Runequest

[radferth]

I played and greatly enjoyed it for 2+ years back in the late 90's. When our big campaign came to and end, we decided to try my houseruled 2nd ed D&D for a bit, but then I had to move. The group was experimenting with 3rd ed D&D that last time I visitied them.

Personally, I loved playing in Glorantha, but found the system only so-so. I like the BRP %-based system in general, but the group I was with did some weird gaming the system in several areas (cycling casting-times was the weirdest for me) that left many of the sessions being much more math-intensive than I cared for.

I tried to run a True 20 campaign set in Glorantha, but I was unable to get my players into the ancient-world mindset. ("Why does everyone follow all these rules, they're just all stupid").

 

[Treebore]

I own a lot of Runequest, including Mongoose's version, and I like it all a lot, unfortunately other than some short games with my family, I haven't used it much.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I love RQ2 and played and ran it lots and lots.

Then after a while, a new shiny comes along, and we play a new shiny for a while - but I always like to go back to RuneQuest. For my money it is still the most elegant and 'real-feeling' combat system I've come across anywhere, and the rules migrated easily to all kinds of other settings (I ran Traveller 2300 with RQ2, I've run Empire of the Petal Throne with RQ2, last year I ran some Eberron with RQ2 (and that had the best pulp-noir feel that I've been able to get with Eberron!)

I'd go back to using RQ2 (In glorantha or any other setting) in a shot

Cheers

 

[meomwt]

We played a campaign under RQ3 about 18 months ago. Another DM started running it, then I took over after he had to drop out (officially due to workload, but in reality due to player conflict).

After a while, the % system starts to grate. Skills can only be raised if you use them - which might be realistic, but gets in the way of developing a character the way you want (unless you ignore that rule, of course). And at "low level" with stats at or below 50%, you miss more than you hit. Oof.

The Magic system is a little under-powered for my tastes, I like a more High-Fantasy feel for my games. PC's develop magic skills very, very slowly and getting new spells can be deadly. Oh dear.

When DM-ing, I found the prep time to be almost prohibitive. If I hadn't found an Excel spreadsheet which could randomly generate Bad Guys, there's no way I could have run the game with the time I have for prep.

So, while I love Glorantha, there are some rules issues and playability constraints which still grind. YMMV, of course.

ETA And I played a session of the Mongoose version at GenCon 2007, didn't enjoy it much, I thought that some of the rules changes "dumbed down" the system too much. I really couldn't get into the new ways of playing at all.