As all you know RQ3 was a disaster. In the eighties I ran RQ games for some friends, but there was no supplements to buy and it was very hard going. Then in White Dwarf I saw an old advert about a RQ magazine called Tales of the Reaching Moon. I wrote off and received issue 2. The magazine was brilliant, also around this time I bought the Gods of Glorantha (vital if you didn't have Cults of Prax) and Genertela box sets.
Tales saved my campaign and probably RuneQuest. Without it the short lived but brilliant renaissance would never of happened. Crowned by MOB's Sun County the short run of RQ3 supplements gave me immediate joy and hope for the future of RQ.
Sadly RuneQuest has got lost, problems with gurus unable to decide on what the rules of RQ4 will be and then Glorantha the Game taking RuneQuest's fire, only to be put on hold itself has hammered the last nail on RuneQuest's coffin. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE RuneQuest (and Glorantha) but it is my certain belief that RuneQuest is dead. If RQ4 in Glorantha or even Pendragon-Glorantha the Game ever come out, I will be highly surprised.
GLORANTHA
Reading through the RQ2 & 3 supplements for Glorantha I gained the highest regard for Greg Stafford & co. The world and in particular the myths of Glorantha codified in those manuscripts blew my mind away. I found them not only far superior to our real world Greek and Norse myths, but easy to include in RuneQuest (as was their obvious purpose).
Greg was my role model for many years, a creative wizard that I really looked up to. Sadly since after King of Sartar my view of him has dropped greatly. King of Sartar was pretty good, but in the back of my mind I feel that maybe it could have been somewhat better (especially the Hero Wars documents). Elmal was a minor problem, which although it didn't bother me, was a sign of things to come which would cause me grief.
Greg's Glorious ResAscent of Yelm and Fortunate Succession on the first read looked impressive. However now I think they are a waste of paper. My problem is that they add a whole load of new gods and myths (and problems), without adding much to Glorantha in a gaming (RuneQuest) sense. Note that I'm not anti-Yelm or anything - I respect Yelm greatly.
On the digest there are long talks about multiple gods. Having different names for the same god for each region seemed silly, confusion for the sake of it, as did having muliple version of the same god, especially all those fucking suns. While the growth of gods was interesting to the those taking part, it shows just have far the gap between those who want to play RuneQuest in Glorantha and those who want to experiment with Glorantha has widened. I can't imagine how the Godmakers would fit all their gods into a RQ cults book. Generally the Godmakers seem very anti-rules. Does anyone remember when that chap published the Onslaught stats, they got very aggressive and bitchy.
What upsets me, is that much of new work contradicts or invalidates what could be called the old testament (Cults of Prax, the Monomyth in general). I know that the way forward is not quoting some out of print RQ2 supplement or fanzine, but why does all the new stuff have to be so radical and alien. I admit that I'm old fashioned - favouring the authoritarian and enjoyable old myths over the subjective and exciting new myths. Also so much of the talk is about the gods, rather than the world of Glorantha itself, but then again people talk about what interests them - which is fair enough.
With the death of RuneQuest my interest and thus how much I care about Glorantha has dropped. My interest was RuneQuest and Glorantha, not just Glorantha as a stand alone product.
David Ford
P.S. Regarding Flails
I recember reading that flails made short work of knights armour (and the knight in it no doubt), so I would agree with anyone saying that flails make great offensive weapons.
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