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...

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.