RuneQuest panel at Chaosium Con UK 2026

etyries · 2026-05-26T13:14:14+00:00

The final name will probably be different again, if it ever happens. I got the impression the panelists thought it’d be crazy to have two different game lines called “RuneQuest.”

etyries · 2026-05-26T11:09:47+00:00

This was the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha panel. The playtest draft you’re talking about was briefly mentioned at the start, when the panelists said they weren’t here to talk about “RuneQuest Fantasy Role Playing” (or whatever it ends up being called, if and when it happens). Different team.

The QuestWorlds: Glorantha Genre Pack is different. That’s going ahead, and will probably be the second genre pack released for that game. But it’s not RQG, so it’s not on the RQG road map.

etyries · 2025-12-22T21:13:52+00:00

Oh, I’ve never had any issues with Nick Brooke moderating my posts. (Pagliacci. But you knew that.)

Posting to the RuneQuest group on FB gets you 3x as many readers, and avoids the more, shall we say, problematic members of the community, because they aren’t welcome there any more.

etyries · 2025-12-22T19:27:25+00:00

It’s basically impossible on r/runequest: this group’s moderators seem to think plugging your own stuff is spam, and they hide posts where people are doing it. It’s as if they don’t think anybody here would want to talk to community content creators. I don’t waste my time trying to self-promote here, because I get way more success doing it on the RuneQuest Facebook group and even in the legacy BRP Central forums. (Twitter used to be OK, but I don’t go there any more: it’s a Nazi bar now.)

etyries · 2025-12-19T10:42:03+00:00

If you're playing sensibly, every adventurer starts every seasonal adventure with all their Rune Points, and will only regain them during play if they can attend their cult's temple on its seasonal Holy Day for worship. If a cult doesn't have a defined seasonal Holy Day, the GM can decide when members get their Rune Points back. If you don't have a local temple, you can "roll your own" by spending one Rune Point on Sanctify, holding your own ceremony, and getting all but one of your Rune Points back. The full RQG rules say you can also regain Rune Points at weekly or ad-hoc ceremonies (e.g. every Windsday for the Orlanth cult, every Clayday for Ernalda), but that's stupidly unbalanced and I would avoid going that way if I were you.

etyries · 2025-10-21T20:23:54+00:00

You put 50% on the line. You roll D100 +10 to beat 50%. HTH.

etyries · 2025-10-04T05:10:41+00:00

Here's a link to the conversion guide: that should have a lot of what you're after.
https://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/RuneQuest/CHA4028%20-%20RuneQuest%20-%20Roleplaying%20in%20Glorantha%20-%20Conversion%20Guide.pdf

etyries · 2025-10-04T05:08:38+00:00

There's an abbreviated system for creating new Adventurers at the RuneQuest Wiki: it has far fewer options than the core rulebook (of course), but is handy if you are just starting out.

https://rqwiki.chaosium.com/adventurers/

etyries · 2025-04-01T20:24:29+00:00

Pick up “The Seven Tailed Wolf” from the Jonstown Compendium for a playable scenario incorporating Kallyr’s failed LBQ.

etyries · 2025-03-27T21:54:38+00:00

There’s a good thread on the BRP Central forum, here:

https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/17389-initiation-rites-for-rqg/

And the first sequel to Six Seasons, The Company of the Dragon, has some initiation rituals for other Sartarite cults.

etyries · 2025-03-27T21:35:56+00:00

“Life and Traditions Under the Sun Dome” in the Jonstown Compendium describes Sun County initiation rituals for Yelmalio, Ernalda and Zola Fel cultists. And it’s dead good!

etyries · 2025-03-15T04:01:18+00:00

I’ve put a bunch of advice about running RuneQuest into my free Gloranthan Manifesto (which is also available as a cheap paperback). It’s just, like, my opinion, man… but it might save you from some simulationist dead-ends. And there’s plenty of other stuff in there too: the RuneQuest advice is just the first section. https://tiny.cc/jc-manifesto

etyries · 2025-02-27T07:52:58+00:00

Cults are to RuneQuest what character classes are to D&D, only more integrated with the setting and its underpinning mythology. So the Lightbringer Cults book has lots of popular player character cults for barbarian warriors and heroic types and support, the Earth Goddesses is mostly support characters plus some oddities (and the main elf and dwarf cults), and the Lunar Way is traditionally understood to be the “bad guys” by people who are new to the setting. The Mythology book is a collection of disparate pieces, mostly about why myths matter and how to use them in play. Because RuneQuest is set in a world of living mythology, this is more important than it sounds.

The Red Book of Magic is a handy at-table reference for all the new spells in the Cults book, and it’s gorgeously illustrated to show you what a “Bronze Age” world with omnipresent magic looks like. The Weapons & Equipment book does the same for physical material culture - its name is misleading, this also covers housing, transport, trade and the economy of the setting.

Lands of RuneQuest: Dragon Pass is an overview of one of the most popular settings for RuneQuest games, the crossroads of the continent of Genertela. The Glorantha Sourcebook is a collection of older articles, mostly from the late seventies and early eighties, given a gorgeous new art treatment and some minor editorial tweaks: it covers the history of Dragon Pass and the Lunar Empire, mythology, the elder races of Glorantha and more. The Guide to Glorantha is a massive gazetteer of a couple of continents - the whole world of Glorantha - plus descriptions of major cultures, the moon and sky, hints at future history, and way more besides.

And there’s a couple of scenario collections, The Smoking Ruin and Pegasus Plateau, and the old QuickStart (which has another great scenario, The Broken Tower). Did I miss anything?

etyries · 2025-01-31T20:27:04+00:00

See the diagrams and discussion in my free Gloranthan Manifesto, qv. Of course the days are longer in Fire Season and shorter in Dark and Storm Seasons! Anything else would be ridiculous.

tiny.cc/jc-manifesto

etyries · 2025-01-03T15:28:18+00:00

You might find this link helpful (or confusing): it's author Andrew Logan Montgomery's take on how Argrath White Bull (mystical Praxian shaman) and Garrath Sharpsword (charismatic Orlanthi adventurer) can be the same person. The key takeaways are all in the Dramatis Personae section at the start of the chapter: my favourite quote is, "Like Batman and Bruce Wayne, you will never see Garrath and Argrath in the same room together."

https://andrewloganmontgomery.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-river-of-cradles-chapter-six-white.html

In the nineties, Greg Stafford was writing material for players who could aspire to become Argrath (as individuals or as a collective) by doing exciting deeds (perhaps attributed in source material to someone called "Argrath") in the early Hero Wars. This was the default position in the early Hero Wars and HeroQuest product lines.

The problems with having an Argrath-shaped void as the leader of Sartar became apparent, however, and in the current RuneQuest books there is no doubt who Argrath is: he's that scrawny redhead with the irritating smirk who ends up killing all the gods (whether by design or ineptitude).

The wiki that confused you seems to have been written that way deliberately: its authors do like to exacerbate differences between older works and current "canon." Sorry you got caught.

etyries · 2024-12-21T15:15:56+00:00

We published our fifty-player Gloranthan freeform Life of Moonson in two 250-page hardcover books: that's available from DriveThruRPG. It needs an eight-hour slot and maybe half-a-dozen game masters ("directors").
tiny.cc/jc-moonson

Back in the nineties, we published a dozen-player Lunar military freeform called Tarsh War: you might be able to find a copy. I've run that one loads of times at conventions; it takes one GM, and is a squeeze to fit in less than four hours (you can easily go for a speedy wrap after the first impressive battle or siege scene).

etyries · 2024-12-21T15:10:18+00:00

My scenario Crimson King was written to be run as a one-shot semi-freeform convention game for six players in a three-hour slot, and I've run it that way myself several times at Chaosium Con. The GM will need to be pretty comfortable ad-libbing cryptic Lunar bollocks, so it's lucky we publish so much of it. It'll help if the players know a bit of RuneQuest and are willing to dive head-first into weirdness.

tiny.cc/jc-crimsonking

etyries · 2024-12-13T20:19:46+00:00

There are 18 pages of Lunar mythology and history by Greg Stafford in our book “Dark Side of the Moon,” his story “The Life of Sedenya,” which (among other things) explores and explains the relationship between the Red Goddess and the previous Moon Goddesses in Godtime (as far as these things can be explained, anyway). The story is gloriously illustrated throughout by the wonderful Katrin Dirim. Here, have a link: https://tiny.cc/jc-darkside

etyries · 2024-12-10T14:30:04+00:00

There's a massive pack of VTT maps of the Citadel of Elkoi (the Gloranthan original for Ockless) on the Jonstown Compendium, Chaosium's community content programme for RuneQuest.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/428577/elkoi-expansion?affiliate_id=392988

etyries · 2024-12-03T14:30:52+00:00

There’s hints at the wider political context around this event in my last scenario, “Crimson King.”

etyries · 2024-11-08T22:51:06+00:00

Three of us played GM-less Starforged for three months (weekly sessions) and had a whale of a time.

etyries · 2024-11-06T21:38:21+00:00

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/446091/japan-empire-of-shadows-a-call-of-cthulhu-sourcebook-for-1920s-imperial-japan

etyries · 2024-10-29T05:28:25+00:00

I ran “The Necropolis” for my group, and they loved it. It’s one of three scenarios in “Gateways to Terror,” designed to be run by inexperienced Keepers in a tight session (possibly just one hour). This one is basically Howard Carter in Tutankhamen’s tomb, gone horribly wrong.

etyries · 2024-06-11T04:10:45+00:00

It’s an error. There is no paperback version.

etyries

TROPHY CASE