Here's my review-
I've got the 4th edition Runequest rules. There isn't much of Glorantha in it. There are runes but they don't work like in Glorantha. They are items which you find and if you sacrifice 1 Power you integrate them. This then allows you to have certain special powers and you are able to learn 'rune-magic' which is pretty much like RQ3 battle magic. You have a % chance of casting these spells which is pretty low. There are no obvious restrictions on which runes you can integrate so it looks like anyone can integrate a chaos rune if they find one. Sometimes you need wierd runes to cast common spells e.g a disorder rune to do a disrupt. There is also a metal rune which you need for most weapon spells. The spells cost lots of cash to learn - e.g. 800 silver pieces for 4 point spell such as Bladesharp 4. Its not clear where this cash goes exactly - someone spends 4 days teaching you the spell and there is some cost for 'materials'. Unless 'materials' cost a lot then people who teach spells are going to live in palaces! There are some generic RQ3 type gods/cults in the book - these aren't associated with particular runes. There is a cult of the Storm King wo have a duty to 'fight the forces of Chaos'. They have a cult spell (this means they teach it) called Skybolt which calls a bolt of lightning from the sky. The rune for this is chaos so to cast it they have to integrate a chaos rune as best as I can work out the rules!
The actual game system is 'broken' in several places and in others
unclear. I don't want to go into the ghastly details too much so
I'll just state a few of the issues (they are discussed at length on
the forums on the Mongoose site):
1. The game has a painful process of opposed rolls for deciding the
success or failure of opposed tasks which involve making two
separate rolls on the active skill %. It isn't clear what the result
of 'criticals' is in the first of these rolls and anyway the whole
thing is pretty laboured.
2. Dexterity is a true killer stat in the game because it decides
the number of attacks and parries or dodges you get in combat. If
your DX is low you are probably doomed because opponents will get
unopposed attacks against you.
3. Melee weapons other than some two-handed weapons do very low
damages (even on a critical hit). For example an average person in a
metal helmet can take several critical sword blows to the head
without going down. With all the parrying and dodging going on many
fights will take absolutely ages.
4. The game has a wierd system where if your chance of hitting is
over 100% then both parties to a conflict half their chance of
hitting. This is broken because it means that as you go over 100%
you start to get worse vs weaker opponents. e.g if you are 98% and
your opponent is 40% that's a lot better than if you are 104%
(halved to 52%) vs 40% (halved to 20%).
5. They got rid of the opposed stat rolls out of older versions of
RQ without replacing them with anything that makes sense.
The game has hero points in it which you can use to make re-rolls or save up for special abilities.
It had advanced character generation rules in which a hero level character is at least 31 years old, has about 8 or 9 different integrated runes, has some skills at about 110% and may be a runelord if they spend all their hero points on it. Of such things are heroes made!
You get some creature stats in the book. Most of these seem to be Gloranthan but others don't - especially the dragon!
A table of incomes and tables of costs are given. For example a plate breasplate will set you back a 4500 silver pieces and it appears that average income is about 4 silver per day.
Overall it seems pretty unlikely that we would play this game without making a lot of changes. However it could be useful for interpreting the meaning of any scenarious etc. published.
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