Should there be ducks in the new RuneQuest?

[Dr Simon]

Everything in Glorantha is touched by chaos. Except for the trolls, where it's radiation poisoning.

Kill him, he's been Illuminated!


I'd vote yes for ducks. They are a quintessential part of RuneQuest. Sure the idea can seem silly but they can also transcend the idea. Or they can be cminc relief, and who wants a game that's relentlessly grim. Ironically perhaps some of the best and most adult scenarios that I ever saw for an RPG were RuneQuest, my favourite being Guatama's Vision in the Shadows on the Borderland compiliation. A sort of Children of the Corn played around one man's hidden guilt over a rape committed many years earlier. Actually, it's kind of the thing that the Howard the Duck comic strip would touch against, but with vampire cows and half-man/half-frog mutants. I assume it was probably Stan Lee, but it could almost have been Alan Moore at times.

(The prize for grimmest adventure that I've ever seen has to be a Modern Cthulhu one from a supplement called The Stars are Right, featuring heroin addicts and porn stars dying from AIDS. I don't think the Elder Gods had much to do in that one except chuckle).

 

[cthulhu_duck]

I voted yes, strangely enough.

Ai Ai Quack Ftaghn.

 

[MonsterMash]

Kill him, he's been Illuminated!

I'd vote yes for ducks. They are a quintessential part of RuneQuest. Sure the idea can seem silly but they can also transcend the idea. Or they can be cminc relief, and who wants a game that's relentlessly grim. Ironically perhaps some of the best and most adult scenarios that I ever saw for an RPG were RuneQuest, my favourite being Guatama's Vision in the Shadows on the Borderland compiliation. A sort of Children of the Corn played around one man's hidden guilt over a rape committed many years earlier. Actually, it's kind of the thing that the Howard the Duck comic strip would touch against, but with vampire cows and half-man/half-frog mutants. I assume it was probably Stan Lee, but it could almost have been Alan Moore at times.

IIRC Howard the Duck was written by Steve Gerber, anyone able to confirm this?

 

[mythusmage]

Kill him, he's been Illuminated!

"Master, is there a way to become illuminated quickly?"

"Of course, student."

"What way would that be, master?"

"Light a torch."

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

IIRC Howard the Duck was written by Steve Gerber, anyone able to confirm this?

Yep. Although I can certainly see the suggestion that his work in the 1970s prefigured the more mature comics by British writers (mostly working for DC on this side of the Atlantic) in the 1980s. Howard would be a natural fit in a lot of Grant Morrison's work as well and even some of Warren Ellis' (just add feathers to the outrage).