Thread: RUNEQUEST 6TH EDITION

RuneQuest – Sixth Edition of the Iconic Roleplaying Game. Created in 1978 by Steve Perrin, Ray Turney and friends, RuneQuest is the classic roleplaying game of fantastic adventure with heroes and magic. Now in a brand new edition, RuneQuest is updated and expanded by Pete Nash and Lawrence Whitaker. Everything you need for fabulous roleplaying adventure is contained in a single volume that has been designed to support any genre of fantasy. The game retains all the key concepts and hallmarks of its earlier versions, but requires no familiarity with the previous editions.

In RuneQuest your characters are defined by their culture, career, community, background, comrades, skills, magic and cults. Progression is through skill advancement – not levels or similarly abstract concepts. As your characters adventure and quest, their capabilities improve and their relationships deepen and strengthen. Players and Games Masters have complete flexibility over what can be achieved, and the way characters develop is entirely dependent on choices players make, depending on their characters’ aspirations and motivations. Games Masters receive a huge amount of support through the RuneQuest rules. All the concepts and game mechanics are explained clearly with options and considerations explored and presented for ease of use. You need only this rulebook for many years of exciting and imaginative play.

RuneQuest contains everything needed for play:
• Character Creation – building your character through the familiar characteristics, through developing culture and community relationships, choosing a career, and gaining basic equipment according to social class.
• Skills – What they do, how they work, and how to handle many different circumstances (degrees of difficulty, critical and fumbled rolls, opposed skills, group skills, and so on).
• Economics and Equipment – Arms and armour, tools, clothing, accommodation... everything your character needs as he or she begins on their life of adventure.
• Combat – RuneQuest’s combat system is unique, dynamic and geared towards adventurous realism. Gaining success over an opponent generates Special Effects that can rapidly turn the course of a fight. Copious advice is presented on balancing combat skills and styles, through to handling rabble and underlings.
• Magic – No less than five very different forms of magic are presented and explored, with complete lists of spells and effects. How magic is defined and used in different fantasy settings and campaign worlds is examined in detail. The Runes, what the represent and how they work, is clearly presented.
• Cults and Brotherhoods – Religious, magical and secular organisations, as well as other kinds of societies are detailed the Cults and Brotherhoods rules. Cults have been an important and traditional part of RuneQuest, and they are covered in significant detail along with templates for many different kinds of cult, order, school and so on for Games Masters and Players to build upon for their own campaigns.
• Creatures - Over 50 creatures are fully detailed, including several non-human player character races. This chapter also offers complete guidance on how to use creatures effectively in RuneQuest games, and notes on how to design your own.
• Games Mastery – Copious notes, thoughts and guidance on how to Games Master RuneQuest games. Areas for consideration are summarised, options explored, and different ways of using the rules offered. An invaluable chapter for new and old RuneQuest Games Masters alike…
• Anathaym’s Saga – Numerous examples of play and how the rules are used are provided through Anathaym’s Saga. Follow Anathaym, her sister Kara, Mju the Mystic and Kratos the Sorcerer as the RuneQuest rules are illustrated and explained.

By Lawrence Whitaker and Pete Nash. 456 pages. Published by The Design Mechanism July 2012.

I just wanted to mention I had a chance to read Steve Perrin's copy of this a couple weeks ago, and wanted to mention that it sold me on it enough that when my finances recover a bit I'm going to buy the PDF of it (I don't buy physical books any more unless and until I actually get around to running the game, and that isn't liable to be for quite a while).

Good work gentlemen.

There's currently a nice review at rpg.net.



I tried to post the link, but am getting an error message, generated either here or by rpg.net.

I finished reading my copy at the weekend.

On the whole I could see nothing to recomend RQ6 over BRP.

I like the new sorcery rules and pretty much didn't care for the rest, I don't like the new combat rules at all.

Perhaps neither could be recommended over the other, but rather, instead of the other. BRP BGB is great for covering many different settings, whereas RQ6 has a strong focus on fantasy settings. The two rule sets would play a little differently. I do like some of the RQ6 melee mechanics and they have certainly done a better job with magic than in Chaosium's RQ3.

However my group pretty much knows RQ3 and Call of Cthulhu, so I won't change things too much with them considering they have a good grasp of BRP. It I had a new group to play with I might consider RQ6 however, just to see how it all plays out. Either way I think they both have pretty good system mechanics as I read them, enough to share between the systems which I suspect many GMs are doing.

I'm certainly interested in checking out some upcoming RQ6 titles, I think I could easily use them with BRP mechanics if I keep gaming with my current group of friends.

Originally Posted by Pindar

I finished reading my copy at the weekend.

On the whole I could see nothing to recomend RQ6 over BRP.

I like the new sorcery rules and pretty much didn't care for the rest, I don't like the new combat rules at all.

I agree. I think the enhanced combat rules from Classic Fantasy are a much better fit for BRP since they were designed as a BRP supplement.

I am running an RQ one shot this weekend at my local game shop and the conversion was a snap.

In my view the main advantage RQ6 has compared to BRP is the presentation.
While BRP can be quite confusing for someone new to the game, RQ6 is orga-
nized and written in a very clear way, and therefore rather easy to compre-
hend and "get into". Otherwise I would agree that the two systems are just
different, without one being "better" than the other in any way.

I love, love, love RQ6 and I come from a strong old school D&D background (I have been responsible for this AV&ES for nearly four years now (although I played a bunch of RQ in the 90's. I love the lack of Glorantha material so I can use my blog's world with heavy Dunsany/CAS/Middle Earth imprinting. I would give it two thumbs up any day.

While I've got some time off work I'm really starting to sink my teeth into a few titles in my collection that I've only perused up until now, with RQ6 amongst them. I kinda like most of the rules in it so far, esp combat manoeuvres, I think they could play out quite well. I was initially put off by the lack of total HP when I read MQ2 and still am to some extent. I know during actual game play it is less book keeping, but sometimes HP is a quick way to size up a critter when reading creature descriptions. No big issue really, more just personal taste after playing AHRQ3 for many, many years.
I think one of the strengths that really strikes me with RQ6 is the char gen, its quite simple but yet has alot of that old school crunch in regards to life-path etc, including family history, connections, contacts, background events etc. Also the book has a decent ammount of equipment lists, something which is also old school and quite useful. All in all it is a great product for fantasy, a great buy in my opinion

RQ6 is a quandary for me. Call-backs to my memories of RQ2, back in the early 80's, cheek against jowl with modern concepts of combat resolution like special effects and combat styles. Fantastic adaptations of the magic systems that go back to RQ3, plus the addition of mysticism, but skill sets that are less finely grained than even RQ2. It's also the game that keeps drawing my attention back, away from the even more realistic games that I love, like GURPS, Hero, even BRP. I don't know if it'll happen or not, but the next fantasy game I run will likely be in RQ6.