Runequest 2e. . .

I picked up a copy of the old Runequest 2e hardcover on eBay yesterday and was wondering what supplements I might want to hunt down for use with the system. While I have some interest in Glorantha, part of me almost thinks that it may be easier (and more cost-effective) to simply grab one or two of the bigger box sets (e.g., The Big Rubble) and fill in the gaps on my own, given that the setting was spread out over many supplements with no core book (and given that the Mongoose core setting book costs an insane amount of money in PDF format).

That said, I know next to nothing about pre-Avalon Hill Runequest, so does anybody else think that there might be a better way to do this? What supplements (if any) are freely and legally availalble online? Is there a fan repository of homebrewed settings? Are the older Runequest setting supplements available for sale as PDFs (or physical products) anywhere online? Or is there, perhaps, enough info in the hardcover to sustain a long-running Glorantha campaign? These and other qustions haunt me -- help, please!

jdrakeh said:

What supplements (if any) are freely and legally availalble online?

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None. There is a lot of information out there, especially at Glorantha.com

Is there a fan repository of homebrewed settings?

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Not that I'm aware of. 95% of Runequest stuff of that era is Runequest specific.

Are the older Runequest setting supplements available for sale as PDFs (or physical products) anywhere online?

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Not legally.

Or is there, perhaps, enough info in the hardcover to sustain a long-running Glorantha campaign?

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I recommend the Glorantha Classic series. Just about every product that was useful and Glorantha specific by Chaosium was reprinted in those books. You can find a list here.

From the Avalon Hill era, the Glorantha: Crucible of the Hero Wars boxed set is the real key. The Gods of Glorantha is useful as well (covers more ground than the Cults Compendium, but in less detail). Finding them is the issue.

If you want a bare bones Glorantha game I recommend:

RQ2 Book: Core Book which you have
Cults Compedium: Covers every religion you'll likely need
Griffin Mountain: deep, detailed, expansive campaign setting

A lot of Heroquest books are very useful as well from a fluff standpoint. Dragon Pass is a gazetteer of probably the most interesting area in the world (just south of the Griffin Mountin area) and is almsot completely rules free. Plus, many are available in PDF (look under Issaries at RPGNow and other sites).

This page is a great resource for the products. You can find a list of all Runequest/Glorantha products there (look at the bottom of the page).

The prices of the Glorantha Classic may seem high, but they are huge products. Each typically contains several RQ2 products combined. The exception was Griffin Mountain which was huge to begin with (I can count on one hand the number of RPG books ever that are as good and useful as it).

Those all look great -- that high price, however, demands that I wait until next pay period to pick any of them up

Cults of Prax has all the common PC cults, plus tons of new spells and skills, and lots of info about Prax. I can't really imagine running a Gloranthan RQ2 game without this book.

Gateway Bestiary has a ton of non-Gloranthan (or at least non-Glorantha-specific) monsters - animals, bugs, creatures from mythology and folklore. Not totally essential, but definitely useful for actual play.

Cults of Terror is a sequel-of-sorts to Cults of Prax covering bad-guy/NPC cults. Not as essential as CoP, but an awful lot of fun.

Griffin Mountain and Borderlands are both complete campaigns-in-a-box (or rather campaign-in-a-book for the former).

Pavis and Big Rubble are a complete campaign-in-two-boxes -- if you only have one you'll miss the other, but if you have both you're set for years of play.

Trollpak is perhaps the best rpg supplement ever produced, and can also form a complete campaign-in-a-box.

The rest of the RQ supplements and adventures are more dispensible -- Apple Lane and Snakepipe Hollow are both cool adventures (especially considering when they were published), but they don't have either the depth or breadth of the stuff that came later. RuneQuest Companion has some cool background color stuff (much of it reprinted from "Wyrm's Footnotes" zine) but not (IIRC) all that much stuff you're likely to use directly in-game. Runemasters is a big book of munchkinned-out character stats, Plunder is a big book of pregenerated treasure-hoards (with some fun unique magic items), Foes is just a big book of computer generated monster-stats, QuestWorld is both non-Gloranthan and kinda lame, the same applies to the various SoloQuests. I might be missing one or two products (EDIT: the very earliest stuff -- Balastor's Barracks (an adventure which is both wholly unremarkable and reprinted in-whole in Big Rubble) and Militia & Mercenaries, Trolls & Trollkin, and Scorpionmen & Broos (all of which are nothing more than collections of computer generated character/monster stats)).

I have no idea what, if any, of this stuff is widely available online. I know Moon Design Publications did several reprint volumes: Pavis and Big Rubble, Griffin Mountain, Cults Compendium (including CoP, CoT, and miscellaneous cults from other sources), and Borderlands and Beyond (BL + other miscellaneous useful/interesting material) which are probably a more convenient (and cheaper) option than scrounging ebay or whatever.

jdrakeh said:

Those all look great -- that high price, however, demands that I wait until next pay period to pick any of them up

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If you go to the glorantha.info site, he has a great deal on the front page. Buy the Borderlands & Beyond book (which contains a boxed set, two supplements and additional material) in softcover and you can get the Griffin Mountain & Cult Compendium for $80 total.

If you check Steve Jackson's Glorantha product page and you'll see that's about $120 worth of stuff. Then you'll only be missing the Pavis book to have it all.