towards liking simple to teach, as there is a non-zero chance I will have to grow a game from scratch.

When it comes down to system vs. system, different people like different things.
I have no difficulty accepting that someone likes D&D, GURPS or AW better than RQ. And I have no urge to prove them wrong.

The only thing I know is that BRP makes perfect sense for me. RuneQuest6 is umteen different shades of greatness.
Glorantha, on the other hand, not so so much. I want to like it, but it doesn't quite click. I think I'm not alone in having given up trying to make heads and tails of Glorantha. I also think that many have written off the entire BRP-family as a game because they couldn't be bothered by the implied setting.
Divorcing RQ6 from Glorantha was a very good idea. It won't stop me from trying again when the guide and AiG comes out:o

Quote from: RPGPundit;682284The straightforward answer is that D&D was simply the better game.

Actually, taken as a whole, when you compare the Runequest book to the contemporary D&D boxed set; D&D is the objectively better overall Game.

At the time in the US, D&D was a better "total package".

Although I still maintain my earlier point that the actual class/level/hp system was just 'good enough' and utterly irrelevant to D&D being the better overall game package.

.

For a lot of us, the fact that OD&D was much simpler, especially the basic combat system, outweighed everything else.  If the issues quoted in the original post don't really bother you, RQ simply has little appeal to counterbalance its greater complication.

Yes, I have played it.

Quote from: Akrasia;682383I'm curious: what are RQ's weaknesses?  Do you think the current version (RQ6) suffers from them?

I greatly enjoy my conversations with you, BTW.  

And I speak from the perspective, frankly, of having worked through a lot of these issues myself and come to some similar conclusions and some divergent ones.  It is funny to me when we agree on stuff; especially when they are rules I adopted decades ago.
I prefer a d100 skill based system.  To the point of the OP, I consider D&D a fun and engaging basic gaming experience, fast and interesting.  I consider RQ a more adult, niche game, capable of hitting on different cylinders.

I also find that RQ6 is frankly much more similar to my own stuff, including where they have gone to teachers, and the levels of skill difficulty, creating backgrounds and critical success and fumble rolls.  Mind you I have not read through the whole thing, and so feel free to correct me if I am incorrect at any point.  

And now that they have divested it from the game world, I think it will become even more useful.

However, the skill improvement system I have always found somewhat blanket, in that it treats all skills the exact same, whether it was difficult or easy.  I also find them very 'flat', I prefer skill trees that allow for more advanced but more specific skills.  A 25% skill in Astrology is not the same as a 25% ability in fire-making,. and gaining ability in either should happen differently, as should any level of mastery take very, very different paths.
 
Their use of Attributes in skills is decent, but crude.  The level of attribute does not help in the speed a character gets better in a skill, which is something I like to cover.  Similarly, I always employ guilds/schools which are better and worse at teaching skills, so that instead of a set amount of skills through a profession, there is more granularity in how good a guild/organization at a skill, not just a  'yes or no' about a skill.

I also find the magic system better, but still too divided and rigid.  It is here I need to understand more, but the types of magic do not seem to 'talk' to each other at all, seeming to be completely different disciplines.    But then I prefer a magic system with many types of spell abilities that mesh to form very different and individual types of casters.  I like pyromancers and Necromancers, and casters who might have less power but better spell success in an area or who might get back necromantic spell ability faster than another caster.  


Will it get in the way?  I think from what I have seen so far, that this is a better RQ, more flexible and more 'toolkit' based, and I think this is good.

Both games have different strengths and weaknesses.

In fact, some of the things that RQ fans say are better in RQ than D&D are actually things that attract people to D&D. So, Alignment, Classes and Levels make it easy to play a character, to understand what the character can do and so on.

But, I think the main thing that D&D had going for it over RQ was the fact that it brought out so many cheap supplements. RQ tended to have boxed sets, or deep setting books whereas D&D had many single scenarios or linked campaigns. Someone could go out and buy a supplement for a fraction of the price of a RQ boxed set.

The same could be said today. Legend supplements tend to be cheaper, and PDF supplements are cheaper than printed ones, but RQ-Family supplements tend to be pricey.

Quote from: baragei;682314You just can't help yourself, can you?:p

D&D had, as has been mentioned throughout the thread, availability, ease of play, momentum and accessibility of settings.
But a better game? No.

For most people, ease of play and accessibility are qualities that make for a better game.

Availability and the first to market effect, followed by the network externalities of everyone playing D&D and/or watching the cartoons AND the fact that RQ's setting was less accessible, Bronze Age pseudo-Greeks just doesn't attract a generation who are in the post hippy glow of Tolkien.

In the UNITED KINGDOM where GW published and distributed RQ alongside D&D, it had and still has a much higher proportion of the fanbase.

Quote from: LordVreeg;682442I also find that RQ6 is frankly much more similar to my own stuff, including where they have gone to teachers, and the levels of skill difficulty, creating backgrounds and critical success and fumble rolls.  Mind you I have not read through the whole thing, and so feel free to correct me if I am incorrect at any point.  
.

I am horribly pulled both ways by the freewheeling feel and style of Magic World (core BRP with a more Moorcock style game system) and RQ6 (subtler and nuanced sire of the MRQ fork).

Just can't decide, since they're both so very good.

Quote from: LordVreeg;682442However, the skill improvement system I have always found somewhat blanket, in that it treats all skills the exact same, whether it was difficult or easy.  I also find them very 'flat', I prefer skill trees that allow for more advanced but more specific skills.  A 25% skill in Astrology is not the same as a 25% ability in fire-making,. and gaining ability in either should happen differently, as should any level of mastery take very, very different paths.

I am not sure I understand your point here.  The skills are different, they do different things.  Self-improvement of skills is essentially a process of reflection, an internal thought process, that shows in the increase in skill rating.  How would that be different in the two examples?  I could see, indeed how the teaching of the two skills would differ, say in the setting and trappings of the learning environment, but how would you reflect that in the rules?
 

Quote from: LordVreeg;682442Their use of Attributes in skills is decent, but crude.  The level of attribute does not help in the speed a character gets better in a skill, which is something I like to cover.  Similarly, I always employ guilds/schools which are better and worse at teaching skills, so that instead of a set amount of skills through a profession, there is more granularity in how good a guild/organization at a skill, not just a  'yes or no' about a skill.

I suppose you could achieve this by having the modifier to the "do I learn?" die roll be an average of the two stats that the skill is based on, instead of intelligence?  Or maybe include Intelligence as well, and average all three, to show the impact of raw ability and the ability to learn quickly and efficiently on the improvement roll.  The Teaching skill also exists in the current rules and gives a bonus to the amount learnt, so you could easily give different tutors different teaching skills to reflect your teaching strengths preferences.

Quote from: LordVreeg;682442I also find the magic system better, but still too divided and rigid.  It is here I need to understand more, but the types of magic do not seem to 'talk' to each other at all, seeming to be completely different disciplines.    But then I prefer a magic system with many types of spell abilities that mesh to form very different and individual types of casters.  I like pyromancers and Necromancers, and casters who might have less power but better spell success in an area or who might get back necromantic spell ability faster than another caster.  

Again, I am not quite getting your point, because I see the RQ magic systems as being extremely flexible, with each one covering not just magic but a different spiritual view of the setting cosmos.  The whole point of the systems is you piece together a short list of effects (spells, miracles, spirits) from the particular type for each caster type, so your pyromancer would have about 6-8 sorcery spells, all fire related, and your necromancer would have a different 6-8 spells.  With the additional rules about setting up how magic works, I suppose you could link particular regional benefits to different "cults" and other such locational special effects.

An additional thought, RQ6 deliberately leaves the units for casting time unspecified in the magic systems so that a GM can set them to his world.  You could very easily say all casting is in rounds, but in a character or cult's centre of power, the casting time is in turns (action points) so the casting would be noticeably quicker.  You could also rule the same over magic point recovery rates, another setting variable left open and discussed in the Magic Chapter.

As you can see, I would view RQ as being completely able to do what you want in this area so am puzzled by how you think it struggles?

Quote from: Jaeger;682413Actually, taken as a whole, when you compare the Runequest book to the contemporary D&D boxed set; D&D is the objectively better overall Game.

At the time in the US, D&D was a better "total package".

What if you compare the RuneQuest 2 boxed set to the D&D book? ;)

Did any fantasy RPG overtake D&D?

I think after Call of Cthulhu's incredible success Chaosium must have thought there was more mileage in supporting Cthulhu and passing off RQ to Avalon Hill, which was of course a disaster but they can't have known that.

I'm not sure about the complexity Vs simplicity argument when it comes to D&D Vs RQ. I think D&D and it's ilk can be far more complex than RQ of any kind. I get the sense there's satisfaction to be had by fans of D&D in house ruling increasingly complex sets of house rules to accommodate the nonsensical principles the D&D rules are founded on. It's why rule modifications still tie themselves in knots 30 years later:
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=27152
If your rule system is inconsistent to begin with, then you can keep piling on addition rules ad infinitum which have to be memorised and applied in context.

Living in the UK I found out about RQ through White Dwarf because at the time Games Workshop was publishing RQ in the UK. This meant big ads and promotion in White Dwarf - full colour colour ads, and even miniatures, produced by Citadel ...

(http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h15/Bilharzia/rqwdad1.jpg)(http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h15/Bilharzia/rqwdad2.jpg)
(http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h15/Bilharzia/rqwdad3.jpg)

This was in around 1983? I have to say it was far more appealing than D&D for all the reasons people have already said. This was before GW commissioned the Warhammer RPG. It would be interesting to speculate what would have happened to RQ had Chaosium decided to grant GW a worldwide publishing licence instead of going with Avalon Hill.

The system differences between D&D and RQ were and are immaterial. When RQ launched it was a time when people bought into D&D/AD&D, Traveller and RQ because they were the big three. They were used for different things and games styles. I played all three systems in my long-ago youth. It was fun.

Where D&D scored was the huge support it had in terms of modules and settings. RQ took its time, was focused on Glorantha in its early days, and didn't produce 32 page scenarios, but detailed, often ground-breaking boxed sets. It appealed to a different demographic.

The crucial turning point was the disastrous Avalon Hill deal. The intention was to get RQ greater distribution, but the property was mis-managed: the system became clunky in some areas, but also very expensive to own - especially in the UK and Europe. The line faltered and support was sketchy. By the time Ken Rolston came to turn things around in the early to mid 90s, RQ's rep had suffered and it had become a truly niche game. Remember, this was around the time of the CCG and Vampire explosions. Both had an effect.

There's also this to consider. In the early days, RQ's sales were very, very good. But it was never the point to challenge D&D for supremacy. This wasn't a market-share war. It was Greg and Chaosium trying to make the best games and supplements they could. It was never, for them, a popularity contest.

Guess what: it still isn't. The fact that RQ is still here, almost 40 years on, getting glowing reviews, and attracting new interest from younger players (from the evidence on our own forums and at Gencon this week), is a testament to the system's strengths. D&D Next is still something of a quandry. It will be successful - and that will be great for the hobby, just as Pathfinder, 13th Age and Arrows of Indra are good for the hobby. It was never, for RQ, about being bigger or better than D&D: merely about being the very best that it could.

On that front, it seems to be succeeding. There's often differences of opinion as to who prefers RQ2, 3 or 6, but nothing like the edition wars seen with D&D3.5 and 4th Ed.

Oh, and RQ helped spawn Call of Cthulhu, still one of the most successful RPGs of all time, and still going strong for Chaosium.

Quote from: Bilharzia;682592I get the sense there's satisfaction to be had by fans of D&D in house ruling increasingly complex sets of house rules to accommodate the nonsensical principles the D&D rules are founded on. It's why rule modifications still tie themselves in knots 30 years later:
http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=27152
If your rule system is inconsistent to begin with, then you can keep piling on addition rules ad infinitum which have to be memorised and applied in context.

A lot of D&D players dealt with wonky rules by excising them altogether from the game, rather than developing complex house rules. We started with a bastardized AD&D, and then stripped away stuff until the game became more simple, mechanically, than B/X D&D.

Quote from: Psychman

Quote from: Originally Posted by LordVreegHowever, the skill improvement system I have always found somewhat blanket, in that it treats all skills the exact same, whether it was difficult or easy. I also find them very 'flat', I prefer skill trees that allow for more advanced but more specific skills. A 25% skill in Astrology is not the same as a 25% ability in fire-making,. and gaining ability in either should happen differently, as should any level of mastery take very, very different paths.

I am not sure I understand your point here. The skills are different, they do different things. Self-improvement of skills is essentially a process of reflection, an internal thought process, that shows in the increase in skill rating. How would that be different in the two examples? I could see, indeed how the teaching of the two skills would differ, say in the setting and trappings of the learning environment, but how would you reflect that in the rules?

As I said, the first way you treat them differently is setting up sub skills and parent skills.  Secondly, rate of improvement can be statted out.  We use such a modifier, and a basic skill like fire-making might be learned 3, 4, or even 10 times faster than a more esoteric (but possibly more useful and rare) skill.

Quote from: Psychman

QuoteOriginally Posted by LordVreeg]
Their use of Attributes in skills is decent, but crude. The level of attribute does not help in the speed a character gets better in a skill, which is something I like to cover. Similarly, I always employ guilds/schools which are better and worse at teaching skills, so that instead of a set amount of skills through a profession, there is more granularity in how good a guild/organization at a skill, not just a 'yes or no' about a skill.

I suppose you could achieve this by having the modifier to the "do I learn?" die roll be an average of the two stats that the skill is based on, instead of intelligence? Or maybe include Intelligence as well, and average all three, to show the impact of raw ability and the ability to learn quickly and efficiently on the improvement roll. The Teaching skill also exists in the current rules and gives a bonus to the amount learnt, so you could easily give different tutors different teaching skills to reflect your teaching strengths preferences.

you could do it that way, and to your comment, I would add this into the stat mentioned above, the speed of advancement.

Also, you don't mention it, but having a more skills available, but available at different levels of advancement based on the original point of learning allows a huge amount of flexibility and diversity.  

Quote from: Psychman

Quote from: Originally Posted by LordVreeg I also find the magic system better, but still too divided and rigid. It is here I need to understand more, but the types of magic do not seem to 'talk' to each other at all, seeming to be completely different disciplines. But then I prefer a magic system with many types of spell abilities that mesh to form very different and individual types of casters. I like pyromancers and Necromancers, and casters who might have less power but better spell success in an area or who might get back necromantic spell ability faster than another caster.

Again, I am not quite getting your point, because I see the RQ magic systems as being extremely flexible, with each one covering not just magic but a different spiritual view of the setting cosmos. The whole point of the systems is you piece together a short list of effects (spells, miracles, spirits) from the particular type for each caster type, so your pyromancer would have about 6-8 sorcery spells, all fire related, and your necromancer would have a different 6-8 spells. With the additional rules about setting up how magic works, I suppose you could link particular regional benefits to different "cults" and other such locational special effects.

An additional thought, RQ6 deliberately leaves the units for casting time unspecified in the magic systems so that a GM can set them to his world. You could very easily say all casting is in rounds, but in a character or cult's centre of power, the casting time is in turns (action points) so the casting would be noticeably quicker. You could also rule the same over magic point recovery rates, another setting variable left open and discussed in the Magic Chapter.

As you can see, I would view RQ as being completely able to do what you want in this area so am puzzled by how you think it struggles?

Again, understand that this is less of a complaint than a comment where I think they could do better. It's not flexible in that 6-8 spells would be considered in many games as an absolute paucity.  What if the same caster was going to come from a group that had decent Pyromancer and Animist spell ability, and some lesser Necromancy (School of ther Burning Spirit, perhaps), but had no ability in Order, Chaos, Water, Air, mentalism or other types?  
So I find the divisions rigid and the amount of effects limited.

Also, with no rancor and much honestly, I consider the lack of casting time and spell ability reclamation lass of a feature and more of a bug.

Quote from: LordVreeg;683038Again, understand that this is less of a complaint than a comment where I think they could do better. It's not flexible in that 6-8 spells would be considered in many games as an absolute paucity.  What if the same caster was going to come from a group that had decent Pyromancer and Animist spell ability, and some lesser Necromancy (School of ther Burning Spirit, perhaps), but had no ability in Order, Chaos, Water, Air, mentalism or other types?  
So I find the divisions rigid and the amount of effects limited.

RuneQuest 6 addresses many of these issues by building flexibility into the construction of schools, traditions or cults at the GM level. Want to combine some animism with sorcery in the same Necromany sect? Go for it, the rules let you build it.  Need more spells since your players have just shifted over from D&D, simply add a new Grimoire or sub-cult. The game is designed to encourage such creativity.

QuoteAlso, with no rancor and much honestly, I consider the lack of casting time and spell ability reclamation lass of a feature and more of a bug.

None taken. Its not that there's a lack of these elements, but more the fact you specifically choose what level they should be when designing your campaign world. The core rules give concrete options which are easy to plug and play.

This does not mean the system is vague and unfocussed. Rather it allows this latest version of RuneQuest to be easily adapted for any sort of genre you want to use it for. So for example whilst Glorantha might have Casting Times in Combat Actions and regain a Magic Point hourly, in Monster Island they are Minutes and Daily to get more of a pulp S&S feel instead.

Though you know?  In the crucial RQ 1e / 2e days, one might argue 15% to hit verses 50% to hit might have been an issue.  RQ's whiff factor in combat for a beginning character is pretty high.  There's also the tone of Basic D&D compared to Basic Roleplaying.  Basic D&D's first two editions are tightly written heroic and enthusiastic in tone and address an intelligent reader.  BRP is provincial and condescending in its tone.  You really feel like the writer considers you to be a back country hick who just fell off the turnip wagon.

Quote from: elfandghost;680961How did RuneQuest never overtake D&D?

Because losing limbs is depressing. And ducks are stupid.

QuoteI ask because if you read through, early critiques of the game and current threads, here (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=27413), the multi-class one here (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=27428) and hit-points one here (http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=27215) you would think that RuneQuest/BRP solves all the problems!

The fact is that in play, those "problems" are not problems. They're not really problems, they're just things gamers like to whinge about.

The funny thing is I'd never seen RQ at all until I saw it in an AH catalog, circa 1984.  And while I'd been playing RPGs since around 1980 or so, I'd never seen RQ in a discount store at all.  You could find D&D of course, Gamma World occasionally, and later on MERP, but that was it.  No Traveller, no RQ.

That meant that if you wanted RQ, you had to go find a hobby store.  D&D had that great advantage that the other games didn't have, and that was market penetration and market visibility in the U.S.  Particularly among kids.

Depth of penetration and familiarity - D&D was just more available and more widely talked about.

Support - as there was more penetration there was more support more 3rd party products basically a +ve feedback loop.

Generic nature of 'setting' - in D&D you can play all sorts of settings their is no default so you can play Robin Hood or Conan, Lancelot or Cugdel, eve if its a poor fit for lots of those. Runequest was always tied to it's world with ducks and Cults and stuff, it felt restrictive. Other BRP stuff came out but all tied to worlds, Elric, Hawkmoon etc if the original Runequest had been more generic with toolkits for tailoring to different types of fantasy that would have been a huge advantage.

Reward - the level paradigm means the more you play the more stuff and power you accumulate and unlike Traveller or Runequest the power comes in obvious chunks. This means players start to play and then get a reward so want to play for more reward and because the rewards are tangible and are part of the character not an adjunct, 2 more HD, or another spell and not 2% more in parry and a horse the reward step engenders player buy in. Just look at the MMO market, level based games are far more popular and that is not just becuase they steal off D&D but because the levelling mindset which like it or not comes with Challenge ratings and the idea of appropriate challenges and rewards.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;683446Because losing limbs is depressing. And ducks are stupid.

And boy do they fly!
http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2010/06/runequest-nights-and-oh-body-parts-flew.html


And yes I agree ducks as a PC race are stupid. And I thought the bronze weapons were stupid as well.

Yes, yes I know it part of Glorantha but that just how it looked when I was way younger.

QuoteAnd I thought the bronze weapons were stupid as well.

Why would bronze weapons, in a roughly Bronze Age setting, be stupid?

Was the Bronze Age as an era overall, stupid too? Should history have skipped it completely and gone straight for iron, or perhaps tin should've had a bigger presence?

Quote from: Loz;682779There's also this to consider. In the early days, RQ's sales were very, very good. But it was never the point to challenge D&D for supremacy. This wasn't a market-share war. It was Greg and Chaosium trying to make the best games and supplements they could. It was never, for them, a popularity contest.

As I remember, the original purpose of RQ wasn't to replace D&D, it was to produce a roleplaying game for Glorantha. White Bear & Read Moon and Nomad Gods (boardgame) players were interested in using the setting in a roleplaying game. So was Greg, but D&D just did not work well. RQ was designed to be the Gloranthan RPG first and a general fantasy RPG second.

Quote from: Loz;683484Why would bronze weapons, in a roughly Bronze Age setting, be stupid?

Was the Bronze Age as an era overall, stupid too? Should history have skipped it completely and gone straight for iron, or perhaps tin should've had a bigger presence?

Because everybody knows that iron/steel weapons are better. ;)

Of course today I know more; Bronze is not weaker but more expensive, the scarceness of tin promoted trade, etc.  And while Glorantha is still not my cup of tea I still appreciate it virtues and importance.

And King of Dragon Game is a pretty kick ass computer game.

But that how it looked to me back when I was in high school.

I loved bronze weapons and armour because they made my figures (sorry, "minis") look cool. And the players always let out a collective gasp of horror when the referee put a figure with iron-coloured armour on the table ...

The other idea that occurred to me following this thread regarding popularity of RQ vs D&D has to do with the response here in Europe compared to in America.  I do not intend any offense however we live closer to the history that informs the classic settings of fantasy here compared to the US, which is a younger nation.

 D&D has a "simplistic" view of people and society in its implied setting, with alignments etc.  Whereas RQ has no alignment and with its culture vs culture and cults potentially being in opposition or alliance independent of their internal ethics leads to a more nuanced and "accurate" representation of power politics that chimes with the European experience.  The rivalry / "neighbour we love to hate" relationship of the UK to France, for example.  Other sales factors being equal, this may account for the popularity difference in Europe vs America before the Avalon Hill deal went and messed things up totally.

Thoughts?

There is an element of truth there. As part of my childhood we were read the Iliad, Odyssey, Greek and Viking myths at Primary school, and studied the Romans and Celts at Middle school.  So my appreciation for the ancient world and polytheism was inspired at a very early age.

Another aspect was the tremendous cultural differences on either side of the Atlantic before American TV shows saturated the European psyche. In US media there was a definite emphasis towards competitiveness, personal ambition, the pursuit of wealth and a disturbing (at the time) lack of concern over killing - as evidenced by exported movies, cop shows and soaps.

Now even though both D&D and RQ were written by Americans, the design of Dungeons & Dragons catered very much to the strong cultural tropes of the US and thus appealed very much to American players. Whereas over here (in the UK at least) it was less the 'kill-loot-raise levels' elements of the game, and more 'oh wow, they included all the cool mythical beasts I learned at school'.  

So when RQ came along, it resonated far more with us as players because we could relate to the ancient world and myths upon which Greg had based Glorantha.  Unfortunately there's no way I can substantiate my perspective, but back in the early 80's all the gamers I knew preferred RQ to D&D, and a significant part of it was based on cultural upbringing.

Quote from: Pete Nash;683961There is an element of truth there. As part of my childhood we were read the Iliad, Odyssey, Greek and Viking myths at Primary school, and studied the Romans and Celts at Middle school.  So my appreciation for the ancient world and polytheism was inspired at a very early age.
Whereas over here (in the UK at least) it was less the 'kill-loot-raise levels' elements of the game, and more 'oh wow, they included all the cool mythical beasts I learned at school'.  

So when RQ came along, it resonated far more with us as players because we could relate to the ancient world and myths upon which Greg had based Glorantha.

I can relate to all of this. D&D always had a great game structure, but RQ tapped into deeper cultural elements which were and still are very evocative and powerful. As a slightly bookish child in the 70s and 80s, the ancient Greek myths were a real presence, mediated through well-illustrated books ranging from re-tellings of myths to translations of Homer. Role-playing for me was a way of tapping into something quite mysterious and powerful, and RQ had that to a greater extent than D&D.

Quote from: estar;683503Because everybody knows that iron/steel weapons are better. ;)

Of course today I know more; Bronze is not weaker but more expensive, the scarceness of tin promoted trade, etc.  And while Glorantha is still not my cup of tea I still appreciate it virtues and importance.

And King of Dragon Game is a pretty kick ass computer game.

But that how it looked to me back when I was in high school.

Omg!  someone who knows more about bronze than 'Iron iz betterz!'




That was not intended to offend anyone, as there are billions of topics I know jack all about.

Quote from: Bill;684011Omg!  someone who knows more about bronze than 'Iron iz betterz!'




That was not intended to offend anyone, as there are billions of topics I know jack all about.

:rotfl:

Quote from: Bill;684011Omg!  someone who knows more about bronze than 'Iron iz betterz!'

Steel is better and cheaper, iron is just cheaper. Plus it more readily available in the sense that most realms would have deposits of iron in their territories.

Also for a long time there was a practical limitation on the type of armor you could make with iron due to limitations on the size of raw billets.  Basically bronze "plate" was way easier to make than iron plate. This can be seen in the lack of iron breastplates versus bronze breastplates. Chain, scale, small plates, and segmented plate were the usual methods making of iron and later steel armor.

Quote from: Pete Nash;683961So when RQ came along, it resonated far more with us as players because we could relate to the ancient world and myths upon which Greg had based Glorantha.  Unfortunately there's no way I can substantiate my perspective, but back in the early 80's all the gamers I knew preferred RQ to D&D, and a significant part of it was based on cultural upbringing.

In my neck of the woods (Northwest PA), Runequest was played mostly by college age gamers who emphasized roleplaying in their game. Runequest was appealing because as a decent skill based system (compared to something like Chivalry & Sorcery) it allowed them make the character they wanted to play. And RQ combat system made more sense than the abstraction of D&D combat system.

For the group I hung out with (about 20 odd kids at the time) Glorantha was just too weird. When we hit college we eventually moved to games like Hero System and GURPS. Note it wasn't a AD&D mono culture we played Traveller, Call of Cthulu, etc as well. But when it came to fantasy roleplaying AD&D was king. And God help me we played a campaign of FGU's Aftermath what an exercise in rules minutiae that was.

Quote from: estar;684029And God help me we played a campaign of FGU's Aftermath what an exercise in rules minutiae that was.

Still have my copy sitting on the shelves... :)

That's an interesting point, Rob, because as much fun as I'm having prepping RQ6 for our next game right now, to be honest, I don't know that I would have given it a look if it were directly tied to Glorantha (the latest RQ6 edition is not, as has been mentioned, despite having some products coming up that will tie in to it).

Although after looking through some of the Gloranthan material recently, I think I want to check it out a bit more, it always seemed too inaccessible and foreign as a setting to really jump into.

Quote from: Zachary The First;684033Although after looking through some of the Gloranthan material recently, I think I want to check it out a bit more, it always seemed too inaccessible and foreign as a setting to really jump into.

My impression from reading about Runequest that there was two initial main campaign areas. Dragon Pass which had all the culture and weirdness in full flower. And Prax which had the Big Rubble, Runequest's original megadungeon. Each having originated in a different campaign run by a Runequest author.

Again my impression is that the easiest method of getting into Glorantha for a gamer coming from classic D&D is to start off with Prax and the Big Rubble. Which is pretty much your big city with a dungeon outside type of setup.

BRP missed the "generic fantasy" boat and GURPS jumped on it (a quite similar system in the sense of realistic combat distinguishing between armor an active defense, no boatloads of hit points, skill system, monster stats = character stats, et al.) D&D has remained evergreen because it's a system that refuses to dictate a setting to you beyond broad strokes.

Quote from: Roger the GS;684074BRP missed the "generic fantasy" boat and GURPS jumped on it (a quite similar system in the sense of realistic combat distinguishing between armor an active defense, no boatloads of hit points, skill system, monster stats = character stats, et al.) D&D has remained evergreen because it's a system that refuses to dictate a setting to you beyond broad strokes.

Not quite, RQ3 (the Avalon Hill edition) was released around the same time as GURPS and was also generic. It was broken away from Glorantha and supported by boxed sets such as 'Vikings' and 'Land of Ninja', so it was trying to capitalise on the shift towards generic rule toolkits. However, as I said in my previous post, AH mis-managed the line. The first thing they put-out for RQ3 was a couple of boxes of character sheets, followed by 'Monster Coliseum', which really wasn't brilliant. The boxed sets were also a lot expensive than GURPS' world books, and so GURPS cornered that side of the market with little effort.

So RQ tried to go down that route, but the production and release policies AH took really killed the attempt. Which was a shame because, when they were finally released, 'Vikings' and 'Land of Ninja' were well received. Regrettably, there was nothing else to follow them.

Quote from: Psychman;683899D&D has a "simplistic" view of people and society in its implied setting, with alignments etc.  Whereas RQ has no alignment and with its culture vs culture and cults
Thoughts?

I think this is true for me or at least how I thought of things in the 80s. RQ+Glorantha appealed because of Ray Harryhausen films, Norse and Greek myths, plus it's difficult to avoid Roman history if you go to school in the UK, and it had a broader view of societies and culture, it helped that the rules seemed consistent and made sense.

The artwork and layout of RQ seemed a lot better than D&D, which seemed clumsy, I couldn't understand why D&D's artwork and design was so crappy when they were the big company with the expensive books - since seeing Erol Otus' paintings online I've changed my mind a little about this. You might not know that Steve Jobs was a RuneQuest fan and thought along similar lines:

Quote from: SteveJobsThe only problem with TSR is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste. And I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their product.

And you say 'why is that important?' well you know proportionally spaced fonts come from typesetting and beautiful books that's where one gets the idea, if it weren't for Chaosium they would never have that in their products...and so I guess I am saddened, not by TSR's success, I have no problem with their success, they've earned their success....for the most part, I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOgOP_aqqtg (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOgOP_aqqtg)

BRP never became a setting-neutral fantasy system because there was never any reason to develop it - Call of Cthulhu was the golden child of BRP and it's done pretty well. Maybe if Chaosium had kept together and kept RQ it might have had a chance to crossover from CoC players.

Now there's at least 4 [edit: actively supported] Runequest-derived setting-free fantasy-ish systems - Legend, OpenQuest, BasicRolePlaying, RuneQuest 6.

I would still like to see a Meeros campaign setting book for RQ6. I know its just used as an example within the book, but there is a lot of great ideas that I would love to see expanded.


(hint hint...)

(wink wink nudge nudge)

I remember seeing RQ box sets back in the 80s. The area I lived in (NoVA/DC Metro) was fortunate to have a few really good game stores in the two big malls in the area (Springfield Mall and Fair Oaks). I was only 11-15 while in that area, so I was pretty young. After that I had moved out to the country and we didn't have a game store in the area until the early-mid 90s.

My early recollections of RQ seem to have an air of mystery and unattainability. I loved looking at the artwork, the covers were really great. But there was just something about it that kept it at arms reach... Something to admire and dream about one day playing, but never quite feeling like I was worthy enough to attain. Even living with the Satanic Panic, D&D didn't hold quite this mystique that RQ did.

I'm probably not describing this very well, but that's how I remember feeling (of course that was 25-30 years ago). Now as an adult, and owning RQ6, I don't see why it was such a big deal to inspire such awe. So I think a lot of it had to do with the setting and Artwork. Glorantha was definitely different than the Tolkien inspired fantasy I was used too. and the depth of culture and sociology were definitely above my understanding at that early age. Now, I see it as a plus and can understand it much better.

Others have touched on elements of my overall theory, but here it is:

TSR had built an industry around D&D before Chaosium published Runequest.

D&D had sold well over 100K units of D&D by the middle of 1978 when Runequest first debuted at Origins that summer. RQ's print run was in the thousands, while at that time D&D was probably 10 times or more that amount per month. Game stores carried D&D on a regular basis, while RQ only appeared in some shops. I see Chaosium as a small "art-house" publisher at this time. It had only a single handful of employees working on RQ while TSR had many more than that working on D&D. In the first few years after RQ was published Chaosium produced very few modules for it, basically only Apple Lane and Snakepipe Hollow, while TSR was easily producing that number every month.

TSR published Dragon magazine, which was centered around D&D. Chaosium didn't have an equivalent magazine for RQ. Chaosium had Wyrms Footnotes magazine, but that was never widely available, with print runs in the hundreds, while Dragon magazine had tens of thousands of subscribers.

The same could be said for miniatures. D&D had no shortage of miniatures produced for it, while Chaosium produced a very limited range. I acknowledge that many D&D miniatures were fairly generic in nature and could be used for any game, but people tended to buy RQ minis for RQ and D&D labeled minis for D&D on average.

Conventions were similar in focus. TSR launched/supported Gen Con, which was a huge showcase for D&D related events. Sure, it was open to all, but it was mostly a D&D oriented convention. Chaosium and RQ had no equivalents.

Thus, in 1980, if you went into a game shop you would see a lot of D&D related product (books, magazines, modules, minis) and sometimes you might see a handful of RQ related product. At a convention you would see a lot of D&D related activity and maybe the odd table or two with RQ. Maybe there would be a small Chaosium booth you could find after passing 10 related in some capacity to D&D.

Regardless of which game had better art/content/rules/production/quality (take your pick), D&D was produced by an industry and Runequest was produced by a workshop, relatively speaking.

Quote from: rmeints;684485Regardless of which game had better art/content/rules/production/quality (take your pick), D&D was produced by an industry and Runequest was produced by a workshop, relatively speaking.

Well, technically speaking, D&D was produced by two hobby enthusiasts exchanging drafts and playing a game with their respective groups over a few months. Then, after borrowing money from a partner with a wealthy father, the first thousand boxes were assembled by hand in the Gygax house hold. I hardly call that the product of "an industry", if you see what I mean.

I get your point, rmeints: In the time frame when RuneQuest appeared D&D had become the gravitational center of an industry it had built for itself, but for the sake of clarity, the actual origins of the game were hardly industrial, and very much the product of a workshop of enthusiasts of its own.

I think one of the most damaging aspects of the RuneQuest fandom to this day is its snobbishness in regards to Dungeons & Dragons. Any time one pushes a game on the grounds that D&D is broken and doesn't work and was in need of being fixed or whatnot, I'm convinced the potential audience of said game suffers from it.

I'm a fan of both D&D and RuneQuest. I've been reading RuneQuest 6th edition and am impressed by what I see. I still intend to give the game a go. But each time I hear some fan somewhere rave about about how RQ is this awesome game that did fantasy justice when compared to that useless nonsensical piece of crap that is D&D, it's got the effect of a cold-shower on me.

Quote from: Benoist;684525I think one of the most damaging aspects of the RuneQuest fandom to this day is its snobbishness in regards to Dungeons & Dragons. Any time one pushes a game on the grounds that D&D is broken and doesn't work and was in need of being fixed or whatnot, I'm convince the potential audience of the game suffers from it.

I'm a fan of both D&D and RuneQuest. I've been reading RuneQuest 6th edition and am impressed by what I see. I still intend to give the game a go. But each time I hear some fan somewhere rave about about how RQ is this awesome game that did fantasy justice when compared to that useless nonsensical piece of crap that is D&D, it's got the effect of a cold-shower on me.

Yes, because D&D fans are so much better with their constant finger - twitching that nothing is problematic at all, everything is perfect, and if you have a problem with D&D, you probably don't even play RPGs or don't understand simple abstractions, dummy. And for a cherry on top of the cake, there is the constant editional bickering.

Quote from: Rincewind1;684527Yes, because D&D fans are so much better with their constant finger - twitching that nothing is problematic at all, everything is perfect, and if you have a problem with D&D, you probably don't even play RPGs or don't understand simple abstractions, dummy.

The D&D fan isn't the one hiding behind some made-up idea of what "realism" ought to look like, like there's some sort of "objective truth" behind his game being better than the other.

And yes, when one goes on pretending that a percentile skill represents accurately what actual learning and experience looks like in the real world, the relationship between the odds of succeeding at one particular task instance versus the overall mastery of a particular area of expertise versus the inverse odds of potentially increasing a skill by this or that rate of advancement, to then turn around to chuckle at abstractions like armor class, hit points, levels and the like, all the while demonstrating that one read the game books in diagonal at best, there's going to be some push back from the D&D fan, for sure! ;)

I jumped ship from D&D the moment I found Runequest/BRP. D&D's levels and classes never sat well with me but what really bugged me was the annoying proliferation of magic items... the overt magical-materialism that seemed built into the game (since so many people seemed to play it that way) sucked the sense of awe right out of me once I started playing outside of my initial group of friends.

I'm sure I've been a 'snob' about it at times... primarily because of D&D's tyrannical hold on the marketplace and vast numbers of players who seem unquestionably loyal to it... who refuse to play anything else.
Anyone who has acquired a taste that is somewhat off the mainstream and finds themselves exiled because of it can be tempted to curse the mob.

Still, once I'd left D&D behind I was more than happy to visit other rule sets as well. Traveller was a big hit with me (though I was never much into the OTU).
Luckily I had friends who felt the same and would play a variety of things... otherwise... I might have just dropped RPGs altogether.

Getting me to go back to playing (anything other than basic) D&D is gonna meet with strong resistance though... as much for the rote mindset people take on while playing it as anything else. I don't really think the rules are bad... but, at least amongst the players I've known, player assumptions are locked in and the game becomes predictable.

Elric and 1E are two of my favorite fantasy rpgs. Never once did I think one was better than the other; that simply never occured to me.



Elric and RQ are simular, right?


I don't think I ever actually played RQ.

Some of the best games I've ever played were run with RuneQuest and BRP variants (CoC and Stormbringer/Hawkmoon). Coming from a background playing AD&D 1st edition and L'Oeil Noir (Das Schwarze Auge), there definitely was a different vibe coming out of Oriflam's RuneQuest (French translation of Avalon Hill's RuneQuest III) when I first laid eyes on it, when I was maybe 13, 14 years old.

I definitely have a feeling of kinship reading our UK friends here describing how the game resonated with them with its use of mythology and its appeal to a Classical ancient history, rather than a realm of Leiber-esque, Vancian treasure-seeking fantasy which I too find very much American in tone and feel (which isn't necessarily a bad thing in my mind, and is actually a good thing in its own right, let's be clear about that).

I love Glorantha.

I don't understand people stopping at the Ducks or complaining about the weirdness of it all. Giant craddles flowing down the river, a huge block of the Cosmic Peak crushing the Devil, nomads riding on all sorts of domesticated animals, including animals riding men, the runes, the different cultural angles on the mythology that each reveal different pieces of a magical whole... all these things and many more made me fall in love with Glorantha.

I still love it today. If I had a shot at it, I would dynamite the notion that there's some sort of "Gloranthan canon", however. The endless nitpicky discussions of the Gloranthan mailing list, with so many seeking "official" answers to questions such as the manner in which the nomads of Prax would practice abortion, if at all, or the types of bounds the Lunars would use to crucify the Orlanthi or whatnot, without thinking for a second that this is in fact THEIR world, THEIR campaign and they ought to make decisions for themselves, just blows my mind completely.

I love Glorantha as a gaming setting, as a realm of MY imagination. I have no interest in it as some sort of fictional canon of any kind.

To give some perspective about how I actually feel about both RuneQuest, and Glorantha. I'm actually a huge fan of both.

Quote from: Benoist;684525I'm a fan of both D&D and RuneQuest. I've been reading RuneQuest 6th edition and am impressed by what I see. I still intend to give the game a go. But each time I hear some fan somewhere rave about about how RQ is this awesome game that did fantasy justice when compared to that useless nonsensical piece of crap that is D&D, it's got the effect of a cold-shower on me.

I totally agree with you. I played a lot of D&D in my formative years alongside RQ, and love them both for different reasons.  Nowadays I tend to run things using RQ, but that's because I can hack the system without a second thought. Whereas I'll pretty much play anything providing there's a seat available and the company is good.

Quote from: Benoist;684525I think one of the most damaging aspects of the RuneQuest fandom to this day is its snobbishness in regards to Dungeons & Dragons.

Is this snobbery really that present "to this day" on forums, at conventions, at game stores? Are that many RQers flipping D&Ders shit now about their unrealistic gameplay, their immature dungeons, and whatever? In the early 80's, sure. I bet that snobbery was in force in that era. But nowadays?

If there is, it must be in threads I don't read, or stop reading when they start getting caustic. Or they're just miniscule in comparison to the tooth-and-nail, eye-for-an-eye bloodshed over D&D editions.

Quote from: Pete Nash;684554I totally agree with you. I played a lot of D&D in my formative years alongside RQ, and love them both for different reasons.  Nowadays I tend to run things using RQ, but that's because I can hack the system without a second thought. Whereas I'll pretty much play anything providing there's a seat available and the company is good.

Hear, hear. I am very much the same.

Quote from: Bill;684539Elric and RQ are simular, right?

Fairly close. One major point of difference is hit locations (RQ) vs general hit points (Elric). Elric has typically used random armor point values vs. fixed values with RQ. Different magic systems.

Quote from: K Peterson;684555Is this snobbery really that present "to this day" on forums, at conventions, at game stores? Are that many RQers flipping D&Ders shit now about their unrealistic gameplay, their immature dungeons, and whatever? In the early 80's, sure. I bet that snobbery was in force in that era. But nowadays?

Nowadays too. Sometimes it feels very much like the 80s are back in force, like part of the hobby accomplished a full revolution back to its origins, with or without the OSR's help, and probably in part because of middle-aged gamers rediscovering the games they played when they were kids, thereby restarting the same arguments around the same themes common back then.

Now there are many RQ fans who are not like this, and a few threads make for a very poor sample of any game's fandom, to be sure. But it still does exist all the same.

Quote from: K Peterson;684555Is this snobbery really that present "to this day" on forums, at conventions, at game stores? Are that many RQers flipping D&Ders shit now about their unrealistic gameplay, their immature dungeons, and whatever? In the early 80's, sure. I bet that snobbery was in force in that era. But nowadays?

If there is, it must be in threads I don't read, or stop reading when they start getting caustic. Or they're just miniscule in comparison to the tooth-and-nail, eye-for-an-eye bloodshed over D&D editions.

I've seen more of D&D fan(atics) whining about how everyone doesn't like D&D and is bashing on their favourite game, than actual bashing. The only bashing I did see is usually some pseudosocial stuff like D&D as metaphor of colonialism and all that puke. Frankly, D&D fans are best left to their own devices when it comes to discussing D&D, because ultimately, the edition spread will ensure they'll tear themselves apart without any need for sneer from RQ/BRP fans.

Quote from: Pete Nash;684554I totally agree with you. I played a lot of D&D in my formative years alongside RQ, and love them both for different reasons.  Nowadays I tend to run things using RQ, but that's because I can hack the system without a second thought. Whereas I'll pretty much play anything providing there's a seat available and the company is good.

Oh, I like both games as well, I mean hells, I have a 2 years running D&D campaign at the moment. But at the same time, both games have flaws, and I don't see a point of trying to sweep them under a rug.

Quote from: K Peterson;684555Is this snobbery really that present "to this day" on forums, at conventions, at game stores? Are that many RQers flipping D&Ders shit now about their unrealistic gameplay, their immature dungeons, and whatever? In the early 80's, sure. I bet that snobbery was in force in that era. But nowadays?

Not so much in my experience. Rather than snobbishness I tend to see folks who've finally tried RQ for the first time, becoming effusive and exuberant about the system. Its nice to hear positive insights rather than damning critiques of systems just left.

Quote from: Benoist;684520Well, technically speaking, D&D was produced by two hobby enthusiasts exchanging drafts and playing a game with their respective groups over a few months. Then, after borrowing money from a partner with a wealthy father, the first thousand boxes were assembled by hand in the Gygax house hold. I hardly call that the product of "an industry", if you see what I mean.

I get your point, rmeints: In the time frame when RuneQuest appeared D&D had become the gravitational center of an industry it had built for itself, but for the sake of clarity, the actual origins of the game were hardly industrial, and very much the product of a workshop of enthusiasts of its own.

If Chaosium and TSR had launched their respective games at the same time I can see your point. As you say, TSR started out with humble origins as well. The thing is they didn't start out at the same time. TSR had become an industry when Chaosium started publishing RQ. In the end, the race was over by the time Chaosium started.

Quote from: rmeints;684576If Chaosium and TSR had launched their respective games at the same time I can see your point. As you say, TSR started out with humble origins as well. The thing is they didn't start out at the same time. TSR had become an industry when Chaosium started publishing RQ. In the end, the race was over by the time Chaosium started.

I see your point. At the same time, RQ incorporated ideas coming from OD&D house rules, such as the Perrin Conventions, so wondering which game would have have performed how if they had started at the same time is a nonsensical scenario. RQ wouldn't have been the same if it had not followed in OD&D's wake.

Quote from: LordVreeg;683038Also, you don't mention it, but having a more skills available, but available at different levels of advancement based on the original point of learning allows a huge amount of flexibility and diversity.  

Yes, it's shocking how much of a difference small touches like this can make to a game. Plus it makes it much easier to differentiate between types of weapons, giving them an extra dimension that brings the whole 'bows were harder than crossbows' thing to life.

Quote from: Rincewind1;684560Frankly, D&D fans are best left to their own devices when it comes to discussing D&D, because ultimately, the edition spread will ensure they'll tear themselves apart without any need for sneer from RQ/BRP fans.

That pretty much knocks it out of the park. What's annoying is when they butt into other discussions under the assumption that someone is obliquely criticising D&D. The sacred cows are sacred no matter what system you're talking about, apparently.

Quote from: Benoist;684525I think one of the most damaging aspects of the RuneQuest fandom to this day is its snobbishness in regards to Dungeons & Dragons. Any time one pushes a game on the grounds that D&D is broken and doesn't work and was in need of being fixed or whatnot, I'm convinced the potential audience of said game suffers from it.

1978 - 1984 RuneQuest golden age.
1984 - 1992 RuneQuest starts dying at Avalon Hill.
1992 - 1994 Ken Rolston might save it.
1994 - 1996 Nope, he can't. Oh god, is RQ now associated with a sexual assault case? This can't be happening.
1996 - 2006 RuneQuest is dead....and stays dead for ten years...
2006 : Mongoose publishes MRQ, this was like a genie bringing a deceased loved one back to life...as a zombie, now I just wish it would die again.
2010 - 2011 Loz & Nash locate the ancestor spirit of RQ and bind it to a new body carved out of truestone.
2012 : The Design Mechanism hammers life back into RuneQuest (6).

So, snobbishness maybe be petty and irritating but I don't think has anything to do with RuneQuest's problems, I think being off the radar for over 20 years does. There's also the reality that although you can say it does different things than D&D (true), it's also true that for many people RQ was (and is) better as a system in most respects - that was part of the reason for it's success, and part of the reason it was designed as it was in the first place.

Quote from: Pete Nash;684554I totally agree with you. I played a lot of D&D in my formative years alongside RQ, and love them both for different reasons.  Nowadays I tend to run things using RQ, but that's because I can hack the system without a second thought. Whereas I'll pretty much play anything providing there's a seat available and the company is good.

+1.

And we do.

Quote from: Benoist;684580I see your point. At the same time, RQ incorporated ideas coming from OD&D house rules, such as the Perrin Conventions, so wondering which game would have have performed how if they had started at the same time is a nonsensical scenario. RQ wouldn't have been the same if it had not followed in OD&D's wake.

I've never wondered what would have happened if RQ and D&D had started at exactly the same time, since RQ came about through a dissatisfaction with D&D. I just provided my take on why RQ didn't surpass D&D in popularity.

Quote from: Benoist;684559estarting the same arguments around the same themes common back then.

In the words of Rich Magill circa 1981 (https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/net.games.frp/DZYY61Sl1nI)

QuoteAD&D sucks for all the previously given reasons. Try The Fantasy Trip
or better yet *****TRAVELLER******!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rich Magill

Of course they had thoughtful and in depth discussions (https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/net.games.frp/8PUOi_DNYmo) back then much better then our benighted age of iron.

unc!tim
View profile
More options Oct 20 1982, 6:28 am
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
From: unc!tim
Date: Wed Oct 20 06:28:39 1982
Local: Wed, Oct 20 1982 6:28 am
Subject: AD&D sucks

In a possibly vain attempt to get some discussion on this group, I will now come out of the closet
publicly and say I think that Advanced Dungeons and Dragons is a very poor excuse for a game. Gary Gygax has no conception of how books are actually used in a play situation, and a very poor ability to understand hand-to-hand combat. Further, the magic system is totally counter-intuitive. Finally, the importance of magic items (as well as the ideas of class and level) depersonalizes characters, leading to a "rogue"- type environment. (Oh yes, the description of gods in terms of hit dice, etc., is totally useless to the DM, and the unarmed combat system is an atrocity; sorry to have forgotten these.) The only reason that AD&D is the most popular FRP game around is that it has a major lead on the others--unfortunately, TSR has not used this time to improve the rules, only to lengthen them.

The only game I know of that's worse than AD&D, aside from basic D&D, is Tunnels and Trolls. Both RuneQuest and The Fantasy Trip provide much better alternatives, and I am told that SPI's DragonQuest (now owned by TSR) is hard to learn but very smooth once one learns it. I strongly recommend that any AD&D player buy RuneQuest and play a few games before further glorifying their rather primitive game.

I suppose I should be afraid to sign my name,
Tim Maroney (unc!tim)

Ah here you go! Complete with the "primitive" zinger at the end! BA-DOOM-TISHHH! :D

First time I remember actually seeing Runequest was in 1980 at Ghengis Con. The whole Duck thing, and the Big Rubble (yet another Dungeon!) was a big turn off, so I pretty much ignored it until after it was acquired, and then republished by Avalon Hill. It also seemed very odd to be playing what would normally be peace loving animals (Ducks, Goats, etc. etc.) that had somehow gained intelligence and then went on homicidal rampages for honor and glory, etc. et. al. That was my first impression.

It also just didn't jive with other GMs in our local group. We were into the traditional Swords & Sorcery style Fantasy liberally dosed with Heavy Metal. In addition to D&D we were regularly running C&S, and TFT games, as well as T&T, but there was no one in our regular group that wanted to run a Glorantha based RQ game, but we did watch when we went to big regional conventions, just to see how it was being played.

That changed though with the Avalon Hill RQ release. For starters, the cover art on the boxed set was made of pure awesome. When I bought it and opened up the box and found the map and campaign setting was Medieval Europe, along with much better rules for magic (by then some of the AD&D magic was going into the realms of ridiculousness) as GMs and players were starting to metagame, that is to say game the AD&D magic rules and argue interpretations of how the spells worked. This was around 85-87 btw.

AH RQ was simple, used a percentile based system all the way. The magic was awesome, combat and magic moved quickly and was well detailed with hit locations, and we could finally play out fantasy games based in the dark and middle ages proper like.

TSR had never released a fantasy RPG based on a real world location. Rolemaster Did, and C&S was awesome for that, but both of those were extremely rules heavy, and had a steep learning curve.

RQ was easy on the GM, fit the bill nicely, and we used it for Fantastic Europe based roleplaying and it replaced the more complex games we were playing previously for fantasy Europe namely, C&S and Rolemaster.  

The other problem we were seeing in D&D was the Level Power Bloat, with players showing up for games with 50th and 70th and even higher level characters for D&D and AD&D games.

AH RQ was a refreshing change from that. It Harkened back to a time when the game was about Roleplaying, and it wasn't important what level your character was, when you entered the game.

Here is a review of Runequest 3 from the 80s (https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!searchin/net.games.frp/runequest/net.games.frp/rBKrQ550buc/pRlHuU5SaWwJ)

And here is something you don't see every day a rebuttal by Steve Perrin (https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!searchin/net.games.frp/Runequest$203$20review/net.games.frp/eUGtQujdPvU/onJrDlPKaSYJ).

Quote from: GameDaddy;684696The other problem we were seeing in D&D was the Level Power Bloat, with players showing up for games with 50th and 70th and even higher level characters for D&D and AD&D games.

That's one of the things that puzzles me about the Arduin Grimoire praise, it had tables for characters to go up to 105th level

Quote from: JeremyR;684794That's one of the things that puzzles me about the Arduin Grimoire praise, it had tables for characters to go up to 105th level

Even 50 seems too high to me.

I would prefer to start a new character before I gained the power to move stars with my bare hands.

Quote from: estar;684788Here is a review of Runequest 3 from the 80s (https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!searchin/net.games.frp/runequest/net.games.frp/rBKrQ550buc/pRlHuU5SaWwJ)

And here is something you don't see every day a rebuttal by Steve Perrin (https://groups.google.com/forum/?nomobile=true#!searchin/net.games.frp/Runequest$203$20review/net.games.frp/eUGtQujdPvU/onJrDlPKaSYJ).

Man, that's a great reminder that edition/system angst is certainly nothing new. Good stuff.

Quote from: estar;684676In the words of Rich Magill circa 1981 (https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/net.games.frp/DZYY61Sl1nI)

You're a shit-stirrer, Estar. ;)

I'd still like to see some quotes, within the past 5 years, that expose the callous RQ snobbery. I just don't think it's really around these days, and the accusations of snobbery are the result of hurt feelings from decades ago. Justified hurt feelings, certainly, but still... from decades ago.

I haven't seen this behavior, even in RQ/BRP hotbeds like BRP Central (http://www.basicroleplaying.com/forum.php), the Gaming Tavern (http://www.gamingtavern.eu/phpBB3testTHZ/viewforum.php?f=7&sid=81e0155c2fc5b7ac8604871eb4783f83), or the Design Mechanism forums (http://designmechanism.freeforums.org/). If RQers these days believe that D&Ders are primitives they're thinking it, not yelling on forums about it. :)

Quote from: K Peterson;684847You're a shit-stirrer, Estar. ;)

I'd still like to see some quotes, within the past 5 years, that expose the callous RQ snobbery. I just don't think it's really around these days, and the accusations of snobbery are the result of hurt feelings from decades ago. Justified hurt feelings, certainly, but still... from decades ago.

I haven't seen this behavior, even in RQ/BRP hotbeds like BRP Central (http://www.basicroleplaying.com/forum.php), the Gaming Tavern (http://www.gamingtavern.eu/phpBB3testTHZ/viewforum.php?f=7&sid=81e0155c2fc5b7ac8604871eb4783f83), or the Design Mechanism forums (http://designmechanism.freeforums.org/). If RQers these days believe that D&Ders are primitives they're thinking it, not yelling on forums about it. :)

Yeah, I mean, I'm just getting into RQ6, and I haven't seen any of it, and I've been in a spot where folks were trying to sell or inform me on their d100 game of choice, and I don't think I hit any D&D derision.

I'm sure someone out there feels that way, but I don't see it flaring up anywhere, or even especially common anywhere I can see.

My opinion is that gaming snobbery is a reaction to the top dog RPG. Because of the dominance of D&D in various eras the most common situation is that a gamer started out with D&D. And THEN found an alternative they liked better.

Because People are people this means that some will sound like snob when talking about their favorites.

I don't think it's so much that D&D sucks as much as that it's very poorly suited to the type of games I like to run.

If you want an action adventure oriented game full of death traps and deadly magic it's pretty well suited to that.  AD&D 1e in particular covers realm management and warfare a bit and is decent enough at that.

The thing is that different people focus on different things and have different interests and D&D is too off the cuff and loose form many of us.  I think the AD&D books are more like collections of essays than reference works but that's okay because back in the day, none of us knew what an rpg was and Gary was doing his best to explain and describe it to us.

I didn't discover RQ until I was over 30, through the Pavis & Big Rubble reprint. I wished I had discovered it in my 20s, when I might have gotten some buy-in with my group for a new setting and game.

On the other hand, if RQ was the big RPG around in 1979 instead of D&D, there's no way we would have ever started playing in the first place; too much buy-in for 10-year-olds who just wanted to explore dungeons and kills monsters.

Quote from: David Johansen;684862I think the AD&D books are more like collections of essays than reference works but that's okay because back in the day, none of us knew what an rpg was and Gary was doing his best to explain and describe it to us.

See that's kinda what I'm talking about. I agree with you that the AD&D books are in fact a collection of essays, or systems and sub-systems, with the intent for it to be a framework which then the DM manages and applies with an eye towards the game itself, as the sum of its parts, rather than a strict application of whatever's written in the books to the detriment of the game thereof.

Where the statement might sound snobbish to an AD&D player is the part I highlighted, which could be read as saying "Gary was doing his best and the books are crappy because he didn't know any better, and neither did we." That's a statement I can't agree with, because this modular assumption, this design as a game with many disjointed parts the referee manages at the game table and applies at his whim, the approach to basically make the game book a toolbox, as opposed to a manual to use a toaster oven, is something you find in Gary Gygax's later works, as in the case with Mythus, which incorporates a simple light core in the Mythus Prime rules, and an assumption that the referee will add to the game from the Advanced Mythus rules until the table reaches a personal sweet spot, up to and including the full application of all the sub-systems therein.

So I think that it's not so much that Gary Gygax "didn't know better", rather than a different approach on what constitutes a useful game book or manual. Now you might not have meant your remark like that, and I'm not saying you did. Just pointing out how this type of statement could be read negatively, and how that would brush an AD&D aficionado the wrong way.

Quote from: Benoist;684868Now you might not have meant your remark like that, and I'm not saying you did. Just pointing out how this type of statement could be read negatively, and how that would brush an AD&D aficionado the wrong way.

A hyper-sensitive 'AD&D aficionado' who is actively looking for something to be offended about, maybe.

Quote from: Simlasa;684871A hyper-sensitive 'AD&D aficionado' who is actively looking for something to be offended about, maybe.

Maybe, though that too could be interpreted as a condescending remark. ;)

Quote from: Benoist;684872Maybe, though that too could be interpreted as a condescending remark. ;)

I learned from my GF that ANY remark can be interpreted however the listener chooses.

Especially on the Big Purple. :D

Anybody who says that AD&D can't that any RPG can't for that matter is bullshitting as far as I am concerned.

In the thirty years of running a variety of systems, my view what differentiates systems is the amount of work required for both player and referee to do a certain thing or genre. You could use AD&D to run a game of combating 1920s eldritch horrors or Call  of Cthulu to run a high fantasy game of dungeon exploration but they require a lot more work to run those thing then what they focus on.

The rest is preferences and taste which boils down to you like what you like.

The power and flexibity of RPGs is lies outside of the mechanics of character details and rules for resolving actions. It lies in the focus on acting as individual characters with their actions resolved by a human referee while interacting with a setting.

Which is why OD&D works as good today alongside the newest games of today.

What we learned since OD&D is how to present these games better, and expanded the variety of types of designs to detail characters and resolve actions.

And we need that variety because not everybody thinks in the same way. RPGs are not the most simplest of games to run even with lite mechanics.

For example I have a hard time wrapping my head around how Fate is supposed to be run but find it a breeze to referee Hero System and GURPS. I was unhappy with classic D&D style mechanics until I read the Old School Primer and then it came together for me in a way it didn't back in the day. I never did how Pendragon's Virtue system is supposed to work in play, but I take a look at a guy with a 8 wisdom and 8 charisma and come up with a entire personality that makes my fellow players go "Yeah he definitely got 8s in both."

Runequest got it points, D&D got it points, some will like one over the other. And as history showed more people stuck with D&D than not. D&D was lucky as a first mover that got it right from the get go and didn't make many mistakes for a while.

Just want to say...

QuoteIn the thirty years of running a variety of systems, my view what differentiates systems is the amount of work required for both player and referee to do a certain thing or genre. You could use AD&D to run a game of combating 1920s eldritch horrors or Call of Cthulu to run a high fantasy game of dungeon exploration but they require a lot more work to run those thing then what they focus on.

Completely agree.

QuoteThe rest is preferences and taste which boils down to you like what you like.

Absolutely, completely agree.

QuoteWhich is why OD&D works as good today alongside the newest games of today.

Utterly, absolutely, completely agree.

QuoteRunequest got it points, D&D got it points, some will like one over the other. And as history showed more people stuck with D&D than not. D&D was lucky as a first mover that got it right from the get go and didn't make many mistakes for a while.

Totally, utterly... oh you get the picture. :)

Well said, Estar.

Quote from: estar;684884Runequest got it points, D&D got it points, some will like one over the other. And as history showed more people stuck with D&D than not. D&D was lucky as a first mover that got it right from the get go and didn't make many mistakes for a while.

This really is the truth of the matter.  It is rare that a game is so bad that nobody will prefer it or that it can't be adapted to interesting game play by a dedicated group.

Quote from: Benoist;684868So I think that it's not so much that Gary Gygax "didn't know better",

Quote from: David Johansen;684862...none of us knew what an rpg was and Gary was doing his best to explain and describe it to us.

I can't see where I ever said Gary didn't know what an rpg was.  But you know?  It's funny because it's very hard to explain an rpg on paper or even conversation and yet, very easy in actual play.  And I think that Gary was able to pass that concept on to so many others speaks very well for his writing and his ideas.

It doesn't mean I always agree with him,  I find GURPS far easier to run fast paced, narrative combat with than D&D and think armor making people harder to hit is the single worst mechanic in the history of rpgs, but I respect Gary and his work.  Others who come after not so much.  I'm pretty sure I'm not where you think I am on the spectrum.  You really should read through Dark Passages sometime, I thing it would clarify my position for you.

Quote from: David Johansen;685001I'm pretty sure I'm not where you think I am on the spectrum.  You really should read through Dark Passages sometime, I thing it would clarify my position for you.

I'll take your word for it.

I'm busy reading my way through RuneQuest 6 right now, but I'll have a deeper look at Dark Passages at some point.

Quote from: Votan;684977This really is the truth of the matter.  It is rare that a game is so bad that nobody will prefer it or that it can't be adapted to interesting game play by a dedicated group.

[cough] Synibarr [/cough]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_of_Synnibarr

Even that game has its' fans, It gave my primary gaming group a good laugh. No one in any of the gaming groups near me ever seriously considered playing it, or running a game.

Runequest however is actually a very good RPG. It was married to Glorantha though.

I never found Runequest GMs or players to be snobs, even in the early days, quite the contrary actually. Watching people play raging ducks just broke the RP immersion for me, which is why I waited so long before actually buying it.

(http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h15/Bilharzia/dndvsrq.jpg)

Apologies...couldn't resist.

Don't apologize - that was funny... and made me wanna roll up a duck character asap.

LOL. :D

Quote from: DKChannelBoredom;685404Don't apologize - that was funny... and made me wanna roll up a duck character asap.

They also make good wizards (http://youtu.be/Xi_hcwB8i64)

Glorantha's idiosyncrasy limits its appeal to a mass market, but may ensure a smaller following in each generation of fantasy fans (as has been the case with a number of literary creations).

I think Gygax was right when he said (in a White Dwarf interview, IIRC) that D&D's early lead had given it an unbeatable advantage.

One way in which that was similar to Microsoft's position in PC operating systems, and something any RPG publisher might do well to consider, was in the volume of published scenarios. Judges Guild demonstrated the demand, and TSR moved to do its part in supplying that.

Chaosium was slow about releasing "adventures" similar to TSR's Dungeon Module line. Avalon Hill may have picked up the pace, but early offerings were pretty poor. That aspect of support for an RPG seems pretty important to growth.

Not only did TSR have more modules, but the default play mode - exploring and looting dungeons - is very, very easy to understand, and very easy for kids to create on their own. Draw a maze of rooms on graph paper. Key it with monsters and treasure. DM your friends through it the next day. Every edition of the game included a sample dungeon of just that sort to show new DMs the way. Runequest didn't offer a model of DIY play anywhere near as accessible to total newbies.

Quote from: Haffrung;685464Runequest didn't offer a model of DIY play anywhere near as accessible to total newbies.

The 2nd. ed. boxed set came with "The Rainbow Mounds" (dungeon-type caverns) and "Gringle's Pawnshop" (defense scenario) in the Apple Lane package (also describing a village home base).

Quote from: Phillip;685411One way in which that was similar to Microsoft's position in PC operating systems, and something any RPG publisher might do well to consider, was in the volume of published scenarios. Judges Guild demonstrated the demand, and TSR moved to do its part in supplying that.

Actually Microsoft is an classic example of a company overthrowing a first mover. CP/M vs DOS and WIndows vs Mac

IBM & Mainframes are a better example.

Anyway both situations occur equally so a company that is first and manages to keep it dominance is to be applauded.

Too often the first mover doesn't really get what makes there product special or decides to rest on their laurels. Gates out hustled Kildall and got DOS on the IBM/PC which lead to its dominance.

I was thinking a bit more about this, and one thing that hit me was the way Cults of Prax is presented. Runequest makes world-building an exercise in crafting religions in anthropological detail, with fully fleshed out practices and beliefs. If you wanted to run non-Gloranthan Runequest you pretty much had to do all that work from scratch yourself. Whereas if you wanted to run non-Greyhawk D&D, all you needed was a hex map with some names on it and you could ad-lib the rest.

Quote from: estar;685519Actually Microsoft is an classic example of a company overthrowing a first mover. CP/M vs DOS and WIndows vs Mac

Maybe you're missing the point. Scenarios = applications is the point, and MS-DOS (and later Windows) won on that count.

Mac was simply less screwed than other OSes tied to proprietary hardware (while MS won the war for riding on clones).

Setting aside the mass of computer trivia (which I do dig), suffice to call RuneQuest the Amiga analog. "Better technology!" cried the fans. "Microsoft Office!" said the market.

In that interview to which I referred, Gygax claimed something like a million units shipped. Bigger user base --> more support --> bigger user base, rinse & repeat. Petrol stations help sell petrol cars. Third parties offer products compatible with the already major platform.

What I use these days is Linux, but Windows is the "industry standard" in the public eye. D&D was in stores all over the place (and advertisements, and toys, and a Saturday morning cartoon!); RQ was much less visible.

Quote from: Cadriel;685600I was thinking a bit more about this, and one thing that hit me was the way Cults of Prax is presented. Runequest makes world-building an exercise in crafting religions in anthropological detail, with fully fleshed out practices and beliefs. If you wanted to run non-Gloranthan Runequest you pretty much had to do all that work from scratch yourself. Whereas if you wanted to run non-Greyhawk D&D, all you needed was a hex map with some names on it and you could ad-lib the rest.

Yes indeed. You could drop that aspect, but then it "wouldn't feel like RQ" to many fans.

The usual thing in my experience was to take a published cult and "file off the serial numbers." Mixing them up was another way to go, so that for instance the Illuminating Monks might combine elements of Lankhor Mhy and Chalana Arroy.

The AH edition included guidelines for 'generic' cults (sun god, etc.). IIRC, it also made spells more cult-exclusive, but I think you still had listed cash prices. It added the sorcery system, a more (too?) elaborate version of the one in Chaosium's Magic World (part of the Worlds of Wonder set).

Quote from: Phillip;685603What I use these days is Linux, but Windows is the "industry standard" in the public eye. D&D was in stores all over the place (and advertisements, and toys, and a Saturday morning cartoon!); RQ was much less visible.

However that was not the case in 1977. Granted there was only a four year window until TSR negotiated the Random House deal in 1981 perhaps only three years due to the lead time needed in these things.

Quote from: estar;685644However that was not the case in 1977.

YMMV, but so what? RQ had yet to be published in 1977!

Here is a thought exercise

What is the earliest point of divergence after the release of Dungeons & Dragon that could have allowed Runequest to become the market leader?

Assume at the very least that Steve Perrin puts out a RPG with the Runequest mechanics around 1977. It doesn't have to be tied to Glorantha or that the Glorantha tie-in was released as a supplement rather than part of the core rules.

Alternate history fans and writers use this technique to figure out if various points of departures are even possible. For example the consensus among many alt-history fans and writers is that there is no reasonable point of departure after the start of World War II that would allow Germany to pull off a successful Sea-Lion invasion of Britain.

You start off with a Point of Departure and extrapolate forward. Then debate whether the PoD and subsequent event are plausible. The most rigorous way of doing this is only make a single change and everything else follows as the butterflies* pile up.

It may be that the only plausible way for any alternative to D&D to become the market leader is for the development of RPGs to be completely different.

*Relates to an adage is that if a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil it will cause a tornado in Texas through a long chain of weather events. It is an example of Chaos Theory where tiny unmeasured initial conditions will eventually dominate thus limiting the how far you can predict the weather and other similar natural events.

In alternate histories it is used to refer how seemly minor events can plausibly spiral into major changes. Another adage is For a want of a nail a kingdom is lost. Which refers a type of PoD where the change is the absence of an event.

I wrote RPG alt-history myself in response to the question whether RPGs could have arose earlier.

Part I (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/11/travelling-alternate-vision-of-rpgs.html)
Part II (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/11/travelling-continued-alternate-look-at.html)

The basic gist is that RPGs rose out of a writers aide for writing Science Fiction in the late 30s and 40s. The initial writers aide used random tables which made people realize that it could be used for a game.

I think the most plausible kind of alternate history is like the Mazes & Minotaurs conceit: had the first RPG to catch on been different, it would still have been the trend setter -- and it would still have been tough for any rival to come close (never mind overtake) it in its "home field."

The thing that could have led to D&D being published but another RPG becoming dominant would have been for TSR to go out of business before 1977. Say they got smacked with a lawsuit from the Tolkien estate over hobbits and another from the Burroughs estate over Warriors of Mars before the end of 1974, and couldn't sell either their stock of D&D or of WoM, and then Don Kaye passes away in 1975. TSR might be under enough strain and debt that they have to go out of business.

At this point I think Tunnels & Trolls would have become the dominant game (at first). It would hit immediately after TSR implodes and have a similar system but simpler and easier for newbies. Polyhedral dice would be a running controversy, since T&T doesn't use them. The dominance might not last since T&T has a lot of silliness.

Runequest might be totally different if most circles play T&T instead of D&D. Greyhawk never comes out in this hypothetical, so the thief skills that inspired the percentile systems don't exist. But it would have a shot at dethroning T&T among serious gamers as a more "advanced" system.

Quote from: Cadriel;685669Runequest might be totally different if most circles play T&T instead of D&D. Greyhawk never comes out in this hypothetical, so the thief skills that inspired the percentile systems don't exist. But it would have a shot at dethroning T&T among serious gamers as a more "advanced" system.

What would be the likelihood of somebody else independently coming up with a percentile system?

Quote from: estar;685651I wrote RPG alt-history myself in response to the question whether RPGs could have arose earlier.

Part I (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/11/travelling-alternate-vision-of-rpgs.html)
Part II (http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/11/travelling-continued-alternate-look-at.html)

The basic gist is that RPGs rose out of a writers aide for writing Science Fiction in the late 30s and 40s. The initial writers aide used random tables which made people realize that it could be used for a game.

That's a fun little alt-history. There could be different ways, as you say. IIRC, Greg Stafford was doodling Gloranthan stories in class in the late 60s. Say he had met Steve Perrin around that time and various SCA types. Stafford was getting into boardgames, the west coast counter-culture was all into the hobbit, the SCA and Perrin were all about simulation. Easy to see how someone might say, hey lets make something like a boardgame where you play a single hero and fight monsters. Stafford would produce the imaginary framework so that it doesn't look like a total LotR rip-off. The brave Sartarite rebels would seem anti-authority.

You probably get characters who, like mythical heroes, can still be laid low by a single blow but get gifts from gods. You get the 'mundane' simulationism in which no one is ever immune to a dagger in the back and a sense that anyone can achieve greatness.

At the height of Vietnam you get the odd coincidence where the troops in Vietnam start playing this weird game which goes through them like wildfire. A few joints, some weird dice and a lot of imagination. At the same time, you get all the west coast students playing in the first published world, Glorantha, where they struggle against oppression and then turning up on demos with "Argrath Lives" and "We Are All Us" t-shirts. Then there's a backlash. Greg Stafford's quote about "real life magic" is taken to mean eek Satanism and the army bans it from being played. Someone claims that a bunch of kids went out into the wilderness to play it and one died when they got lost.

It's actually fairly easy to imagine. Chaosium end up renaming themselves when they start getting pressure from media who claim the name refers to black "chaos" magic. Lovecraft Adventures is renamed Call of Cthulhu when another media outlet claims it's about ponography. They buy Dragonquest and then Dungeons and Dragons to publish them with amazing production values but never really follow through.

At the same time, the whole computer libertarian movement starts obsessing about writing code to create RQ characters and small mazes called RnQ (pronounced rink). Hackers also found ways of represent runes on CRTs leading to a second satanic panic when the chaos rune was said to be horns of the devil.

Admittedly that's just a ten minute thought experiment but it was fun...

Quote from: Phillip;685654I think the most plausible kind of alternate history is like the Mazes & Minotaurs conceit: had the first RPG to catch on been different, it would still have been the trend setter -- and it would still have been tough for any rival to come close (never mind overtake) it in its "home field."

That may well be, RPGs turned out to have a powerful social component and benefit from the network effect. The way to figure out alternatives is to look other situation where there was strong social network around a product.

One thing that comes to mind is that Facebook was not the first Social Network site. Look at why did it beat out its competitors like MySpace? And see if those reason can be applied to the development of RPGs.

Quote from: Cadriel;685669Runequest might be totally different if most circles play T&T instead of D&D. Greyhawk never comes out in this hypothetical, so the thief skills that inspired the percentile systems don't exist. But it would have a shot at dethroning T&T among serious gamers as a more "advanced" system.

Percentiles were known widely in wargaming circles. I don't think in a alt-history where D&D ceased publication early on that the lack of a thief class would be a problem. Also note that the Thief came from West Coast gaming circles and it was just one of many alternatives classes being created and circulated at the time.

Another interesting point in a timeline where D&D falters is what impact does that have on the manufacturing of polyhedral dice? While I don't think it would stunt RPG's growth lack availability would have an impact on what mechanics were commonly used.

Also keep in mind that independently of RPGs there was boom in hex and counter wargames spearheaded by SPI and Avalon Hill. It peaked in 1980.

Quote from: deleriad;685676That's a fun little alt-history. There could be different ways, as you say. IIRC, Greg Stafford was doodling Gloranthan stories in class in the late 60s.

.....

Admittedly that's just a ten minute thought experiment but it was fun...

I feel with the hex and counter wargame boom occurring that it would not be hard for various authors like Stafford, Barker, and Crossby (Glorantha, Tekemul, and Harn) to make the leap into gaming and eventually including a game that focused on individual characters.

In a way that how Glorantha game did develop and how the Fantasy Trip came to be. Both started as wargames and went on to have a true RPG developed.

Also there were hybrid wargames like Lord of the Rings, Swords & Sorcery, and Freedom in the Galaxy that had a strong individual character component.

So in a timeline where D&D faltered, I feel somebody somewhere would have picked up the pieces and continued the development of RPGs.

Quote from: estar;685693Another interesting point in a timeline where D&D falters is what impact does that have on the manufacturing of polyhedral dice? While I don't think it would stunt RPG's growth lack availability would have an impact on what mechanics were commonly used.

What else were polyhedral dice used for back in the 1970's?

What?  This thread is still going? :confused:

Quote from: LordVreeg;682442I greatly enjoy my conversations with you, BTW.

Thanks, man.  I always find your comments interesting, even when I disagree with them.    

Quote from: LordVreeg;682442I also find the magic system better, but still too divided and rigid.  It is here I need to understand more, but the types of magic do not seem to 'talk' to each other at all, seeming to be completely different disciplines.

I'm not sure what is 'rigid' about the magic systems, but with respect to their division, I actually think that this is a feature rather than a bug.  It lets GMs decide which kinds of magic, and how much magic, to include in their worlds.  A world in which all magic comes from the gods would just use Theism, whereas a more 'swords-and-sorcery' flavoured world might permit only Sorcery and Animism.  Etc.  The modularity is great IMO.  And they all seem like they would work well together, if that's what you wanted.

Quote from: Akrasia;685905What?  This thread is still going? :confused:

I'm happy it is. The upswing in RQ talk is coinciding with me getting into RuneQuest, so I'm happy for the crossover.

QuoteI'm not sure what is 'rigid' about the magic systems, but with respect to their division, I actually think that this is a feature rather than a bug.  It lets GMs decide which kinds of magic, and how much magic, to include in their worlds.  A world in which all magic comes from the gods would just use Theism, whereas a more 'swords-and-sorcery' flavoured world might permit only Sorcery and Animism.  Etc.  The modularity is great IMO.  And they all seem like they would work well together, if that's what you wanted.

That was my take, as well. For example, Animism doesn't really jive with how I see magic working in my campaign, so I'm removing it. Theism and Folk Magic, with just a hint of darker Sorcery available at great cost? Yeah, that'll work. I don't want to precisely call it a toolkit, because the individual parts are already built for you, but it's there to be customized.

Quote from: ggroy;685703What else were polyhedral dice used for back in the 1970's?

Various miniature wargames were using percentage chances.

If you had a d20, you had a d10 -- back then, d20 was numbered 0-9 twice -- and if you had d10, you could roll d100. You could also get decimals from a pack of cards, for instance.

Dice other than standard d6 were less common in the boxed boardgame field partly because of the short supply (whereas miniatures gamers would provide their own).

Quote from: ggroy;685703What else were polyhedral dice used for back in the 1970's?

They were a maths teaching tool.

Dave Arneson once held a seminar at Gen Con (late 90s) where he told his view of the RPG history to a room of maybe 20 people. In that he mentioned how they first came across polyhedrals in England. (Or in a school catalog from England?)

QuoteIf you had a d20, you had a d10 -- back then, d20 was numbered 0-9 twice -- and if you had d10, you could roll d100.

I still have a couple of sets like this, and use them frequently. You should see the look on younger player's faces when they see the 0-9 twice numbering and go 'Aw, kewl' (or whatever hip lingo they speak nowadays).

Quote from: Bilharzia;6846071994 - 1996 Nope, he can't. Oh god, is RQ now associated with a sexual assault case? This can't be happening.

WOAH, I never knew anything about that, what was the deal there?

Quote from: Warthur;686237WOAH, I never knew anything about that, what was the deal there?

I would recommend you don't read anything about it at all because it's a sad tale which goes nowhere.
http://hillcantons.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/yellow-journalism-and-runequests-s.html

At the time I wasn't playing RPGs but occasionally reading about RuneQuest and when this happened I thought there was no possible recovery for the system, not to compare with the situation of Oliver Jovanovic who ended up spending nearly 4(?) years in jail.

There's a fuller history of RQ here:
http://www.maranci.net/rqpast.htm

Quote from: ggroy;685703What else were polyhedral dice used for back in the 1970's?

Weren't they used to learn math?  Like roll two dice and multiply them?

RQ and related systems are seen as too simplistic or too complicated. Thr funny weirs mechanics of dnd and other derived systems changed the brains of those playing. Making it impossiblw dor them to see other systems and poisoning them if even trying.
The roll over mechanic especially is brain numbing. Not allowing the gms and the players to understand it is all percentile anyway.
Now we are awash is a sea of dnd and wod zimbies, lol.
But we have started and underground fight and discovered they can be cured. We have brought back to consciousness many dnd zombies. Using BRP classic fantasy we have ensnared and awakened some minds. But it is hard, many converts when gping out often succumb to the zombie infection again. Even admitting they like BRP and RQ they can convert other. But the fight rages on.
But sheer numbers are against us, even the meme of gaming is corrupted by the dnd zombie curse

Hmmm...For casual players who never read the rules, playing D&D first does tend to lead to a bad set of assumptions about how things work that doesn't port well to other games.

But brain damage?  Given this is the Pundit's site and his history with Ron Edwards of the Forge who is infamous for his coments about D&D causing brain damage?

sylvermoonkitten, you're just begging to get char broiled in these parts.  There are people here who like their D&D a lot and, brain damage or not they're a pretty smart bunch.

Quote from: sylvermoonkitten;687731RQ and related systems are seen as too simplistic or too complicated. Thr funny weirs mechanics of dnd and other derived systems changed the brains of those playing. Making it impossiblw dor them to see other systems and poisoning them if even trying.
The roll over mechanic especially is brain numbing. Not allowing the gms and the players to understand it is all percentile anyway.
Now we are awash is a sea of dnd and wod zimbies, lol.
But we have started and underground fight and discovered they can be cured. We have brought back to consciousness many dnd zombies. Using BRP classic fantasy we have ensnared and awakened some minds. But it is hard, many converts when gping out often succumb to the zombie infection again. Even admitting they like BRP and RQ they can convert other. But the fight rages on.
But sheer numbers are against us, even the meme of gaming is corrupted by the dnd zombie curse

I guess I got what I asked for - thread-evidence of RQ/BRP snobbery and asshole-ness towards D&D players. Thanks for helping, sylvermoonkitten. :duh:

Quote from: K Peterson;687762I guess I got what I asked for - thread-evidence of RQ/BRP snobbery and asshole-ness towards D&D players. Thanks for helping, sylvermoonkitten. :duh:

Well..if you asked for it, why are you complaining?:p

I'm leaning towards crying troll at this point.  But we can give the new "girl" a little more time to disprove it.

Sorry, i didnt know about someone saying anything about causing braindamage, sorry. But kinda proves a point. Dnd is fine enuff.  People.fighting to defend rules like shooting someone for playing the wrong card at bridge, dont ya think. Ive seen such orthodoxy from certain real world people. As for charbroiled, hmm. I am a mom, astepmom,a grandmothrr, a wife, in a closed poly relationship. And you think fans of a gaming system is going to broil me, lol. But truthfully, why ask, if al I seen here with the standard bearing for dnd, why would you be surpriaed soneone who likes another system wouldnt get in some jibes. Besides your winning with your superiority. Happy?

Thought this was a discussion site for roleplaying. I learned I am beat. Thank for proving dnders are such warm people

Quote from: David Johansen;687757There are people here who like their D&D a lot and, brain damage or not they're a pretty smart bunch.

And some of us can take a joke, too. ;)

Can I say "us", having a leg in both camps?

Quote from: Vile;687786And some of us can take a joke, too. ;)

Can I say "us", having a leg in both camps?

Well if you can't, neither can I. I'm in the same situation.

(https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/p480x480/14145_10152162245853976_998061940_n.jpg)

You know, while we're at it, Runequest might have been more "realistic" but it certainly wasn't any more tactical or strategic.  You still basically lined up and traded blows and parries.

So complaining about other games being "wargames" is really a double edged sword.

Quote from: David Johansen;687911You know, while we're at it, Runequest might have been more "realistic" but it certainly wasn't any more tactical or strategic.  You still basically lined up and traded blows and parries.

So complaining about other games being "wargames" is really a double edged sword.

True, and the reverse will also be true for some groups, i.e. you can play D&D as a very strategic and/or tactical game, and the same way, you can play RuneQuest in a very strategic, and/or tactical manner. The nature of the management and the resources, the theoretical odds and so on might change from one game to the next, and therefore affect the ways one might approach different challenges in those different games, but that's precisely what will make BOTH games interesting to some of the same players, myself included.

Though RQ lacks D&D's ability to manage large tactical battles.  It gets too fiddly.

Quote from: David Johansen;687918Though RQ lacks D&D's ability to manage large tactical battles.  It gets too fiddly.

Not in a significant manner, I believe, unless you are talking about really large battlefields, in which case D&D might not be appropriate either. If I was running really large engagements in a game, I would use Chainmail in AD&D's case, and probably something based on the Perrin Conventions with RuneQuest.

Roll initiative for sides, Roll d20 per 0HD combatant, roll damage for number of hits.  Remove casualties.

Verses

Roll d% to hit this must be done individually and sequentially based on strike rank or dex, check for fumble, special or critical success, roll damage, apply critical or special effect or roll for fumble effect, subtract armor from damage, roll hit location, check hit location effects.  Start on the next guy's attack.

yeah, whatever Ben...

I know you hate to admit that D&D's wargame roots have their uses, but I've run battles with hundreds of figures on the table using Castles and Crusades.  And it doesn't slow down much at all.  Though I tend to reduce all damages to single dice and give half HD hp to all 1 and 0 HD combatants.

Quote from: David Johansen;687921yeah, whatever Ben...

I know you hate to admit that D&D's wargame roots have their uses

Yeah, totally. That's what I keep saying to Ernie. That's why I want to build a sand table too: to be able to ignore those wargaming roots by playing the hell out of them! That's some impregnable logic right there, my friend. /sarcasm

I got that you were talking of ejecting 0 HD combatants with d20 rolls, but abstracting RQ would be trivial to me as well. I wouldn't use strike ranks and the like, like I'm sure you wouldn't worry about segments and weapon speeds in your D&D mass battle, to begin with, and as I mentioned, I'd look towards something like the Perrin Conventions to retro-engineer something manageable that would fit my vision of RQ.

Now your mileage vary, cool, which is why I said from the start "LIKEWISE, IN SOME GROUPS, THE REVERSE WILL ALSO BE TRUE..." Notice the "in some groups". You don't have to agree with that. That's MY mileage, not yours.

Now who do you think is trying to tell the other he's wrong here? Hint: it's not me.

sigh...we keep doing this don't we :D

Ernie?  I don't really care if you've got Gary on the ouiji board, nor what Old Geezer is squawking about.  I care what the rules in the book say.

Anyhow, Weapon speed applies pretty quickly and easily across uniformly equipped units and segments are really just initiative points.

But you can't really pick up a handfull of d10s and generate meaningful d% rolls and RQ doesn't have hit points that allow instant death from a single die roll.  You could use Con / 4 or something though.  But D&D can do it out of the book with minimal modification.

Also, RQ doesn't have morale rules.  Functional morale rules written by a wargamer.

Quote from: David Johansen;687926sigh...we keep doing this don't we :D

You keep doing this, yes.

Perhaps...It's the only redeeming feature I can see in D&D's mechanics so I tend to focus on it.  Besides, I see WotC as the company in the best position to kick the living shit out of Games Workshop's market domination and it's a thing I'd really like to see.

On the other hand, sand tables are hard on paint jobs.  I like flocked modular scenery better myself.

Quote from: David Johansen;687921Roll initiative for sides, Roll d20 per 0HD combatant, roll damage for number of hits.  Remove casualties.

Verses

Roll d% to hit this must be done individually and sequentially based on strike rank or dex, check for fumble, special or critical success, roll damage, apply critical or special effect or roll for fumble effect, subtract armor from damage, roll hit location, check hit location effects.  Start on the next guy's attack.

yeah, whatever Ben...

I know you hate to admit that D&D's wargame roots have their uses, but I've run battles with hundreds of figures on the table using Castles and Crusades.  And it doesn't slow down much at all.  Though I tend to reduce all damages to single dice and give half HD hp to all 1 and 0 HD combatants.

I don't understand why this is even a relevant part of the conversation.

Why would you want to?   Rq is an example of a rule set you move to when your are moving down the continuum away from abstraction towards emulation.


Looking back, I think david has the right of this....love you, Ben, but this the war gaming side is closer to the abstraction side....and dee n dee.

I think you could pretty easily take the d6 miniatures rules (originally written for WEG Star Wars) and substitute d10's for d6's without much fuss.

Quote from: David Johansen;687918Though RQ lacks D&D's ability to manage large tactical battles.  It gets too fiddly.

Binomial Distribution is your friend.

Math that gives you the odds of X folks making a roll with Y chance of success.

As far as the abstraction goes, D&D will translate more readily into a large scale battlefield than RuneQuest, yes.

What I was saying was that the actual difference (as in, mathematical difference, the space in easiness separating the two, not the unlikeness between the two) will vary, and some will find that RQ isn't noticeably harder from that standpoint. Since for mass combat in D&D I would actually use Chaimail, reverse-engineering the Perrin Conventions (maybe plugged onto a simplified larger-scaled RQ mechanic, or onto a retooled, smaller-scaled White Bear Red Moon) to act in a similar way towards RQ wouldn't be that much more trouble, from my standpoint.

I'm talking particular standpoints and groups, and I'm being bludgeoned with "but you're wrong because OBJECTIVE TRUTH!" Fuck that noise, honestly.

Not to mention, the combat scale was actually not what I had in mind when saying that, like D&D could be played as a tactical/strategic game, likewise RuneQuest. What I was originally talking about was planning, resource management, exploration, combat engagements, etc, all at the party's scale. You know: strategy and tactics.

Quote from: David Johansen;687926nor what Old Geezer is squawking about.

* pees on David Johansen's boot *

If you want to fight mass battles, why not just use CHAINMAIL or even SWORDS AND SPELLS?

I mean, if you think back engineering an RPG to mass battles is fun, knock yourself out, but miniatures rules, including fantasy, are almost as thick on the ground as fantasy heartbreaker RPGs.

Quote from: Old Geezer;688015* pees on David Johansen's boot *

If you want to fight mass battles, why not just use CHAINMAIL or even SWORDS AND SPELLS?

I mean, if you think back engineering an RPG to mass battles is fun, knock yourself out, but miniatures rules, including fantasy, are almost as thick on the ground as fantasy heartbreaker RPGs.

And Glorantha is soon going to get its own (http://www.madknight.co.uk/).

Quote from: David Johansen;687926But you can't really pick up a handfull of d10s and generate meaningful d% rolls and RQ doesn't have hit points that allow instant death from a single die roll.  You could use Con / 4 or something though.  But D&D can do it out of the book with minimal modification.

You might want to look at the latest versions of RuneQuest before making sweeping statements like that. :)

Why is any multiple d100 roll any different from a d10 or d20 roll? If you are basing it on mixing up the paired dice, then just group the d100's of the same colour. If you have some sort of visual problem with grouping separated dice together then just round the skill value of the figure/unit to the nearest 5% and use d20's instead like they do in Bushido. No problem.

Aside from RQ being fundamentally designed to permit incapacitation or instant death in one blow (and unlike D&D not increasing HPs for higher level/more experienced troops); the RAW of the latest versions in fact include rules for Rabble and Underlings which allow them to be neutralised even easier with a single blow, with no modifications required at all.

QuoteAlso, RQ doesn't have morale rules.  Functional morale rules written by a wargamer.

Again, the latest versions include morale rules for Rabble & Underlings, and there's even a combat special effect which can cause opponents to surrender. Using the RAW you can even make saving throws for a unit versus magic or intimidating creatures a single group roll, further reducing unnecessary dice rolling.

So whilst RuneQuest doesn't incorporate comprehensive mass battle rules (why use an RPG to run a large scale wargame after all), it does most certainly have rules to make running D&D style, larger scale combats much, much faster with minimal overhead.

Quote from: David Johansen;687918Though RQ lacks D&D's ability to manage large tactical battles.  It gets too fiddly.

The Mongoose version of Monster Coliseum has mass combat rules using RQ, but complaining it isn't a wargame does seem to be a non sequitur.

Quote from: Old Geezer;688015* pees on David Johansen's boot *

If you want to fight mass battles, why not just use CHAINMAIL or even SWORDS AND SPELLS?

I mean, if you think back engineering an RPG to mass battles is fun, knock yourself out, but miniatures rules, including fantasy, are almost as thick on the ground as fantasy heartbreaker RPGs.

Because my point is that the existing rules in AD&D 1e don't require reverse engineering.  YOu could have all weapons do average damage and roll hit dice as a saving throw to speed it up a little more.  But you don't really need to because the game is already there.  It's almost like it was designed that way or something!

Runequest requires substantially more modification.  All we're really seeing here is D&D players reflexively gaging up the same old "it's not a wargame" whining that let Games Workshop sweep fantasy wargame field out from under it in the first place.  I think D&D's greatest strength is its broad appeal and I find the knee jerk defensiveness and clanishness of its fans laughable.  Almost as laughable as their name dropping celebrity worship.

Anyhow, Geezer, you should go change those pants but I'm not going to remind you to unzip first next time in any case.

Quote from: David Johansen;688398Runequest requires substantially more modification.  All we're really seeing here is D&D players reflexively gaging up the same old "it's not a wargame" whining that let Games Workshop sweep fantasy wargame field out from under it in the first place.  I think D&D's greatest strength is its broad appeal and I find the knee jerk defensiveness and clanishness of its fans laughable.  Almost as laughable as their name dropping celebrity worship.

I don't really disagree, D&D has a tactical miniatures game deep in its DNA. Runequest has SCA-style combat in its deep DNA (and there really is no rules connection between WBRM and Runequest). If you want to run a big skirmish with lots of miniatures, it isn't going to be much of a stretch using one of the many incarnations of D&D. That being said, you can easily run big skirmishes with RQ6 (right Pete?) or Pendragon. Hell, I've run dozens of battles using HeroQuest, but that's not as a tactical exercise but more of a Faces of Battle kind of experience.

But honestly, there's a lot of silly chest-beating going on here. D&D and RuneQuest are both fine rules system with very different, but enjoyable, combat engines. I personally prefer RQ to D&D, but I've been playing primarily in Glorantha since about 1980, so we ditched AD&D for RQ2 back then. Not because RQ2 was self-evidently superior, but just because it supported the settings and the games we liked (and you could play were-pigs, were-wolves, or trolls - which I recall as being pretty darn awesome at the time).

That being said, our group switched from RQ to Pendragon (David Dunham from our group came up with the Pendragon Pass rules) around 1992 or so, and never really returned to RQ. We've been using either HQ2 or Pendragon variants as our preferred rules engine ever since. Again, not because HQ2 or Pendragon are objectively superior, but because they support the style of play my group enjoys (although for the last six years we've used HQ2 pretty much exclusively as my current gaming group really prefers the rules lite approach).

Jeff

Quote from: richaje;688419I don't really disagree, D&D has a tactical miniatures game deep in its DNA. Runequest has SCA-style combat in its deep DNA (and there really is no rules connection between WBRM and Runequest). If you want to run a big skirmish with lots of miniatures, it isn't going to be much of a stretch using one of the many incarnations of D&D. That being said, you can easily run big skirmishes with RQ6 (right Pete?) or Pendragon. Hell, I've run dozens of battles using HeroQuest, but that's not as a tactical exercise but more of a Faces of Battle kind of experience.

But honestly, there's a lot of silly chest-beating going on here. D&D and RuneQuest are both fine rules system with very different, but enjoyable, combat engines. I personally prefer RQ to D&D, but I've been playing primarily in Glorantha since about 1980, so we ditched AD&D for RQ2 back then. Not because RQ2 was self-evidently superior, but just because it supported the settings and the games we liked (and you could play were-pigs, were-wolves, or trolls - which I recall as being pretty darn awesome at the time).

That being said, our group switched from RQ to Pendragon (David Dunham from our group came up with the Pendragon Pass rules) around 1992 or so, and never really returned to RQ. We've been using either HQ2 or Pendragon variants as our preferred rules engine ever since. Again, not because HQ2 or Pendragon are objectively superior, but because they support the style of play my group enjoys (although for the last six years we've used HQ2 pretty much exclusively as my current gaming group really prefers the rules lite approach).

Jeff

Yes.
Find the rules that support the setting and the style of play.  Not objectively better or worse without the context of that perspective.

Vreeg's first Rule of Setting Design (http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/60581028/Vreegs%20Rules%20of%20Setting%20and%20Game%20Design)
"Make sure the ruleset you are using matches the setting and game you want to play, because the setting and game WILL eventually match the system."

Quote from: Old Geezer;688015If you want to fight mass battles, why not just use CHAINMAIL or even SWORDS AND SPELLS?

I mean, if you think back engineering an RPG to mass battles is fun, knock yourself out, but miniatures rules, including fantasy, are almost as thick on the ground as fantasy heartbreaker RPGs.

I prefer Battlesystem myself but I agree with the general point being made.

Quote from: David Johansen;688398Because my point is that the existing rules in AD&D 1e don't require reverse engineering.  YOu could have all weapons do average damage and roll hit dice as a saving throw to speed it up a little more.  But you don't really need to because the game is already there.  It's almost like it was designed that way or something!

Yes elements of Classic D&D can be traced right to Chainmail where 1 hit to kill became 1 hit dice and 1 hit became 1d6 damage.

But Chainmail was purposely designed with mass combat in mind. Classic D&D is not. Rolling a d20 for a mass of 10 men to hit is not accurate in anyway shape or form. Nor is assuming that damage is average although that not as big of sin as the to hit roll.

I am not talking about historical accuracy but probability. The translation of the many possible hits to a single dice roll.

If that what you want to do then what reflects the probability of 10 men hitting is use binomial distribution; the probability of X trials with Y chance of success succeeding. The result is a bell curve which can be mapped to a 2dX roll (2d6, 2d10, etc)

As it happens I made such a chart for my own use.

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mFjy4EWzmtg/TBKQ_lOb1SI/AAAAAAAAA60/0wuTjkxDqfI/s400/WarSystem+Chart+1.jpg)


1st edition Battlesystem did something similar and took it a step further and combined it with damage. Instead of using average damage they used the HD themselves. You do X HD damage on a successful hit. 1 HD would take out an orc while 4 HD will take out an ogre.

Binomial distributions can be applied to any RPGs including Runequest. And similar combined charts can be made to see how much damage many men hitting would do in Runequest or any other system.

A person has somewhat knowledge in probability to set up the charts but in doing any RPG can be given a mass combat that accurately reflect what would happened if you actually rolled for hundreds of NPCs.

And none of this is new, miniature wargamers were aware of this since at least the sixties and the military training programs before that. Which is one reason Old Geezer rightfully mocked you.

Quote from: David Johansen;687911You know, while we're at it, Runequest might have been more "realistic" but it certainly wasn't any more tactical or strategic.  You still basically lined up and traded blows and parries.

I don't think this is true, especially with RQ6 combat effects which have changed how you might approach melees - this opens up tactical options to make it seem:
a) closer to a 'real' fight,  and
b) make combats more interesting by giving you all these choices.

Of course that doesn't mean that this way of doing things is more appealing to some people than any other game but it has a very distinctive quality which does give it a completely different feel to D&D.

Quote from: sylvermoonkitten;687731The roll over mechanic especially is brain numbing. Not allowing the gms and the players to understand it is all percentile anyway.

The roll over mechanic is horrible to old RQ fans as well.

Quote from: soltakss;688582The roll over mechanic is horrible to old RQ fans as well.

There is a roll-over mechanic in RQ?

The only percentile system with a roll-over (or roll-high) mechanic I know is RM/MERP/HARP.
And after GMing MERP I decided that I would change that as soon as possible to a real % roll, basically by shifting the table rows accordingly. (Yes, I know that I would have to fiddle with the tables a lot, that it won't be a strict conversion, and that some features of the tables could be lost in the process.)

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;688763There is a roll-over mechanic in RQ?

No, it's the same old roll under%. I think the conversation got a bit garbled.

On big battles:
Back in the early 1980s, I wrote a set of miniatures rules to interface with my very RQ-ish house rules for RPG. It was pretty clunky! I think a better approach would be more like Gygax's Swords & Spells than the approach I took.

On a related note:
I always thought D&D was better suited than RQ -- which was focused on the earlier careers of figures with such potential -- to depicting the Heroes and Superheroes and mega-monsters of WB&RM. An issue of Wyrm's Footnotes included some writeups in terms of Hargrave's Arduin rules.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;688763There is a roll-over mechanic in RQ?

Experience in MRQ/Legend/RQ6?

There was a roll-high element in resolving ties, which I never liked as it was too close to roll-over.

QuoteThere was a roll-high element in resolving ties, which I never liked as it was too close to roll-over.

You mean the 'roll high but under' mechanic used for opposed rolls.

Which isn't even remotely close to roll-over, because you're still rolling within your skill range.

The only roll-over mechanic any BRP-based game has used is for skill advancement.

Back in the early nineties, one of the guys bought Runequest and was going to run it.  After a couple hours of character generation, when we realized we were only about halfway done, we all decided it would be better to roll up some D&D characters.  Fifteen minutes later, we were ready to enter a dungeon.

That is how Runequest failed to overtake D&D at my table.  Exact same pattern happened when I tried to run Dangerous Journeys.  Exact same pattern with GURPS.

Quote from: Old One Eye;689316Back in the early nineties, one of the guys bought Runequest and was going to run it.  After a couple hours of character generation, when we realized we were only about halfway done, we all decided it would be better to roll up some D&D characters.  Fifteen minutes later, we were ready to enter a dungeon.

That is how Runequest failed to overtake D&D at my table.  Exact same pattern happened when I tried to run Dangerous Journeys.  Exact same pattern with GURPS.

That is a weakness, chargen is 95% of my games takes a session in itself.

Quote from: Old One Eye;689316Back in the early nineties, one of the guys bought Runequest and was going to run it.  After a couple hours of character generation, when we realized we were only about halfway done, we all decided it would be better to roll up some D&D characters.  Fifteen minutes later, we were ready to enter a dungeon.

That is how Runequest failed to overtake D&D at my table.  Exact same pattern happened when I tried to run Dangerous Journeys.  Exact same pattern with GURPS.

Wow! I've never, ever, come across RQ character generation taking 2+ hours. Rolemaster yes... but never RQ.

Quote from: Loz;689511Wow! I've never, ever, come across RQ character generation taking 2+ hours. Rolemaster yes... but never RQ.

Skill based games, only one boxed set in the group, handwriting the character on notebook paper, and things being new made it a slow process for us.  Now I ran Call of Cthulu every once in a while (if memory serves they were similar game engines).  I always made sure to make copies of character sheets less character generation drag in that game as well.

Quote from: Loz;689511Wow! I've never, ever, come across RQ character generation taking 2+ hours. Rolemaster yes... but never RQ.

Yeah. I remember it took time to generate our first few RQ characters as kids, though. Stormbringer and Hawkmoon were much easier, as I recall.

Quote from: Benoist;689529Yeah. I remember it took time to generate our first few RQ characters as kids, though. Stormbringer and Hawkmoon were much easier, as I recall.

Oh, I don't doubt it may have been time-consuming. I've simply never seen it take in the region of four hours.

Quote from: Loz;689531Oh, I don't doubt it may have been time-consuming. I've simply never seen it take in the region of four hours.

20 year old memories are not exact, and we were but teenagers.  Suffice to say, it took significantly longer than D&D.  We liked D&D just fine, so the extra time seemed superfluous.  I suspect that many that have gotten into Runequest over the years have done so as a rejection of D&D?

Quote from: Old One Eye;689538I suspect that many that have gotten into Runequest over the years have done so as a rejection of D&D?

Not as a rejection, but as a replacement. I got very disenchanted with AD&D, BRP was in the right place at the right time, and it's been there ever since.

Well, that's a big difference between then and now.

The extra complexity in the character creation in RQ WAS a big deal...even if a better game, that price of entry was a drag on the popularity of the game.

Now, PF/3.5 character creation is rough, and positively brutal once the character starts getting levels. But now there is software that does it. It's amazing the number of players I know that simply cannot create a character without using software assistance. Even with 4e, players were often paralyzed without software aid. The idea of simply rolling up a character and no min/maxing with respect to 20,000 pages of text (only doable via software, I concede) is abhorrent now, but I digress.

If RQ could have come out with such a thing back then, that would have helped, I bet.

Quote from: Old One Eye;68953820 year old memories are not exact, and we were but teenagers.  Suffice to say, it took significantly longer than D&D.  We liked D&D just fine, so the extra time seemed superfluous.  I suspect that many that have gotten into Runequest over the years have done so as a rejection of D&D?

My experience it was either that the system allowed to make the exact character in their mind's eye or that the system offered more details particularly combat. Neither of which was found in various classic editions of D&D.

Then 3.X/D20 fixed both with "good enough" mechanics that all but choked off the flow of gamers from D&D to the alternatives. The alternatives that thrived were Fate, Savage Worlds and similar lite RPGs.

A RPG having detailed mechanics and/or detailed combat can longer take advantage of being NOT D&D. Instead you had rely solely on growing your own audience. Something that seems the D100/BRP family of games seems have been successful at and GURPS, HERO have not.

Note that D&D 4e could have restored the earlier dynamic but the advent of Pathfinder meant it survived. The main problem of D&D 4e it was too game-like making harder to see what your character was doing.  Compared to say Runequest where it very obvious to how each type of action was tied to what the character was doing.

Quote from: Loz;689531Oh, I don't doubt it may have been time-consuming. I've simply never seen it take in the region of four hours.

I concur, overly long character generation was not one of the complaints I heard. Yeah it was longer but nothing compared to games like Chivalry & Sorcery, Aftermath and especially my beloved GURPS.

I tried a game of Runequest 2nd Edition last years and chargen took an hour tops. The longest amount of time was spent on trying to figure out the advanced professions in the back (the stuff where you spend money to get trained). If we just did the recommended beginning character we would have done in a half hour.

Quote from: Doom;689544Now, PF/3.5 character creation is rough, and positively brutal once the character starts getting levels. But now there is software that does it. It's amazing the number of players I know that simply cannot create a character without using software assistance. Even with 4e, players were often paralyzed without software aid. The idea of simply rolling up a character and no min/maxing with respect to 20,000 pages of text (only doable via software, I concede) is abhorrent now, but I digress.

A perfect example of the power of accessibility.

Quote from: Doom;689544If RQ could have come out with such a thing back then, that would have helped, I bet.

If Chaosium had shipped an in-house developed program on a floppy with the each copy of RQ2/3, I doubt it would have helped the game's popularity:p

Quote from: estar;689548I concur, overly long character generation was not one of the complaints I heard. Yeah it was longer but nothing compared to games like Chivalry & Sorcery, Aftermath and especially my beloved GURPS.

I tried a game of Runequest 2nd Edition last years and chargen took an hour tops. The longest amount of time was spent on trying to figure out the advanced professions in the back (the stuff where you spend money to get trained). If we just did the recommended beginning character we would have done in a half hour.

Details matter.  Was everyone sharing one boxed set or were there multiple copies floating around?  Was everyone new to the game or was there someone who new enough to guide folks along?  Did you use pre-printed character sheets or did everyone hand scrawl on notebook paper?  Was everyone involved a mature adult looking to get to the heart of the matter or was it mostly teenagers with all that entails?

Quote from: Loz;689511Wow! I've never, ever, come across RQ character generation taking 2+ hours. Rolemaster yes... but never RQ.

With the first couple of editions, starting characters without previous experience, RQ generation is in my experience about the same as generating 1st-level characters for AD&D.

With those same editions, most previous-experience options add just a little more time. Apprentices and nobles can be more time consuming, since they involve actually spending lunars on training (and nobles can have a lot of cash!).

The main method in the Avalon Hill edition seemed a bit more work to me, but that might not be accurate. There was also a quicker alternative, without all the cultural details.

An approach like that in Call of Cthulhu and Elric! can be pretty fast and very flexible. Stormbringer had a sort of "character class" set of backgrounds, and Magic World an even simpler one; another system along that line appeared in White Dwarf.

I'm about 1 hour away from kickoff, and we have some math-challenged folks in our group. I've allotted 4 hours for RQ6 generation, but much of that will be spent socializing, eating, talking over/finalizing character concepts, eating, discussing the world, having wassail, and somewhere in there, getting down to chargen. Actual chargen shouldn't take that long.

People, snacks, setting, system. We're doing it right. :)

Dnd is a wargame, 30 + years and all you have is a combat game. The experience system.shows it 3rd ed under, dont have fourth handy. RQ and such are.role playing games, dnd has it tacked on.
A simple dnd character us just a combat machine, RQ is a character even Palladium has experience for noncombat.
As for quick generation demands on gms hubby has it down to 30 minutes with smart people , a little longer for those slower.
Saying it took you long is like comparing a person that cooks alot and can easily produce a meal, and someone who keeps lookung at the cook book, unprepared.
In the same way of thinking dnd is just chips and maybe hot dogs. Compared to a five course indian dinner. For some easy food is fine for others. Well...
When I was comparing the over roll to dnd I was trying to convey, because if that many people espcially math impaired dont understand it still is a percentile roll, it is based on wargaming mechanics dnd is directly derived from.

Quote from: baragei;689550If Chaosium had shipped an in-house developed program on a floppy with the each copy of RQ2/3, I doubt it would have helped the game's popularity:p

Well...this isn't exactly PC chargen, but it's pretty close, this very handy RuneQuest 6 NPC generator - just add a number and click.
http://ouropa.planeetta.com/rq_tools/enemygen/
by Erkki Lepre

You can even make an account, customise one of the templates, save it and use it however you like, including using it as for instant PC-Gen.

Quote from: Bilharzia;689564..this very handy RuneQuest 6 NPC generator..

Yes. Very handy. Still not made by Chaosium, though:p
While we're at handy things, the interactive PDF Character Sheet (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1384882/RPG/RQ6/Character_Sheet_RQ6_7_2_Chris-Harvey.pdf) is superhandy. I think LanguageGeek here made it? Let me thank you once again.

I think the complaints of complex chargen sending a group back to D&D actually mean that it was not D&D and it required some learning. Of course learning a new game took more time and mental energy than repeating a process that had been understood previously. The group just didn't see the benefits of taking the time to grok a new game.

We all have a limit on the number of new ways to get our elf on that we are willing to learn. For some that's high because we like systems, or the potential to do new things with systems. For others the number is low or even one, and that one is usually D&D.

Quote from: The_Shadow;689654I think the complaints of complex chargen sending a group back to D&D actually mean that it was not D&D and it required some learning. Of course learning a new game took more time and mental energy than repeating a process that had been understood previously. The group just didn't see the benefits of taking the time to grok a new game.

We all have a limit on the number of new ways to get our elf on that we are willing to learn. For some that's high because we like systems, or the potential to do new things with systems. For others the number is low or even one, and that one is usually D&D.

That's very true.

I love learning new game systems. Many of my friends absolutely detest it. They play whatever the newest version of D&D is (or Pathfinder lately). Some of them are also really into World of Darkness. Other than that, rpg's may as well not exist for them.

They're just not interested in learning new systems, when D&D or WoD does everything they want.

Quote from: The_Shadow;689654We all have a limit on the number of new ways to get our elf on that we are willing to learn. For some that's high because we like systems, or the potential to do new things with systems. For others the number is low or even one, and that one is usually D&D.

Or, in Germany, Das schwarze Auge.

But the situation is more complex as what you say applies more to fantasy games and not the whole spectrum. Monocultural fantasy gamers are absolutely capable and willing to learn other systems of other genres.
In Germany many, many DSA players also play Cthulhu or Shadowrun. In the 90s there was one system in particular that, for about 2 or 3 years, was the secondary system of almost every group: Plush Power & Plunder (basically a Toy Story RPG with plush animals). Their first adventure module in which teddy bears caused highjinx in a department store at night was as widely played and known as Keep on the Borderlands.

But try to offer the same group another fantasy game, complex char gen or not.

Traveller had complex character generation, but it was fun. IMO that's where RQ2 and especially RQ3 character generation fell down, not in the level of complexity itself but in the fact that it was tedious.

Now, early D&D character generation was certainly very fast, but it was also dull. And, when saying generation itself was fast, you still have to consider that there was a lot of reading ahead to see what the future held if you chose one class over another.

Still, if speed of producing characters is an issue (and I agree it could well be), then Chaosium RQ loses out to TSR D&D  (though possibly not AD&D RAW).

Quote from: Vile;689734And, when saying generation itself was fast, you still have to consider that there was a lot of reading ahead to see what the future held if you chose one class over another.

In my 80's experience we just envisioned a character and rolled stats, and adjusted them to make them fit the class. Or not even envisioning a character (as in: personality and background) but rather a race/class combo: "I want to play a gnome illusionist!"
Everything else entered the game as it became available, according to the PHB.

Only after a few years and actual play experience players started taking into account the future special abilities and spells.

I hate it when hubby is right. Hubby says in the past decade or so dnders have become.leatherhided. and refuse.to.explore.systems, even when complaining about the system. Reading this thread, I see it. Hours in character generation for RQ and BRP?  Shows, only lack of prep. The one reason people never gave RQ a chance is as stated it was all players needed. No need of skills, no need of combat, all abstract. One magic system, pretending to be more. Also eveything is given to you? Why explore, heck even dnd novels dont jibe with the game,lol. ( admuttedly, I havr only read those from tge 2nd ed era).
Same thing with WoD,  guess it is easier to live in someone elses reality, than dream in your own. Lol. ( see tge lol,???)
Hubby has reams of notebooks from the 1st ed and 2ed, self created worlds, or severly altering th Forgotten Realms, lol. And WoD is so locked into its world, no room to breathe.
The rrason dnd took off?  Simplicity, not os system of users. Sadly, with 4th ed we see hiw dnd has emulated more a world of computer games. What dnd wrought, it has become enslaved by.

Quote from: danbuter;689659I love learning new game systems. Many of my friends absolutely detest it. They play whatever the newest version of D&D is (or Pathfinder lately). Some of them are also really into World of Darkness. Other than that, rpg's may as well not exist for them.

They're just not interested in learning new systems, when D&D or WoD does everything they want.

I know one gamer that resists learning new games and will often say "Why not just use Pathfinder?" for any setting.

Quote from: Bill;689785I know one gamer that resists learning new games and will often say "Why not just use Pathfinder?" for any setting.

I will add to this that it used to be that the deference between D&D and its alternatives were pretty dramatic. With skills and/or detailed combat other RPGs were very clearly had things the D&D hadn't.

Since 3.X a "good enough" factor has entered the equation which the gamer above probably is feeling. Character customization? Pathfinder/3.X; "good enough for me", detailed combat? Pathfinder/3.X "good enough for me".

And the advent of both internet publishing and the open gaming license you got every alternative from the very simplistic to the very complex.

Moreso you got alternative within RPGs particularly anything d20 based like Pathfinder. You can find or easily create mechanics to run an over the top Pathfinder or a gritty realistic Pathfinder.

Look at the D100/BRP/Runequest variants alone.

Quote from: Bill;689785I know one gamer that resists learning new games and will often say "Why not just use Pathfinder?" for any setting.

Substitute RQ/BRP/Legend for Pathfinder and that's me, that is.

Quote from: soltakss;689801Substitute RQ/BRP/Legend for Pathfinder and that's me, that is.

I am a huge Elric and CoC fan, but I still gladly try new games.

It's fine to have favorite games but some people choose such a limited selection it seems strange to me.