gencon news- been waiting for this

[Dreamscape]

Now it seems we will see a system that is more akin to their "essentials" product, written with Glorantha in mind, which is how RQ was orginally published by Chaosium back in 1978...a FRPG specifically designed for Glorantha, not the "generic" system it became in 1984 when Avalon Hill published it, and the later MRQ and RQ6 design.

So far the only statement we have is that the rules will be identical to RQ6, with parts of the Adventures in Glorantha supplement built in. AiG was supposed to be the setting book for the setting-neutral RQ6 rules. It's early days yet and I'm sure no-one is exactly sure how that will work yet, but is doesn't sound slimmed-down so far.

I'm actually an RQ2-guy who has long abandoned Glorantha, I was using RQ2 as a generic rule set before RQ3 came out. I think it's a pity that the RQ6 rulebook is being superseded so quickly (I hope Pete Nash can restrain himself and not tweak the rules! ) although I can see how it makes sense to tie the name totally non-generic name "RuneQuest" back into Glorantha. I hope The Design Mechanism will produce their own re-named versions of RQ6 and RQ6 Essentials for those of their fans who have no interest in Glorantha and just want to play in the other excellent settings being produced for RQ6 - I'm eagerly awaiting delivery of my Luther Arkwright book on Friday!

As for Chaosium, I was kind of surprised by the decision - I always thought that Moon Design's HeroQuest was supposed to be "the" rule set for Glorantha and that RuneQuest never really managed (nor had the potential) to convey the mythic aspects of Greg's world. But now the strategy seems to be to spread it across a number of systems - HQ, RQ, OpenQuest and 13th Age so far. And the sudden nature of the merger seems a bit spur-of-the-moment, it seems to have been a surprise to The Design Mechanism who were still promoting their draft AiG at GenCon right up to the announcement by Chaosium / Moon Design.