RuneQuest Design Notes; And Getting The Band Back Together

Chaosium's Jeff Richard has posted some 'designer notes' regarding its upcoming edition of RuneQuest (slated for a Gen Con release in August). In those notes, he discusses the four primary design goals: set it in Glorantha, maintain backwards compatibility with RQ2, bring the Runes directly into the game mechanics, and provide incentives for character immersion into the setting.

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You can read the full thing here.

In other new RuneQuest news, Steve Perrin has joined the design team. Chaosium's president, Rick Meints, said that "We knew that Steve Perrin’s place at the table, as both the creator and lead author of the original groundbreaking ‘78 and ‘79 editions of game, was a natural fit that harkens back to the genius and originality of RuneQuest." The team now includes Sandy Petersen (Call of Cthulhu), Ken Rolston (Paranoia, Elder Scrolls, RQ3), Chris Klug (James Bond 007 RPG, DragonQuest) and Jason Durral (BRP, Conan).

“We want to usher in the newest exploration of Glorantha with a tribute to the masterpiece opus of work that has come before. Part of Steve's role is to help insure that this edition contains the best possible game mechanics while maintaining backwards compatibility with RuneQuest 2", said Jeff Richard, creative director at Chaosium.

 

[Bluenose]

It depends what type of Mythic aspect you are trying to portray. If you are just a mortal that lives in a world with Mythic heroes it does great. Honestly in our games the GM just started adding mythic abilities to our characters as they performed heroic deeds.

I don't think that there's such a thing as a mortal that lives in a world with Mythic heroes in Glorantha. Even the most ordinary person is a magical being living in a magical world. That's part of the setting, An initiate of a god, on that god's holy day, doesn't go to the temple to pray in that temple. They go to that temple and take part in a ceremony where they go to their god's home outside the mortal world and the temple is part of that home. A character from a shamanic culture gains magic from being taken to meet a spirit that will make a bargain with them to provide it. Glorantha is a world where the divide between mortal and magical and mythic is largely absent.

 

[Lord Twig]

I don't think that there's such a thing as a mortal that lives in a world with Mythic heroes in Glorantha. Even the most ordinary person is a magical being living in a magical world. That's part of the setting, An initiate of a god, on that god's holy day, doesn't go to the temple to pray in that temple. They go to that temple and take part in a ceremony where they go to their god's home outside the mortal world and the temple is part of that home. A character from a shamanic culture gains magic from being taken to meet a spirit that will make a bargain with them to provide it. Glorantha is a world where the divide between mortal and magical and mythic is largely absent.

I disagree. A whole lot of people in Glorantha are Lay Members of their cult (or even many different cults in a pantheon). They have some everyday spirit magic (a better name for battle magic IMO), but they don't travel to the realm of the gods. I guess you could rule that ceremonies transport an entire temple of worshipers to the god plane, but that doesn't seem to be suggested anywhere in the rules. In our games ceremonies were very magical (cult spirits and such would show up), but the weren't "Hero Quest" level magical.

Likewise shamans go on "spirit quests" (or at least their spirits do, their body stays behind guarded by their fetch), but they are an exception. The other members of a shaman's tribe will never experience the spirit plane or any plane other than the physical one. If they run into a spirit it will be one that has manifest on the physical plane and will be truly terrifying to the average person.

And that's what really appealed to me. You had people that lived in a world where everyday magic was everywhere. A little charm against evil (or Chaos more likely) actually did something. You have a disease? You need to drive the bad spirit out.

And I mean literally drive out the spirit of disease that was causing you to be sick! What did you think caused disease? Little tiny creatures that live inside you? Don't be silly! It's evil spirits!

Now the Hero Wars/Hero Quest RPG got pretty fruity with ceremonies and Hero Quests, but that is an entirely different game.

 

[Bolongo]

Future World..from Worlds of Wonder, as well.

Was Future World ever a fully realized setting? I remember it more as just a name tacked on to a list of sci-fi appropriate skills and equipment.

 

[Lord Twig]

Was Future World ever a fully realized setting? I remember it more as just a name tacked on to a list of sci-fi appropriate skills and equipment.

I had Worlds of Wonder way back when. Unfortunately I lost it about 20 years or so ago. But if I remember correctly, it came with Magic World, Future World and Super World. None of them were fleshed out at all. They were just basic rules for the genre they covered.

 

[Dumnbunny]

I guess you could rule that ceremonies transport an entire temple of worshipers to the god plane, but that doesn't seem to be suggested anywhere in the rules.

It's mentioned in Cults of Prax:

There are always special days of worship for the cults. For most cults it is a day wherein all worshippers will attend special rituals wherein they can actively enter into the magical world and partake of ceremonies blessed by the physical attendance of their deity.

 

[Caliburn101]

Great... more 'Glorantha or forget it' retrospective lunacy from Chaosium - as if nearly going bust before didn't teach them to stop being so niche and corner-case with their offerings!

RuneQuest 6 by Design Mechanism is superior in every way to any iteration of the franchise that has come before it and doesn't force you to play every game in the narrow (if well-realised) 1-world vision of Glorantha.

If you want to play in Glorantha with inferior combat rules compared to RQ6, but are prepared to do that 'because Glorantha!', then good luck to you.

If you want ANYTHING else, forget this 'straight to dvd' rules set.

 

[werecorpse]

Great... more 'Glorantha or forget it' retrospective lunacy from Chaosium - as if nearly going bust before didn't teach them to stop being so niche and corner-case with their offerings!

RuneQuest 6 by Design Mechanism is superior in every way to any iteration of the franchise that has come before it and doesn't force you to play every game in the narrow (if well-realised) 1-world vision of Glorantha.

If you want to play in Glorantha with inferior combat rules compared to RQ6, but are prepared to do that 'because Glorantha!', then good luck to you.

If you want ANYTHING else, forget this 'straight to dvd' rules set.

I think their highly successful glorantha centric kickstarters pointed them in this direction.

I have enjoyed RQ2 and what I think was RQ5 (I only ever had an unfinalised copy) best of all. But I am not sure I would play RQ except in glorantha and the versions that tried to work generically have never inspired me.

So I'm looking forward to the result.

 

[Bluenose]

A little Pendragon going on there

Great... more 'Glorantha or forget it' retrospective lunacy from Chaosium - as if nearly going bust before didn't teach them to stop being so niche and corner-case with their offerings!

RuneQuest 6 by Design Mechanism is superior in every way to any iteration of the franchise that has come before it and doesn't force you to play every game in the narrow (if well-realised) 1-world vision of Glorantha.

If you want to play in Glorantha with inferior combat rules compared to RQ6, but are prepared to do that 'because Glorantha!', then good luck to you.

If you want ANYTHING else, forget this 'straight to dvd' rules set.

I never found Runequest particularly 'Glorantha-centric' in rules terms in any edition - indeed, RQ3 had Mythic Earth as the default setting. It certainly never seemed like it was forcing me to play in Glorantha, and I don't think it was an ideal fit between rules and setting. As such while I used Gloranthan material for inspiration I didn't often use the setting as a whole for my RQ campaign - that was an entirely different setting. I found the RQ rules generic enough to use for several settings, rather in the way Traveller had a set of rules that handled some sorts of SF; and both games had an official setting that received plenty of support without being so wedded to that setting that playing something else required significant work.

 

[JeffB]

Im absolutely ecstatic to see them integrating Glorantha in new/different ways into the RQ rules, as well as particularly happy they are dropping TDM's RQ6 as the baseline and instead getting back to the core of RQ (as in 2e) as a baseline and moving forward from there mechanically for the new system. Great News, AFAIC.

Parts 2/3 go into more details

http://www.chaosium.com/blog/

 

[aramis erak]

AFAIK Ringworld was the only sci-fi setting actually published by Chaosium. But there have been sci-fi games with clearly BRP-inspired rules from other publishers. The one I remember best was Other Suns from FGU.

One of those 3rd party games, Worlds Beyond, eventually because a Chaosium product.
Delta Green can be considered modern horror/sci-fi.