Enough on heroquests for the moment. Let’s talk a little about adventure design and the role of combat in RuneQuest adventures. In most video games and in 5e and Pathfinder 2, combat…
Tag: Playing RuneQuest
Devoting Yourself to a God
One more thought. In RQ, a character can really only overcome setting physics through magic, spirits, good equipment, and maybe the special abilities of a rune lord (multiple actions in a round)….
The RuneQuest Playloop
So now that we’ve dived down deep into heroquesting, lets pan the camera out and look at what actually is going on at the table in RuneQuest, or for that matter most…
Some HeroQuesting Thoughts IV
So how to do it? Well start with the RQ rules themselves. Let’s imagine we have a group of characters that are investigating the Old Vampire Cave on the darkest day in…
Playing RuneQuest
Having done some lovely test runs for RQ at Gamehole for almost entirely new players, here’s some observations: RQ combat is actually quite straightforward once you conceptualise Strike Ranks as the initiative…
Argrath as RuneQuest Background
Argrath lets us have a dynamic and rapidly changing setting WITHOUT requiring that the players or even the GM be responsible for the main thrust of the changes. So even if all…
Sartarite Geography
The average Sartarite knows of course of the twenty four tribes of Sartar, of the cities of Boldhome, Alone, Alda-Chur, Jonstown, Wilmskirk, Swenstown, New Pavis, Nochet, and Furthest, and likely Dunstop and…
Common Rune Magic
So as I get very near with the new version of the rules, here’s another thing I am wrestling with – Common Rune Magic. Now my original intent of creating Common Rune…
Cult vs. D&D classes
Thanks for all the comments on my post about character creation process! As always it is good to get your input and experiences, even if I end up taking a different approach….
RQ Character Creation
So when we look at RQ character creation, it seems to me that the most important decision is choosing a cult. That’s what defines your character more than homeland, background, or even…
Creating scenarios
Often my posts go deep into how some part of Glorantha works or how things interact. That’s a personal interest which is probably shared by a lot of folk in this group….
Treasure!
RQG doesn’t really have Treasure Ratings, for most sentient creatures, social status goes hand in hand with gear which goes hand in hand with skill and power. Here’s five tiers: What about…
Adventurers in the Hero Wars
Now the big Hero Wars stuff operates at an orthogonal (Neil’s favorite word that I now insist on using) with adventuring around in Sartar and Pavis / Big Rubble. We explore ruins,…
Top Five RuneQuest Cults
So it is absolutely no surprise to me that in our completely non-scientific poll with over 500 votes the most popular five RQ cults are: 5. Yelmalio: Always the most popular cult…
RuneQuest Campaign Heroquesting
So while I am on this whole “through a heroquest into your RuneQuest campaign” kick – here’s some ideas: Pay attention to the calendar. If the characters decide to adventure on a…
Turning an Adventure into a Heroquest
Turning an adventure into a heroquest is easier than you might imagine in RuneQuest. Let’s remember what a heroquest is at its most elementary – a heroquest is a commingling of the…
Layout of the Big Rubble
The Big Rubble is about 15 square km or 1500 hectares. That’s basically the Upper Westside of Manhattan or little bigger than Kensington plus Chelsea in London. Another way of thinking about…
Old Seshnela
Old Seshnela in the far west of Genertela is about 240 km wide from north to south and about 320 km long from east to west. It is about twice the size…
Hey that’s cool Jeff, but what the heck am I supposed to do with that in my Runequest game?
I posted two “deep” background articles on the nature of the Lunar Empire and Argrath’s role as a driver of change in Glorantha. Now a sensible question would be something like, “hey…
Introducing Gloranthan Gods and Cults
Gaming a lot of RuneQuest in a lot of different countries and with a lot of different cross-sections of the population as I do, a lot of people can easily get hung-up…
Game Time in RuneQuest
One of the design goals in RQG has been to incentivize passage of campaign time. An adventure a season (or so), means that the gamemaster can let the setting develop, and have…
Creating scenarios for RuneQuest
A few thoughts: Give the adventurers a reason why they are in the adventure. Maybe they are hired or sent on the adventure by a ruler or cult leader. Maybe their community…
Zero-to-Hero vs. Starting In Media Res
I’m a big fan of letting the players start with competent adventurers – and RQG (and indeed most games I work on) reflect that. This not only reflects the amount of sessions…
Making Sense of RuneQuest for Players
To really make sense of RuneQuest as a campaign setting, I think it is handy to give the players a short version of the monomyth and a little history. Not a lot,…
RuneQuest Campaign Styles
For the default setting of 1625, there are a couple of prevalent campaign styles I see a lot of: Exploration and dungeon crawls. Big Rubble, Upland Marsh, Snakepipe Hollow, Prax, and the Shadowlands….