RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha quick start - review
Skip this intro
Growing up in Poland everyone was either playing Warhammer or some homebrew. Or most likely a WFRP's Old World run on mechanics homebrewed beyond any recognition. The only info about Glorantha and RuneQuest we had back then was that it's that weird system with ducks. It was sort of hinted in Magia i Miecz ("Magic & Sword") the only serious magazine we had that the classic RuneQuest was one of the founding systems of the hobby in the before times. In the edgy 90s that was not "dark" or "mature" or "realistic" enough. But now that I'm reading of how Glorantha works, it turns out that it is what I was always looking for in an RPG setting.
I watched the game on YouTube being run by Jeff Richards mostly because I follow the WebDM team. (they were using pre-gens from the quick start but a different adventure)
Quick start
The quick start booklet has been released for Free RPG Day 2017 as a preview of an upcoming new edition of RuneQuest Glorantha (RQG).
To begin with, the cover is a tribute to the most popular edition of the game RuneQuest 2. It is evocative and from the get go establishes that this is not your medievalesque fantasy but something more along the lines of Ancient Greece. Wikipedia tells me that it would be Late Bronze Age which seems to fit.
The book is nicely illustrated and the layout is very clean and elegant - the print is in black and white but the PDF is full colour.
The first half of the book contains a quick overview of the rules. RQG runs on BRP - Basic Roleplaying System that was created specifically for it's first edition in the before times (1978, to be precise). I had no idea it was a RuneQuest thing the first time I came across it with Call of Cthulhu 5.1 edition but I loved it ever since. There is something intuitive, simple and beautiful in percentage skills.
The rules discuss combat, magic and the Runes - putting RUNES back in RUNEQUEST. After Runequest 3 some weirdness entered the continuum - Greg Stafford was no longer in Chaosium, Runequest as a brand went to Avalon Hill and later on to Mongoose, at one point it became a generic fantasy system. RQG the system and the setting become one.
As mentioned before I like roll under, percentage systems so I felt right at home. The runes however, oh the runes are magnificent. The runes are the building blocks of the reality, cosmos, magic, everything. The world is very mythical - everyone has magic, and everything drips with connections to the lore and the gods, who have a very real, Greek-Roman presence and meddle with mortals' affairs. Characters can use the rune magic to influence reality, beseech help of the gods and cast powerful magics. The runes that you are affiliated with can influence your personality, and so can the passions.
The second half is The Broken Tower, an introductory adventure for the included pre-generated characters. The adventure does a great job showcasing what kind of world Glorantha is and what tone and type of event the players can expect further on. They would learn that the good of their tribe is important and what their own place in it is; that the cows are of great value; that raids and feuds with neighbouring tribes are part of everyday life but murder is a big deal; that combat is vicious and you may want to surrender or take hostages; that you can call spirits for aid and negotiate with them; that there are places much older than the current age that are inhabited by powerful beings from ancient times; and that demons and old gods are not necessarily evil and may be negotiated with. The adventure is written in such a way that depending on the group it can feature a lot of deadly combat or no combat at all and still be feasible to run. The NPCs are fully fleshed out, the locations are interesting and both familiar and strange, and the weird creatures do not have to become enemies.
5 out of 5 cows, would raid again.
The minor issues that I have with this product are the visible signs of rewrites - grammatical oddities, a word too much or too little in some sentences.
Why you should care
Chaosium has had some tough time, and Runequest has been in a weird place for a while. Now, after Greg Stafford (creator of Glorantha) and Sandy Petersen (creator of Call of Cthulhu) have returned to the company and restructured it from the inside, it seems like they are on the right path and are releasing great products again.
RQG is not D&D or Warhammer. It is a very different, distinct creation that you should give a try if you play RPGs.
You can get the PDF for free from Chaosium website, or DriveThruRPG, and the printed version from Chaosium, Lulu, Amazon, of your FLGS for cheaps (£7.49 ~roughly $9.99).
Comments
Post a Comment