RuneQuest 1980
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Post Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 10:36 pm 
 

I've been collecting RQ lately, but don't yet have anything from 1980. Chaosium produced four titles: GateWay Bestiary, FOES, RuneMasters, & The Book of Treasure Plunder.

Judges Guild had the GM screen, Legendary Duck Tower, & Duck Pond. Duck Tower is on my list already, & Treasure Plunder has a great cover. But I'd like to hear from anyone who's read them- which are the best in terms of entertaining text & illustration?

  

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Post Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 11:40 pm 
 

Hi Sauromatian

FOES is just the bigger version of FANGS --- it's just lots and lots of pregen NPCs and monsters.  There's some nice Becker art, though.  I put it to use when I need RQ characters fast.

Gateway Bestiary is very much a Sandy Petersen work: you can see his interests in insect biology, Celtic mythology, and Lovecraft, pre-Call of Cthulhu.  It's all non-Gloranthan, if that matters to you.  There are some cool monsters (Lamiae, Headhangers) and some cockeyed stuff (the Chonchon).  A lot of them made it into the RQ3 Creatures book.  And they misspell "Runequest" on the cover.

Plunder is half (pretty boring) charts for generating troves and half descriptions of magic items that are very entertaining to read; they're all tied to Gloranthan cultures / religions, and typically  one-of-a-kind (or just quirky, depending on your tolerance for whimsy) like Rhino Fat, or Balls of Tails.  I really like it.  It's a good illustration of the differences between RQ and D&D.

RuneMasters consists of examples of über- powerful characters, two for each cult in Cults of Prax.  Good advice on the subtleties of how to make the most of magic, tactics, bound spirits, a retinue of followers, etc, but for the most part it's dry reading, because the sample characters' histories & personalities were cut from the original printing.  Rick Meints's Glorantha Classics reprint of Borderlands & Beyond includes Plunder + the material that was chopped from RuneMasters.  

I have Duck Tower & Duck Pond, but haven't read them.  Duck Tower is key-it-yourself, like In Search of the Unknown.

  


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Post Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 7:40 am 
 

stumbling tiger wrote:Gateway Bestiary is.. all non-Gloranthan, if that matters to you.


An interesting distinction, as it seems to mean more to the authors' sense of turf than to the game itself. The Judges Guild stuff has this Gloranthan flavor to it, but is nominally non-G. The Hellpits of Nightfang text actually seems to express confusion & frustration over the distinction. The giant aminals & dinosaurs of Gateway Bestiary are often given as an example of non-G content, but these creatures are present in Griffin Mountain, WB&RM, & Pamaltelan material. Then it gets even more arbitrary for 3rd edition.

stumbling tiger wrote: they misspell "Runequest" on the cover.


Things like that are the best part.

stumbling tiger wrote:Plunder is.. depending on your tolerance for whimsy


Also the best part of RQ. It takes itself so seriously at some times, then at other times it's all Looney Tunes.

stumbling tiger wrote:RuneMasters.. the sample characters' histories & personalities were cut from the original printing.


That's a real pity, that the most readable part is missing.  

stumbling tiger wrote:I have Duck Tower


This has eluded my grasp. It's come up on ebay recently sold in lots with other RQ/JG titles, but not alone. Anybody out there have one to sell or trade?

  


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Post Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 10:01 am 
 

Oh yeah, I forgot that City of Lei Tabor was also published by JG in 1980. I've heard mosty unfavorable reviews, anyone care to differ?

But you gotta love those tiger feet:
http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-pic?picid=5392

This particular RQ-combat tactic is explained in blow-by-blow detail at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2sMuVPMkkk

  

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Post Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 12:05 pm 
 

sauromatian wrote:
An interesting distinction, as it seems to mean more to the authors' sense of turf than to the game itself. The Judges Guild stuff has this Gloranthan flavor to it, but is nominally non-G. The Hellpits of Nightfang text actually seems to express confusion & frustration over the distinction. The giant aminals & dinosaurs of Gateway Bestiary are often given as an example of non-G content, but these creatures are present in Griffin Mountain, WB&RM, & Pamaltelan material. Then it gets even more arbitrary for 3rd edition.


I haven't read anyone objecting to the giant animals.   There are plenty of big bugs in Trollpak and its descendants, and as you point out, dinosaurs all over Dragon Pass.

The Gloranthan/non-Gloranthan distinction means something to me as a reader, not as a player.  I don't give a hoot whether Nightfang, Allosauri, or Lei Tabor are "canonical" Glorantha or not; I use them in my game if I find them fun and convenient.  

To me as a reader, the absence of Glorantha in the Gateway Bestiary means there's no given social / mythological context for the monsters.  It reads more like the Fiend Folio than Cults of Terror.   More freedom for the GM, I guess, but I'm used to the fun of puzzling out the cultural story-material, and I miss it.  E.g.: "Hmm -- lamiae are weird / interesting.  I wonder if they're that way because of chaos?  Could they be Illuminated?  Do they ask Nysalor riddles?"  

It's the difference between the Dwarves in the Monster Manual and Stafford's notorious "Why I Dislike Mostali." http://www.glorantha.com/library/elder/ ... slike.html
Plenty of people objected to that article, but you won't forget it once you've read it.

About Lei Tabor : guess it depends how much you need jillions of stats.  I've read it and I remember almost nothing about it.  My eyes glazed over about the 3rd or 4th barracks directory.

  


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Post Posted: Tue Aug 07, 2007 4:44 am 
 

stumbling tiger wrote:Stafford's notorious "Why I Dislike Mostali."


That's a pretty good description, especially the part about dwarven food. The aversion to non-processed food is very Judge Dredd, while the Soylent Green part fits in nicely too.

He mentions tunnels connecting the Mostali to the whole of Glorantha. Rail-cars for mines are supposed to be far older than steam-driven surface trains.

The Molstali should be expected to have an entire cross-conteninal subway system, complete with brotherhoods of ticket-punching conductors. Finding a Mostali ticket-puncher in a hoard of plunder would give the bearer power to cancel runes, a combat advantage.

  

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Post Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 12:10 pm 
 

sauromatian wrote:I've been collecting RQ lately, but don't yet have anything from 1980. Chaosium produced four titles: GateWay Bestiary, FOES, RuneMasters, & The Book of Treasure Plunder.

Judges Guild had the GM screen, Legendary Duck Tower, & Duck Pond. Duck Tower is on my list already, & Treasure Plunder has a great cover. But I'd like to hear from anyone who's read them- which are the best in terms of entertaining text & illustration?


There's a fair bit of info on my (slighty creaky) website:
http://www.glorantha.info/runequest/cha ... osium.html

Hope that helps,
Rick Meints

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Post Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 7:19 pm 
 

rmeints wrote:There's a fair bit of info on my (slighty creaky) website


I've been using your site, but there is one point regarding 'Trolls & Trollkin' upon which I do not agree:

"Only completists like myself need to obtain a copy. If you own any of the versions of TrollPak you won't miss this."

It's not the most engaging read, but there are aspects of accuracy. Imagine you're a teacher assigning an essay to a student of trollish extraction, in which he is to tell the story of his people.

Trolls aren't the most bookish sort, so you wouldn't get a properly elaborated essay. You'd probably get just a bare list of information, maybe resembling the technical manuals used in the autoshop classes so popular with the trollish student body.

A troll's not going to be a Microsoft Office wiz either, so you'd get a primitive dot-matrix printout that looks like the same block of data cut-&-pasted over & over again.

In other words, Trolls & Trollkin is authentic troll literature.

  

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Post Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 2:55 am 
 

Hi,

Runequest seems to be having a bit of a revival - it was my biggest seller at UK Gencon.

Cheers,
Malc

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Post Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 3:37 am 
 

lawrenson wrote:Hi,

Runequest seems to be having a bit of a revival - it was my biggest seller at UK Gencon.

Cheers,
Malc


Runequest has always sold very well, esp the hard to find stuff!

Brette:)

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Post Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 4:51 am 
 

Hiya,

hmm... not so much in the UK.

A lot of the stuff I sold last weekend I'd had for AGES  :D

Sold more than D&D.


Anyone know anything about Children of the Red Goddess, while I'm here?  :D

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Post Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 6:03 am 
 

lawrenson wrote:
Anyone know anything about Children of the Red Goddess, while I'm here?  :D


I'm assuming that you mean the Apprentice Guild one, from memory an unauthorised release for ruequest and hence very collectable, come up very infrequently and goes for very good $$

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Post Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 8:23 am 
 

Yeah, thats its.

I've not seen one ever go on Ebay (not that I've looked too hard I will admit)  :D

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Post Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 1:22 pm 
 

rmeints wrote:

There's a fair bit of info on my (slighty creaky) website:
http://www.glorantha.info/runequest/cha ... osium.html

Hope that helps,
Rick Meints




Any knowledge of this item: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0172112400



There are no hard cover RQ rulebooks that I spotted in your product lists save the GW RQ3 ones, and this definitely isn't one of them.

  


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Post Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 2:43 pm 
 

g026r wrote:

Any knowledge of this item:  
** expired/removed eBay auction **


There are no hard cover RQ rulebooks that I spotted in your product lists save the GW RQ3 ones, and this definitely isn't one of them.




I believe that book was once covered by a dust-jacket (thats why when they appear without it, it looks very strange).



I am not sure if it was a limited edition issue.



More knowledgeable people can chime in but I have seen it before, but not very often.


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Post Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 4:37 pm 
 

The dust jacket has the same color cover as the 1979 book and 1981 box. I've noticed two come through ebay in the last 4 months, going for $40-60 with the jacket.

When I lost the auction for one of them, it became an obsession to find everything I could; previously I only had an ultra-common Broken Tree Inn reprint, now I have everything before the boxed set but Gateway Bestiary. Just be careful is all I'm saying; that runemagic is powerful stuff.

  


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Post Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 6:09 pm 
 

sauromatian wrote:When I lost the auction for one of them, it became an obsession to find everything I could; previously I only had an ultra-common Broken Tree Inn reprint, now I have everything before the boxed set but Gateway Bestiary. Just be careful is all I'm saying; that runemagic is powerful stuff.


I've already got the 2nd ed. rules somewhere.  For the time being, I've been concentrating on the AH 3rd stuff, (I know, not as popular/good, but gotta start somewhere.) but picking up earlier things off and on when they catch my eye or don't seem too expensive.

In other words, you don't have to warn me.  I already know the dangers. ;)

  

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Post Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2007 7:57 pm 
 

sauromatian wrote:
When I lost the auction for one of them, it became an obsession to find everything I could; previously I only had an ultra-common Broken Tree Inn reprint, now I have everything before the boxed set but Gateway Bestiary. Just be careful is all I'm saying; that runemagic is powerful stuff.


Ah, collectors creep - it's a curse :roll:


You can never have too much of something you didn't need in the first place.

  
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