Can somebody tell me about Runequest setting?

[JeffB]

Grue are chaotic reverse satyrs (head of a goat, body of a man) that live to spread diseases

Those would be "Broos"

Nasty things, and I've incorporated them into all my D&D games in some form or another.

 

[Tonguez]

Were I tempted to run a RQ-based game, I'd get ahold of one of the older boxed sets with the Glorantha stuff. RQ stats are d20-like and easily converted. Percentage skills are easy-peasy to convert.

So has anyone done a d20 conversion thats available to see?

 

[silburnl]

Well, Dave Dunham (a friend from back in Santa Barbara) was the one who ran Pendragon Pass. But IIRC, that was after Greg and Charlie Krank had come up with the mechanics for 'Super-RQ'. Those sheets were basically RQ sheets with traits and passions from PD grafted on. IIRC, your percentile skill chance was your RQ skill divided by 10 or 20, since @ 2000% an RQ character always criticals.

OK not the same thing then but I think I can see how the idea-pot carried on bubbling via Pendragon Pass to produce HW and then HQ.

Interestingly since posting my previous description of the HQ design, I've caught up with my backlog of HQ-related yahoo!groups emails and there is an interesting ongoing rules-design discussion on 'alternate wounding' mechanics (building off the trade 7AP for a -1 Hurt option) that would have the effect of adding back a bit of crunch to the basic conflict resolution mechanic, so even amongst the true believers there would appear to be a desire for a slightly less abstract and narrativist system at times.

Further to the original question about Glorantha the setting, your mention of David Dunham reminds me that noone has mentioned his 'King of Dragon Pass' computer game as an introductory text. Its not a traditional computer game by any stretch, but it does a very good job of introducing a lot of the concepts and wrinkles of the setting in a fairly gentle fashion.

Also Issaries have just released 'Dragon Pass - Land of Thunder' which is a gazetteer of the core area for the Sartarite rebellion against the Lunars, this rectifies the slightly bizarre situation that held for RQ, which was that practically all of the published stuff was set in Prax or Balazar. Early responses on the mailing lists are positive but I won't be seeing it until after the holidays so I can't possibly comment.

[Edit]
I forgot the other thing, which is that the Forge (www.indy-rpgs.com) has a forum dedicated to HeroQuest that includes some threads which discuss the world.
[/Edit]

Regards
Luke

 

[Hypersmurf]

Those would be "Broos"

Grues are more fun.

It is very dark. You might be eaten by a Grue.

-Hyp.

 

[tetsujin28]

Magic is everywhere but generally low level. It takes *forever* to be a powerful caster and the odds of survival are incredibly low. The most powerful casters can level a village but few of them exist.

I assume you're talking about RQ III? Since in RQ I&II it was easily possible to roll up a beginning elf who had enough POW to begin the game as a runepriest.

Dwarves are very stone fixated and not something I saw played often.

Greg hates the Mostali. That's why there was never very much written about them.

Trolls are living warfare, able to eat rock and swing trees, but cursed as a result of their stubborness

IIRC, they were cursed by Nyslalor. And don't forget their lovely alchoholic creations, like Powzie!

As a "fer instance," the head-hanger is a scorpion like chaos beast that takes the heads of casters, ingests them, and then has it extruded onto a stalk on the beast's back. For about two weeks the head hanger can then tap the head to cast spells the person knew until whatever remaining magical power the person had is gone and the head rots off.

I think you're partly confusing them with scorpion men. IIRC, the headhanger had kind of a slug/caterpiller-like body, and was introduced in RQIII.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I don't know what others think, but my group found RQIII to be a major step backwards, They took away lots of stuff we liked (5% increments, defence, POW as life force, Rune Lords, Glorantha setting) and introduced a whole lot of boring and (what seemed to us) half-thought-out stuff, setting it on Earth, of all the boring places.

It was about that time that I designed a science-fiction game which translated RQ directly into sci-fi mechanics. After several years thought about publishing it but realised it would have to use different mechanics from those owned by Chaosium and so after several iterations ended up with Starguild, which has been on the web since about 1995 - currently living here: http://www.starguild.freeserve.co.uk/starguild/

Sorry about the minor hijack, please return to your normal scheduled thread now.

Cheers

 

[tetsujin28]

Yeah, RQ III was weak. PCs were majorly scaled down in power, the illustrations were awful (save the nice cover and those by then-still Chaosium stalwart Lisa Free, before she became a born-again), nit-picky new magic and encumbrance rules, and a boring pastiche of fantasy Europe mixed in. Blah.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I always thought the RQ2 encumberance rules were one of its shining gems, nicely abstracting the idea of encumberance so that it was usable (and thus got used).

I ought to think about retrofitting it for 3e, come to think of it...

 

[tetsujin28]

Yes, the basic unit of RQ I/II encumbrance was the 'thing'. What was a thing? Something that could be held in one hand. A two-handed sword? Two things. Some mugs of ale? About 1/4 of a thing (hey barmaids are professionals).

 

[Ace]

The ducks are a particularly good shibboleth. If the idea of anthropoid ducks strikes you as amusing or even charming, you'll probably really like Glorantha. If the very thought of duck PCs makes you want to vomit, you'll probably want to stay far, far, away.

Me, I don't find Gloranthan ducks any more offensive than, say kender or *shudder* tinker gnomes. In fact, I even did a 3.5 conversion for a one-shot game:

http://home.gwi.net/~rdorman/frilond/rul/dm/duck.htm

Very nice page! I especially like your Savage Species classes. I am going to get quite a bit of use out of the Carniverous Ape in my next campaign