gencon news- been waiting for this

JeffB · Jul 30, 2015

Chaosium....I hope they re-vamp RQ.

http://www.glorantha.com/greg-stafford-announces-new-ownership-group-for-chaosium-at-gen-con/

pedr · Jul 31, 2015

Christopher Helton was tweeting from their announcement and had this conversation on Twitter:

Brian Pivik (@bpivik)
30/07/2015 22:09
Exciting news! I certainly hope that Design Mechanism will continue on with AiG and RQ6! twitter.com/dorkland/statu…

Christopher Helton (@dorkland)
30/07/2015 22:14
@bpivik The Design Mechanism guys will design the new Runequest.

Brian Pivik (@bpivik)
30/07/2015 22:16
@dorkland Meaning a new NEW version, or to continue on with RQ6?

Christopher Helton (@dorkland)
30/07/2015 22:17
@bpivik A new version just called Runequest.

JeffB · Jul 31, 2015

pedr said:
Christopher Helton was tweeting from their announcement and had this conversation on Twitter:

Thanks for that Info!

I haven't been happy with RQ6. MRQ2 was flawed, but on the right track. Hoping third time is the charm for Nash & Whitaker.

ShadowAssassin · Jul 31, 2015

Sorry to burst your bubble but RQ6 is the basis for the RQ in Glorantha book as confirmed by Loz so no new edition. BRP/MW is likely to be on the back burner for the forseeable future. Glorantha and CoC are the money makers and assuming they keep Mike Mason as CoC Line Editor Developer there is plenty of material in the vaults top keep Chaosium going.

JeffB · Aug 1, 2015

Well that sucks if true, unless they strip RQ6 to the bone. Otherwise I will stay with Openquest as a base.

Whats with the tweets posted above, then? [MENTION=6687063]ShadowAssassin[/MENTION]

JeffB · Aug 1, 2015

Glorantha Google + group seems to have conflicting info and much speculation. Doesn't seem like anything official yet. I will keep my fingers crossed for a re-vamp.

pedr · Aug 1, 2015

Here's Design Mechanism's statement: http://designmechanism.freeforums.org/chaosium-design-mechanism-and-runequest-statement-t1220.html

I don't understand enough of the relationships between these games to really get the nuances!

aramis erak · Aug 1, 2015

pedr said:
Here's Design Mechanism's statement: http://designmechanism.freeforums.org/chaosium-design-mechanism-and-runequest-statement-t1220.html

I don't understand enough of the relationships between these games to really get the nuances!

Simply put:
They're sticking with the Mongoose (unlicensed pseudoclone) variant of BRP for Glorantha, publishing it as "RuneQuest" (and the fans will likely call it RQ7)

The differences in combat are subtle.
In Character gen, more noticeable differences.

The differences between BRP and RQ6 are akin to those between D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder... stuff from one is easily used in the other. Extending the analogy, RQ3 would be akin to D&D 3.5...

JeffB · Aug 1, 2015

pedr said:
Here's Design Mechanism's statement: http://designmechanism.freeforums.org/chaosium-design-mechanism-and-runequest-statement-t1220.html

I don't understand enough of the relationships between these games to really get the nuances!

This is good news. Thanks for the FYI !!

And yeah , it's complicated. The first Mongoose RQ (RQ4) was a mess. MRQ2 (RQ5) was an improvement and had promise but dropped the ball in some areas, and was pretty incomplete. Then the two guys who wrote MRQ2 started TDM, and came out with RQ6...IMO, overburdened with subsystems and complication as they tried to really put thier own stamp on the RQ name. They later released a "essentials" stripped down version of RQ6, which was an improvement.

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. Runequest has a pretty split fanbase....There are the original folks like myself who see it specifically as the Gloranthan FRPG, and there is the other crowd who likely came on during the Avalon Hill era RQ3, where it became a "generic" system not tied to any particular setting (or they simply are the people who just don't like Glorantha)

RQ until now has been out of the hands of the people who created it since essentially 1983, when Chaosium made the deal with AH. The game has died many times, and languished, but the fanbase has kept it alive during many lean years. Having it come back to the new Chaosium in the care of Stafford, Peterson, and the Moon Design crew would be like D&D coming back to Gygax (RIP).

ShadowAssassin · Aug 1, 2015

I've never read a bigger load of rubbish than that posted by aramis erak.

According to a post by Loz Whitaker for the Design Mechanism the 2016 RQ version to be put out by Chaosium will be RQ6 merged with Glorantha., The new licence as of 2016 allows them to publish non-Glorantha material for RQ6 such as their current lineup of Mythic Britain, Korantia, Luther Arkwright and the Classic Fantasy D&D clone. The DM team join Chaosium as the RQ writing team.

Loz mentions that Moon Design material sells about one third the rate of the Call of Cthulhu material and Design Mechanism material sells at a rate about half of the Moon Design product. BRP is about 10% of Chaosium revenue and is likely to be put of the back burner (that's BRP and Magic World basically)