[RQ-Rules] The End of Glorantha - Now What?

[Stephen Posey]

peter at maranci.net wrote:
> Sorry it took me a couple of days to follow up, but life intervened.
> 
> Rather than quote everyone and respond to each point, let me thank
> everybody and try to address the main themes:
> 
> About Glorantha: I have to admit that one of my concerns is the possibility
> of publication for the new BRP. BRP won't be using the Glorantha setting at
> all, I presume. So if a scenario depends TOO much on Glorantha, I won't be
> able to modify it and submit it to Chaosium. Not that that's my sole reason
> for living, or anything, but it helps a lot when writing to think that
> there may eventually be a commercial market for it.

Dunno, I thought one of the motivations was to have a system to match 
and support the Moon Design reprints. That was nominally what the "BRP 
Player's Guide" and "Magic Book" were all about, no?

BTW, I note that Chaosium has restocked most of the monograph titles 
that had disappeared a couple of weeks back, but not those titles.

> But there's a deeper issue here: the ways in which the shadow of Glorantha
> falls over the RQ system. For example, the Spirit/Divine/Sorcery spell
> systems. These have built-in Gloranthan presumptions which are NOT
> necessary to the RuneQuest system. Other magic systems work just as well in
> RQ. If you want to simulate Middle Earth magic, or graft in Spell Law, or
> damn near anything else, it's really not hard to do. There could
> potentially be hundreds of magic systems for RQ, depending on what you want
> to portray in your campaign. Picking just one, or just a few, limits the
> system as a whole.
> 
> I don't know. I suppose if I had my choice I'd like to see Chaosium come
> out with lots of supplemental magic systems as years go by. But that
> *would* make it difficult to write scenarios for Chaosium - depending on
> which magic system(s) you use, you'd be losing potential readers. The same
> problem applies even to adventures published on my site. Complicated.

Having various "official" magic systems doesn't seem to have hurt GURPS 
much.

I think a simple core system (something like the one in Magic World 
perhaps? which actually pretty closely resembles RQ3 sorcery) with the 
option of expansion would work as a foundation; then other systems could 
be added as needed for particular settings.

> Say, do you think that Chaosium might "update" CoC to use the new RQ/BRP
> rules? Maybe put ALL of their current games into the same system? That
> would be great!

I think some kind of cross-fertilization is certainly possible.

I think it would be imprudent to require dedicated CoC players to have 
to acquire a second set of rules to play, so it should be kept a 
complete game.  You may recall that first edition CoC included a copy of 
the old BRP rulebook for its core rules and that didn't work so well.

> On a separate note, John Pare mentioned "a family and sort of anti-gaming
> wife" - I know what you mean. My wife isn't quite anti-gaming, but she
> doesn't "get" it. She's willing to try a one-shot game with some of my
> friends sometime soon, but I'm getting nervous - obviously I'll want to run
> something that she'll really enjoy. Then when my son learns to read I'll
> have a small gaming group available at all times...which would be paradise!
> :D

Hmmm, so just how many of us are in the boat of having a significant 
other that doesn't "get it" like that? <raises hand>

Stephen Posey
slposey at concentric.net