Runequest really seems to be underrated, and there nevers seems to be an explanation why.
I really feel like 3rd Edition Runequest wasn't liked.
But it just doesnt feel like most people are into the games like these.

>>96060491 (OP)
I love Runequest, and gay sex with feminine men, but I'm more of a miniature wargamer than an RPG player. I wish they did a wargame with hard plastic kits.

never seen anybody even mention it outside of the vidya (King of Dragon Pass)

got the runequest humble bundle last year, revolutionized how I see setting design and mythology, but I can't imagine ever running it...

>>96060491 (OP)
Bro we allready have a BRP and RQ thread here >>96043460

Why you need to make another one
Anyway I’m going to go recap my morrowind/nausicaa post apoc campaign over there that has been running since last September/October
I was >>95075594 if you want to go search the archives

>>96060533
Looking it up it seems likes theres also a new one in the pipe.
Which is pretty thing seeing there being another Runequest game coming out before the new RIFTS videogame.

>>96060491 (OP)
It's just very tied to Glorantha, and Glorantha's appeal is on the narrow side

>>96060765
As someone who started the box set last month, if you get a mature group it's pretty easy to run. It's just the setting is huge and intimidating, but you really don't need to know or include it all.

>>96060765
Don't worry about running it. Soon you'll be able to play it by yourself.

>>96060491 (OP)
It's just a dogshit system with a dogshit setting, it's not that complicated, bro.

the lore is really cool
you are foreigners so you are going to learn more about the location as you go. It's sort of the reverse of dnd
instead of being on the borderlands and wilderness, you are from the wilderness, arriving in the heart of civilization

>>96060491 (OP)
>there nevers seems to be an explanation why.
weird bronze age shit is too out there for most gamers
the setting has a ton of history and lore that you kind of have to learn, and the system is inherently tied to that setting very heavily
the system is different to what most people are used to and gamers are lazy as shit
and the biggest reason, it's not D&D so most people won't even look at it twice

First two editions are fine.
Biggest issue is really that most people who play it do so to obsess over irrelevant minutiae of Gloarntha's gods shenanigans rather than actually running a fun game. (the latter of which the first two editions have some strong modules for like Griffin Mountain and Pavis & Big Rubble while the latter editions have little to nothing for beyond going on about metaplot crap)
Didn't help that the people who ran the company for the last couple of editions were Greg's yes-men who believe that pulp adventuring was childish and beneath them and more for the AD&D crowd and the old runequest heads who championed fun games left the company.

3E was done by Avalon Hill and had some mechanics that wrren't thought out like Fatigue, some mathc hanges and more skills than many thought were needed.
Avalon Hill also made some wful supplements and the Mythic World idea didn't pan out.

However, Chaosium wen it got the rights back has done jack all but excrete their magnum opus of all the cult books with art. Cult books which still boil down to lists and lists of gods and requirements that have been rehashed since the late 80s.

They were putting out adventures, which were less pulpy and more Pendragon-adventures for landed warrirors stories about myth and crap.
But that's fallen by the wayside too.

Frankly the current staf at Chaosium are too old and disorganised to do anything. One of the people who did the art, the Prince of Sartar guy had a whole rant about them somewhere and how they just got to the nd of the chapter and decided to not renew it.

Also they keep talking about projects but anything beyond commissioning art and reusing text seems to be beyond them. They would be Palladium-tier if not for Call of Cthulhu and contracting out writers for something people have played for decades.

>>96073610
>>96073828
>the current staff
I'll give them major props for re-printing Classic editions of their games.
The new stuff doesn't do anything for me though.

>>96073856
I wonder if it would have ended up better for the Runequest if they hadn't branched off 6e

>>96060506
Used the rules from one of the Tekumel wargames. Alot of the models slot right in.

>>96079158
Hard plastic is not the same thing as resin, Anon.

>>96079158
Yeh the old ‘Chaos Warrior’ pikemen, archers, crossbowmen, and poleaxe troops sculpted by Bob Charette work well for both Runequest & Tekumel.

>>96072107
This is stolen from EPT, not something you can credit Runequest for.

>>96072107
That cover doesn't scream "bronze age fantasy!" At all...

>>96083629
That was a 3E cover when they were swinging between the classic S&S theme and Mythic Europe.

>>96079158
Speaking of, Tekumel is a better setting too.

>>96088137
Yeah, the Sandy Petersens' RQ3 Tekumel is a pretty good setting for Old School Runequest.
https://www.tekumel.com/downloads/RQtekumel.pdf

>>96088342
Is it worth getting into? I hear the author was incredibly based.

>>96088509
No clue about the RQ version but generally for EPT as a whole I don't think so. Tekumel has very similar issues to later Runequest in that the writers shat out write-only fluff without actual gaming aspects and even the creator's groups were kinda similar to WoD LARPers in what they wanted out of a game.
But unlike Glorantha it doesn't have great modules and the setting isn't particularly interesting or rewarding once you get past the speedhump of the exotic bits. There's only a few niceties that I consider notable at all but they're generally taken from elsewhere like the undercity dungeons (Lankhmar) and having out there science fiction tech in the dungeons 'cause the gods are human space-travellers & aliens (like Zelazny's Lord of Light published 7 years prior to EPT) but all that good stuff can be summed up in a single a4 page while the rest is just endless droning on about stuff that doesn't matter and isn't interesting like how they have mayan-style roads and a more convoluted way of paying wergild.
While I don't care about Barker's political proclivities I do get schaudenfreude that obnoxious theatre kid types and political lgbtoids who adopted Tekumel now have to deal with questions about Serpent's Walk and why they're playing a neo-nazi's game.

>>96088509
I heard HP Lovecraft was a pretty cool guy

>>96088933
Cool. I'll see what I can do. I prefer d100 like RQ compared to OSR style of Petal Throne.
>>96088941
MAR Barker is the author of Tekumel. HP Lovecraft authored Dreamlands. I love Lovecraft. Incredible man.

>>96088984
yeh, HP Lovecraft was a pretty cool guy

>>96089003
And Chaosium designers were cool enough to give us both Runequest and Call of Cthulhu.

>>96089015
>Call of Cthulhu
Another game sort of ruined by later editions. But at least you can get the first and second from them now.

>>96089015
its ok anon you can say his name, this isnt rpgnet
and you wont summon the wrath of john romero

>>96089045
Which editions are good? I was thinking about getting into Delta Green.
>>96089051
Thank God. RPGnet is like Reddit for people who think Reddit isn't moderated enough. I feel bad just for lurking there sometimes.
Muhammad Abd-al-Rahman Barker did nothing wrong!!

>>96060491 (OP)
>I really feel like 3rd Edition Runequest wasn't liked.
It was a bit clunky here and there, as I recall. RQ II was simpler and I liked it better.
But production values for RQ III were excellent.

>>96089051
Petersen's influence really can't be understated. Pretty much all of his CoC stuff from back in the day is great.
>>96089083
>Which editions are good?
First three are more or less the same with third being 2e split into a phb and dmg instead of one book. 4e should also be fine I think but haven't actually checked it out in a long time.
5E I know marks a big shift and is definitely once it starts getting bad when Lynn Willis took over, going on about realism in insanity and wasn't catering to the same pulpy style of play where investigators survive to fight bigger better baddies as not being in line with the literature it started getting much worse to play.
Good ol' CoC is pretty much indiana jones meets D&D where you're supposed to introduce a couple of scenarios and let the players deal with them sort of like dungeons and once you start to try and make it into a literarily accurate storyfag simulation it becomes a terribly boring railroad.
>I was thinking about getting into Delta Green.
Can't answer that one since I never got into it despite having it sitting on my shelf.

>>96088509
The original Empire of the Petal Throne box set is worth looking at. The later releases fall into the trap >>96088933 articulates well.

>>96089716
nah the one that sounds like an hpv shot works pretty well for someone whos new and is looking up to date in-lore information

Now the dust has settled, what do we think of it?
The way I see it:
Good - Shargash, Polaris
Disappointing - Dayzatar, Lokarnos
Ok - Ourania
Rehash - everything else

>>96094690
Serviceable in the most uninspiring way possible. I'd find more gameable material on Greg's tombstone.

Nothing past 1996

>>96094971
post pic of Greg's tombstone

>>96095332

>>96096014
fef

>>96088933
It was never really a secret, given how his players interacted with it as far back as the late 70s

>I fought we won

It made me think. If we all become self radicalized lone wolves, we can take down the
"neoliberalism", "cultural marxism", "capitalism", "woke" or whatever you preffer to call the current shit that makes life awful.

>>96107905
Belintar is a pretty cool guy
He rules the Holy Country and doesnt afraid of any duck

>>96089051
What did he do to piss of the Purple Place?

Runequest 3 killed a lot of the fanbase for RQ in the 80's and 90's. I don't know how bad it was, but the current Runequest edition is based on RQ2 so that's considered the peak by a lot of grogs. Avalon Hill were also more used to releasing board games and not RPG's, they didn't know how to release and market those. Then Avalon Hill shut down and yet Chaosium didn't get the rights back, so for the 90's and early 00's RQ was pretty much dead. That's a big start, beginning of the end. RQ3 was disliked, then copyright shit prevented RQ from even existing for a while.
Though they still had a fanbase, I really like looking at old 90's RQ/Glorantha. A lot of those zines bemoaning the death of RQ were made when the third edition was still new. So much Runequest fan stuff comes from this era and it was global thing, US, UK, Japan etc.
Then the 00's, there was Heroquest, not really Runquest but it was still connected to Glorantha and original Glorantha creator, Stafford, but doesn't use the BRP system. And then Mongoose's RQ, the IP kept getting passed around owners.
RQ6(which would become Mythras) was pretty well liked, then Chaosium got the IP back in the 2010's and now we have RQG/RQ7/RQ4(the numbering if you ignore anything with no Chaosium involvement) which is the current edition, and the last one with any involvement by Stafford or Steve Perrin. So Chaosium has RQ back, the people running it are old fans who want it thrive, and they're trying to push it, even in Japan where it used to have a playerbase.

>>96118414
You forgot about Hero Wars, Robin Law's first crack at Heroquest, that was printed as weird, novel sized books and sold horribly, apparently.

I guess there is also a first edition of Heroquest that was developed without Laws, that was more crunchy?

>>96118414
There's still problems in trying to get new fans today. Chaosium is ran by real oldfags. Fans, but out of touch boomers who had contact through fanzines and shit. Modern fanbases learn about games through videos, fansites, fan wikis, heavily organized, explains all the lore and history of a game. Glorantha is a half century old setting with an intentionally complex and contradictory lore, yet trying to get into it online is a death sentence. Wikis that barely go into detail, wikis that are literally just fucking bullet points and explain nothing to someone new trying to wrap their heads around something new. That, or obscure tumblr blogs that are better, but you know how much of a pain navigating tumblr can be.
Those are the main things I think that stop Runequest from being an RPG staple for people. 3e caused a rift, AH fucked up with RPG's, the IP was lost and passed around, and Chaosium has the spirit but doesn't know how the fuck to attract newer younger people.
Maybe that new RTS game in the work will draw in new people. King of Dragon Pass absolutely did. Maybe tell people all the stuff Warhammer took from it.

>>96118437
Yeah there's a bunch of holes in my retelling, I'm not a grog at all. But I hope I treated some ground. Heroquest and Hero Wars are blind spots for me.

>>96060990
There's a bunch of random BRP/RQ/Glorantha stuff up right now
I won't complain because there's always shit with multiple threads up daily and this is something that's rarely one of them

>>96083629
The way Glorantha is depicted is all over the place depending on the edition. The Japanese version did that a lot too
Glorantha in general is anachronistic, some early Iron Age stuff is there, Renaissance dwarves too. "Bronze age" is more of a shorthand for the main aim, specifically in how it deals with its religions/mythology

>>96086697
3E could be good when it wanted to be, art wise

>>96088509
Of course, he was a Muslim
>>96088941
And Lovecraft married a Jewish woman
Very based in my opinion

>>96107905
Trump won tho and shit has never been better, lib faggot

>>96073828
>One of the people who did the art, the Prince of Sartar guy had a whole rant about them somewhere and how they just got to the nd of the chapter and decided to not renew it.
The guy who did that Glorantha webcomic? Got any info on that? NO I AM NOT FUCKING BUMPFAG
>>96073430
>the setting has a ton of history and lore that you kind of have to learn, and the system is inherently tied to that setting very heavily
The problem is that they don't have anything to drag in newfags into the lore and setting, or act as some stepping stone into the world. Tons of overly complicated settings have whole book series and games.
Runequest has a few old books and one dead comic.
The BRP system isn't everyone's taste, but so much of the shit people complain about has already been solved by grogs who swear by the system. Simple shit like hit location, just give random monsters/npc's five-ten(I forgot) points for each location, nothing too crazy.
But all these tips are known by guys slowly dying out.

>>96125101
Chaosium is just horribly organised and persist because they can feed on Call of Cthulhu sales and the 10% cut of licensed fan material.

Originally Chaosium wanted to start with their cult book but had to be internally convinced to make some adventures. Now there are drafts written years prior to anything happening, shown off finished products they’ve done nothing to sell and the cults books keep getting bigger.
The Bulgarian who drew Prince of Sartar just said they company decided not to pay for any more chapters despite it being a popular introduction and ending on a weird cliffhanger.

>>96107905
This is what every mass shooter thinks before becoming an internet meme for being a fat loser who achieved nothing but the death of others.

>>96060491 (OP)
Because Runequest the system is bad, specially the RQG one, specially if you compare it to other BRP based games, like Pendragon or even Mythras.
And Glorantha is shit, it started okay, but the more you learn about it the most I disliked it, but then I started with KoDP.

>>96086697
>classic S&S
Classic S&S is medieval but ok

>>96125101
Bro your King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages?

>>96094690
It's hard to do good technical art than feels so flat desu. Than they have been at years for just this is a bad joke, I only bought ONE of those books and was such a badly edited mess than I resold it to another gloranthan fan for half of what it costed and I felt like I ripped him off. It can't be in such an old company like chaosium, than has such a crawling pace of making stuff, to have such levels of incompetence, is just isn't right.

>>96060491 (OP)
Why would I play this when Warhammer exists?

>>96132126
Tbh Warhammer has done in comparision everything well, the game, not GW.
Some of the best bestiaries, easy and fun game with weird stuff so its memorable, and a very strong IP than even normies have heard about. In comparision RQ is dated. They new books, have a very weird tumblr view to me (I have flashbacks of the early 2010 so this can be just me) and are badly, BADLY edited, with a very slow character creation, and the RQG is a mess, not only unbalanced, than in RPGs, I Don't care, but in the format, its edited like shit, amateurs do better.

>>96088933
Tbh the amount of lgbqq than got buttblasted with the Tekumel stuff was hilarious and I also had a lot of schaudenfreude about it, but a bit of a pity because I followed some normoid boomers than low key had lots of cool stuff about tekumel than didn't ditch it exactly, but let it rest becasue that.

>>96132126
Half the shit Warhammer does came from Runequest, down to how it does Chaos
It's cringe to seem someone talk about how cool and weird beastmen are and it's literally just broos but with less rape

>>96134329
doesnt reall feel like that looking trough it though.

>>96060491 (OP)
Love Glorantha but I hate Runequest, the game feels too clunky for my taste.
My dream game would a complete version of Pendragon Pass, maybe with some bits of HQ baked in.

>>96118437
Basically Hero Wars and Hero Quest 1 are that weird system that tried to do simulationism with a narrativist foundation, and it’s a complete mess. Fun to read, if you like Glorantha, but absolutely not something you are expected to run easily.

Hero Quest 2 fully embraced the narrativism, maybe a little too much, but at least the system is braindead easy to run.

>>96139916
Not my problem
Games Workshop localized the third edition for the UK, so they had an intricate relationship with Glorantha and yoinked some bits here and there

>>96140936
>Love Glorantha but I hate Runequest
I think this is a factor, though I do think the history behind the IP being fucked around, Avalon Hill's bad decisions, and Chaosium's incompetence are the primary driving ones.
People either love and adore Glorantha but hate the system, or love the system but hate Glorantha, they just stick to BRP in general.
Chaosium could probably make its own alternative for the former, but you got a lot of BRP options like Mythras already and you try your best to put as much as Glorantha in it. I dunno, I'm not a business guy, never ask me

Has anyone tried 13th age glorantha?

>>96141871
yeah its too bad that it wasn't tried for more, shame it had potential

>>96141915
is 13th age any good?
i keep seeing treads about it but there doesnt seem for a consensus

>>96141907
Apparently they want to try to sell a ‘Runequest lite’ sometimes in the next months or the next year. It will be set in Pavis, which is a good choice for beginners as the region is relatively free if the mytho-cultural complexity of the others regions of central Genertela, while still being high in adventuring potential.

>>96141915
While I do think 13th age has its appeal, I’m not a fan of the system - moreso for playing in Glorantha.

>>96130728
>>96073828
The fact that they have 9 cult books planned and that it seems to be the focus of their release schedule for Runequest is baffling. Not to mention the glacial release schedule. I get that the mythology is the most interesting part of the setting, to the ones who have been developing it since the 1980s, but for a new player or even someone who is wanting to run the game and not just view it as a worldbuilding project what the fuck am I meant to do with that?

The community seems to better understand what people want. Just look at the Jonstown compendium the most popular releases on there are location sourcebooks and actual campaigns. You know things you can get to the table.

I know they lost control of the IP and it existed in limbo for a very long time but they need to start thinking about how to attract new players and what people new to the IP actually want. Compare it to the other IPs that did succeed like WH or DnD see how they have spread out over multiple formats. Otherwise it's going to remain extremely niche and eventually die as they don't have anyone to hand the setting to once the oldguard retire or die out.

Where are the professional actual plays? Why did they abandon the webcomic? Why is the wiki for what is one of the most extensive worldbuilding projects ever done literally a disconnected series of 1 or 2 bullet points for all the entries? Why are they not pursuing video games more, they're sitting on a potential gold mine. All of these things would do wonders for the community and help extend the setting.

>>96142389
The irony is that both the HW and HQ2 eras did a much better job at onboarding beginners. Take the Sartar Kingdom of Heroes book for example, it’s a model of how to present an important part of Glorantha in a clear and accessible way, without sacrificing/simplifying too much of the richness of the setting like the more recent books tend to do.

I suspect Jeff Richards just doesn’t give a fuck anymore since Greg’s death.

>>96142389
I agree pretty much. Runequest has a lot of lost time, existing in limbo for most of the 90's, plenty of people drifted away or fucking died, and it didn't come home until most of the old guard were old enough to run for president. "34?" You know what I mean.
>Why are they not pursuing video games more
They are actually, there's one in the works, I think some of it even leaked here years ago. It's some kind of strategy game, developing in Ireland.
I think Chaosium is even doing a board game version of White Bear Red Moon/Dragon Pass

>>96141927
Not my favorite depiction of Glorantha but still a pretty good one

>>96142946
I've been following the development of Warlords, it's a good start but they really need to push more into it. Slitherine games are always very niche. They got this and the KoDP/ Six Ages games, the original being about 25 years old at this point, meanwhile things like WH or DnD have had at least 1 or 2 video games released per year since the early 2000s. And still no one has approached the most obvious game format for Runequest, a cRPG. They have to push into these markets for the gameline to survive.

>>96143029
My favorite might be in the Avalon Hill stuff. Despite all the blame it gets, people did claim it got better near the end, around Sun County

>>96143029
is sure was something to be sure there was more but cant recall
yeah thats the game someone recommended from the last thread

>>96142946
Internal rumour is the reprint of WB&RM died when they realised how much effort it would be to update the art and get the cardboard printed off.

>>96143819
Chaosium I will literally just do a blood sacrifice of myself if you manage to do anything right please holy fuck

>>96143819
That's bullshit. They had a demo of the new version running at Chaosium Con. Seemingly the only thing they want to do is republish old material with a modern dash of art, surprisingly, WBRM fits that bill despite all financial success of the product being questionable. Will make the grogs happy though (the crowd they seem to have a hate boner for)

>>96116629
Apparently going to gaming conventions you're invited to go to to game and promote your games.

>>96060491 (OP)
>But it just doesnt feel like most people are into the games like these.
Good.

>>96116629
Massively fail Cthulhu and Gods War, the board games and joke about naming Latino characters in his Cthulhu modules after domestic appliances.

>>96150812
Amazing, they first started talking about redoing WB&RM in 2015, ten years later we get a demo and in another ten years we might get a product.

>>96159485
They are so incompetent and bad at this. Boomers without any of hte good points of the boomers (don't give a shit about the current shit, instead, they give a shit about teh current shit, ten years ago).
They are so ass at editing to...

>>96157898
>joke about naming Latino characters in his Cthulhu modules after domestic appliances.
Kek

>>96159528
Cute dragonsnail, would let it eat my cattle.