Opponent Create-O-Matic

I don’t know who created the Adversaries Generator for RuneQuest (the page doesn’t mention any name), but this tool is fuсking brilliant. I absolutely love the detail of being able to choose the format under which the stats of the adversary shall be rendered. I choose FOES for old times’ sake!

New NuRQ News

As I have written here, the so-called ‘nuRQ’ has been ditched. In its stead, Jeff Richard is working on a lighter/simpler (but fully backwards-compatible) clarified version of RQG.

Here are some news about the latter posted today by Jeff on basicroleplaying.org:

New core rules book. This is 200-250 pages laid out. It is very focused on Sartar, Prax, and Pavis. Combat is much clearer and easier (what we have found is that a typical 4 round combat with 5 adventurers versus a group of NPCs takes about 45 minutes to run with a newish GM). Character Creation is MUCH faster. You should be able to make your first character in around thirty minutes, with it being 20 minutes or less once you get the hang of it. Faster if you use the PDF worksheet. The cheat sheet for the core rules, magic system, plus all common rune spells description takes up three pages total.

Gamemaster book. This is 250-300 pages laid out. It includes a full bestiary that is focused on being plug and play. It teaches all of the core rule systems, how to create encounters tailored for your characters, how to handle social interactions, spirits, run campaigns in Dragon Pass and Prax and Pavis, between adventures, and how to handle treasure (plus plenty of unique items). It includes the official and complete heroquesting rules and battle rules. This is something that reflects years of discussion between Mearls and I about how people learn how to run games and what they actually need to know.

Pavis and Big Rubble. This is the setting. Fully updated and expanded, with at least a half-dozen brand new adventures, starting with a Welcome to Pavis scenario intended to bring brand new players into the setting. 

Chaosium Con Europe II

Chaosium have just confirmed there will be a Chaosium Con Europe II next year in Poland, from 30 October to 1 November (so basically the same dates as this year). Well, see you all next year in Gdańsk, then!

Cons & News

I haven’t posted in a long time… but hey I was busy: attending two cons in a row, Chaosium Con Europe in Poland, and Contes d’Automne in southeastern France, plus many real life shenanigans kept me away from the interwebz.

Chaosium Con Europe

This was the first official Chaosium Con in continental Europe (after the various unofficial ones in Germany). It was organised as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of Chaosium’s creation by Greg Stafford, and it took place from 30 October to 2 November in the beautiful port city of Gdańsk in Poland.

red bricks galore

The venue was really nice: the Uphagen Manor, a former redbrick manor transformed into a hotel (see the picture). There weren’t that many gaming slots so I only played RuneQuest (twice), Pendragon and Age of Vikings, the latter GM’ed by Pedro Ziviani, its creator. It was still nice to catch up with the ‘tribe’ as I hadn’t been attending any con outside of France since the coronavirus pandemic.

I was very, very positively impressed by Age of Vikings. I initially thought it was ‘just’ the second edition of Mythic Iceland but it is much more than that. The rules are basically a streamlined version of RQ/BRP:UGE in terms of combat, skills, passions... honestly I wish Chaosium had trod this path rather than the inelegant nuRQ. Oh, well.

I shall provide other snippets of news gathered around the many pints of beers that were quaffed at the bar of the hotel—I couldn’t attend any of the panels (because of conflicting schedules with the games or with my wife’s desire to visit Gdańsk) so the following is all hearsay (also, probably old news by the time you read this).

The short term publishing schedule for RuneQuest is as follows:
- the Sartar book, 
- the Pavis book,
- a new Starter Set with a focus on Sartar and Pavis,
- a new rulebook (see below),
- the remaining ‘cults’ books are going to be published after all of the above, Darkness then Water then Chaos,
- the cults books for the Invisible God and the Horned God are not in the pipe at the moment,
- the Harmast novel.

Later on, we should expect:
- a reprint of the RQ3 Dorastor supplement (à la Sun County) 
- the new White Bear Red Moon wargame won’t be an identical reprint after all; it will feature less wargame-y rules than the original game (but not a reboot as what Chris Klug was working on).

The more general news about RuneQuest is that the ‘new rulebook’ will be a shorter but more streamlined book, less intimidating than the current one, and with bestiary elements and better indexing. Contrary to the tentative “nuRQ” of 2025 it won’t aim at being a ‘new edition’.

We shall also expect more PDF downloads like the Elder Race Adventurers and the Praxian adventure The Hunt for the Storm Calf.

The good news is that the con is back in 2026, also in Gdańsk, but probably a tad earlier in the year.

Contes d’Automne

This is probably less of interest to my non-Francophone readers. Contes d’Automne is a fantastic con set in a former monastery in Provence. What I really like there is the sense of being with your friends during the whole duration of the con: all meals are taken together, whereas at Chaosium Con Europe you had to leave the con’s premises to find something to eat in the neighbourhood, which (1) broke the out-of-time-out-of-everything spell and (2) didn’t guarantee you’d have lunch with the tribe. I hope they fix it for next year.

Anyways, I discovered a lot of games at Contes d’Automne—which is usually what happens because GMs there tend to concentrate on lesser-known games. I played Cthulhu Dark, Blades in the Dark, and Candela Obscura (yes, quite an array of gloomy games), and I ran QuestWorlds, because I purchased the hardcover at Chaosium Con and couldn’t wait to use it.

If you speak French, I really recommend this con.

Shipwreck from Antiquity

We are currently holidaying in Cyprus, and we’ve recently visited the Lusignan castle at Girne, which houses, among other things, an exhibit about a Greek ship from approximately 300 BC that capsized in front of the city’s harbour. As the missus said, “they’d almost made it!”

The ship was discovered in the 1960s and brought on shore in 1963-64.  

Here are a few pics from the exhibit, which may provide inspiration for Gloranthan sea voyages.  

nuRQ - Important News

This is from social media, so I guess it’s OK to share it. 

Update on the new RuneQuest

An update on the work on a new edition of RuneQuest. Thanks to the countless hours of playtesting, feedback, and revisions, we’ve realized that we need more time to keep developing a new edition. Consequently we're pushing back the estimated release date to 2027 at the earliest.

However, all that work has made clear to us that the existing RuneQuest rules can be presented in a far more concise and clear manner. The process has also helped us identify where the existing rules need to be clarified to make it easier for newcomers to learn the game mechanics and for us to make VTT adaptations. 

So without further ado, what we are going to do is release a Revised RuneQuest core rule book. This will be significantly shorter than the existing RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha core rule book—about a third the size. Combat rules are cleaned up, and the rules are far clearer and better presented than in RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. This book will include a Bestiary, and will focus on Sartar, Prax, and the Big Rubble.

In the meantime, we will continue to roll out new releases for the RQG line; stay tuned for some exciting announcements!

Vampires and Glorantha

I have never been a fan of vampires in Glorantha. Even before Greg Stafford’s world became firmly grounded in a Bronze Age/Iron Age mythological milieu, and was still a kind of “old school” kitchen sink of various fantasy tropes, I disliked the presence of vampires.

Why? Well, because as a mythical creature, the vampire only appeared in European literary fiction in the 18th century. It’s a creature from the modern era, not from Antiquity, and not even from the Middle Ages. I actually even found vampires lame in D&D.

But we can fix this, because mythical creatures feeding on the vital fluids of the living have been present in myth and legend since... forever. However, their depiction is in stark contrast with the ‘charismatic villain’ type popularised by Bram Stoker’s novel and by classic horror film. Vampire-like creatures from antiquity are almost invariably monstrous and repulsive, resembling ghouls rather than European aristocrats.

Given Chaosium’s current art direction for Glorantha, much more inclusive of non-European influences, I would like to suggest the following as alternate inspiration for the vampire:

First and foremost, the vetāla, a class of spirits in Hindu mythology that live close to charnel grounds and that can take possession of dead bodies as vehicles for movement. These animated corpses then cause mischief in nearby villages.

Bhairava is the god of vetāla. As with many fearsome South Asian deities, he is not ‘evil’— his frightening appearance may indicate that he is a fierce protector of the faithful or that he teaches how to transform anger or hatred into understanding. This being said, the way he is depicted can be a source of inspiration for the ‘new’ Gloranthan vampire, in line with the current art used in the game.

Bhairava

Second, the strix of Ancient Greece. It was a monstrous bird that fed on the blood of children [hence the D&D ‘stirge’].

Third, let’s look at Inner Asia. The ḫortdan is a vampire-revenant that gets out of its grave at night to feed upon the blood of the living. It can become invisible or turn into an animal. The ḫortdan look bloated (especially after having fed), with a ruddy complexion.

Hence my suggested modifications to the description of the vampire (RuneQuest Bestiary, p105-106):

–Instead of “it takes on a pallid white skin and lustrous hair”: “it becomes bloated with a ruddy complexion”.

–Instead of “it may now turn into a bat, wolf, or smoke”: “it may now turn into a monstrous bird or become invisible”.

 

Also, since Darkness creatures are so strongly opposed to Chaos, I believe the vampire should be associated to the Shadow Rune, and not to the Darkness Rune.