27 March 2015

The Stafford Codex

Greg Stafford, the father of the fantasy world of Glorantha, of the Pendragon role-playing game, of the Prince Valiant role-playing game, of the D6 System, and of mucho more rpg-related goodness, is probably the most influential rpg designer alive now that Gary Gygax is dead.

Well, as is his wont, Greg forgot to renew the url of his previous web-site (or something like that), so he had to start everything all over again, and he now has a brand new personal web-site called The Stafford Codex.

The site also has a short ‘links’ section and, believe it or not, Timinits & Trolls is amongst the few sites and blogs that are listed. Man, am I elated.

18 March 2015

Revamped Perrin Conventions

To me, Steve Perrin is the most important rpg designer, ever. Since the very beginning, he has epitomised what I like in a role-playing game: an old-school feel, but with more unified, more logical mechanisms than D&D. To me, his maiden oeuvre, the original Chaosium version of RuneQuest (1978), is simply perfect, and has remained my favourite rpg to this day.

As you may know, the origins of RuneQuest lie with the Perrin Conventions, a set of xeroxed sheets of paper that were passed on from avid gamer to avid gamer in the Bay Area and then all over the US which "improved" the original D&D combat rules with a more streamlined approach to them. The Perrin Conventions are available here, but they are the later version that appeared in Chaosium's All The World Monsters vol.2, not the original ones from the xeroxed copies. There were many differences between the original xeroxed version and the one that ended up being published within All The World's Monstes vol.2: the latter concentrated on the combat rules, whereas the former had a lot of magic rules and other stuff.

Anyway, there's been talk round the internet that the complete Perrin Conventions would soon be republished, possibly in a revamped form. This new publication would be as a digest-sized illustrated game rule book. Unfortunately, no ETA at the moment.

All I can reveal is that Steve Perrin is currently working on the "new" Perrin Conventions, which will be heavily annotated and include details on the campaigns they were used in, including the campaign world he has been running under a dozen different systems since Steve first started role playing in 1974. Huzzah!

12 March 2015

RuneQuest 6 in italiano

After the unsuccessful crowdfunding campaign of last year's summer (very bad timing for a crowdfunding campaign in Italy.... everybody's at the beach), Alephtar Games is back with an Italian version of RuneQuest 6. No more crowdfunding-related shenanigans; this time, the product has been translated and is about to be made available; actually part of it is already available, see below, and the fully-fledged product will be available on 11 April 2015.

Player's Manual

Alephtar Games is going to release the game in three books. I guess the idea is to have players only spend money for the Player's Manual whereas the referee buys all three books. Moreover, the PDF version of the Player's Manual is currently pay-what-you-want (i.e., free if you're stingy) from this site. Hopefully, this will make RQ6 popular in Italy.

Anyway, here's a partial English translation of the announcement available on Alephtar Games' web-site:

Alephtar Games is happy to publish the 6th edition of RuneQuest in Italian.

To increase the convenience of the game, especially for newcomers, the A4 450-page English-language book has been repurposed as three convenient A5 appr. 200-page booklets: Player's Manual, Magic Manual, Game Master's Manual. Each manual will cost €19.90 if bought separately. However, the full bundle will only cost €49.90, just like the English version of RQ6. The manuals will also be available in electronic format, with a layout specifically designed for screen and tablet perusal.

The PDF version of the Player's Manual is currently available as “pay-what-you-want”. The dead tree manuals will be available at the next Modena Play! convention (11-12 April 2015), during which a RuneQuest 6 tournament will also take place, organised by La Stanza dei Sogni.

But, wait!, there's more. The advance sale of three manuals has already started at the incredible price of €39.99. This offer ends 31 March.