What's Happening with RuneQuest?

As we announced at Gen Con 2015, a brand new version of RuneQuest is going to be released in 2016. It will be the fourth Chaosium edition of RuneQuest.

Moon Design acquired the rights to Greg Stafford's legendary game setting Glorantha and the game systems RuneQuest and HeroQuest in 2013. But with Moon Design now part of the Chaosium ownership, Chaosium becomes the licensed publisher for RuneQuest (along with HeroQuest and other products related to Gloranthan universe).

What about RQ6?

As announced at Gen Con 2015, the Design Mechanism license concludes in July 2016. That edition of the game is available until then.

What will the new Chaosium Edition be based on?

We are big believers in starting from first principles whenever we do a book, and in the case of RuneQuest, RQ2 is that foundational document. We are then building up from RQ2, incorporating concepts learned from RQ3, RQ6, Pendragon Pass, Call of Cthulhu, the Epic System, and the RQ Dragon Pass campaign (what? haven't heard of the last two? That's because they were never published!).

Will elements of RQ6 be retained in the new edition?

Yes, RuneQuest incorporates many elements of RQ6 (combined Attack & Parry skills, opposed rolls, combat styles such as Sword and Shield, hit locations instead of general hit points, 100%+ scalability, actions, adding two characteristics to determine the starting values of skills, etc) while keeping the rhythm of RQ2 combat. Because RuneQuest is NOT generic, we avoid many elements of RQ3 that its own writers considered to be significant design flaws.

So the new edition of RuneQuest has Glorantha as its setting then?

An important design goal for us is that the rules system needs to be integrated with the setting and should reinforce and reward the player's interaction with the setting. And the setting for RuneQuest is Glorantha!

Who is involved in the project?

Sandy Petersen and Ken Rolston are both involved with this project, as is the entire Moon Design team, and as with the Guide to Glorantha, we are working with twenty years of Greg's design notes.

When can we see more?

We'll be sharing design aspects of the new RuneQuest in due course - but you are going to need to have a little faith in the ability of the Moon Design team (with lots of input from Ken, Sandy, and others) to finish writing it!

BTW, aren't you also reprinting RuneQuest 2?

Yes, we're bringing the classic second edition back into print to kick-off the 50th Anniversary of Glorantha celebrations in 2016. Players will have a wide variety of ways to play games in Glorantha, be it old school (RuneQuest Classic), crunchy (the new RuneQuest edition), storytelling (HeroQuest-Glorantha), or d20 (13th Age). Our motto is: Pick your system, grab your players, enjoy Glorantha!