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Author Topic: Tell me about RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha  (Read 2604 times)

Brad

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Re: Tell me about RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha
« Reply #15 on: May 18, 2021, 02:14:32 PM »
Unlike JeffB, I am a much more casual Runequest fan; I've played 1/2 and 3, some Heroquest (of whatever it's called), and the Mongoose Glorantha game. I've browsed the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha book, so take my opinion with that in mind.

I'd play a Glorantha game in 1/2, a generic Iron Age game with 3rd as I don't think it's as suitable for actually playing in Glorantha, Mongoose is serviceable, I would never play the new one because it's mechanically so hard to understand I sort of gave up. I always thought the magic system for RQ was best in 1/2 and went sort of downhill from there.
It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.

JeffB

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Re: Tell me about RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha
« Reply #16 on: May 18, 2021, 02:20:30 PM »

There is an option for previous experience in the back of both Runequest 1st and 2nd editions-. IIRC, 3rd as well. I have not looked at my copy of 3rd in many moons, let alone played it.

Ah thanks. I was thinking of going through the appendices more carefully.
It’s baked into the basic character generation in RQ3, with two different options on how to handle it.

BTW I know there was some anger about how Avalon Hill handled Runequest, but I think that RQ3 is extremely underrated. My (cough *mint* cough) RQ3 rules book is one of my prized rpg possessions 😊

Some very good products came out of Avalon Hill- in particular I like Shadows on the Borderlands, and River of Cradles- of course these were all written by Chaosium-  And I was very excited getting and running RQ3 deluxe box, BITD (bought it the day it showed up on the shelf)  I loved making characters for it as I recall, loved the layout, the new Character sheets (SO MUCH BETTER) and I don't even mind Fantasy Earth ( I like such settings, despite them requiring a lot of handwaving to work) . But in play I remember us not real happy with the added complexity, the sorcery rules, and just not seeing a big play benefit compared to RQ2.  I sold all my original AH & Chaosium collection 15-20 years ago, but I do have a softcover AH Deluxe 3E book in storage somewhere, along with the NuChaosium RQ Classic reprints and PDFs.

In my old age, I've come to prefer OpenQuest mechanically, vs/ the originals. I also like 13th Age in Glorantha- I'm a big fan of 13th Age, and I think the 13A crew put forth a better effort than Chaosium, especially as regards to presenting Glorantha in a more malleable, DM/Game Table friendly way.

Trond

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Re: Tell me about RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha
« Reply #17 on: May 18, 2021, 08:16:06 PM »
Looking over RQ2 again I now remember why I scratched my head about the experience in the appendices (man this is clunky and unbalanced, but charming in that old school way). Having said that, I think I could make it work; I think 5 years experience in Apprenticeship, or as Mercenary or Barbarian would do to get the characters more up to speed. The Apprenticeship gives 4000Lunars per year (so effectively 20 000 L worth of training, which i guess is worth roughly 100%-200% in skills looking at the various tables and depending on if you train a a few to a high % value or a lot of skills in low %). 

I'll keep reading RQG to see what I think.