RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha Deluxe slipcase set Hardcover – April 15, 2019

RQG ReviewI've finished reading through the core book. I am very pleased. The production quality is amazing. The rules were easy for me to follow and understand. It reminded me of RQ3, which I played until 1993. I had watched Logician Tim's review of RQG and he claimed that there was nowhere that explained how to read the D100 roll to determine success or failure. I saw several places that explained that you rolled under the skill rating, so he apparently wasn't paying attention. The rules were similar enough to RQ3 that it took only a small adjustment.I'm happy that this edition of Runequest is tied to Glorantha. The fit feels so natural. C.S. Lewis once said that the thing that attracted him to the study of mythology was that feeling of otherness. That's what I really enjoy about Glorantha, the otherness. I'm excited to run a game. I've been telling my gaming friends about it.All in all, great job! But also, curses to you because now I want to buy the Red Book of Magic and the Glorantha Guide.P.S. My favorite people group were and are the Uz.

I started runequest in 6e, and my experience is limited. Most of myplayers are turned off by the amount of map involved in BRP percentile systems. Still, this new system from Chaosium looks like a great addition. I look forward to running it!

Great roleplaying game and great slipcover set

This newest incarnation of RuneQuest is gorgeous. The art is wonderful, the books are well made....everything about it screams high production quality... however... it all feels rushed to me. The layout of the book is abysmal, confusing, disjointed, and there are a number of things you would expect to find in a core rulebook like this that are just flat out missing. I can't help but feel that quite a lot was left on the cutting room floor when these books went to print, and that there was not a lot of time left at that point to reorganize them. The GM Screen helps quite a bit, but there will be a lot of flipping around the book searching for exactly what you need, and be prepared to wing it because what your player just asked you about might not even be there.The Magic system is complex but rewarding with multiple types of magic with both narrative and mechanical differences. I LOVE this... but what it functionally means is that you, the GM, must know all of them backward and forward and your players must know and understand the kinds of magic they use. Like most things in this game the mechanics can be complex and that may turn some players off.The combat system is dynamic and brutal, but again, mechanically complex. Initiative is handled by combining a speed value, Strike Ranks, from various places... innate character stats, weapon speeds, declared actions, casting times, and so on to get a final number that indicates where you act in the round. Bows are very fast, with my players typically firing three shots a round (at different Strike Ranks, mind you) but unless you get Special or Critical successes to attack they only do "chip damage." Melee attacks are much slower, especially in a round where you have to draw or switch weapons (actions which take time and so impose Strike Rank penalties) but tend to hit much harder. Rolling under your attack skill is a success. Under 1/5 of your skill is a Special Success, and under 1/20 (or 4 or less) is a Critical Success. These all have extra effects and damage dependent on what type of weapon you're using. All attacks can be Parried or Dodged, though each successive Parry or Dodge attempt in the same round imposes a cumulative penalty to the roll.Armor reduces damage and is location based, so you will buy and equip armor for each hit location separately. Armor can be damaged. When you successfully parry and attack you can damage your weapon. Functionally this means that you need to track not JUST damage to your character but damage to each part of your gear and your weapons.Does this all make sense? Yes. Does this all work in the context of the rules? Yes. Is this all perhaps overly complicated and require a high amount of needless book-keeping? Again yes.If you get this game I hope you like tracking state changes and diving into complex rules! If you do, this is going to be an extremely fun and rewarding game for you. The systems, while complicated, work great together. Learning and playing this game will take time and be rewarding. If you want a game to jump into without having to study like a college textbook this is not the game for you, mechanically.Which brings us to the SETTING.The mechanics of the game are intrinsically tied to the setting in a way that I've never seen done before. Many of the mechanical systems are essentially an expression of the setting, rather than a way of interacting with it. This is an amazing achievement for the game designers, and I applaud them for it, even as I hiss angrily at them for making it so hard for me to modify something to more suit my liking. If you intend to use this system but NOT play in Glorantha, then you should pick up a different game... one with an engine that can be dropped into any other chassis. RuneQuest is NOT THAT.Also, be advised that this setting does not shy away from adult content and concepts, some of which, like the fully human herd beasts that have had their sentience removed so that they can be used, abused, and eaten as if they were animals are... problematic. I can't fathom why, in this day and age, parts of the setting like these "It's OK, they're not REALLY human, they're just animals..." details were left in.This is a very old and long-running fantasy setting, and you will find that the creatures and situations in the books fall into one of four categories. First are the "Standard Fantasy Monster" templates. Second are the "Very Cool Spin On A Fantasy Monster" (Elves, Dwarves, and Trolls here are quite good) The Third category is the "This is horrible/gross/disgusting" which is a broad category encompassing monsters that would be at home in horror genres. Some of these are also gross. Be advised that there are monsters that explicitly breed with any other creature that they can catch, be it male or female to produce more foul offspring... but it's... uh... OK? ... because people are harder to catch than herd animals so your GM will PROBABLY just have a horror adventure where they have snuck into your farm and now monsters are bursting out of all your cows... I'm sure you'll never have to worry about being captured or knocked out by them...The last category is the "What were they smoking in the 70's when they came up with this, and why is it still in here?!" category. These are just the oddball, strange, cartoon-bonkers level creatures that are entrenched in the lore and you either accept it or have it blow a hole in your suspension of disbelief. Creatures that are humans but with an octopus for a head that are called a... walktopus. Duck People... called... Ducks. The extra big people that are bigger than regular humans called "Men-And-A-Half." Intelligent Tapir people that herd non-sentient humans. Large humanoid bear-like creatures with what looks like jack o' lanterns for heads... called "Jack O' Bears."There's a lot of whiplash when you go from an encounter with something truly horrifying to a... Jack O' Bear. Most of the game is firmly in the "mature audiences, horror or horror adjacent" zone, but then you have the occasional slapstick monster that just doesn't seem to fit the tone of the setting.I guess the TL:DR here is that there are a LOT of great ideas here, and the game is complex without being bloated, but because of that complexity you and your players are going to have to put in the time, study, and work to get this game humming. This game would be very rewarding for groups who love dark fantasy and extra crunchy systems, who take the setting and world seriously, but not so seriously that they can't talk to a Walktopus or a fantasy re-skin of Howard the Duck.If that's NOT you... if you want an amazing game from the same publisher that uses very similar rules but is much more streamlined then may I direct you to Chaosium's OTHER excellent RPGS... Call of Cthulhu and 7th Sea?

The books look gorgeous, I really liked the art and the presentation, but I have 2 problems with the game.I bought it because I'm a fan of the videogame King of Dragon Pass, I expected to recreate what the videogame does: life in a clan, clan interactions, mythology and heroquests, etc. Sadly, those books don't help in anything beyond the maps and a bit of background (at best 40 pages). Instead of low magic and mythology I found a world of high magic, all people look like warrior mages, there are no rules for Hero Quests, the book picks a very different point of history following what I think is a terrible metaplot that is laid in other products, etc.Ok, the game didn't meet my expectations, I can live with that and enjoy the system, my second problem is that I think it is also a bad game. Very complicated rules, it looks like instead of advancing from 1980s design points they went backwards. Of the 435 pages of content, 380-400 are rules and more rules. Character creation is complicated, rolling 3d6 for characteristics not sure why, because later you have to go through tables indexing a mix of those characteristic values to gain some bonus to some skills, then you have more tables for your background, profession, religion, runes... Then you have 3 different magic systems with their own rules, each own with strange arbitrary rules to progress on their paths and characters can have spells from 2 or 3 of those systems and they need magic points, rune points, etc. Combat is also an important part of the game, you need to be calculating percentages of your skills when you roll, compare results in a table...you also have a table for initiative, combat breaks easily with spells because the rules have profound balance holes, etc.At the end the rules look like a strange mix of different mini-systems with the only purpose of making your life more difficult, the worst thing is they filled near 400 pages of rules and still left a lot of things like Hero Quests not covered for more rules supplements, terrible, if you want background, don't buy this.This pack comes also with a beautiful bestiary and some merchandising for the GM, tables, maps, screen, a calendar and small book about a region with 3 adventures that have the quality of those D&D adventures where you only go to some ruins to kill some monsters.I would give a 5 for presentation, 1 for the game, as I value more the game I give this 2 stars. My advice is to avoid it unless you are a fan of the setting and you need it for collectionism.

The setting is huge and has a big learning curve, but if you don't mind a little crunch in your ruleset this is a great game. Some of the most realistic-feeling melee combat I have ever played in a tabletop game, and a deep, magic system with a truly mythic feel. I can see why so many of the older generation of roleplayers have stayed so loyal to Runequest over the years. I strongly recommend it to anyone for whom D&D is beginning to feel a bit juvenile.

El pack vale la pena, te ayuda a establecer todo el setting y las ilustraciones son geniales.

Bought this for my son for Xmas, he was really pleased with it.