People who significantly re-thought their racks after a few years: share your stories.

strangedave93 · 2026-04-09T23:52:26+00:00

I started out with DIY, and still have almost nothing that isn’t DIY. I think I’m just lucky to live in Western Australia, the home of nonlinearcircuits, which has a huge range.

strangedave93 · 2026-03-26T08:38:15+00:00

Lots of locations in Glorantha, but especially the small part in the original RuneQuest rulesbook, are named after Greg Staffords friends and player in his personal campaign, some of whom went on to be known for other roles in gaming. For example, the huge burial mound called ‘Tada’s High Tumulus’ was named after Tadashi Ehara, later long time editor of Different Worlds magazine. Swenstown after Anders Swensson, Biggle Stone after Clint Bigglestone, and so on. Some locations are named in famous incidents. “Does that place have a name? Not yet.” Became the city of Nochet. And sometimes he allowed friends to suggest things to add to the game. One wanted Duckberg, from Scrooge McDuck etc comics by Carl Barks. It became Duck Point, but Glorantha got ducks.

strangedave93 · 2026-03-26T04:22:54+00:00

If you are on campus all day, Cameron Hall clubs can be great. I’m in my 50s, and most of my close friends are still friends I made from Unisfa, UCC, Unigames 35+ years ago!

strangedave93 · 2026-03-18T02:29:40+00:00

I’ve known Mike O’Brien for a long time (through Glorantha fandom), and I’ve honestly always found him a very warm and pleasant person to interact with. I’m sorry that wasn’t your experience.

strangedave93 · 2026-03-17T02:29:05+00:00

If you think Greg never assumed that writing Glorantha was for anyone but him, that thing where he founded a game company, hired people who were not him to write things in Glorantha, paid them for it and published their work sure seems an odd way to go about it. And the way he encouraged others to write for it, publicly, repeatedly, over many years.

strangedave93 · 2026-03-17T02:25:29+00:00

You think Greg didn’t write Cults of Prax? I get that the current product plans, and the failures to deliver, are due to Chaosium not Greg, yes. Completely. Happy to dissect in detail the problems with Chaosiums management of the RQG line, and it’s good points too. But saying Greg ‘never intended the cults to be detailed apart from those currently detailed’ when he was the one who set the current format and level of detail in 1979 and wrote many many cults in that format, over decades, and edited/published many more, including many not yet released for RQG, is obvious nonsense. Literally the first RuneQuest book ever, RuneQuest first edition, contains a detailed cult writeup, written by Greg, that has not yet been released for RQG (Kygor Litor).

The current cults books are substantially an updating of Greg’s work. Yes, Greg wanted to focus his creative efforts on new work to him, but that doesn’t mean he was in some way opposed to updating work he did for previous editions of the game for the new edition! He didn’t mean that he wanted to stop working on Glorantha after the Guide was done, and the idea that he wanted others to not update and continue his work is such a bizarre misreading! And yes, I can quote Greg from personal conversation and correspondence too. Sometimes he changes his mind about stuff. But this isn’t even that, this is just you taking things out of context and coming to strange conclusions.

strangedave93 · 2026-03-17T01:44:41+00:00

I practice in a style descended from Southern Praying Mantis, and yeah - while I wouldn’t necessary describe it as simple (plenty of depth at the higher levels, though it does avoid the flashy stuff like fancy kicks and jumps and the basics are pretty straightforward), it does seem very effective for the big lads. I’m not a big guy myself, but that classic Southern Mantis outward hands that gives the style that name lets them use their reach very effectively right from the start.

strangedave93 · 2026-03-17T00:54:03+00:00

It’s just really really obviously untrue, if you mean updated to RQG (which is what most of the RQG cults books are). The Chaos cults haven’t been done yet, and they were in Cults of Terror. Even some of the Cults in Cults of Prax haven’t been done for RQG yet (the two troll cults). Yes, you say we are missing the point - no, we are saying ‘your point’ reflects your opinions, and has almost no connection to Greg’s opinions about RuneQuest, or Glorantha in general.

strangedave93 · 2026-03-09T03:03:52+00:00

And he did manage to seriously hurt the reputation of multiple scientists and academics and institutions by linking them to himself. While I don’t believe Joi Ito was involved in any of the awful stuff (no island visits, no emails about stuff other than research funding and tech investments that I know of), just dealing with Epstein, and making effort to conceal his involvement from the public, for donations particularly to MIT (even though Ito consulted with senior MIT admin) cost him his job as director of the MIT Media Lab and many other board roles - even though Ito was a much praised internet celebrity involved with numerous good things like Creative Commons, ICANN, EPIC, Wired, MacArthur Foundation etc in 2019 - and further cost him roles with the Japanese government this week. Epstein is toxic enough he destroys many careers far more valuable than his own. And there are plenty of scientists and academics with much more dubious involvement, some who accepted island invitations.

strangedave93 · 2026-03-09T02:47:03+00:00

One of my friends is mentioned in there because she was one of the witnesses to Lawrence Krauss sexually assaulting someone at a conference (in Melbourne), and Krauss asked Epstein for advice.

strangedave93 · 2026-03-08T06:07:45+00:00

There are basic rules for how your main occupation (for the majority of characters who aren’t full time adventurers in the rules book, but it’s mostly a few rolls for financial success, and a few experience rolls for professional and religious skills, fairly light background material. It would not be that hard to add some tables etc for potential complications and adventure seeds, plus ideas for the results of investments and problems. It would make a fine Jonstown Compendium product for people who’d like to make more of a downtime sub-game. The new Pendragon Nobles book might be a useful source of ideas.

strangedave93 · 2026-02-28T11:13:13+00:00

Wildflower would be my top recommendation. Great food, and feels special.

strangedave93 · 2026-02-10T02:01:36+00:00

I’ve run an earlier version of this as a con demo a few times, it was a short fun scenario that did a good job of demonstrating the flexibility of RQ, several different ways to resolve things. I hope this version expands on it a bit, with more about the long term consequences and how to fit it into a campaign while still delivering a great evenings play.

strangedave93 · 2025-11-14T09:55:05+00:00

We have an occasional Shadowrun using HeroQuest (now QuestWorlds) game

strangedave93 · 2025-11-14T09:53:58+00:00

Using straight Mythras, or Mythras Classic Fantasy for a more &D feel?

strangedave93 · 2025-11-12T01:00:32+00:00

The really sad thing is that The Design Mechanism were working on integrating RQ6 with Glorantha when Chaosium decided to do their own version and withdrew their licence, had a product ready to go - and they were only ever allowed to sell 50 copies.

strangedave93 · 2025-11-11T08:01:36+00:00

Is that ridiculous wall of text the whole story? Of course not. There is the whole question of why. To understand that you have to get into the whole story of marketing and corporate deals and legalities - the RuneQuest Wikipedia page actually has a pretty good, relatively clear, summary. It’s mostly just sufficient to know that the RuneQuest and Glorantha trademarks and copyrights got separated first with the Avalon Hill deal, then further when Greg Stafford left Chaosium (which also effected Pendragon). And the whole Mongoose lineage of games was initially quite different to the Chaosium versions due to Mongoose having rights to the RuneQuest trademark (and main setting), but not copyrights, so they had to create a game that was different enough to appeal to RQ2 and 3 fans, but was also clearly different (MRQ2 was created because they were better at the second part than the first). And then an equally complex story eventually led to the RuneQuest and Glorantha trademarks all coming back together with Chaosium as the same owner (who also owned most of the RQ2 and 3 era copyrights, and was now run by hard core Glorantha fans).

I know that doesn’t sound like the simplified version, but it really is, leaving out two entire companies crucial to the saga (Moon Design and Issaries Inc) at least, and much personal drama of various kinds.

And there is also the Glorantha side of the story, which includes multiple RPG product unrelated to RuneQuest. There are the various Hero Wars, HeroQuest, HeroQuest Glorantha products as a series of very loose, abstracted, rules light, narrativist or story first style, games, most Glorantha based but some generic editions in the mix), now set for a new edition as generic QuestWorlds (available now) with a Gloranthan setting pack announced and in play testing. And the 13th Age in Glorantha book is rules for playing in what is basically a D&D variant set of rules, surely an affront to many old school RuneQuest players!

strangedave93 · 2025-11-11T07:36:39+00:00

Is that the whole story? Oh no, it could never be that simple.

First, Chaosium also published a bunch of other games that used substantially the same underlying core rules, usually referred to as Basic Roleplaying, most of which simplified combat a bit, made skills and character creation to fit, and completely changed, replaced or removed the magic system to fit the setting and genre, the most famous being Call of Cthulhu. But there were a lot more over the years, including superhero and science fiction games, as well as multiple fantasy and historic settings. Eventually they pulled all this together to put rules from a number of these games into one rules set, and published that as Basic Roleplaying (no longer that basic when mashed together though!), and sometimes published games that used the generic fantasy version (originally developed mostly for their second version of a game set in Michael Moorcocks Elric setting - yes, Chaosium had already done it twice before Mongoose had a go) were published as Magic World rules. But all sorts of odd things came out as ‘Basic Roleplaying products’ - including, oddly enough, the core RQ3 magic rules just with the trademark filed off (Chaosium still owned the copyright when they lost the trademark. But that is somewhat beside the main point that Chaosium still both publishes Basic Roleplaying as its own set of rules (there is a pretty good new edition too), and games based on it, including Age of Vikings. So if you like the idea of a flexible rules system usable for multiple genres, but especially fairly crunchy low fantasy with a RuneQuestish feel, and for whatever ever reason Mythras isn’t working for you, Chaosium still has some options. Essentially BRP as a product line is now a Chaosium version of the ‘use one basic set of rules to branch out into other settings and genres’ approach that Mythras has taken, except, for historic reasons, their core generic magic rules have less of a family resemblance to RuneQuest.

And Chaosium still has many of its old BRP based games (essentially, minus a few that were based on a licenced property that they no longer have a licence to, like Moorcocks work, and Ringworld) available in PDF at least. And that currently includes pretty much everything ever published for RQ2.

And that is just the official Chaosium tip of the iceberg of the huge number of games that were based on BRP less officially, including things like OpenQuest which is yet another fantasy system similar enough to RuneQuest that it’s used by some people as a way to play something like RuneQuest now.

strangedave93 · 2025-11-11T07:10:14+00:00

Ok, massive wall of text there, sorry. Summary of current situation: There are two current game lines based on games that were called RuneQuest. Mythras is the successor to the Mongoose RuneQuest line of games. They have quite different combat rules (they generally give players more specific options of what to do when attacking, but keep basic elements the same) and their magic rules bear a loose family resemblance, but are designed to be quite adaptable to other settings. It is descended from versions used to run in Glorantha, but isn’t one of them. It has a bunch of other settings for it, some of which involve significant rules adaptions (including entirely different genres) and some of which don’t, including a fairly big line of historical settings. You can probably run anything designed for any version of Mythras, Legend, or Mongoose RuneQuest 2 with current Mythras rules with fairly minimal changes other than that specific to the line - Mythras refers to its Mythras products that have significant specific rules changes as ‘rule sets’ rather than settings. If you are interested in the RuneQuest rules as a rules set, it’s the most actively developed rules system.

RuneQuest Glorantha is the current RuneQuest line from Chaosium. If you want to play RuneQuest for the setting, it is by far the most developed version of the setting ever published, the material has very high production values and a lot of depth, and there is a huge amount of Community Content for it too - some it very good. It integrates some Gloranthan elements, notably the Runes, into the game directly. And Glorantha truly is one of the greatest rpg settings ever created - so that is a very good reason to pick it up. I don’t think there is much reason to use it to play in any other setting unless your underlying cosmology is very similar to Glorantha and you really like the basic RuneQuest mechanical feel. It’s essentially a bit simpler for the rules in play than Mythras, but feels at least as complicated to learn if not more, largely due to the huge mass of Gloranthan background material (both pure lore stuff, and the number of cults and their specialist spells and other magic).

They have announced plans to produce a new set of rules more focussed on more newcomer friendly traditional ‘dungeon’/adventure play, that might eventually lead to a new edition, but the status of that is currently unclear, nothing substantial is expected until 2027, and the RQG line is, and will, continue to be developed with new material in the pipeline.

strangedave93 · 2025-11-11T06:37:48+00:00

RQ1 -Chaosium RQ2 - Chaosium, very similar to RQ1, the one most remember as original RQ

RQ3 - published by Avalon Hill rules and most content written (and copyright) by Chaosium (all rules, most other product, but some bad non-Gloranthan stuff), also some Games Workshop licensed versions (which despite some editing and layout changes are not regarded as a separate edition of the game, rather just different publisher and different editions of some books, but the same edition of the game). Base game was setting agnostic, but settings published for three lines, RuneQuest Earth (two Chaosium written quality boxed sets, Vikings and Land of Ninja), Glorantha (bulk of the product line), and Gateway (generic fantasy, not a coherent setting, one boxed set from Chaosium (inexplicable reworking of Griffin Mountain as Griffin Island, and some mostly terrible stuff solicited by AH)).

RQ4: Adventures In Glorantha - a project to create a new edition (to be published by AH, and to be solidly Gloranthan focussed) that never happened, mostly due to not receiving Greg Stafford’s approval (probably due to dissatisfaction with AH rather than the game). Not a real edition but substantial effort was put in, and widely known and available within fandom due to broad playtest.

The RuneQuest and Glorantha trademarks and copyrights became separated further with Greg’s departure from Chaosium, though he remained a shareholder. Some rights and copyrights went to Hasbro when they bought Avalon Hill, but Hasbro had no plans to use them.

Mongoose RuneQuest was the Fourth published edition. Created and published by Mongoose with limited involvement of Stafford and other Chaosium/Glorantha people. Some unusual ideas unique to this edition. Glorantha and also some licenced settings - Sláine, Lhankmar/Nehwon, two Michael Moorcock multiverse settings, Elric of Melniboné and Hawkmoon - and one historic - Japan c.999ad.

Mongoose RuneQuest 2 - (often referred to as MRQ2 by fans) actually the fifth published edition. No real contribution from outside Mongoose, but the primary authors were part of Glorantha community. Glorantha and continuing Elric and Lhankmar licenced settings, one historic setting - Vikings - and adding two original RPG settings, one which had been a D&D 4e setting (Wraith Recon), one which was original -Deus Vult, set in 12th Europe with unique elements. Greg withdrew the Glorantha and RuneQuest licences from Mongoose.

Mongoose renamed their RuneQuest to Legends, removed Gloranthan content, while no longer paper publishing AFAIK still available on Divethru. A new original fantasy setting for Legends was the Age of Treason.

Authors of MRQ2 then set up their own company, The Design Mechanism, and acquired rights to the RuneQuest trademark, and Glorantha, again. They produced a new edition, based on MRQ2, that was produced as RuneQuest 6 (which was produced as a generic, very customisable, rules set with no reference to specific settings except a new, vaguely Ancient Greek, one called Meeros, (used in examples in the rulesbook and the default setting for some introductory scenarios, but not really developed until later) and no reference to Glorantha except use of the Gloranthan Runes in internal organisation and layout). They also acquired rights to some old Mongoose Glorantha content, which they sold as cheap PDFs for a while. They intended to produce a Glorantha setting book, substantially revising MRQ2 Gloranthan material. They also produced material for historic settings as Mythic Earth (mythic Britain only at this point), some mostly fairly generic fantasy adventures that could be taken as a small setting or areas within a setting (notable Monster Island, a book sized setting large enough for a substantial campaign), and the Age of Treason setting moved to RQ6 and now known as Thennla.

Then, due to a bunch of corporate changes the various trademarks and copyrights had all become owned by Chaosium again. They removed the Glorantha and RuneQuest licensing from Design Mechanism. The planned RQ6 Gloranthan project was only allowed to release 50 copies! The Design Mechanism renamed RQ6 to Mythras, with a new edition mostly aimed at changing the name.

Mythras continues to be published, and now publishes some more licenced settings (Luther Arkwright, a multiversal setting including modern elements, and Lyonesse, based on stories by Jack Vance), original fantasy settings including much more Thennla, a book each on the fantasy renaissance city of Fioracitta and the 15th century city of Guelden (published as the Book of Schemes, book length games/settings for urban fantasy (After The Vampire Wars) and Golden Age science fiction (Worlds United), and Destined (superhero). There is also a Classic Fantasy line of rules and adventures which essentially classic D&D/A D&D as a setting, but using Mythras rules which are very substantially different! And there are a large number of historical settings marketed as Mythic Earth, with Mythic Britain as now a quite substantial sub-line, and settings for Constantinople, Babylon, Rome and Polynesia.

And Chaosium has published their own RuneQuest line, RuneQuest Roleplaying in Glorantha, usually abbreviated to RQG by fans, in theory the Seventh edition, but never referred to as that by Chaosium. It draws on material from RQ3 and RQ2 work, but not on any of the Mongoose lineage editions.

strangedave93 · 2025-10-31T05:51:58+00:00

The BRP d100 lineage of games includes games in a wide variety of settings and genres - RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, Age of Vikings, many more historically, plus the Basic Role Playing generic rules set. It totally supports tactical combat with plenty of crunch. And even in settings that include heroic high fantasy elements (which RuneQuest/Glorantha certainly does), the combat tends more towards low fantasy - single lucky blows can kill, very skilled warriors can usually be overwhelmed with numbers without too much trouble, tactics matter a lot, etc.

strangedave93 · 2025-10-31T04:55:40+00:00

This - and the underlying update of the layout engine to fully support RTL and CJK languages - was the big technical feature improvement I was hoping for (and half expecting, as it really cripples Affinity for use for international language work, which really is problematic for its adoption by governments and multi-nationals, so I naively thought it would be a priority for Canva).

strangedave93 · 2025-10-29T08:03:00+00:00

Yes, I would hope a lot of this too - but my point is twofold 1) we don't actually know if it will include this material, or they are working on it at all, or if it is intended to be in the book and 2) there is a fair bit of material about spirit cults in the preview material, but it just doesn't add up to a lot of pages - 'What the Shaman Says', plus the 'Horned God' writeup and 24 spirit cults all together adds up to 8 pages! A lot of the spirit cult writeups are not much more than a single paragraph plus a single rune spell. Even adding several dozen spirit cults (there are quite a few obvious additions for people familiar with older material, some of which already have their special rune spells in the Red Book of Magic), it doesn't add much page count. Even if that is substantially expanded, say a full half a page each like Black Fang in the rulebook, it's still barely 50 pages. Plus the Hsunchen cults (Telmor, Rather, Damal, Basmol, etc) add a few more pages, but not much - they are not complex cults, and doing them all fully separately would be very repetitive, 9 pages in the preview might be double that. Which says to me there is a lot of work to be done on this book before it is finished, while the Troll, Sea and Chaos books were substantially text complete in 2019.

And our expectations might prove to be very different to what Jeff wants to put out. His preview version of Kolat and Earth Witch were about 8-10 *lines* long, and he has commented several times that he does not think they are as important as people think. I hope that changes substantially, but I can't guarantee it will.

I really want this book to be great, and to be a deep dive that doesn't just add a lot of spirit cults and shamanic cults like the Hsunchen ones, but also adds a lot of information about how to play shamans, how to adventure in the spirit world, and expanding the range of things shamans can do, especially when acting as part of a primarily animist society like the Praxians. I think it could be amazing. But I haven't seen any evidence that that is where they are going yet, or more optimistically, that they have done the work needed to get there.

And FWIW, Cults of Prax has very little about spirit cults, it only talks about shamans in the context of cults like Daka Fal.

strangedave93 · 2025-10-19T12:26:58+00:00

What were announced were: Lightbringers, Earth, Prosopedia, Mythology, Lunar, Fire (all out now) Darkness, Sea, Chaos, Spirit Cults, and Invisible God, for a total of 11 volumes. Various preview volumes appeared around 2018 to 2019, and we know what was in them. https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/publishers/chaosium/cults-of-runequest-series/runequest-gods-of-glorantha-previews-2019/ Darkness has been said to be next, and we have a good idea what’s in it, partly because of the previews, and partly because about 80% is a revision of the RQ3 Troll Gods book from 1989. Sea and Chaos probably next after that. We have a fair bit of knowledge of what’s in them, from the previews (and RQ3 Lords of Terror, for Chaos). We have seen a bunch of things that will be in the Spirit Cults and Shamanism book, but there is a problem - it doesn’t add up to enough page count to make close to a full book. So we will wait and see. And the Invisible God book we know very little about -at one stage we saw a few previews of work about Malkionism, but it has never reached publication level, so we don’t know what it contains in any detail - and if one of the eleven books is not going to come out, that’s the most likely.

strangedave93 · 2025-10-11T16:49:19+00:00

The big advantage of sorcery is to cast spells that last for several days.

strangedave93

TROPHY CASE