Thread 96474663

I've really been enjoying reading through Runequest, so I don't understand why it seems so underrated in modern gaming.
There doesn't really seem to be much interest in the current edition compared to early ones.
I was hoping that there could be more excitement over its potential.
Especially with the changes coming.

>so I don't understand why it seems so underrated in modern gaming
It's strictly inferior to 6th edition/Mythras, Glorantha is overwrought, lack of support from Chaosium and too expensive.

Glorantha lived and died with KoDP.

I'm surprised how much legs 13th Age has with Glorantha.

>>96474663 (OP)
I like the lore, I like a lot of the rules.
I hate strike ranks, and I hate how everything requires you to reference a fucking table.
If they fixed those two issues and polished up some of the other jank I'd recommend people play it much more often.
I usually only recommend people read Runequest in the context of it being speculative fiction. I think actually playing it would be retarded.

>>96475097
>lack of support from Chaosium
I mean, Chaosium has put out a fuckload of books for the game though?

>>96478137
NTA but books aren't necessarily support. Priority one is to play the game, not to collect a library. Books can be helpful to that end but Chaosium doesn't seem to understand what it's actually like to pick up a new game, and then they will have staff and affiliates pontificate about how people should be engaging with the game. Moreover, Jeff is on the record for saying "who has the time to pick up and learn a new RPG system" on the official Chaosium youtube channel, so clearly he has neither the sympathy nor understanding for what the modern TTRPG audience wants. They are out of touch and they're just starting to realize some 7 years later how out of touch they really are.

Mythras (was RuneQuest 6 ) has imo a more refined system than the current RQ:G and has a diverse range of settings, not tied to Glorantha. It's a better choice if you want to homebrew or you're interested in mythic Earth or Sword & Sorcery campaigns.

>>96478520
I wish I could be as enthusiastic about anything as your are about Mythras.

I'm personally having a hard time getting on-boarded, there just doesn't seem to be that much discussion online. I got interested because I'm an Elder Scrolls fan, but I think I'm just too much of a noob to understand where I should start.

>>96489623
Chaosium recognised those difficulties and planned a new extensive hand-holdy module that gently introduced Gloranthian lore and concepts through play but all of their recent hires (rightfully?) told them that the current system doesn't hold up and with the amount of resources they're investing in it they'll literally never break even let alone turn a profit; they're planning a relaunch of the RuneQuest brand.

Glorantha was a warning against worldbuilding. I'm sure developers had a lot of fun, but selling it to 3rd parties is... well, you see the results.

>>96483167
I literally said I'm NTA. I've not played Mythras and never mentioned it.

>>96490050
The worldbuilding is probably the ONLY thing that is keeping it afloat at the moment. If they tore it out RQ:G would still sink because the problem is that the current Chaosium are fans of RQ rather than real game designers. They don't know how to make a game good or successful, just how to play it.

I notice that both longtime BRP players and ones with their wits about understand it and are fine with it
But when I first got into running Runequest derived systems such as mythras or RQ6 as it was called a good 10+ years ago, before the advent of OneDND

One thing I noticed is that several week. Long healing times seemed like an alien concept to OneDND and shitfinder players

Weirdly one of the groups of players that liked realistic injuries was natty who were into tolkien and outdoorsman activities
Who strangely seemed to enjoy the trauma of other PC’s getting injured and having to make realistic solutions that a medic or sawbones would make instead of wiggling fingers away the injury

Players I found in subsequent years would be more fine with these kinds of wound systems

>>96490397
Most versions of RQ are setting agnostic but regardless of Editon this problem keeps happening in recent years

We can only hope that something is in the pipeline after Cults.
Even if it’s some more adventure packs because 2 scenarios books doesn’t cover a lot of ground.
Or they are going to milk fans with Jonstown Compendium like they do with CoC.

>>96489886
I thought they were simply planning a rewrite of the main corebook to make it a better read when they reprint it. Honestly their beginner box is probably one of the best I've seen and I often reference that instead of the corebook. They can probably lift a lot of that and just slot it in.

(but if they got rid of the clunky constraining lifepath and stole some stuff from Mythras I would be quite happy)

>>96493080
There has been rumblings of a grand Argrath campaign akin to the Pendragon campaign for a long time. But Chaosiums release schedule is as nebulous as the moon. I don't think they have been able to grow the IP like they hoped and may not want to sink a ton of resources into it.

I think things might turn around a bit when the Runequest computer game come out later this year. They need a bit more market saturation to be able to bring in a new crowd. Most of the Runequest fans seem to be in their 50s and 60s now.

>>96476618
they released one book they were supposed to release two and even more supplements. I use this content regularly in my normal 13th age game but there isn't enough of it

>>96476618
the duck racial is hilariously broken. Quack is some cloak of shadows tier bullshit

>>96493723
They had growth when Six Ages 1 and 2 came out but gave that up when ASharp gave up on making more because it was a one or two-man team.

>>96494504
It's a shame. Runequest is prime material for video game adaptation but most people have never even heard of it despite it being one of the most established and embellished settings out there.

>>96495709
URW feels like RQ in Mythic Finland

Since no one has outright said what happened, Chaosium recently announced a new edition of Runequest that was meant to be more D&D-player friendly - less lore heavy and the rules replaced strike ranks with a weird, board gamey phase system that played like a clusterfuck. Chaosium has since said those rules were to be scrapped and replaced with a more condensed version of the current rules.

If they could just find a way to convey strike ranks in an easy-to-read manner and hold your hand a little bit with the setting, I think the game would be a lot more popular. The game is ran by people who have been playing it for 40 years and sometimes I think they forget how to invite new people in without scaring them off.

>>96498118
I want to watch the playtest of the janky boardgame

you also forgot to mention that during the playtest of the new rules, the amount of people that went from the gaming area over to the chaosium booth to give valid criticism & playtest feedback on the new rpg edition rules were met with aversion & outright hostility by the chaosium staffers in the booth.
its crazy how similar things have played out in the past.

>>96499564
Which convention was this? GenCon?

I don't know how they could simplify the setting more than in the starter box. I just checked, it's literally 18 pages. Anyone unable or not willing to read and retain 18 pages of information in plain english needs to be filtered out of the hobby for the overall good of the rest of us. If that makes me an elitest grognard so be it.

>>96499564
If this happened at Chaosium Con UK I wouldn't be surprised, the British Chaosium employees are bitter about literally everything, even mentioning Mongoose around them causes a tism.

>>96501276
Funnily enough, I was at UK Games Expo a few months back and was almost put off from getting into Runequest from the attitude of the staffer at their exhibition. Like I was really intruding on their day, wanting to talk to them about the thing they were selling. I put it down to the hall being massively overcrowded, stifling and tensions getting frayed that day. Interesting to hear that they have a reputation for it.

It’s like if Gygax & Friends still owned D&D.

>>96491293
What the fuck did someone train an LLM on my posts? the way it’s written it’s clearly not an LLM

This reads like a slightly more demented and migraine induced version of something I allready wrote
Mind you I made them on my phone, and did often write them while suffering a migraine and feeling loopy

It’s been a while since I posted here but
Glad to see I got copycats

Now you fucking n’whas regardless of what brp derivative you are running what has happened in recent sessions?
Currently in the game I’m running three out of five party member are suffering from personality derangements and voices in their heads after hitting the psionic too hard
And the party nun with a power fist punched a giant undead crab with a laser beam tank cannon to death

Honestly I feel like Heroquest was a much more fitting system for Glorantha than Runequest, it's a shame they decided to abandon it for grognards nostalgic for 2nd edition.

>>96490050
You know as time goes on I start to wonder how much of glorantha was gregs actual religious beliefs
how much of it was things he liked at the time
And how much of it was Greg satirising the things he liked and his religious beliefs
And as my eyes start to widen reading a lot of the things Greg has said I see increasingly more of the third

Man was a master troll like that

>>96507165
I think glorantha should run on runedragon
A highly modified version of pendragon but still using a lot of the same procedures

>>96507147
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

>>96507177
I'm well aware of glorantha history. However, you are trying to apply standards from other pre-modern cultures onto separate ones without basis.

There's always Mythras.

>>96509973
Mythras certainly seems to be carrying on the spirit of Mongoose Runequest with plenty of 3PP support.
Its Great to See!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI1REDqO41Q

>>96509764
i'm saying highly modified here
as you could have a section of your character sheet dedicated to runes and shit like modern runequest and they would influence your characters behavior
we saw more of pendragon make it's way into RQG with passions and runes, i say we cut a lot of the baggage and also tool the pendragon elements to work really fucking well with glorantha

>>96507165
Try actually playing it.
Runequest Classic is a game, Heroquest is the idea of one.

>>96514024
Runequest Classic is a game, Heroquest is the idea of one.
Yeh Heroquest really was was a much more fitting system for Glorantha than Runequest

>>96514043
>system
More like set of books to buff up ideas for a setting.
It's not much of a game for actual tabletop play.
>the idea fits
Yeah well the idea has to survive actual play to be worth a damn, something a lot of people at chaosium seems to have forgotten.

>>96514062
not sure what you mean by that since the staffers that actually worked on the og hq are long gone

>>96510012
It also has way less of the jank MRQ had
I like running weird monsters with chaos features and letting players figure it the fuck out

>want to get an up to date overview of RQ
>every single search leads to some huge PDF or a wiki with like one line of some completely random thing mentioned that explains nothing

its actually really simple
ignore any lore published after second edition

>>96514043
I mean, I guess its different for everyone, but HeroQuest is much more a "game" to me while RuneQuest plays more as hand-wringing simulation.
King of Sartar is a very small fraction of the Glorantha material ever published and so taking the full library into account, Glorantha is mostly myth rather than any sort of traditional 1st/3rd person narrative. That's to say, there's more written on how Orlanth/Niskis rescued Heler/Tarhelera from Aroka/Venebain than there is on the specifics of Harrek the Berserkers world wide raid with Argrath.
As such, Heroquest let's me slip between those two modes of storytelling while still using the same system and skills. It is just as mechanically complex to take a completely newly created character on his first Cattle Raid as it is his first HeroQuest (for the player at least.) Because of that simplicity though there is a lot more creative burden on the participants, be they players or DM's. The mechanics decide degrees of success, you have to frame everything yourself narratively and how that degree of success applies to the situation. While I can understand how thats not everyone's cup of tea, thats what Greg wanted for Hero Wars, even going so far as to encourage people to make up new gods, people's, and lands for Glorantha. He saw it as "exploring" the setting and just as valid as any worldbuilding he did. Kinda the point of Hero Wars/HeroQuest.
Now that I think about it though, I imagine RuneQuest might be better for those who have more passion for TTRPGs while HeroQuest is more for people with a passion for Glorantha. Which is probably why HeroQuest was Greg's preferred way to play through his creation. David Durham's (KoDP Creator) too. Practically every decent Glorantha contributer who isnt Jeff preferred HeroQuest. Apples to Oranges ofc, but I'm tired of Jeff's RuneQuest being right way or it being the highway.

>>96514024
Im actually playing it right now, granted a Solo game. I think the main hurdle for play is that not everyone who plays games wants to create stories. With a lot of games, only the DM needs to be narratively creative while players are reactive in their role to what the DM puts forth. HeroQuest seems to evenly distribute that creative burden a lot more evenly. Thus, scenarios are much less about solving the dungeon puzzle or dodging booby traps and about working out how to twist your words in such a way that you can make a convincing argument for your Farming skill to allow you to forage the nearby landscape for food since the party is starving. Or about figuring out how to explain just exactly why your "greedy" flaw DOESNT make you try to steal the holy treasure you've been tasked with guarding.

Not everyone wants to write a story of course. But if you don't, and im not being facetious Im genuinely asking, why are you playing in Glorantha?

>>96517329
>>96517227
I feel that getting 3-6 people together who want to play a rpg in a cool setting is a lot easier than getting the same amount of people together who want to engage in a collaborative story building project. That's ultimately why Runequest has seen more success and support than Heroquest.

>>96474663 (OP)
>so I don't understand why it seems so underrated in modern gaming.
I think the problem was primarily Chaosium handing it to Avalon Hill in the late 80's/, fans disliking it and AH's choices, Chaosium losing it in the 90's, it being passed around to different licencors throughout the 00's and by the time it went back to Chaosium and Greg's hands, the old guard was long fucking dead or moved on and newfags didn't know what to do with it.
Runequest and Glorantha had their niches, but they got lost in the shuffle over the past few decades. It's not that easy to get into anyway(why the fuck is the wiki like that), and some systems cloning it have gotten their own audience like Mythras. Maybe the new vidya game coming out will revive it just like how KoDP got people into it in the late 90's, I think it's managed to reclaim a niche in Japan again.

>>96513973
Rqg honesty isn’t any better
It’s just since it’s mechanics are much more portly made and explained people end up improvising more which can be what you are supposed to do
It’s also more popular which means you got a bunch of nu tubers expanding its mechanics in an easy to digest manner
Which really seems to help a lot of people beach into a game
best thing we have is inwills and even though he is a great gm and a nice chap
He was still farely new to the mythras rules at the time he stated making videos about them and he sounds like a loveable British idiot dork with the voice of molten cheese going into a cheese grater