Pitch me the current RuneQuest

[Michael O'Brien]

I do have a nitpick that has felt off to me, so maybe someone more familiar with the setting can explain...
"Jonstown?" In a Bronze Age, Mediterranean feel campaign world, there's an important settlement that sounds like a small town from 1950s Arkansas?

"Jonstown" is named after the editor of Greg Stafford's original Glorantha board war game White Bear & Red Moon. Greg gave many of the playtesters of that game the honour of naming a place on the map. Other place names were made up from rather quirky origins: Greg was a mythologist, not a linguist.

My colleague Rick Meints talks about the origins of various Glorantha place names here. (Below is the actual original map that debuted in RuneQuest 2nd edition, from the company archives. It's by William Church, who also gets a place named after him on the map)

 

[Bluenose]

I don't know a whole lot about Runequest, but I just recently purchased a bunch of books for it fromthe Humble Bundle mentioned above. I've started reading through it, and I am not sure I'll ever be able to play it. Explaining the both the rules and the setting to my players will likely prove a daunting task, one that I might not be prepared to understake. It's interesting though. Given the price I paid, I simply can't be disappointed in it.

Start with something simple, and if they enjoy it start bringing in more complex aspects. When all's said and done, that's the easiest way to start with any new game. The Starter Set is pretty good in that respect (if you aren't a jaded grognard who's tired of Sartarite clans). But nobody needs to start off knowing about more than where they live and some slander about the rest of the world.

 

[Wolfpack48]

I don't know a whole lot about Runequest, but I just recently purchased a bunch of books for it fromthe Humble Bundle mentioned above. I've started reading through it, and I am not sure I'll ever be able to play it. Explaining the both the rules and the setting to my players will likely prove a daunting task, one that I might not be prepared to understake. It's interesting though. Given the price I paid, I simply can't be disappointed in it.

The key to running RuneQuest is to focus on adventures. There's a LOT of background lore, but don't get too caught up in it and just focus on a straightforward adventure like you would any other game, then slowly start to sprinkle in some of the lore bits and strangeness that is Glorantha. I'd start right off with the Starter set or one of the adventure books and use the cult books as references if you need to look something up. At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong, and there are no "mistakes" -- make Glorantha what you want it to be and have fun.

If it helps, you can think of the Cults as the "classes" you would have in D&D -- each cult has its own flavor and focus, and each religion teaches characters an area of expertise in addition to their cultural background skills.

 

[Velderan]

The key to running RuneQuest is to focus on adventures. There's a LOT of background lore, but don't get too caught up in it and just focus on a straightforward adventure like you would any other game, then slowly start to sprinkle in some of the lore bits and strangeness that is Glorantha. I'd start right off with the Starter set or one of the adventure books and use the cult books as references if you need to look something up. At the end of the day, there is no right or wrong, and there are no "mistakes" -- make Glorantha what you want it to be and have fun.

If it helps, you can think of the Cults as the "classes" you would have in D&D -- each cult has its own flavor and focus, and each religion teaches characters an area of expertise in addition to their cultural background skills.

While I haven't played RuneQuest yet, I did buy the Humble Bundle to check it out and my plan was to start with the Starter Set. The Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon Starter Sets were fantastic at presenting the game to someone who had never played them, so my hope is the RuneQuest set is as good.

Other companies could really learn a lot from Chaosium on how to put together a Starter Set.

 

[Wolfpack48]

As long as we're talking new books for Glorantha, and the ongoing (great) series of Cult books, I would love to see a series of Region books start to make their way out. Each book would have a geography and cities of the area (fold out map?), cultures and peoples, cults, points of interest, important people, maps, adventure/campaign seeds, and most importantly, 3-6 adventures set in that region, ideally as ways to introduce PCs to the area.

Genertela
Fronela, Kralorela, The Lunar Empire (multiple books?), Maniria, Pent, Ralios, Seshnela, Teshnos, Vadeli Isles, The Wastes

Pamaltela
Errinoru, Fonrit, Jolar, Jrustela, Kothar, Kumanku, Loral, Maslo, Slon, Tarien, Teleos, Umathela

Vithela
East Isles, Vormain

 

[John Dallman]

Jonstown is named after a player named John. Nochet is named so because when a player asked if the town had a name, Greg answered "Not yet." That's what I've been told, anyway.

I heard Greg tell that tale himself, so it's at least mythically true.

I just played my first session of the new RQ. I played a lot of RQ2-with-bits-of-RQ3 back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and read most of the Mongoose RQ material, and much of the Hero Wars material, but I hadn't played for a long time. I was running one of the pregens from the starter set because I was sick for the character generation session.

This is different from RQ 2/3. You have the mythic quality of Hero Wars with a somewhat streamlined version of the familiar RQ mechanics. This has advantages, like you actually know how injured you're getting in a fight. The runes and passions work like Pendragon traits and passions, and this works: the roleplaying and the system integrate well, and I was getting fully immersed in a character in my first session playing them. It's become my favourite version of RQ after one session.

 

[John Dallman]

The runes and passions work like Pendragon traits and passions, and this works:

On reflection, a further point. In Pendragon, it's natural for PC knights to feel that they are at the centre of important events, because that's true as a tenet of the setting. In RQ2/3, that wasn't usually true for starting characters, and it came in gradually as they developed.

In RQ:AiG, at least on the evidence of the one session I played, that feeling comes naturally as the tension ratchets up, and you start looking for ways to inspire yourself to cope with what's coming. This may require some GM skill - Michael Cule, whom some of you know, has a lot of RQ experience and was running the session I played - but it seemed to happen fairly organically.

 

[Michael O'Brien]

This may require some GM skill - Michael Cule, whom some of you know, has a lot of RQ experience and was running the session I played - but it seemed to happen fairly organically.

Michael Cule is also the author of the fondly remembered early RuneQuest scenario 'The Rumble at Tin Inn', published in White Dwarf #33 (January 1982).

 

[chaochou]

This may require some GM skill - Michael Cule, whom some of you know, has a lot of RQ experience and was running the session I played - but it seemed to happen fairly organically.

Mike used to run a weekly game at a club I attended in the mid through late 80s in High Wycombe in the UK.

A very nice fella, and definitely a very capable GM.

 

[John Dallman]

Mike used to run a weekly game at a club I attended in the mid through late 80s in High Wycombe in the UK.

He still lives there. He has a podcast! Improvised Radio Theatre - With Dice.