Runequest is being accumulated, maybe even collected.
Collection is of course the lesser of two stages, the bigger and better one is playing it with friends.
For the bulk of my awareness of table top role playing games (TTRPG’s), D&D has held little interest, being the home of the ubiquitous “murder hobo”, game-ish abstraction and over popular fantasy stereotypes I grew tired of a long time ago and Runequest which was too weird by far.
Weird?
Runequest is a curious mash-up of Ancient Greek, Babylonian, Persian, Indian (sub-continental), Indian (American) and Celtic cultures as realised through 1970’s era eyes. Compared to D&D, which standardised Tolkien-European fantasy ideas into mundanity, Runequest is highly original, or more to the point anti establishment at it’s cre.
The game mechanics, world building, setting and the overall feel of RQ is clearly and openly not a D&D clone (as intended), more of a revolutionary departure, a path taken in the earliest years of the hobby by creators who shunned the “normal” fantasy baseline.
On the other hand, it shows it’s early, if naive roots proudly. Place names like “Apple Lane”, “Trade Think”, “Soggy Bottom”, “Woods of the Dead”, “Old Vampire Cave”, “Bloated Bear Inn” etc smack of 1970-80’s era early gamer on-the-run thinking drawing from prompts of that time like fairytales, personal experience, TV shows and an Ameri-centric take on popular fantasy culture, while at the same time being intimately and authentically small world, almost too true to not be real.
This is contrasted with a vastly more mature and thought through mythos and pantheon drawing on Indian (sub-continent), Indian (American/South American), ancient Mediterranean/Arabic and some original stuff, as well as an expanded and expanding world view. It is however a heavy load and something you have to pay into (the designers say not, but the reality is, you buy it, you buy into it).
The latest edition is heavily rooted in RQ culture. It is the Glorantha RPG no doubt. Early attempts to make it generic, the most generic probably being Legend which is a derivative of a derivative, a game that has effectively moved into the more traditional Euro-fantasy time/realm and shed all RQ ties, but is still an echo of RQ like most D100 games. The latest edition is a full wind-back with a mild refresh.
Do I get it?
Not really, not yet.
Like a lot of unfamiliar things, the more I read, the more I normalise it, but it is a world that was made for other’s needs and has a lot of baggage. Oddly the baggage is seemingly complete, but at the same time incomplete. “Your own Glorantha may vary” is the catch phrase that frees the players and designers from regimented adherence, but if you do not are you playing Glorantha as it needs to be played or is it just a skeleton of a system?
On top of that, it is not complete and completion adds more and more layers. Tough choice or the work done for you? This is always the way and something I have always struggled with.
Pay into the overhead of an established world or flesh it out as you go?
Runes, Gods and Goddesses, Hero wars, Hero quests, Satarites, Sword and Sandal technology etc are becoming more settled slowly, but some things like the Broo, are much more appreciated.
I realise the breakthrough will likely come when rolling it out to others, that point when you switch from student to teacher and that roll-out will be in the form of one of the excellent introductory adventures.
They give you the best helping hand I have come across in the GM pack and Starter set. I managed to pick both up for a little over $70au (about $40 U.S.) and have at hand (ignoring the RQ:G Core and other books I have for now), over 300 pages of rules, guides, adventures, maps and support.
Before this came a long forgotten RQ 1e campaign not long after it was introduced to Australia (giving away my age), some RQ2, but as a generic game, Legend, Mythras and other D100 games as well as the excellent and slightly more approachable 13th Age Glorantha. The last entry was the seed for the orchard that is now.
13th A:G is a complete contradiction.
My avowed dislike and rejection of all things D&D has two exceptions;
The One Ring spin-off Adventures in Middle Earth was the ideal low magic, low fantasy 5e salve, but I decided recently to just stick to TOR as the basis of a d100 game and let that one go and funnily enough, I have since embraced TOR fully without the distraction.
13th Age was over-the-top D&D mashed-in with a world I had little interest in Glorantha.
In a lot of ways, 13A:G is more D&D than D&D is. Old school values, with clean and high powered new school (within limits) mechanics that are all about play for real players at real tables by actual 3e and 4e edition designers. All the stubborn constraints that make D&D stale, boring, clunky, abstract, predictable and vanilla* are enlivened with simple but effective “house rules” or rejected outright.
Both “cure” the D&D malady differently, but the sheer audacity of their close hew to the oldest game in the genre, without succumbing to the stereotypes required, pleased me.
I will likely never play 13A:G, but that was never the point. It was to be mined for resources for my own 13A game (Dragon Pass as a location somewhere on/off the maps edge, with Runes as ICONs due to some type of ancient residual power from a previous age), but it can now also serve as a source book for RQ proper.
I must admit, the itch I need to scratch at the moment is the “kids on bikes” style game. Trying to avoid getting “Tales From The Loop”, mainly because the original book has plenty to inspire and the system is not D100, something I am trying to standardise my gaming to**.
Ok, getting off topic here.
Runequest for me is a comfortable bit of once uncomfortable, a slightly intriguing journey into a new landscape, but a stretch of somewhat tired mind-scapes.
The alternate path is also to use the RQ:G resources that attracted me to the system (Bestiary, Red Book) as the foundation of my own game, which will be the subject of another post.
*Yes I have owned most editions and played bits of all. Always the same experience, just a little different each time.
**M-Space with some “soft” rules (from Troubleshooters, Rivers of London etc) and game advice gleaned from TFtL itself will work, mostly about the “scale” of children’s minds and their world perception, I just need to get it done.