Revised RuneQuest

Revised RuneQuest is not the same as NuRQ. The latter is Jeffʼs ongoing effort to lure D&D and Pathfinder players to play RuneQuest, whilst the former is a proposed streamlined presentation of the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha core rules (deemed too long or too complex by people who apparently are literacy-challenged).

Anyway, there was a panel about Revised RuneQuest (lets call it ReRQ from now on) at Chaosium Con UK; Nick Brooke live-posted about it. Here is a summarised version, with my comments:

Revised RuneQuest

Goals: reduce page count, edit rules for clarity, remove barriers to entry for new players, and maintain full compatibility with all RQG products. It is a “polish pass”, not a new game.

Overhauled character generation: 

- reduce time to create;

- remove barriers to entry;

- maintain rich, diverse options;

- introduce non-human adventurers in the core book;

- reduce the total number of cults in the core book.

Five cultures, including humans, ducks, minotaurs and baboons. [Minotaurs? Is that for power gamers? I canʼt possibly remember a time when Minotaurs were mentioned as adventurers in Dragon Pass]

Nine cults: Issaries, Lanbril, Yelmalio, Babeester Gor, Orlanth, Ernalda, Humakt, Storm Bull, Chalana Arroy. [Lanbril... thatʼs an ultra-minor cult; again this reeks of ‘let them  play D&D-style thieves’. OTOH Chalana Arroy is a good choice; Iʼve had good experiences with the Chalana Arroy pregen, both as a player and as a GM] 

New, clearer spell templates (consistent presentation of information). [Good]

What isn’t changing?

The current RQG book is not going away. This is RQG. It’s the same game, fully compatible with the 2018 release. It is a re-presentation of the rules, not a new edition.

What won’t be in the new book?

Phalanx combat; family history (because many new fans bounced off it); sorcery; shamanism. [This is a shame. Greg was an actual shaman! Shamanism is what sets RQ apart from vanilla fantasy TTRPGs. I agree the current rules are poorly written, but all we need is a good edit.] There are simply too many things for somebody who is brand new to RQG to take in. The rules for these things aren’t being changed at all; they just won’t be in the revised core slimmed-down rulebook, so new players won’t hear about them (yet).

Does this mean the Starter Set is obsolete?

No, it's the same game.

Does this mean the old RQG Core Rulebook is obsolete?

No, it's the same game. RQG (2018) is still widely available in print and digital formats, please buy as many copies as you need.

Does this mean stuff cut from the old Core Rulebook will be changed?
(Are we getting new Shamanism, Sorcery, Phalanx rules etc?)

No, you can still use all those, as it's the same game. But new players won't be overwhelmed by options in the revised core rules.

What's next for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha?

Goals: Playable Content: “show, don’t tell”. Let players discover Glorantha through play.

The Apple Lane Campaign: This reworks and expands on material from the GM Screen Pack Adventures Book.

Welcome to Glorantha: Collected scenarios, each highlighting a different, unique aspect of Glorantha. Compatible with the RQ Starter Set (that’s all you need to play them). One of the scenarios will be a mundane world heroquest. The book will show off different things that you can do with the game and setting. It’s designed for new players, like the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set. [Excellent, we need introductory scenarios. But we also need fully-fledged campaigns in the style of the old boxed sets]

Return to Snakepipe Hollow: A new adventure in the same dungeon set after the Dragonrise. This is not a reprint. It’s a whole new campaign dungeon; the denizens have changed since the Dragonrise.

On the Royal Road: A collection of encounters, with full NPCs incl. deep backgrounds, adventure hooks, etc. Use them any way you like in your own campaigns.

Cults of RuneQuest: Gods of Darkness: Including troll adventurer creation [at last] and everything else you expect from the Cults of RuneQuest series. After that, there may be a handful more books (2-3?) to complete the Cults of RuneQuest series. ❌ There are no current plans to publish a "Cult of the Invisible God" book. [Drat it]

City of Lei Tabor

cover

City of Lei Tabor is a “gateway” (i.e., non-Gloranthan) supplement for RuneQuest 2 by Paul Nevins and Bill Faust published by the Judges Guild in 1980.

It is a typical Judges Guild supplement of that time: the cover is of the same flimsy paper as the booklet itself, the layout is non-existent, most of the content (illos, maps) is b&w and whenever there are some colours they seem to have been haphazardly chosen. The authors are not even amongst the ‘greats’ that published both for the Chaosium and for the Judges Guild: a short search on the internet shows that they only published for the latter. Yet for some reason I have a particular fondness for this supplement, probably because of the implied (vaguely) Oriental background of the city. However, my friend 𐌘𐌄𐌓𐌔𐌖 aptly remarks on his blog that the mix of Oriental names (incl. real Chinese deities), Gloranthan cults, and vanilla fantasy illustrations by Kevin Siembieda is completely unconvincing. And yet I have a particular fondness for this supplement.

Within its 96 pages, City of Lei Tabor presents the titular city (or rather city-state), its inhabitants, major NPCs, politics, cults, and businesses in quite some detail—even if, for the most part, it is uninspiring. And yet I have a particular fondness for this supplement.

The best part of the supplement is the many NPCs. You don’t have to create any on the spot, or to name them... they’re all in there, down to the lowliest constable—as Anders Swenson wrote in issue No.11 of Different Worlds: “RQ referees will never have to write out an NPC soldier again, ever.”.
Again, some Western/Oriental name mixtures are really weird, like the captain of the City Wall Guards who’s called Graham Fiendfeller and who is a Rune priest of Lei Kung (also: shouldn’t he rather be a Rune lord?).

One thing I like is that many of the guilds mentioned in RuneQuest 2, which disappeared from all subsequent editions, are present in Lei Tabor.

Lei Tabor, despite its small size, is the seat of the Ducal House of Lei. The cult of Lei Kung is the main cult in the city. It is unclear to me whether the authors took the name of the Daoist god of thunder from the Deities & Demigods manual (I have sold mine years ago) or from some book about Chinese folk religion, but the fact that he is a thunder god somehow makes him related to the Storm Tribe in my eyes, which is a welcome change to the mostly Solar gods of the Kralori pantheon. The cult of Lei Kung is associated to the Runes of Air and Movement.

Other local gods are the Lightning Goddess, Tien Mu (her name really means ‘Celestial Mother’ in Chinese), and five powerful associated Spirits of Thunder, the Wu Lei Shen (whose name really means ‘Five Thunder Spirits’). Given that these deities have real Chinese names, they probably also stem from a book about Chinese folk religion the authors must have had access to.

There is also a thieving cult which is based on the worship of three apotheosised thieves of the past, which is actually a pretty neat idea. The worship of these apotheosised thieves is intertwined with the local Thieves Guild.

The many inns and taverns are neatly fleshed out, with a few nice NPCs I have used in my RuneQuest games, with rumours, with adventure seeds, etc. My favourite is Imal’s Inn.

The various members of the ruling family, the Leis, are also well fleshed out and the details of their backgrounds can lead to several adventure seeds if built upon by the GM.

In My Glorantha, I have placed (and used) Lei Tabor in northeastern Pent. The Leis are former Kralori nobility, who fled Kralorela when it was ruled by the False Dragon Ring but who did not return to Kralorela when the rightful ruler was reinstated because their lands in northern Shiyang province were given to other aristocratic families. They have been brooding their discontent since then. This makes Lei Tabor a useful urban centre to place conspirators in. With its many inns and dangerous wilderness, it is also a good area to have your adventurers wander through.

detail of my campaign map,
see p288 of the Guide

First Mention Ever of RuneQuest?

Amateur Press Association (APA) zines were the internet forums/social networks for the SFF nerds of the 1970s: each contributor would write a mini-zine (1 to 10 pages), send it to a central mailer who would collect all the mini-zines in order to produce a massive, 100+ pages zine that he or she would then post back (via snail mail!) to all the contributors. Alarums and Excursions was the main APA zine devoted to pen & paper role-playing games. In Alarums and Excursions issue No.26 (September 1977), Steve Perrin writes that he, alas, will have no time to participate in the APA zine scene any longer because he is

engrossed in RUNEQUEST, the role-playing game based on the world of Dragon Pass (from White Bear and Red Moon, Nomad Gods, etc.). About the ideas in this game, more later, but it has thoroughly eaten up my D&D time.

(...)

RUNEQUEST
The name of the game is my invention, and it describes the basic focus of the game. The characters must improve themselves so as to earn the Runes which will set them on the road to Herodom. (...) It is a long, hard trail to earn a Rune and that does not guarantee a Hero status. (...)
The other principal unique feature of the game is that everyone knows magic, or at least can learn it.

Note how Steve mentions that it is the ‘world of Dragon Pass’, rather than ‘the world of Glorantha’. Also of note (from another part of Steve’s contrbution): at the time flame wars were called fan feuds.