Nu Tunnels & Trolls

Well, a mere fortnight after the announcement by Chaosium of a new e̶d̶i̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ version of RuneQuest, Rebellion Unplugged has announced that a new edition of Tunnels & Trolls is in the works and is going to be published in 2025.

Yay! Talk about living in interesting times.

A lot of people were worried that the new T&T wouldn’t be true to its roots (or even that Rebellion Unplugged would be sitting on the licence), but the announcement today mentions that Scott Malthouse (of Trollish Delver fame) is one of the people working on the new ruleset. Scott is a true blue fan of Tunnels & Trolls, so I know we can only expect Good Things from the new edition.

Yay! Can’t wait!

Mike Mearls About the New Rules

Mike Mearls has been interviewed by Luke Gygax on his Twitch TV channel.

Obviously, he addresses Nu RuneQuest; the ‘meaty’ part starts at 00:33:30 and ends at 00:40:30, so it’s a mere 7 minutes to listen to.

If you still don’t want to listen to it, here is the salient information:

1. Nu RuneQuest is not a new edition; it’s more like Pulp Cthulhu vs ‘normal’ Call of Cthulhu.

2. Nu RuneQuest will concentrate on adventures set in Pavis & Big Rubble: dungeon crawling, treasure hunting, dealing with chaotic foes…

3. In the rules, social actions will be as important as combat [c’mon this is already the case in RQ...]

Nu RuneQuest

So Jeff Richard dropped a bomb today on Facebook. Here it is, verbatim:

New RuneQuest? 

The cat is out of the bag! Mike Mearls, Jason Durall, and I have been secretly working on refining and streamlining the RuneQuest rules for the better part of a year! The rules are in final playtest (and any playtesters present please do not comment on them publicly until we give the word). And man we are EXCITED! Loads more info very soon, so watch this space.

But sharp eyed folk might want to carefully review some of my posts over the last year!

OK I’m way too lazy to review Jeff’s FB posts over 12 months, but someone over at BRP Central noticed that he posted a lot about Pavis & Big Rubble. I thought this was because the new Pavis & Big Rubble book would be the next in line, but someone smart wrote that Nu RuneQuest may drop all the extra chargen shit and concentrate on Pavis & Big Rubble as a single locale for starting PCs, with a fair bit of dungeon delving.

Anyway, it is clear to me that the reason Jeff hired Mike Mearls is that Mike has been successful with D&D 5E and Jeff wants to sell RQ to new players looking for a simpler FRP game rather than to (or on top of) us grognards.

Then obviously the next question is: on top of the complex chargen chapter, what is going to be removed from the core rules in Nu RuneQuest? On Bluesky, Facebook, BRP Central, everybody is speculating... Some think the rules are merely going to be streamlined (everything in one place, errata included, Passions/Runes going to work in boon/bane mode); some others are expecting major overhauls like removing the SR system altogether.

Anyway, you may sign up to the playtest rules — but then you have to also sign an NDA. I’m signing up so don’t expect anything from me from now on.

Oh, and BTW, how should we refer to Nu RuneQuest? ‘New RQ’? ‘RQ 2025’? ‘RQG 1.1’?