Back From Chimériades V

Back from the first con in ‘con season’!  This year’s Chimériades took place in the same wonderful village in the Luberon as the two previous incarnations.

As usual, here is my feedback for the poor souls who had other priorities in life than travelling to a wonderful château in a seraphic location to enjoy role-playing under the Provençal sun. [Important notice: since I’ve had an appalling H1 2016 at my day job, I am in fuсkwit mode at the moment, so: no GMing at my side at the Chimériades (nor will I GM at the Eternal Con in Bacharach), and I must also disclose that I have stolen from various friends’ con summaries to complete mine.]

Blue sky, ochre castle *

THURSDAY 5 MAY, evening

Chimériades aren’t particularly known for their being a ‘dry’ convention, but the organisers have overachieved this year… after the inaugural ceremony, several tables of fresh mojitos were expecting us in the courtyard of the castle. Also by the end of the con, we hadn’t run out of beer kegs (contrary to what happened in 2014…)!

Beer and mojito *

Mojito Army †

Another big subsistence-related surprise: this year the food was prepared by a professional caterer! We had fantastic paella cooked in huge frying pans just in front of the château. So most of us started the three-day playathon sipping a fresh mojito in the mouthwatering smell of frying capsicums. I’ve definitely experienced worse at a con.

Keep it flowing †

THURSDAY 5 MAY, late at night

I had obviously signed up for Jeff Richard’s very first worldwide open playtest of the new RuneQuest rules! First significant surprise: you are encouraged to play a party of characters from a similar background, and the [quite long] character generation is not dissimilar from the Sartar clan generator in HeroQuest, except that each character is similarly created via a long questionnaire, and not the clan or the character party itself. As a result, and since there were five of us, this took almost two hours, at which point we decided to play the actual scenario the following day in the early morning. Second surprise; the rules are really, really close to RQ2, even more so than what Jeff had hinted at on G+. To me, it looks like Chaosium’s two guiding principles in this endeavour have mainly been “remove unnecessary rules” and “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”; I am happy with 99.9% of the results… I only miss the Defence skill, but since apparently I am the only such person on Earth, it shouldn’t be an issue for most of the fans.

A thick manuscript! *

FRIDAY 6 MAY, morning

OK, so were all from the same ‘Old Tarshite’ village on the slopes of Kero Fin, and Jeff demonstrated that you could play an intense hero quest even with beginning characters. We all had the opportunity for mucho roleplaying and we got to try out all the new skill combinations, augments, etc. All I will say here (since RQ4 definitely warrants its own dedicated blog post) is that the new system works flawlessly, that there aren’t any maths involved (augments are flat ±20%, not percentages of percentages), and that rune magic ROCKS. These first impressions still have to be confirmed, of course, since I’ve only played a mere one-shot, but as much as I enjoyed the short-lived RuneQuest Adventures in Glorantha supplement for RQ6, I have had the impression at Chimériades that we had found –at last!– the holy grail of Gloranthan old school role-playing!

My first RQ4 character sheet! *

FRIDAY 6 MAY, 10:30, first panel: Gloranthan Round Table

The first panel of many that were available (and of which I only attended two) was the Gloranthan Seminar with Jeff Richard and Ken Rolston.

Jeff and Ken Talk *

As usual, the first questions were about upcoming products— so:

The Coming Storm is at the printer. The first book is expected in time for Gen Con. The second book is at layout, and is scheduled for the end of the year.

13th Age in Glorantha (13G) is at its final review stage. Currently at 400+ pages. Scheduled for the end of the year. As Jeff goes through the edits of 13G, he adds relevant stuff here and there to the 1627 sourcebook to make sure everything mentioned in 13G gets properly covered in the sourcebook, which BTW is a myth book; the model for the sourcebook is the myths articles in Wyrms Footnotes. The sourcebook will be useful for all Gloranthan-based role-playing games and not only for 13G, since all Gloranthan RPGs now heavily revolve around hero questing – and hence myths.

New RuneQuest core rules. Public playtesting in the next few weeks. Missing sections: hero quests, new sorcery [note that there won’t be any Malkioni in the core rules, only Grey Sages will have a few sorcery spells]. The full manuscript is scheduled for Gen Con. The new rules are designed to be backwards compatible with all the reprinted RQ2 products, which are going to be back in publication and printing.

Six Ages (successor to King of Dragon Pass): finished writing, missing the art. Looking at end of 2016/beginning of 2017. Set in Glorantha, but not in Dragon Pass [yours truly suspects Esrolia].

Gods War is being kickstarted this summer, by Petersen Games and Moon Design.

Wyrms Footnotes issue 16 will gather RQ material that won’t have made it in the published book.

Once the rules books are out, supplements will have to be rolled out… An “Esrolia Pack” is in the works (the published Nochet map was the first step).

The new Dragon Pass boardgame by Chris Klug is currently being playtested. It is designed to be played in 90 minutes. The aim is to kickstart it at the end of 2016.

Reiner Knizia card game: each player is a Praxian khan raiding the other clans. Fun, fast-paced filler game (20- to 30-minute play time).

Trollball proof-of-concept boardgame using miniatures from Petersen Games. A few pictures were posted on G+. No schedule at the moment.

HeroQuest: Glorantha in French, directly published by Moon Design— no intermediaries!

Jeff and Ken also mentioned that Glorantha should not be seen as a “scholarly” world any longer: GMs now have the Guide at their disposal, and beginning players should have enough understanding of their starting locale thanks to the character generation process in RQ4.

FRIDAY 6 MAY, afternoon

Rightly expecting not to be in great shape for Chimériades, I hadn’t booked anything for the Friday afternoon slot. I have thus been able to leisurely walk through the castle and its gardens to see the various RPG tables, and more.

Basking in the sun... *

...and playing RPGs *

Stéphane Gallay was playtesting Gingerbread (working title), his new RPG in which the players are students in a super-hero academy. Readers of a well-known French graphic novel will feel at home. I didn’t play, just watched, but the system seemed quite reminiscent of Hero Wars.

Stéphane and his playtesters *

I’ve also enjoyed listening to my friends playing Grégory Privat’s Bimbo RPG. I love how the game “forces” the players to be creative both in how they describe their character’s actions and in how they have to talk in-character.

Bimbos in the sun †

I have drooled at length in front of a copy of Cthulhu Wars painstakingly painted by Grégory Privat that you could win thanks to the lottery (alas, I didn’t).

Lottery prize *

There were nice Gloranthan decorations everywhere in the castle, this year being the 50th anniversary of Glorantha (but more on this later), including some unpublished illustrations!

Some friends of mine were playtesting the 21st century version of an old favourite of ours…

Er, I think the Red Emperor is dead! †

Also the usual publishers’ and resellers’ booths, etc. Other friends playing, and various games being demo'ed.

FRIDAY 6 MAY, night

Another piece of epic Gloranthan gaming! Early in the year, Éric Vanel had adapted the BattleLore rules to Glorantha for an in-campaign battle that we played during the course of his HQ campaign. Since we all loved how the game had played out, he decided to use those same rules to render the battle of Dangerford (from the Coming Storm) as a standalone wargame.

I acted as the co-referee. We had 5 players on the Lunar side, 4 representing the Sartarite rebels. The game played really well, the only problem was that the players who had received the rear-guard counters didn’t get to play much. Also, the Sartarite units exaggeratedly benefited from a scaling error on the map that made the Creek much wider than it really is, hence decreasing the efficiency of the Lunar units that use ranged weapons and/or magic. Hopefully a version 2 (for THE KRAKEN?) will fix these small shortcomings because except for these the game was fantastic.

Map and counters *

Gaming Aid *

And... Action! †

SATURDAY 7 MAY, 10:30, second panel: Ken Rolston: What I’ve Left Undone

This had been advertised more as a workshop than a panel, so I had assumed we would be creating stuff with Ken Rolston. We ended up mostly listening to Ken talk about CRPGs –which I hate– but him being the Rune Czar it was still very interesting.

Ken globally talked about failed games, how he pitched them to bigwigs, what they could have been… The one that caught my attention most was ‘Exile’, a mix of Civilization and Oblivion, and ‘Markland’, pitched as Sartarites settle the New World, or Elves and Dwarves settle a post-Hobbit Desolation of Smaug. I also remember this particular sentence: “Managing artistic people is like herding cats”.

Oh, and Ken did mention a single failed tabletop RPG: Seals of Satan (published in White Wolf Magazine issue No.42) with, er, cute seal-like demons firing death rays from their eyes!

The Rune Czar Talketh *

SATURDAY 7 MAY, afternoon

The usual perk at these cons is that you get to play with the very authors of the games, and so I managed to secure a place at Camille Guirou’s The Cardinal's Blades table to enjoy her adventure le Serpentaire (the word means both ‘Secretary Bird’ and ‘Ophiuchus’ in French, and both meanings played an important role in the scenario…). It was really one of the most enjoyable adventures I’ve ever played, with a breathtaking in medias res opening, great locations (Provence in the 17th century), and possibly the best NPC I’ve ever been confronted to. Loved it!

*

†

While I was enjoying Camille’s game, some other lucky friends were playing Scions of Ralzakark with Ken Rolston. This was a scenario Ken had already GM’d at THE KRAKEN… Can you believe I missed it twice?!

†

SATURDAY 7 MAY, late afternoon and night

Alas, alas, even the best cons get to an end, and we had a moving closing ceremony, during which Philippe confirmed there would be another con in 2018.

After the traditional barbecue dinner (yes there were vegetarian patties) the organisers had a big surprise for us Gloranthan fans: a score tartes du Luberon with Gloranthan runes on them! This is part of what makes the Chimériades so special.

Beauteous!! †

Thank you, thank you, thank you again to Camille Guirou, to Philippe Auribeau, to Rémy Croxatto and to all the other organisers, and see you in 2018!

Un jour, toujours

The ugly pictures (unmarked or marked *) are by tours truly.

The beautiful pictures (marked †) are by Stéphane Gallay, under a creative commons licence.

Chimeriades & RuneQuest 4

Long-time readers of this blog know that there are three conventions I love and have almost never missed: the one in Bacharach in Rhineland-Palatinate, THE KRAKEN in Brandenburg, and Chimériades in the Luberon.

Well, Chimériades V starts tomorrow, and I am oh! so excited to go. The highlight for me will be Chaosium's own Jeff Richard making the first public appearance of the new RuneQuest rules (which Jeff calls ‘RuneQuest 4’ — not sure if that will be the official name though). I will be playing in a game refereed by Jeff on Thursday night — watch this space if you're interested by my first impressions!

The Hanging Garden, Issue No.5 – Updated!

Issue No.5 of The Hanging Garden has been updated with a full-length article about Boot Hill by Travis Casey. Enjoy!

The Hanging Garden, Issue No.5

Howdy dear readers. The fifth issue of my free e-zine, The Hanging Garden, is available for your perusal and enjoyment from the usual page.

Issue No.5 is a special "Old West"-themed issue. It contains several interviews, articles, and three full-length scenarios (two for Basic Roleplaying, and one for GURPS).

Feedback and comments are welcome, as usual. Cheers!

FG Con: Revolution D100 On-Line Demo Game

As implied by its name, FG Con is an on-line convention devoted to the popular on-line tabletop RPG platform Fantasy Grounds. The on-line convention is taking place from 8 to 10 April 2016.

An official adaptation of the Fantasy Grounds engine to Revolution D100 has been available for some time now for a select group of happy playtesters. Yours truly can testify that it is really a top-notch adaptation that almost gives you the same experience as playing in the same room as your friends.

Paolo Guccione, the author of Revolution D100, will be demoing it on Saturday 9 April from 9pm to 1am CET. You may register here.

Paolo may run further on-line demos, depending on how many people subscribe. Paolo is an 'Ultimate GM', meaning players needn't have a Fantasy Ground licence. You can play in his games for free – just download the software and play. You will also receive a link to the latest version of the Revolution D100 SRD, and a library module with the most important tables and charts.

The Sea Cave

I have received the PDF of the RuneQuest Old School Source Pack from the RuneQuest Classic edition kickstarter. It is a collection of all the very early RQ supplements, incl. The Sea Cave, which is an original unfinished and unpublished adventure by Greg Stafford. The Sea Cave is rather in the style of the quite lethal old school adventures of the time. Here are a few salient points I enjoyed whilst reading it [WARNING– MAJOR SPOILERS]:

“When adventurers are slaughtered or run screaming, the Monsters get experience rolls too.” I guess this is to make the adventure tougher should the PCs return to it. This sentence has a nice Monsters! Monsters! flavour to it which, being a huge T&T fan, I have really enjoyed reading.

At the beginning of the scenario, there is a section dedicated to tides in Glorantha, and to how the exact day the characters start the adventure may influence its outcome.

The text makes a difference between Denizens (remain in the same area) and Inhabitants (move from one area to the other) of the Sea Cave. The referee must decide where the latter will start off at the beginning of the scenario. This is decision is a mix of referee agency and of a random die roll influenced by the tide.

Rather than wandering monsters, the referee has a table to roll up random items in the various locations. The items go from the mundane (a shark tooth that was part of a necklace) to the hazardous (a magical skull that attacks the PCs) or the magical (an aluminium whistle). They are globally Gloranthan-themed, and contribute to making the adventure more than an average dungeon crawl.

The monsters themselves depart from the tedious monster-in-a-room-guarding-a-treasure design philosophy (or lack thereof) typical of the 1970s/1980s. The Trolls have family ties, know how to read and write, and do not get along well with the Sea Wyrm. The Mermaid also opposes the Wyrm. It is an interesting little monstrous ecosystem.

There is also a faux boss, which is a clever little twist. The PCs will think they have killed the boss,  collect the reward... but then the villagers who have hired them will still be plagued by mystery attacks at sea... possibly prompting a second foray into the Sea Cave, and making this adventure re-usable :)

Unfortunately, since this was an unfinished and unpublished adventure in the first place, the maps are quite terrible. Furthermore, a very short appendix at the end of the adventure explains that Greg had originally intended to add a temple to Cacodemon to the east of the cave complex; there are stats for the priest. Speaking of stats, they are handwritten on RQ monster/NPC sheets and are particularly difficult to decipher. I wish Chaosium had made the extra effort to print them rather than merely photocopying them.

All in all, it is a very decent adventure, possibly playable in a single session (depending on how long the PCs stay in the fishing village to investigate/hire a boat before heading to the cave).

The New RuneQuest - How It Will Use Runes

The fourth instalment in Jeff Richard's design notes about the new RuneQuest is available on the Chaosium blog. This latest blog entry is mostly devoted to Gloranthan Runes and to how they will be used in the new RuneQuest.

In my opinion, there are two salient points: (1) Rune skills, and (2) Rune points.

Runes, much like in the short-lived RuneQuest Adventures in Glorantha by The Design Mechanism, will be directly expressed in gaming terms by straight percentile skills, and quite high-level ones too.

Apparently the player will have to choose three elemental runes and receive interesting starting scores in them; the example mentioned in the blog entry is Air 60%, Moon 40%, and Fire 20%. RuneQuest Adventures in Glorantha usually envisioned a single elemental rune at start.

The other runes (see my earlier post) function in opposing pairs; their total being always 100%, the worst score in one of them is necessarily going to be 50%. Not bad for a starting skill.

Apparently Rune Magic has been singled out as one of the weak areas of RQ2, what with sacrificing your POW for single use spells. Apparently a new mechanism will be implemented: Rune Points. RPs will fuel Rune Magic spells just like MPs fuel Battle Magic spells. They will still be ‘bought’ by sacrificing POW; however, it seems they will be easier to recover.

News From The Design Mechanism

I always hesitate before publishing this kind of blog entry.... I reckon most people reading my blog also scour the various D100 forums and G+ communities. But, well, who knows, maybe there are people who only read my blog, so here are the latest news from The Design Mechanism for your enjoyment.

1) RuneQuest 6 will be re-named Mythras. The book will be re-printed with the same content and the same cover illustration; only the name will change.

2) The next supplement out is a much-revamped incarnation of the former BRP monograph titled Classic Fantasy. There is a preview here, and the cover simply rocks:

This is so Old School! I love it.

Apparently it will be much more than a mere Old School supplement for RuneQuest 6; with Mythras firmly rooted in the ancient world and the bronze age, Classic Fantasy will be the basis for faux mediaeval adventuring using the RQ6/Mythras rules.

3) Rumours are re-surfacing again of Chronicles of Future Earth by Sarah Newton being re-written for the RQ6/Mythras rules set. Stay tuned...

The New RuneQuest - A Candid Retelling of 2015

In his third instalment about the 'new' RuneQuest, Jeff Richard quite candidly retells the whole Chaosium/The Design Mechanism imbroglio from last summer. Even though I was quite shocked at the news of the demise of RuneQuest Adventures in Glorantha at the time, I have come to understand the reasons behind this business decision, which, given the success of the RuneQuest Classic Edition kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, was certainly a sound one.

The New RuneQuest - Snippets of Information (cont'd)

The second instalment on Chaosium's blog about the birth of the 'new' RuneQuest is here.

TL;DR

• A short overview of what makes RuneQuest RuneQuest.
• A short overview of why RQ2 is superior to RQ3 and hence used as the basis for the 'new' RQ.
• Globally, this last blog entry sort of answers the sceptical remark I made yesterday about the draft being available for Gen Con: the 'new' RQ is more like a RQ 2.5, hence its short-term availability.

The New RuneQuest - First Snippets of Information

The Chaosium have released the first real snippets of actual information about the new incarnation of their flagship role-playing game (no, it's not the Call of Cthulhu). You can click here to get to the relevant post. I am sceptical about the“launching at Gen Con this year” bit of the article. The Gen Con is in August; a launch in August 2016 is tantamount to saying that the game is almost finished and in its very final playtesting phase, yet Steve Perrin has just recently jumped on board, and it seems any playtesting at the moment is restricted to the Chaosium inner circle, so....?

Anyway, what has caught my interest is not the aggressive time-line, it is the picture of the hand-drawn player character sheet:

I like the fact that we're ending up with way more runes on the player character sheet than in HeroQuest Glorantha or in the short-lived RuneQuest Adventures in Glorantha.
I also like the fact that this feature directly reverts Gloranthan cosmology as presented p146-149 of the Guide to Glorantha (but what about the other Form runes?).

The Man Is Back!

Steve Perrin, the man behind most of the original mechanisms used for the RuneQuest rules, is back! Here is the press release from Chaosium:

Steve Perrin joins design team for new Chaosium edition of RuneQuest

In the spirit of bringing the band back together, Chaosium is delighted to announce that Steve Perrin is joining the design team for Chaosium’s new edition of RuneQuest. "We knew that Steve Perrin’s place at the table, as both the creator and lead author of the original groundbreaking ‘78 and ‘79 editions of game, was a natural fit that harkens back to the genius and originality of RuneQuest", said Rick Meints, President of Chaosium.

In late 2015 Moon Design Publications and Chaosium successfully Kickstarted the RuneQuest Classic Edition campaign, a triumphant reissue of the iconic 2nd Edition of the RuneQuest rules and the supplements produced for it: Cults of Prax, Pavis, Big Rubble, Griffin Mountain, TrollPak and many others.

“We want to usher in the newest exploration of Glorantha with a tribute to the masterpiece opus of work that has come before. Part of Steve's role is to help insure that this edition contains the best possible game mechanics while maintaining backwards compatibility with RuneQuest 2", said Jeff Richard, creative director at Chaosium.

The new version of RuneQuest maintains backwards compatibility with earlier editions, while also containing a number of unique innovations that resonate with Glorantha, Greg Stafford's mythical campaign setting where RuneQuest started and to which it returns. This new edition incorporates Runes directly into both your character and the magic system you use, including their passions and motivations.

"The rules reinforce immersion in the setting even more than the original RuneQuest rules did, and ideas experimentally brought forth in Griffin Mountain reach their fruition", said Richard.

Seizing this unique chance to get this right, Chaosium has brought in a team of notable game designers to support Chaosium’s rebirth of RuneQuest, including Sandy Petersen (Call of Cthulhu), Ken Rolston (Paranoia, Elder Scrolls, RQ3), Chris Klug (James Bond 007 RPG, DragonQuest) and Jason Durall (BRP, Conan).

A special pre-release version of the new rules will be revealed at Gen Con later this year, along with introductory scenario sessions. A wealth of all-new campaign material and supplements for the new edition will follow.

RuneQuest Classic - If You've Missed The Kickstarter...

So, if you've missed out on the one and only Kickstarter crowdfunding project that you shouldn't have overlooked if you were a true-blue fan of Old School role-playing games, here is a chance to still be able to pre-order the 'new' version of RuneQuest 2, elegantly called RuneQuest Classic: link.

This is not a mere reprint. It comes with additional content such as a lot of Q&A from the 'RuneQuestions' column in Wyrms Footnotes (Chaosium's in-house organ), new appendices ('The Birth of the Minotaur' by Greg Stafford, precisions about Divine Intervention and Divination, 'What It Takes To Convince The Examiners' also by Greg, precisions about ghosts and spirit combat, and of course a full description of Rurik Runespear, Runemasters-style), a GM screen, and player handouts.

As a whole, the additional content amounts to 7 pages of small type in the appendices, and to various instances of boxed text interspersed throughout the main text of the rulebook.

Hit Location Tables and Their Evolution

Note: I will restrict my post below to humanoid hit locations, which are anyway the ones I use most when I'm refereeing RuneQuest, as my favourite “monsters” are human opponents. I also believe humanoid hit locations are the ones that have been modified most in the various incarnations of RuneQuest and of the Basic Role-Playing System.

RuneQuest 2 had a simple universal hit locations table, which was applied to a humanoid target irrespective of whether the attack was via a mêlée weapon, a missile, or a spell. The table is the one in the first column (Mêlée) in the illustration at the bottom of this blog post. There were a few modifiers to be taken into account if the attacker was on horseback or riding a high llama (one of the bizarre riding animals used by the Praxian animal nomads).

RuneQuest 3 kept the same table as RuneQuest 2 whilst restricting its use to mêlée combat and adding a second, slightly different, table for the results of missile combat — which made perfect sense. Please refer to the tables in the first two columns (Mêlée and Missile) in the illustration at the bottom of this blog post.

The Basic Role-Playing System “Big Gold Book” (BGB) used the same exact tables as RuneQuest 3.

RuneQuest 6 has introduced a slightly different table, which is supposed to replace both the Mêlée and the Missile tables from RQ3 and the BGB; please refer to the table in the third column (Unified) in the illustration at the bottom of this blog post.

Personally, and in contrast to the latest outcries about Chaosium splitting the RQ fanbase again with yet another version of the RQ rules, I find the various incarnations of the rules sufficiently similar that I can use them interchangeably; e.g., I have recently run my RQ6 Swenstown scenario twice, and I've used the RQ2 hit locations both times... only realising whilst re-reading the various rules sets to write this blog post that they were actually different!

Anyway, my suggestion is to use a mix of the RQ2/3 and RQ6 hit location tables as follows: the first column for mêlée combat, the second column for missile combat, and the third column in all other cases (e.g., falls, spells) or if you only want to use a single hit location table.

Also please remember that a combatant in a superior position adds +1 to the D20 roll for hit locations.

Gloranthan News from Dragonmeet 2015

Dragonmeet is an annual British tabletop gaming convention that takes place in early December in London. It is one of the largest UK conventions and it is attended by many professionals and famous guests.

Unfortunately, I have never been able to attend, as London has become ridiculously expensive. Anyway, after the two German conventions (Eternal Con and The Kraken) and the Chimériades in France, it's certainly the most important convention for European fans of the world of Glorantha, so I'm sure I'll make the extra effort one day.

Moon Design/Chaosium have made quite a number of announcements at Dragonmeet regarding the future of the world of Glorantha and of the Chaosium role-playing games, which have put in turmoil the various forums and G+ communities of the Gloranthan aficionados so, even though I was not present, I have decided to copy a post by Steve from BRP Central for the benefit of the readers of this bog. Aren't I nice.

• The RuneQuest 2 re-issue (via the Kickstarter) is progressing well, and the rulebook itself is ready. Jeff held up a softback "test" copy printed via Lulu.com.
• A European fulfilment centre is being set up and will start from February 2016, including the HeroQuest: Glorantha rulebook.
• Prince of Sartar - a colourist has already been brought on board, despite this being a later Patreon goal. The next chapter is New Pavis, then the following chapter will be the classic Cradle scenario. The Patreon campaign means that Prince of Sartar can continue; before this there were problems given that this isn't a product being sold, it's a free web comic. There will be a monthly Google hangout with Jeff and Kalin for backers.
• The Glorantha sourcebook (for 13th Age, but rules-free) is waiting on the final 13th Age in Glorantha manuscript so that Jeff can finish it off. Art is being commissioned now.
• The Coming Storm - this advances the timeline from 1618 to 1625. Apparently Greg has joked that "it only took 40 years" to advance these seven years! The first book is the setting, the second is the campaign. It is planned that all the major NPCs will be depicted in art in the books, and many examples of this (great!) artwork were handed round, plus several maps.
• The Gods War boardgame, by Sandy Petersen, is on course for a Kickstarter in 2016.
• The “new” RuneQuest will be later in 2016.
• Trollpak (the new three-volume version, not to be confused with the reprint stretch goal in the RQ2 Kickstarter) is at the stage of commissioning art.
• The Guide to Glorantha will be reprinted in 2016, in the same format as before. It won't be in general distribution though.
• The RQ2 reprint might be in stores, or it might not. This is being looked into.
• Sandy Petersen is very involved in the “new” RuneQuest.
• Jeff's very brief comments on what the “new” RuneQuest will be have been reported (and mis-reported) elsewhere [e.g., here], and are better explained in Jeff's forum posts on the RQ forum and in the Chaosium press release.
• The Reiner Knizia Gloranthan board game that was previously announced by Chaosium was referred to by Jeff as "Khan of Khans". It's set in Prax, and a key theme seems to be stealing stuff from other players.
• Jeff announced that in late 2016 there will be a Kickstarter for a "re-modelled" Dragon Pass board game. This is being totally revamped by Chris Klug, it's not just a reprint. Basic KS goals will include cardboard figures for Harrek, Jar-Eel etc, with stretch goals for plastic figures. It is aimed for between 2 and 5 players and around 90-100 minutes of play.

Entropic News

the beloved BGB

A few weeks ago, I asked, somewhat rhetorically and jokingly: Is D100 Dead?, because of the news from early this autumn that Chaosium would be scrapping the 2008 incarnation of the Basic Role-Playing system, fondly known amongst aficionados of the BRP system as the “Big Gold Book” (BGB), and the only one currently available.

[Yes I know about OpenQuest and Legend.]

Well, it now seems we're soon going to experience quite the opposite of the death of the D100, i.e., a plethora of D100-based systems! For those of you who do not follow G+, the gaming forums, etc., here are the latest news:

• The BGB will indeed be scrapped, and replaced with a new generic product called BRP Essentials, itself based on the classic RQ2 rules and “incorporating 30 years of progress”.
• The Design Mechanism isn't working on the new Gloranthan version of RuneQuest any longer (see announcement here); as a result, RuneQuest 6 will continue under a new name.
• Alephtar Games' Revolution D100 has successfully funded.

It hence appears that we will soon have three simultaneously in-print D100-based engines: BRP Essentials, the as-yet-unnamed generic D100 system by The Design Mechanism, and Revolution D100 by Alephtar Games.

These are the generic D100-based role-playing games; I'm not even mentioning that there are going to be two in-print Gloranthan D100-based FRPs in 2016: RuneQuest Classic and the “new” RuneQuest! An embarrassment of riches...

RuneQuest Classic Edition Crowdfunding Campaign

Funded in 4½ hours.... More than 1,000 backers... Reached most of its stretch goals...

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR??