Quote from: Nerzenjäger;868062I like Glorantha, but have no interest in running it with RQ.
RQ/BRP was my first love when it comes to RPGs, but that being said, I think 13th Age might in the end be a better fit for that complex setting. Same goes for Tekumel by the way. And I'm not even that huge a fan of 13th Age, but the Icon system lends itself pretty well to worlds rich in lore and makes it easy to get into immediately.

I'm not so sure that's true. I don't know how much of it will remain in RQ:G but the combinations of cultural background, Devotion, cult initiation, Passions, and Runic Affinity that you can rustle up in RQ6 seem to me to do a lot of what the Icons do, but in a more detailed manner. Or do you mean the Icons system is good precisely because it's simple?

RuneQuest was always the best system for Glorantha, in my opinion, because it's deliberate gritty, simulationism lent the setting more verisimilitude and brio. It makes the world seem more historical and real.

In my view, right or wrong, the reason why Jeff and co decided to go 'back to source' for the new RQ rules was more a practical case that they couldn't find a way to compromise and condense down the RQ6 rulebook (c.400 pages) + Adventures in Glorantha (c.200 pages) into a circa.300 page core rulebook. They basically want a book to match Heroquest: Glorantha in design, I reckon, under their total creative control and I think on final analysis it must have been an editing nightmare.

Anyway, we now know that there will never be a unified BRP/RQ system (a la D20/OGL) only a 'family of related games' and this is merely how it has been anyway over the last decade or so. I'd like to see less 'core rules' for disparate versions of the same essential system and language, and more standalone settings with all necessary rules included. This ought to cut out more consternation in the future.

Anyway, travelling over Christmas so best wishes to all!

Quote from: nDervish;867722Voted "Love Runequest, don't care about Glorantha", but I really meant "Love Runequest, Glorantha can take a flying leap".

Goofy and the Ducks don't particularly bother me.  I loathe Campbell/Monomyth/Hero's Journey and canned metaplot, regardless of what setting may be at hand and I get the distinct impression that they're the creamy filling within Glorantha's hard outer shell of Narrativium (which I'm also less-than-fond of).



And what of those who want to play fantasy in homebrew settings without slotting everything into classes, levels, and system-enforced "zero-to-hero" (or, depending on edition, "hero-to-superhero")?

You can always go for GURPS if you must have something utterly denatured, no there there, that reads like a theoretical textbook. Or Hero System. For that matter, there's the BRP "big gold book".

RQ works fine, though, and I don't see how having the distinctive features of questing for runes, etc., included in the package for the rest of the audience is some kind of great hindrance. It's hard to see how such a belligerent attitude could be sensibly formed on the basis of Chaosium's RQ2, which was my referent. (The AH edition was similar, sketching Glorantha as well as Fantasy Europe.)

As I wrote, it was not a big deal, just bits of color such as descriptions of elves and dragons, a couple of inspirational maps by Bill Church (from WB&RM and Nomad Gods), and a brief big-picture overview.

One might as well complain that Villains & Vigilantes or Champions was useless for making up your own campaign from scratch because of write-ups of CHESS and UNTIL (and contemporary-era assumptions generally). Likewise of course, only more so, Marvel Super Heroes. Traveller? Gamma World? Darned near every successful game ever? Too bad they had flavor, instead of being just technical algorithms with no context, so they couldn't be such huge sellers as the hundreds of "some guy's numbers" booklets published, eh?

Guilds, spells, cults, monsters, economic and cultural assumptions, etc., necessarily imply some background, in D&D as well as in Palladium or Harn or RQ. Having that helps people get their beatings and get started, even without having already spent years or decades building a campaign world. Having some color that's not just another imitation of Greyhawk seems to me a feature.

Quote from: nDervish;867722Voted "Love Runequest, don't care about Glorantha", but I really meant "Love Runequest, Glorantha can take a flying leap".

Goofy and the Ducks don't particularly bother me.  I loathe Campbell/Monomyth/Hero's Journey and canned metaplot, regardless of what setting may be at hand and I get the distinct impression that they're the creamy filling within Glorantha's hard outer shell of Narrativium (which I'm also less-than-fond of).



And what of those who want to play fantasy in homebrew settings without slotting everything into classes, levels, and system-enforced "zero-to-hero" (or, depending on edition, "hero-to-superhero")?

You can always go for the Big Gold Book, or GURPS or Hero System, if you must have something utterly denatured, no there there, that reads like a theoretical textbook.

RQ works fine, though, and I don't see how having the distinctive features of questing for runes, etc., included in the package for the rest of the audience is some kind of great hindrance. It's hard to see how such a belligerent attitude could be sensibly formed on the basis of Chaosium's RQ2, which was my referent. (The AH edition was similar, sketching Glorantha as well as Fantasy Europe.)

As I wrote, it was not a big deal, just bits of color such as descriptions of elves and dragons, a couple of inspirational maps by Bill Church (from WB&RM and Nomad Gods), and a brief big-picture overview.

One might as well complain that Villains & Vigilantes or Champions was useless for making up your own campaign from scratch because of write-ups of CHESS and UNTIL (and contemporary-era assumptions generally). Likewise of course, only more so, Marvel Super Heroes. Traveller? Gamma World? Darned near every successful game ever? Too bad they had flavor, instead of being just technical algorithms with no context, so they couldn't be such huge sellers as the hundreds of "some guy's numbers" booklets published, eh?

Guilds, spells, cults, monsters, economic and cultural assumptions, etc., necessarily imply some background, in D&D as well as in Palladium or Harn or RQ. Having a context helps people get their bearings and get started, especially those who have not already spent years building their own game worlds. Having some color that's not just another imitation of Greyhawk seems to me a feature.

Quote from: Phillip;868174Guilds, spells, cults, monsters, economic and cultural assumptions, etc., necessarily imply some background, in D&D as well as in Palladium or Harn or RQ. Having a context helps people get their bearings and get started, especially those who have not already spent years building their own game worlds. Having some color that's not just another imitation of Greyhawk seems to me a feature.

I agree, though what you said sounded strangely familiar.

Yes, some weirdness happened while editing and I ended up with two posts. Just deleted the first.

Maybe my view is not hip to the current scene, and vanilla "fixed up D&D" is not a glutted market as it was in the '80s and '90s.

One those "almosts" of history was Avalon Hill's plan to use Jack Vance's Lyonesse as setting for RQ IV (which came to a strange and tragic end).

Quote from: Bilharzia;867666Check out RQ Essentials.

Thank you Bilharzia!! And your photo rocks.

Wow! RQ Essentials is quite a read. I can see why RQ6 has a following. I could see me years ago getting really into a dynamic system like RQ 6, but these days its got a level of complexity that doesn't draw me.

But hot damn, that's one fine fantasy toolkit.

Quote from: RandallS;867726I suspect most people did not see WBRM until the Avalon Hill edition (long after RQ was published) and most have never heard of Nomad Gods.

I am surprised Chaosium hasn't teamed up with Fantasy Flight to produce modern versions of White Bear, Red Moon and Nomad Gods.

Quote from: The Butcher;867839The two best introductions to Glorantha out there, as far as I can tell, are the amazing Prince of Sartar webcomic and the addictive, classic text-based RPG/wargame, King of Dragon Pass.

Thank you Butcher!!!

I am loving Prince of Sartar. Deeply impressed. Woot!

Quote from: Phillip;868174One might as well complain that Villains & Vigilantes or Champions was useless for making up your own campaign from scratch because of write-ups of CHESS and UNTIL (and contemporary-era assumptions generally). Likewise of course, only more so, Marvel Super Heroes. Traveller? Gamma World? Darned near every successful game ever? Too bad they had flavor, instead of being just technical algorithms with no context, so they couldn't be such huge sellers as the hundreds of "some guy's numbers" booklets published, eh?

I'm guessing you haven't actually read RQ6. Unlike RQ 2, it's built to cover a wide range of fantasy settings. It's also got a lot of flavor, both in its writing style and in the many examples of play.

Quote from: Baulderstone;868209I'm guessing you haven't actually read RQ6. Unlike RQ 2, it's built to cover a wide range of fantasy settings. It's also got a lot of flavor, both in its writing style and in the many examples of play.

I don't need to read them all to learn that the core book has 456 pages, more than 3.5 times as many as RQ2. I don't know whether they watered down Dwarves and Elves and Trolls to generic D&D copies. I don't know whether they dumped Dragonewts and Broos and Morokanths, Spirilt Binding Crystals and Rune Lords and Chaotic Creature Features.

I do know that it seems mighty strange that the inclusion of touches like that plus a few evocative pages mentioning such things as the Lunar Empire's clash with Sartar, Shadows Dance and Snakepipe Hollow, the Big Rubble and the River of Cradles and the Riders of Prax, should pose an onerous burden when they did not when they made up such a smaller proportion.

I gamed in Glorantha fairly regularly until the advent of RQ3. Then it disappeared of the radar for a few years and I happily adapted RQ2 and, later, RQ3 to a vast multitude of different settings. Then in the 90s the "RuneQuest Renaissance" brought Glorantha back with a level of complexity that I wasn't willing to buy into, never mind new players who had no background in it at all. I haven't had any desire to play or run Glorantha games since, but I still like the RQ2 and RQ3 iterations of the rules.

Quote from: Spinachcat;868206Wow! RQ Essentials is quite a read. I can see why RQ6 has a following. I could see me years ago getting really into a dynamic system like RQ 6, but these days its got a level of complexity that doesn't draw me.

Join us, Spinachcat. You know you want to...

Quote from: Spinachcat;868206Thank you Butcher!!!

I am loving Prince of Sartar. Deeply impressed. Woot!

Always glad to be of service. I do believe presenting the complex myth and exotic local color as a serialized webcomic was a master stroke.

Quote from: Phillip;868217I do know that it seems mighty strange that the inclusion of touches like that plus a few evocative pages mentioning such things as the Lunar Empire's clash with Sartar, Shadows Dance and Snakepipe Hollow, the Big Rubble and the River of Cradles and the Riders of Prax, should pose an onerous burden when they did not when they made up such a smaller proportion.

I think that the "few evocative pages" married to the RQ 6 system was the original idea that Chaosium had. But you're right, the large rulebook and all the work that has gone into Adventures in Glorantha must have looked impossible to fit in one volume. The only way to make RuneQuest and Glorantha fit together is by effectively excising the toolkit aspect of RQ 6, and printing only those rules relevant to Glorantha. I have the feeling that they want to marry them even more closely to the setting than was the case in RQ 2. Such that RQ and Glorantha become effectively inseparable. Not that a clever gm couldn't reverse-engineer something different out of it of course. But I think the future is going to make the divide apparent. Those of us who don't want to play in Glorantha will use Design Mechanism's rules, those that do will use Chaosium RuneQuest, and that leaves that frustrated group, who I feel for, who are very invested in RQ 6 and want to play in Glorantha, and were desperately eager for AiG to come out ...
All of this probably won't effect my gaming one jot, except that I'll have more DM supplements than I would have. All that is hurt is my feeling of belonging to the RuneQuest tribe, in which my membership appears to have been revoked ....

Quote from: Bren;867775The Hero's Journey and other Cambellian fillips are useful for Heroquesting, which historically has fallen somewhere between only minimally present and entirely nonexistent in the majority of Runequest games.

Quote from: Baron Opal;867819And, there's as much Narrativium as there is adventuring in Greyhawk with D&D. Heroquesting is a bear of a different color, I grant.

Fair enough.  The impression I'd gotten of Glorantha is that heroquesting is The Major Feature of the setting and something that characters would engage in frequently, whether in small scale reenactment of myths to gain new powers or full-blown, capital-H Heroquesting to reshape the fundamental nature of reality.

Still doesn't interest me, but at least I guess I don't need to be as ready to run screaming from the room if playing there is ever suggested.

Quote from: Phillip;868174RQ works fine, though, and I don't see how having the distinctive features of questing for runes, etc., included in the package for the rest of the audience is some kind of great hindrance. It's hard to see how such a belligerent attitude could be sensibly formed on the basis of Chaosium's RQ2, which was my referent.

It seems we're even, then.  You haven't read RQ6 (which is by no means the dry, flavorless textbook you seem to imagine) and I haven't read RQ2.  RQ6 and BGB were my first exposure to the BRP family and I had no exposure to Glorantha prior to the infamous GenCon announcement.

But I have backed the RQ2 kickstarter and look forward to reading the core PDF.

Quote from: Phillip;868174As I wrote, it was not a big deal, just bits of color such as descriptions of elves and dragons, a couple of inspirational maps by Bill Church (from WB&RM and Nomad Gods), and a brief big-picture overview.

Still all material that I'd just end up not using.  I'd much rather that the page count go towards suggestions on building your own flavorful world (which RQ6 has, and I do use) instead of enshrining any setting, even one that I love, as part of the core rules.

And that's assuming a setting which is easily removed.  Chaosium's most recent statements talk about things like the setting and rules reinforcing each other, which implies to me something like Ars Magica, where setting and system are so deeply intertwined that it's not easy to see how you would go about using either one without the other.

Quote from: Phillip;868174One might as well complain that Villains & Vigilantes or Champions was useless for making up your own campaign from scratch because of write-ups of CHESS and UNTIL (and contemporary-era assumptions generally). Likewise of course, only more so, Marvel Super Heroes. Traveller? Gamma World? Darned near every successful game ever? Too bad they had flavor, instead of being just technical algorithms with no context, so they couldn't be such huge sellers as the hundreds of "some guy's numbers" booklets published, eh?

Funny you should include Traveller in that list...  I first encountered Traveller in the LBB days.  Offhand, I don't recall the Third Imperium (or any other setting) even being mentioned in the LBBs.  Even if a setting was named, I'm quite certain that it was just the name - no history or cultural details or anything of that sort beyond what could be inferred from the rules.  (There are nobles and a Scout Service, but how do the nobles relate to the population at large and how does the Scout Service operate?  That's up to you.)  And I never got the slightest whiff of an expectation that you should play in The Official Setting.

On the contrary, those LBBs (and every subsequent edition of Traveller I've seen, up to and including the original Mongoose implementation) contained explicit methods for creating your own setting.  And it was specifically that which made me fall in love with Traveller and to continue to look to it as a source of inspiration 30ish years later.  It's also why, when I was forced to abandon most of my physical gaming paraphernalia, the second thing on my "must keep" list was my battered GDW Traveller Charts & Tables booklet.  (The first thing was the binder full of RoleMaster attack and crit tables.  Also very setting-neutral, but extremely flavorful.)

Classic Traveller didn't have a specific setting and Gamma World didn't really either. It had a blank hex map of a battered U.S.A. and was set after a massively destructive event... but not much else in the way of a setting. No mention of who or what caused the collapse and ruin.
Listing of monsters and equipment did kinda push a certain set of notions but I think they were really open to interpretation.