Want to play a Duck?

[Bill Zebub]

I always thought it should have been geese. Ducks know they are delicious and flee, meanwhile geese know they can break a human's arm and will happily demonstrate.

Wild turkeys, too. They are NOT afraid of you.

At least, not during the off-season.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Ducks should be the first step in a series of question to classify setting or the tone of games.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Seriously. How could a thread on this topic NOT include the Assassin Duck from Dragonbane?

Because the OP is with Chaosium and talking about the ducks that started it all in RPGs.

 

[schneeland]

I want to like them, but cannot get past thinking that Thanksgiving dinner is trying to fight back. To be fair though, I am not a fan of any animal PCs in general.

Same here, unless we are talking about a game/setting with (anthropomorphic) animals per se.
In fact, the ducks are one of the things that reduced my motivation to engage more deeply with Runequest. And if I were to ever run the game, there would probably be a great duck hunt inserted into the past of its setting.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Want to play a Duck? After appearing as a location and then counters in Greg Stafford's 1975 board war game White Bear and Red Moon ("Ducks, Ducks, and More Ducks"), as TTRPG creatures Ducks first appeared in RuneQuest first edition.

This was way back in 1978, as something that could be a hobbit equivalent. Ducks were first depicted in art by Jennell Jaquays as cover art for issue #8 of Chaosium's house zine Wyrm's Footnotes (1979).


Our new Basic Roleplaying: Creatures book features TTRPG stats for Ducks.



You can also download (free) a Duck Adventurer as part of our RuneQuest Elder Race Adventurers pack. Art for both of these is by Lionel Marty.



Our forthcoming Lands of RuneQuest: Sartar book has a section on Creating Duck Adventurers, with art by Ossi Hiekkala.



There's also more Duck art coming by Mark Smylie. Ducks, Ducks, and More Ducks.
​

And you can read more about the origin of the Ducks in this post by Chaosium President and head of the Nostalgia Department Rick Meints:

Out of the Suitcase #2: Ducks, Ducks, and more Ducks

Over on the RuneQuest Facebook group there's recently been a wonderful, fragmented discussion of the origins of Ducks in Glorantha recently. I thought I'd spend a little free time writing down what I know...

www.chaosium.com

M’lard.

 

[LordEntrails]

I'm sold, next RQ game I play I will pick a duck. That's likely to be awhile though.
We also enjoyed the ducks in Dragon Pass. Never thought they got the influence they deserved

 

[Richards]

Not quite the same, but in one D&D 3.5 campaign we had a duckbunny NPC...his name was Quiffington and he had the blended intellect of five different mages. (Serves them right for messing about with wild magic....)

Johnathan

 

[Michael O'Brien]

Dragonbane.

Yes, the ducks are there because Drakar och Demoner, the original Swedish version of Dragonbane, was based on Chaosium's BRP/Magic World (with Chaosium's blessing). Ducks have been part of the Swedish TTRPG landscape ever since.