Reading Classic RuneQuest: Preamble
I started playing RuneQuest with the latest edition, “RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha”, colloquially known as “RQG”. I had fallen in love with the setting via its gigantic1, critically acclaimed, system-agnostic “Guide to Glorantha”2, so using the official game to bring it to the table felt like the next logical move. RQG looked great at first, even though I was immediately skeptical of some of its most idiosyncratic mechanics, like Strike Ranks3. But there was a lot of cool stuff! Divine magic that requires worship at your god’s temples to recharge! Rune affinities that model your personality! Passions that connect to your community!
But after a couple years of play, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
As I mentioned in a recent article about the lore problems of the RQG product line, I realized that I was playing in Glorantha despite RuneQuest. I would probably never use the RuneQuest system4 if it wasn’t for Glorantha. I started house-ruling it like crazy, until I ended up basically with a (still work in progress) whole new BRP game. But RuneQuest is such a legendary game, so what’s going on? Is it just not my jam? I know so many people who swear by RuneQuest, most of whom started with the 2nd or 3rd edition, so what am I missing?
Then, I realized that the reason RQG looked like a great game at first, but disappointed and frustrated me in the end, is that it’s actually three great games, put together badly5. Namely: the “old” RuneQuest (a mix of 2nd and 3rd edition), Pendragon, and HeroQuest (né Hero Wars). I’m not the first one to come to this realization (“Coeur de Runes” author Uzz blogged about this in French a while ago) but hey, we all go at our own speed.
If you ask me6, the problem with the RQG product line is 60% the aforementioned lore issues, and 40% the RQG system itself.
After this realization I went looking for RQG’s constituent parts. I started playing Pendragon last year, and recently started GMing it too. I played a bit of HeroQuest and QuestWorld, and definitely want to do more of it. But as for the “old” RuneQuest… well, that’s what brings us here. Let’s read, and maybe later play, the most classic of the RuneQuests, RuneQuest 2nd edition! (colloquially known as “RQ2”) Let’s see what the rage is all about, as they say.
So this is the start of a series of articles in which I dive into this venerable material that influenced so many people in such a profound way. A while ago I found a shockingly well preserved copy of the 2-inch boxed set (pictured above), and that’s what I’ll read through, if you want to tag along.
Being a kid of the late-80’s/early-90’s, I’ll try and utterly fail to put myself in the shoes of the late-70’s/early-80’s gamers that were the audience for RQ2. I’ll definitely be missing a lot of historical context, so feel free to educate me on Mastodon, Bluesky, or email when I write something stupid.
This should be fun! I’m already excited, just by opening the box and getting that whiff of old paper smell. I make no promises about the posting cadence for this series, so see you in the next article, whenever that is!
- It worked with me to get hooked on Glorantha, but I don’t expect many people to start with it… still, I do recommend the book as a great way to stop intruders in your house ↩︎
- Sadly only available in PDF at the moment… I REALLY HOPE that Chaosium will print new physical copies again because this thing is absolutely breathtaking. ↩︎
- As some people said already, if Strike Ranks were such a great idea, it would have been copied by other games, right? ↩︎
- I may use the BRP system, with most of its “simpler” options, but not the RuneQuest system with its Strike Ranks and hit locations and skill category modifier tables and POW gain rolls and so on. ↩︎
- If you think they’re put together very well, that’s fine! Not every game is for everyone! ↩︎
- Even if you don’t ask me, actually. It’s my blog! ↩︎