OK, well, I had my first game of RuneQuest last week and I thought I'd put down my thoughts about the setting and system, as far as I had been exposed to it. I should add that I actually have a copy of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and I have read it, so my observations do have a level of informed context.
Anyway, the game was a 'one-shot' very kindly put on by the chap who piqued my interest in this particular RPG over a pint a few weeks ago. The title of the adventure wasn't mentioned but I think it was one written by the GM himself, who I understand is contributing to some official Chaosium publications down the line.
As it was a one-shot (and presumably because the scenario will ultimately be an 'official' one that supports the rules) the characters were selected from the pre-generated ones included in the main rule book. I was to play Vasana, a heavy cavalrywomen (or maybe she was just big boned) with a buffalo for a mount. She was accompanied by her half sister, the charming priestess Yanioth. Helluva dancer too.
In addition we had a deserter from the hated Lunar Empire (Vostor), Sorala, a 21 year old 'adventurous and athletic' scholar, plus a shaman called Vishi Dunn, which name reminded me of the unfortunate Barney Dunn from the great Woody Allen film Broadway Danny Rose. This was a minor character (a ventriloquist with a stammer) who got beaten up by the mob though a case of mistaken identity. But this is completely irrelevant and I didn't tell anyone at the time.
Note that I'm not going to go into details about the adventure because it was a one-shot, it may be formally published by Chaosium (so no spoilers) and none of us had played RuneQuest before so we were going a bit slowly at first, until it all became a bit rushed towards the end because the venue we were using was about to close (actually it had closed). Nevertheless, it seemed to be a solid mystery-solving, unquiet spirit-resolving sort of scenario with ample role playing possibilities, so I hope it goes well once published.
So, what were my impressions of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha? Well, the positives are that the system is detailed, solid, skills based (rather than class-based, such as in Dungeons & Dragons) and there is no 'levelling up' (or down) as such. In fact many of the mechanisms are recognisable if you've ever played Call of Cthulhu (CoC), which isn't surprising as they both originated in the same era from Chaosium.
That said, some of the core mechanisms appear to be closer to 6th edition CoC rather than the current 7th edition. For example, it still has the old resistance table, no longer part of CoC.
However, the main and indeed over-riding feature of RuneQuest is that it is set in a rich and detailed 'bronze age' world with a well-established and extensive back story, thanks to the imagination of Gregg Stafford. The idea is that mythology and magic are in a sense 'real' in this world, so that everyone (and I mean everyone) is supposed to have a connection of some sort to one or more Gods and everyone is capable of using magic of one sort or another. At a superficial level this is a bit like CoC where all characters have a range of skills that they can develop as they wish. So far so good.
However, the fact is that I am personally very interested in the ancient world, particularly the civilisations of Mesopotamia (e.g. the Sumerians and Akkadians), not to mention the Medes, Assyrians and the peoples of what used to be called Asia Minor. I have had a long-standing interest in the Hittites and (a thousand years later) the Lydians, the archetypal bronze age asiatic Greek civilisation, and other more obscure peoples such as the Scythians, the Thracians and even the often overlooked Paphlagonians. All of these cultures have clearly influenced Glorantha (maybe not the last one).
And this is where it started to unravel for me. The problem is that there is so much real and fascinating history, culture, mythology and drama in the ancient world, that trying to learn a completely fabricated history and lore is really something I am not interested in. I know that Glorantha is meant to be a fantasy setting where things are made up and in theory you can decide how much detail you want to go into, but this setting is so detailed and exerts such an influence on all aspects of the game that it is difficult to avoid.
And although one can play the game and not necessarily delve too deeply into Glorantha's history or mythology (same thing), it is actually quite hard to disentangle the rules from the setting, so entwined are they. In this instance one can compare RuneQuest with D&D which has various settings, but these are not mandatory and are, let's face it, basically irrelevant to most adventures.
And sure, other RPGs such as CoC have 'lore' (the Mythos) but the players don't need to know anything about that in order to play the game. And in fact not knowing about the Mythos is usually a bonus as it ensures that it takes longer to go insane earlier than you otherwise would. That's why I like CoC because the game usually involves fairly normal folk gradually uncovering and then having to deal with the abnormal. Plus again I am familiar with and relate to the 1920s/1930s real world setting so there is no concocted back story to learn. But the point is that this is not lore, it's history.
The thing is that for RuneQuest the back story and the lore influences everything and it is difficult to get away from it. During full scale character creation (which we didn't do for the one-shot) your entire back story, including that of your parents and even your grandparents, can be meticulously mapped out and hooked into the preceding timeline and events of Glorantha
And the thing is that your character is then supposed to know all this, and to use that knowledge during the game to understand the world, to interpret clues and signs and to control how the character interacts with everyone and everything. Furthermore, your character is supposed to be deeply immersed in the mythology ('cults') of Glorantha and in fact won't survive long if not: there are no atheists in Glorantha.
This then, for me at least, made me anxious that I was not remembering, understanding or picking up the clues we were being given about the world and consequently that I was not operating within the parameters I was supposed to. For example we were told about various symbols carved into the lintels of a house and we were supposed to know that they indicated different tribes (i.e. that, significantly, the household was the product of a 'mixed marriage'), and therefore these were clues as to what might have happened and where we should go next. However, as players we just didn't know this (even though our characters would have) so we were a bit stumped and had to be thrown a bone or two by the GM
In fact it seemed to me that what the RuneQuest system actually does is imply that your character and therefore you as a player don't actually have free will; that your character is constrained by your motivations ('passions'), customs and social norms and that your available actions are confined by your personal history and wider social expectations. There is even a mechanism in the game where if passions become so well (over) developed the player can actually lose control of the character and decisions are made by the GM. Lack of agency and control is a classic stressor!
Also, as as aside, when thinking about Glorantha's history and lore, one thing I did notice was that most placenames in Glorantha are quite prosaic and descriptive, in fact typically D&D-like, with names such as Dragonrise, Stinking Woods, New Crystal City, Skull Ruins, Blackwell, Duck Point, etc., whereas the characters we were meeting generally had names that were unpronounceable and difficult to remember (or spell), almost like a different register to the world they lived in. This seemed incongruous to me.
So, in Glorantha we have a detailed, pervasive, lore heavy and somewhat ponderous setting (with some silly suspension of disbelief-busting innovations such as sentient warrior ducks), that influences everything.
And then we come to combat. The thing is that because the setting is so rich, detailed and frankly esoteric and the major feature of the game, it is not meant to be a combat oriented system, such as one usually finds in D&D. In fact when it does happen RuneQuest combat can be quite lethal if you are unlucky. And indeed, when combat did arise during our game (and it was the climax of the session) I found it to be quite ponderous too.
This is because the combat system includes a feature where it is determined randomly where your blow or missile hits your opponent (I'm not sure if you can intentionally aim for one area if you want to), if you can hit your opponent at all and can get through their armour.
So what happened in our case was that combat was taking a long time because damage kept landing in the same body part so that, for example, repeated hits on the left arm after its already been shot away and was slowly crawling off to hide somewhere didn't transfer to the rest of the target - it was just wasted hits. And by the same token there was always potential insta-death for your player if the enemy got a half decent hit to your bonce.
That said, I can see how a detailed combat system could work well, taking all sorts of factors into account such as specific armour locations, taking cover, reaction times, rounds fired and so on, which is how, for example, the combat system works in Cyberpunk 2020. But, what we found was that the hordes of enemies that suddenly popped up out the ground, like the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, just would not die, however many times we hit them, because (due to the luck of the dice) we kept hitting them in the same place.
Therefore, I think my point is that RuneQuest is a system rooted very deeply in the lore and orthodox back story of the invented setting. I can see how people could get into that, so that an extensive and profound understanding of the setting influences how characters/players perceive the world and interact with it. However, to then add a slow and complicated combat system to it, just makes everything, well... ponderous.
So, I suppose I've not been very positive here in this rambling discussion of my impressions of the game and I do realise that I've probably annoyed some people by just not 'getting it'. I do think the setting is interesting and complex and I could see how some people would get into it. But it is not for me. The combat system is probably OK, but combined with the setting I found it difficult to enjoy overall.
On the upside, thinking about this experience has crystallised more what I do want from an RPG, which means my focus going forward will be on Call of Cthulhu and variants (World War Cthulhu, Achtung! Cthulhu, Pulp Cthulhu, etc.), Traveller (I like a bit of sci-fi), possibly Cyberpunk 2020 (or more likely Cyberpunk Red, when it comes out) and even (crivens) D&D5e.
Anyway, the game was a 'one-shot' very kindly put on by the chap who piqued my interest in this particular RPG over a pint a few weeks ago. The title of the adventure wasn't mentioned but I think it was one written by the GM himself, who I understand is contributing to some official Chaosium publications down the line.
 |
| Vasana, why not dress for success. |
As it was a one-shot (and presumably because the scenario will ultimately be an 'official' one that supports the rules) the characters were selected from the pre-generated ones included in the main rule book. I was to play Vasana, a heavy cavalrywomen (or maybe she was just big boned) with a buffalo for a mount. She was accompanied by her half sister, the charming priestess Yanioth. Helluva dancer too.
 |
| Yanioth, enchanting. |
In addition we had a deserter from the hated Lunar Empire (Vostor), Sorala, a 21 year old 'adventurous and athletic' scholar, plus a shaman called Vishi Dunn, which name reminded me of the unfortunate Barney Dunn from the great Woody Allen film Broadway Danny Rose. This was a minor character (a ventriloquist with a stammer) who got beaten up by the mob though a case of mistaken identity. But this is completely irrelevant and I didn't tell anyone at the time.
 |
| A digression concerning Barney Dunn |
Note that I'm not going to go into details about the adventure because it was a one-shot, it may be formally published by Chaosium (so no spoilers) and none of us had played RuneQuest before so we were going a bit slowly at first, until it all became a bit rushed towards the end because the venue we were using was about to close (actually it had closed). Nevertheless, it seemed to be a solid mystery-solving, unquiet spirit-resolving sort of scenario with ample role playing possibilities, so I hope it goes well once published.
So, what were my impressions of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha? Well, the positives are that the system is detailed, solid, skills based (rather than class-based, such as in Dungeons & Dragons) and there is no 'levelling up' (or down) as such. In fact many of the mechanisms are recognisable if you've ever played Call of Cthulhu (CoC), which isn't surprising as they both originated in the same era from Chaosium.
 |
| Avengers assemble! |
That said, some of the core mechanisms appear to be closer to 6th edition CoC rather than the current 7th edition. For example, it still has the old resistance table, no longer part of CoC.
However, the main and indeed over-riding feature of RuneQuest is that it is set in a rich and detailed 'bronze age' world with a well-established and extensive back story, thanks to the imagination of Gregg Stafford. The idea is that mythology and magic are in a sense 'real' in this world, so that everyone (and I mean everyone) is supposed to have a connection of some sort to one or more Gods and everyone is capable of using magic of one sort or another. At a superficial level this is a bit like CoC where all characters have a range of skills that they can develop as they wish. So far so good.
However, the fact is that I am personally very interested in the ancient world, particularly the civilisations of Mesopotamia (e.g. the Sumerians and Akkadians), not to mention the Medes, Assyrians and the peoples of what used to be called Asia Minor. I have had a long-standing interest in the Hittites and (a thousand years later) the Lydians, the archetypal bronze age asiatic Greek civilisation, and other more obscure peoples such as the Scythians, the Thracians and even the often overlooked Paphlagonians. All of these cultures have clearly influenced Glorantha (maybe not the last one).
 |
| Hittites, circa 1200BC. |
And this is where it started to unravel for me. The problem is that there is so much real and fascinating history, culture, mythology and drama in the ancient world, that trying to learn a completely fabricated history and lore is really something I am not interested in. I know that Glorantha is meant to be a fantasy setting where things are made up and in theory you can decide how much detail you want to go into, but this setting is so detailed and exerts such an influence on all aspects of the game that it is difficult to avoid.
And although one can play the game and not necessarily delve too deeply into Glorantha's history or mythology (same thing), it is actually quite hard to disentangle the rules from the setting, so entwined are they. In this instance one can compare RuneQuest with D&D which has various settings, but these are not mandatory and are, let's face it, basically irrelevant to most adventures.
And sure, other RPGs such as CoC have 'lore' (the Mythos) but the players don't need to know anything about that in order to play the game. And in fact not knowing about the Mythos is usually a bonus as it ensures that it takes longer to go insane earlier than you otherwise would. That's why I like CoC because the game usually involves fairly normal folk gradually uncovering and then having to deal with the abnormal. Plus again I am familiar with and relate to the 1920s/1930s real world setting so there is no concocted back story to learn. But the point is that this is not lore, it's history.
The thing is that for RuneQuest the back story and the lore influences everything and it is difficult to get away from it. During full scale character creation (which we didn't do for the one-shot) your entire back story, including that of your parents and even your grandparents, can be meticulously mapped out and hooked into the preceding timeline and events of Glorantha
 |
| If your grandparents were unlucky, they met this guy (the Crimson Bat) |
And the thing is that your character is then supposed to know all this, and to use that knowledge during the game to understand the world, to interpret clues and signs and to control how the character interacts with everyone and everything. Furthermore, your character is supposed to be deeply immersed in the mythology ('cults') of Glorantha and in fact won't survive long if not: there are no atheists in Glorantha.
This then, for me at least, made me anxious that I was not remembering, understanding or picking up the clues we were being given about the world and consequently that I was not operating within the parameters I was supposed to. For example we were told about various symbols carved into the lintels of a house and we were supposed to know that they indicated different tribes (i.e. that, significantly, the household was the product of a 'mixed marriage'), and therefore these were clues as to what might have happened and where we should go next. However, as players we just didn't know this (even though our characters would have) so we were a bit stumped and had to be thrown a bone or two by the GM
 |
| Some runes, circa yesterday |
In fact it seemed to me that what the RuneQuest system actually does is imply that your character and therefore you as a player don't actually have free will; that your character is constrained by your motivations ('passions'), customs and social norms and that your available actions are confined by your personal history and wider social expectations. There is even a mechanism in the game where if passions become so well (over) developed the player can actually lose control of the character and decisions are made by the GM. Lack of agency and control is a classic stressor!
Also, as as aside, when thinking about Glorantha's history and lore, one thing I did notice was that most placenames in Glorantha are quite prosaic and descriptive, in fact typically D&D-like, with names such as Dragonrise, Stinking Woods, New Crystal City, Skull Ruins, Blackwell, Duck Point, etc., whereas the characters we were meeting generally had names that were unpronounceable and difficult to remember (or spell), almost like a different register to the world they lived in. This seemed incongruous to me.
 |
| Glorantha |
So, in Glorantha we have a detailed, pervasive, lore heavy and somewhat ponderous setting (with some silly suspension of disbelief-busting innovations such as sentient warrior ducks), that influences everything.
And then we come to combat. The thing is that because the setting is so rich, detailed and frankly esoteric and the major feature of the game, it is not meant to be a combat oriented system, such as one usually finds in D&D. In fact when it does happen RuneQuest combat can be quite lethal if you are unlucky. And indeed, when combat did arise during our game (and it was the climax of the session) I found it to be quite ponderous too.
This is because the combat system includes a feature where it is determined randomly where your blow or missile hits your opponent (I'm not sure if you can intentionally aim for one area if you want to), if you can hit your opponent at all and can get through their armour.
 |
| Front to back: Vasana, Sorala, Vostor, Vishi Dunn and Yanioth (plus NPC obscured) |
So what happened in our case was that combat was taking a long time because damage kept landing in the same body part so that, for example, repeated hits on the left arm after its already been shot away and was slowly crawling off to hide somewhere didn't transfer to the rest of the target - it was just wasted hits. And by the same token there was always potential insta-death for your player if the enemy got a half decent hit to your bonce.
That said, I can see how a detailed combat system could work well, taking all sorts of factors into account such as specific armour locations, taking cover, reaction times, rounds fired and so on, which is how, for example, the combat system works in Cyberpunk 2020. But, what we found was that the hordes of enemies that suddenly popped up out the ground, like the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, just would not die, however many times we hit them, because (due to the luck of the dice) we kept hitting them in the same place.
 |
| Cyberpunk 2020, soon to be replaced by Cyberpunk Red |
So, I suppose I've not been very positive here in this rambling discussion of my impressions of the game and I do realise that I've probably annoyed some people by just not 'getting it'. I do think the setting is interesting and complex and I could see how some people would get into it. But it is not for me. The combat system is probably OK, but combined with the setting I found it difficult to enjoy overall.
On the upside, thinking about this experience has crystallised more what I do want from an RPG, which means my focus going forward will be on Call of Cthulhu and variants (World War Cthulhu, Achtung! Cthulhu, Pulp Cthulhu, etc.), Traveller (I like a bit of sci-fi), possibly Cyberpunk 2020 (or more likely Cyberpunk Red, when it comes out) and even (crivens) D&D5e.
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