<rant mode>
Believe it or not, there are some of us who prefer the RuneQuest rules system to the world of Glorantha. Were I forced to chose between the two, I'd pick RQ in a flash.
Nothing against Glorantha, although I really do think it has become over-burdened with boring and over-complicated detail. It was a great world in the time of RQII, but picayune details and ever more esoteric arguments have sharply reduced its usefulness to those whose main goal is to have fun while roleplaying -- that is, without memorizing an encyclopedia and spending half the session arguing over Gloranthan "correctness".
Don't get me wrong; I like Glorantha. Hell, I publish RQ/Gloranthan scenarios on one of my web pages, but I try to make fun the first priority. The point is to make Glorantha adventures that can be played by gamers who *aren't* Gloranthan scholars, or even very familiar with the world. I've been glad to hear that some of my scenarios have been used in non-RQ and non-Gloranthan campaigns.
What captivated me about Glorantha when I first started playing wasn't a library of discussion about Elmal/Yalmalio; it was that it was a world that was *different*, with a strong, definite, immediately understandable flavor of its own. It welcomed imagination. But somewhere along the line that quality seems to have been lost. Glorantha is no longer a friendly world to newcomers.
RuneQuest remains the most clean, logical, and useful RPG system I've ever seen. Yes, improvements are certainly possible -- but for all the talk of "new developments" in roleplaying which have left RQ behind, I've seen no examples of superior basic mechanics (though I'm keeping my mind open).
Since RQ as we knew it seems almost certainly dead, gamers whose primary allegiance is to the system rather than Glorantha are royally screwed. Hell, there isn't even an RQ-rules list! Passing material around on the net and on web pages seems to be the only way to get support for the system.
It's hard not to be pissed off about that.
</rant mode>
-->Pete
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Maranci pmaranci_at_tiac.net Malden, MAEditor, Interregnum RPG/Science Fiction APA/magazine -- email for info. Interregnum WWW home page: http://www.tiac.net/users/maranci/index.html FRP adventures, art and more: http://www.tiac.net/users/maranci/rq.htm
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