Back in 1981 I was introduced to role-playing games by my elder brother Russell and his friend.
At the time I was drawing maps of ancient Greece as I had been going on a Hellenic mythological binge, so I was well up for a good fantasy game.
The game was RuneQuest (Games Workshop 2nd edition box set) and the setting was Glorantha. First scenario was 'Rainbow Mounds' and my character was a Blackfang Assassin as I wasn't keen on Orlanth or Kygor Litor (the only other options for cults).
From that moment I was hooked!
Every Sunday afternoon was a RuneQuest afternoon. We explored Glorantha, making most of it up as we went along, and I went through a new character every other week as I had a habit of killing off my PCs. Russell at the time had his character, Barefoot Bulltamer, living on an epic nine years of real time gaming. Barefoot went everywhere. Tarsh, Sartar, Prax, Pavis, Sanctuary (Thieves World) then onto Pamatela where he discovered that Basmol the Lion was really the Deity trapped under the Block in Prax.
We also explored the Young Kingdoms with 'Stormbringer', Known Space with 'RingWorld', the Mythos with 'Call of Cthulhu', lead an Elf Tribe with 'ElfQuest', and were even knights of Camelot with 'Pendragon'. We always stuck to Chaosium games and we returned to RuneQuest and Glorantha.
Then in 2000 at the Convulsion convention in Leicester we were introduced to 'Hero Wars' (later to known as HeroQuest). This way of gaming in Glorantha, with a more narrative structure, suited us as our games were heading in that direction anyway. There was a paradigm shift with the mechanics of the game system but we soon got over that.
I used HeroQuest with other settings and genres such as Firefly, Dad's Army, Supernatural, Heroes, and The Shield. My con games went fairly well, played over fifteen games per year, but there was always a backlash against them. Some people on the UK con scene would bad-mouth my games, spread their discontent about them and even rip down my sign-up sheets!
So I have abandoned that game system and gone back to an old favourite.
So now I return to RuneQuest.
I have the latest edition from Mongoose, written by Lawrence Whittaker and Pete Nash, and I have a Glorantha 2nd Age campaign planned. I have playtested some of the scenarios with my home group so I now have a scenario ready to run at
Continuum 2012. Just some prep work to finish off like artwork, maps and the player characters to generate.
At some point I will swap over to
Design Mechanism's
RuneQuest 6e once I have the rules under my belt.
I have made up a RuneQuest character sheet in Microsoft Excel that calculates all the base skills, hit points, modifiers, etc.
