Runequest, from the moment I first discovered it, became my game. I was a thirteen year-old D&D player in 1985 when I first picked up Runequest in 1985 and from that moment forward, my AD&D books began to gather dust. As I grew up and became more sophisticated in my thinking about world-building and game systems, my love for the game only grew. Not until 1997 did I start using anything else for games I ran.
Reflections on Runequest of the 1980s
For those who were not there to admire Runequest in 1981 when it arrived on the scene, it is hard to convey how forward-looking a system it was for its time. The realism with which it represented combat with armour providing damage reduction but making characters easier to hit, the simplicity and verisimilitude with which it represented dodging, parrying, knockbacks and wounds to specific locations on the body held up so well that when I hauled-out my third edition (mid 80s) Runequest books last year to make a custom game system for a campaign I was running, I realized that the perfect balance of realism, drama and ease of play remains unequaled in any game system today. Indeed, Runequest’s 1980s editions would be solid competitors in almost every area of play with any system with a simulationist bent in use today.
Before I learned that Mongoose was coming out with a new edition of Runequest and I was just evaluating for the purposes of creating a custom system for a medieval campaign I was running, I had occasion to compare old RQ to the other systems out there today and found that it was really in only one area that Runequest’s first three editions has been surpassed on the mechanical front in the past two decades: skills. Although RQ shared present-day D20’s important practices of ensuring skills (and especially knowledge skills) did not multiply much beyond the basic core skills, 1980s RQ worked on a percentage-based skills system – each skill a character had was a percentage, although powerful characters had ways of pushing their skills up past 100%. Critical successes were delivered for getting 5% or less of the skill total on percentage dice; special successes, 20% but the system was not really able to grapple with the opposed skill checks and variable levels of difficulty at which the D20 skills mechanic excels. Still, this seemed a minor flaw, given how well the product had aged overall.
Old Runequest did not just have simple, elegant and realistic mechanics going for it. It also had a superb campaign setting – Glorantha was, on the one hand, a low-magic world in that characters and even villains rarely had access to magical powers beyond the equivalent of second-level D&D spells; on the other hand, it was high-magic in that magic was ubiquitous. Gods were close to the world and their cults constituted much of the fabric of society. Low-level magic was employed by the most lowly people but was hardly noticeable: a quick prayer might slightly improve one’s chance to hit, or, because of the completeness of the supplements that described the world, more often, facilitate conception, marginally accelerate crop growth or reduce cloud cover over a few hours. Back when I used to play the game, I used to think that this world full of gods just made Glorantha neat, quirky and unlike D&D. It has only been in the past several years since my return to university that I have come to realize that, unlike D&D polytheism, Runequest polytheism paints an anthropologically accurate picture of how polytheistic societies and their cults and belief systems functioned in our own historical past. If one takes historical accuracy to mean “how people at the time thought the world worked,” as opposed to “how we now know the world worked in the past,” Runequest turns out to be as accurate as you can get.
Today's Runequest
I have begun with this rather lengthy preface to convey just how high my expectations were for Mongoose’s new Runequest when I picked it up at Gen Con last week. And, for the most part, I am pleased to report that they have been fulfilled. The detailed combat mechanics of dodging, parrying, impaling, knocking back, limb severing and all that lovely crunchy, realistic stuff have been retained. Similarly, the rules remain simple and elegant, presented in a lean (126-page) and affordable ($24.95 US) single book. Furthermore, not only does the new Runequest manage to cover everything its predecessors did, it continues in the tradition of detailing practical and necessary rules for giving a campaign a feeling of verisimilitude with minimal mechanical complexity, that, in D&D are consigned to obscure setting books and supplements. Runequest’s new rules on travel and movement include easy-to-understand mechanics for coping with chases, fatigue and travel in poor weather or challenging terrain.
One of the ways that Mongoose has been able to produce such a lean volume is by consigning almost all setting material to supplemental volumes. The monsters, cults and magic items read more like samples of forthcoming publications than something that can stand alone. Luckily, such setting-neutral books are the way I want my rules presented. Sure, there are a few Gloranthan stand-bys like humanoid ducks and power crystals that find their way into the volume but one can tell that Mongoose has learned from the failure of Chaosium to make Runequest a system with the market of penetration of GURPS or D&D by not welding it too closely to a setting that, no matter how loveable, feels counter-intuitive and incomprehensible for those who want their RPGs to be modernity in chainmail.
I was only disappointed by two sections of this new edition of Runequest: the skills and experience systems. My disappointment with the skills mechanic is probably irrational; Matthew Sprange and his crew of developers have solved every deficiency with the old skills system that I identified above. But, because they are committed to keeping the percentile system, their solutions serve to make opposed skill tests and variable challenge difficulty feel over-complicated compared both to 80s Runequest and to D20. Sometimes high rolls are good and sometimes low rolls are good; in rare situations, there are four or five iterations of mathematical calculations before a result can be determined. But provided a GM is numerate, I imagine a group could get the hang of this system in a few sessions, although if the group is used to D20, the other aspects will have to be pretty impressive to keep them committed. How fortunate that they are.
My second complaint, as a nostalgic player is that instead of Runequest’s new Hero Points system looking like something that combines the best of GURPS and True20 experience mechanics, it looks like a betrayal of 80s Runequest. One of the things I most deeply loved about my old Runequest games was that one gained experience in skills that one used or was trained in. No matter how badly one wanted to make his PC a great sorcerer, if he didn’t cast a spell in combat, he wouldn’t get any better at it; if he wanted to be a great swordsman, he became one by killing people with a sword, not an axe, a sword. Sadly, Runequest has become just like every other game – it has sacrificed verisimilitude and the risk and pain of trying something new in order to grow as a character and has moved to a pure player-directed experience system. Just like any other game, you can kill a bunch of people with a hatchet and become a better linguist. Again, I see the irrationality of my disappointment. Runequest may still have the best experience system out there; it’s just not as good as it used to be.
And that is also my general assessment of the new edition of Runequest. Will I buy more books? You bet. Am I looking forward to the next release? Of course. Will I finally get around to reading Fritz Lieber because I want to appreciate Mongoose’s Runequest Lankhmar campaign setting? Quite probably. Will I miss my old high school campaign in the City of Pavis? All the more.
Postscript
For those hoping this review would touch on production values and the like, you are mostly out of luck. I really don't care how pretty the pictures are and lack the discernment necessary to even pronounce on whether various drawings, fonts and layout were good bad or indifferent. This might explain my easy attraction to the game's first three editions. What mattered to me was that the book was useable, well-indexed and properly edited.
Reflections on Runequest of the 1980s
For those who were not there to admire Runequest in 1981 when it arrived on the scene, it is hard to convey how forward-looking a system it was for its time. The realism with which it represented combat with armour providing damage reduction but making characters easier to hit, the simplicity and verisimilitude with which it represented dodging, parrying, knockbacks and wounds to specific locations on the body held up so well that when I hauled-out my third edition (mid 80s) Runequest books last year to make a custom game system for a campaign I was running, I realized that the perfect balance of realism, drama and ease of play remains unequaled in any game system today. Indeed, Runequest’s 1980s editions would be solid competitors in almost every area of play with any system with a simulationist bent in use today.
Before I learned that Mongoose was coming out with a new edition of Runequest and I was just evaluating for the purposes of creating a custom system for a medieval campaign I was running, I had occasion to compare old RQ to the other systems out there today and found that it was really in only one area that Runequest’s first three editions has been surpassed on the mechanical front in the past two decades: skills. Although RQ shared present-day D20’s important practices of ensuring skills (and especially knowledge skills) did not multiply much beyond the basic core skills, 1980s RQ worked on a percentage-based skills system – each skill a character had was a percentage, although powerful characters had ways of pushing their skills up past 100%. Critical successes were delivered for getting 5% or less of the skill total on percentage dice; special successes, 20% but the system was not really able to grapple with the opposed skill checks and variable levels of difficulty at which the D20 skills mechanic excels. Still, this seemed a minor flaw, given how well the product had aged overall.
Old Runequest did not just have simple, elegant and realistic mechanics going for it. It also had a superb campaign setting – Glorantha was, on the one hand, a low-magic world in that characters and even villains rarely had access to magical powers beyond the equivalent of second-level D&D spells; on the other hand, it was high-magic in that magic was ubiquitous. Gods were close to the world and their cults constituted much of the fabric of society. Low-level magic was employed by the most lowly people but was hardly noticeable: a quick prayer might slightly improve one’s chance to hit, or, because of the completeness of the supplements that described the world, more often, facilitate conception, marginally accelerate crop growth or reduce cloud cover over a few hours. Back when I used to play the game, I used to think that this world full of gods just made Glorantha neat, quirky and unlike D&D. It has only been in the past several years since my return to university that I have come to realize that, unlike D&D polytheism, Runequest polytheism paints an anthropologically accurate picture of how polytheistic societies and their cults and belief systems functioned in our own historical past. If one takes historical accuracy to mean “how people at the time thought the world worked,” as opposed to “how we now know the world worked in the past,” Runequest turns out to be as accurate as you can get.
Today's Runequest
I have begun with this rather lengthy preface to convey just how high my expectations were for Mongoose’s new Runequest when I picked it up at Gen Con last week. And, for the most part, I am pleased to report that they have been fulfilled. The detailed combat mechanics of dodging, parrying, impaling, knocking back, limb severing and all that lovely crunchy, realistic stuff have been retained. Similarly, the rules remain simple and elegant, presented in a lean (126-page) and affordable ($24.95 US) single book. Furthermore, not only does the new Runequest manage to cover everything its predecessors did, it continues in the tradition of detailing practical and necessary rules for giving a campaign a feeling of verisimilitude with minimal mechanical complexity, that, in D&D are consigned to obscure setting books and supplements. Runequest’s new rules on travel and movement include easy-to-understand mechanics for coping with chases, fatigue and travel in poor weather or challenging terrain.
One of the ways that Mongoose has been able to produce such a lean volume is by consigning almost all setting material to supplemental volumes. The monsters, cults and magic items read more like samples of forthcoming publications than something that can stand alone. Luckily, such setting-neutral books are the way I want my rules presented. Sure, there are a few Gloranthan stand-bys like humanoid ducks and power crystals that find their way into the volume but one can tell that Mongoose has learned from the failure of Chaosium to make Runequest a system with the market of penetration of GURPS or D&D by not welding it too closely to a setting that, no matter how loveable, feels counter-intuitive and incomprehensible for those who want their RPGs to be modernity in chainmail.
I was only disappointed by two sections of this new edition of Runequest: the skills and experience systems. My disappointment with the skills mechanic is probably irrational; Matthew Sprange and his crew of developers have solved every deficiency with the old skills system that I identified above. But, because they are committed to keeping the percentile system, their solutions serve to make opposed skill tests and variable challenge difficulty feel over-complicated compared both to 80s Runequest and to D20. Sometimes high rolls are good and sometimes low rolls are good; in rare situations, there are four or five iterations of mathematical calculations before a result can be determined. But provided a GM is numerate, I imagine a group could get the hang of this system in a few sessions, although if the group is used to D20, the other aspects will have to be pretty impressive to keep them committed. How fortunate that they are.
My second complaint, as a nostalgic player is that instead of Runequest’s new Hero Points system looking like something that combines the best of GURPS and True20 experience mechanics, it looks like a betrayal of 80s Runequest. One of the things I most deeply loved about my old Runequest games was that one gained experience in skills that one used or was trained in. No matter how badly one wanted to make his PC a great sorcerer, if he didn’t cast a spell in combat, he wouldn’t get any better at it; if he wanted to be a great swordsman, he became one by killing people with a sword, not an axe, a sword. Sadly, Runequest has become just like every other game – it has sacrificed verisimilitude and the risk and pain of trying something new in order to grow as a character and has moved to a pure player-directed experience system. Just like any other game, you can kill a bunch of people with a hatchet and become a better linguist. Again, I see the irrationality of my disappointment. Runequest may still have the best experience system out there; it’s just not as good as it used to be.
And that is also my general assessment of the new edition of Runequest. Will I buy more books? You bet. Am I looking forward to the next release? Of course. Will I finally get around to reading Fritz Lieber because I want to appreciate Mongoose’s Runequest Lankhmar campaign setting? Quite probably. Will I miss my old high school campaign in the City of Pavis? All the more.
Postscript
For those hoping this review would touch on production values and the like, you are mostly out of luck. I really don't care how pretty the pictures are and lack the discernment necessary to even pronounce on whether various drawings, fonts and layout were good bad or indifferent. This might explain my easy attraction to the game's first three editions. What mattered to me was that the book was useable, well-indexed and properly edited.
Last edited:
