Runequest 1 (left) and 2 (right) and RQ2 reborn (middle)
My first ever foray into the remarkable story telling world of role playing games was with Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (thank you Gary Gygax for sharing your vision with us all!). I guess for most of us role playing oldies, AD&D was also the first roleplaying game played by you.
The same content as the original, just updated with errata and remastered for the 50th anniversary of Glorantha
Until I had to read The Hobbit for school English classes, I had never heard of the fantasy genera before. I was hooked! I then flawed my parents when I asked for The Lord of the Rings for my next birthday. You see, before this time I had hated reading and was many years behind what my reading level at school should have been. My parents despaired and I wasn't very good at school.
Table of content
But when I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, I was inspired. Nobel men of honour and great courage, deep friendship and self sacrifice, women of such unsearchable beauty, majesty and nobility of character, held in utter respect and chaste love by great warriors of men, elves and dwarves. Fell deeds and great struggles against impossible odds. Hope beyond hope in the darkest of hours. Tolkien's writings called to my heart as deep waters to my soul, and I was never the same again.
Same great old style graphics too
Needless to say, I credit these two works as the first changing force in my life. I went on to read books above my reading level and eventually, after finishing High School, went on to university to become a Biologist. The only book that has had more of a powerful and positive impact on me than Tolkien's works is the Holy Bible.
Rurik is back also. Missed you, lad!
But I digress. I had just finished reading The Lord of the Rings at about the age of 11 or so, and a school friend of mine told me about AD&D. A mutual acquaintance had introduced him to the game and soon the three of us were journeying through fantasy realms and fighting orcs, goblins and worse, smiting evil wherever it lay festering in the darkness.
Rune Magic and Battle Magic were revolutionary to RPG's at the time
It was not long after this that I was introduced to a new game called Runequest. After being an AD&D fan, I was blown away by the intuitiveness of Runequest, its application of D100% skill tests, armour reduction on damage and the fact that anyone could use Battle Magic. I fell in love with this game and its mechanic, the Basic Roleplaying system (BRP).
Dragonewts, enigmatic and arrogant to say the least!
Since that time, BRP / Runequest has been the mainstay of the roleplaying group that I game master for. Regardless of the genera of our games, I have relied on BRP / Runequest as the main gaming system we've used. I have taken my roleplaying group to the worlds of Fallout 3, to Middle-earth, to the superheroes world of City Of Heroes, and currently we are in the Warhammer Old World (with a dash of the Sword Coast thrown in to the costline of the Troll Country north of Kislev). The BRP mechanic has served us well and survived each transition admirably.
Runequest still has one of the best random treasure generating systems I've seen in an RPG. Castles and Crusades treasure generator is pretty good also
So when Chaosium announced its Kickstarter to bring back Runequest 2, I quickly signed up. I received my hardback copy of Runequest 2 just before we left to go overseas. Right now, you can only get the PDF version from Chaosium, but they will soon be rolling out printed copies for sale.
Return of an old friend
Seeing this come back into print, is like catching up with an old friend and picking up the friendship just where we left it. Fantastic!
