Category Archives: RuneQuest

Luther Arkright for RuneQuest 6

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Bryan Talbot is one of the UK’s best comic artists and writers.  He has numerous credits for 2000AD inc. Judge Dredd and most famously Nemesis the Warlock in the 80s and is therefore officially British Old School.

If that wasn’t enough he’s got his own creator owned title, Luther Arkwritght, that he’s been working on since the 70s. It’s an exciting multiverse hopping saga that is spans across two epic comic collections, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and Heart of the Empire. Its got elements of Steam Punk, occultism, mad science, satire on the British monarchy and society. In short its a rich setting ripe with story telling potential…

…and The Design Mechanism are doing a self-contained RPG powered by RQ6.

Oh my I think I’ve wet myself with glee 🙂

Here’s the cover that they just released (comments on the G+ thread indicates its currently in proof).

Arkwright-Cover-Low-Res-SmallMore about the game in the press release that originally announced it back in 2012.

If you want to check out the comic as well as the collected versions available via Amazon, there’s a CD with everything + notes and commentaries over at Bryan Talbot’s own site.

Yesterday was a good day for UK OSR

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In the hustle and bustle of the Crypts and Thing Remastered Kickstarter, I missed mentioning a couple of other UK OSR releases….

First off for the Mighty RuneQuest 6 is the The Taskan Taskan Empire Cover SmallEmpire by Jonathan Drake . This was previously part of the “Age of Treason – The Iron Simulacrum” release by Mongoose but its now updated to RQ6 and available via Lulu.

Companion Volume to Shores of Korantia, The Taskan Empire takes you into the fraught world of the Immortal Emperor Zygas Taga, embodied in the fearsome, magically animated avatar, The Iron Simulacrum.
This 105 page book provides a full overview of the empire, it people, customs, religion and more. Character creation rules for Taskan characters are provided as are rules for cults, new spells and the way Taskan religion is indelibly bound into the lives of all who live in the Simulacrum’s shadow.
You can purchase in two ways. The PDF on its own is available from http://www.thedesignmechanism.com/products (and in the RuneQuest Supplements category) for just $5.99. Or, you can buy the Print on Demand copy from our Lulu site (http://www.lulu.com/shop/jonathan-drake/the-taskan-empire/paperback/product-22067471.htmll). If you buy the Lulu copy, you get the PDF free of charge. Just email us at designmechanism AT gmail DOT com and attach a copy of your Lulu receipt. We’ll send you a redemption code for the PDF from our own website.

Then Cakebread and Walton have released Skull Cove for its Pirates & Dragons, for both the huge tome D100 version (powered by an adapted version of Renaissance) and their rules lite One Dice system, which also includes stats for OSR D&D.

In the distant reaches of the Skull-Cove1-300x336Dragon Isles lies a quiet cove, where friendly pirates welcome the Adventurers to their small settlement. But all is not as it seems – there is a dark secret behind the smiles of the inhabitants…

This adventure for Pirates & Dragons includes statistics for both the Renaissance and OneDice versions of the game, as well as retro-clone stats. It is intended to be used with the large scale colour map of Skull Cove presented by DramaScape. Both can be bought together – look for the discounted bundle!

Note: The Dramascape map package also contains a completely different take on the island, for the Savage Worlds system. Renaissance, OneDice and retro-clone stats are provided in this product for that adventure.

You can buy this product from DriveThruRPG/RPGNow.

Free D100 Games

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OpenQuest-basicsIts official the D100 Renaissance has caught up with the D&D OSR as far as free rulesets are concerned.

I’ve added a new link category “Free D100 Games” on the Right Hand Sidebar, for quick reference;

Note: I’ve not included Legend, because its not free and RQ6 (which is basically the updated version) supersedes it, or GORE because that’s incomplete and unsupported.

So there’s now no excuse not to download one of the above and give D100 a whirl 🙂

Looking forward not back

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The announcement of the  RuneQuest 6 Bundle of Holding really got me excited about running a RQ6 campaign. In fact everytime RQ6 gets a big burst of publicity I’m there notebook in hand scribbling away and dreaming up my ultimate RQ project. As an RQ fan boy I’d love to have an RQ Gateway project out there.  Ultimately I’d have to clone myself with the number of projects I’ve already got on the go. As a publisher if I do anything in the D100 arena I have to push OpenQuest and its spin off games.

Also there’s a dull thud of realisation that I would simply be retreading old ground. Because as much as RQ6 is a new iteration of the game, its RuneQuest. All the familiar structures are there, Cults, tactical combat, the four types of magic (even mysticism reminds me of the KI powers from Sandy Petersen’s RQ3 era Land of Ninja).   That to get the most out of it me and my players would have to commit to along weekly campaign, which due to my personal circumstances just isn’t going to happen. I get the same feeling from mainstream D&D, 5th Ed and vanilla Retro-clones (like Labyrinth Lord). Its a sinking feeling that it will be a long learning curve, working out that certain rules don’t work for us as a group, and involving heavy prep for me personally. These days I’m happier with rules light iterations of these games, which take me and my group in new directions at a much faster pace.

So sorry RQ6 you are going back on the shelf next to your old and glorious forebears. Nothing personal (you are a damn sexy game) just a bit too heavy and involved for my tastes these days.

A fistful of RuneQuest 6!

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The Bundle of Holding is repeating its RuneQuest 6 offer. Your chance to get everything the Design Mechanism have released, except the excellent Mythic Britain, so far in Pdf for not much groats. But quick offer ends 12 Dec.

I’ve already got these tomes, so I’ll be hugging my limited edition RQ6 hard cover instead 🙂

You'll have to prise my RQ6 hardcover from my cold dead fingers!

You’ll have to prise my RQ6 hardcover from my cold dead fingers!

RQ6 Actual Play: Tales of the Blessed City

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Over at the Tavern Forum, Tom Zunder has a short write up of his RQ 6 campaign Tales of the Blessed City.

Being a chronicle of the perspicacious adventures and tremulating exploits of three perambulating personalities of the convivial conurbation that personates itself as “Fayoval, Blessed City of the East”.

This is a RQ6 game, largely RAW, and run face to face on alternate Thursdays.

Our tales exhibits overtly the actions and infers the motives and hints at the emotions of our protagonists, being:

Toc, Shaman of the exiled Sylvings and retainer of House Marozzo, played by the illustriously legal Andrew Watson.
Antonio di Marozzo, of the House Marozzo, notable youth and duelist of the Equestrian class, played by the fastidious revenue agent Duncan Rowlands.
Baptiste, sometimes madam and sometime concubine in the Walled Quarter of Gems, played by the ever teenage Monster Heart, Neil Gow!

Our story starts one hot and sunny endless day in the days of the Twinight, when the solar radiance of the orb above us blazed all the hours of the day and at a time when the sunburnt, eye strained and sleep deprived folk had almost forgotten the meaning of the word ‘day’.

Read more at

RuneQuest and me

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So last post was me & D&D, so where do I stand as far as the game that I probably reverer more in the Old School stakes?

RuneQuest 2 is where the story starts for me. In Pavis in Glorantha sometime in the mid 80s. A one on one session with my friend I rolled up a simple character who could just about wield a sword and was a couple of thousand of lunars in debt to the Fighting Guild as a result. His name lost to me know, but I remember he had aspirations to be an initiate of Humkat (the Gloranthan Warrior god of Death and Gloom). So off on a trip to Troll Town, a Troll strong hold established by the Hero Arkat in the Dawn Age. With me so far… don’t worry it was all new to me and a good three quarters of the game was my GM friend explaining the background to Glorantha and all its associated workings (Cults, HeroQuesting, Myths as a way of changing reality). Solid foundations which I’ve built on still, but still a huge learning curve that fortunately I fascinated with.

RuneQuest 3 is where it all took off. The Games Workshop Hard covers (RuneQuest, Advanced RuneQuest and RuneQuest Monsters) at pocket money prices made the game accessible to all in the UK, and when they chucked them in the bargain bin during the Great Betrayal (when they dumped all their RPG support around White Dwarf 100 at the end of the 80s) everybody and his brother had a copy. This time I was in a proper group of about five playing in a generic setting, possibly Griffin Island, fighting off zombies with a young twenty something Civilised Peasant Farmer whose claim to fame was he was OK with a Pike (about 40% from memory). Next session I wanted more so with the GMs OK I rolled up a Sorcerer called Tel-Kar-Nath who new the sum total of one spell, Venom (“I shall turn your blood to poison!”).  Next session I had grabbed the reins of GMing and huge files of notes were produced.

Stormbringer 1st Edition (a slight detour). Also in the same bargain bin as a result of the Great Betrayal. I’ve gone about this game before, but this was a revelation in terms of scope of what the game could do and how you could modify the D100 engine to produce a very different style of game. A very lethal style of game 😉

Then at University having access to a student grant and making a solid investment in the future I got all the Glorantha Boxsets  from the newly opened Travelling Man (up in Headingley Leeds for those who could remember it). Que the 10 years long campaign set there that one day I WILL PUBLISH the setting for. During this time we kept on striping out the crunch until the system resembled what OpenQuest is today. These were my glory years running RQ set in Glorantha – both at home and at at cons. RQ 3 for me was story gaming done right, a post for another day.

The wilderness years came for me in the late 90s when we gradually drifted away from our regular RQ3 Glorantha game due to entering the wacky world of employment. Then there was the case of mistaken identity that was HeroWars (effectively 1st edition HeroQuest), a wonderfully epic narrative game which is nothing like RQ.

Mongoose RuneQuest – The return!  Well sort of. Bad editing and shonky rules take the sheen off what should have been a fine version of the great and glorious game. But the release of a SRD did lead to the following …

OpenQuest is my RuneQuest (with a bit of Stormbringer thrown , which is why its got so many demons). Originally designed to be a small fantasy interpretation of my favourite bits of BRP/RQ with my own common sense house rulings. Its kinda grown into OpenQuest Deluxe (a open tribute to the collected RQ3 Deluxe of the 1990s produced under Ken Rolston’s time as RuneCzar during the so called RQ Renaissance) and then be paired back to the slim and slender version of OpenQuest Basics. Its been a great journey which started at lunch in my office in 2007 and continues to this day.

MRQ2 Lawrence Whitaker’s and Pete Nash’s go at refreshing MRQ, and a damn fine one too.  I never got to play this one because my group at the time would have none of it, and Greg Stafford pulled the license from Mongoose a year or so into the license.

RuneQuest 6  Loz and Pete now working together as the Design Mechanism revised and expanded version of MRQ2 which is the ultimate big book RuneQuest dwarfing all its prediscesors. A fine version of the game and a worthy inherittor of the name RUNEQUEST 🙂

RuneQuest 6 Special Edition Hardcover

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Finnnnnnally, the IndieGoGo campaign for the RQ 6 Hardcover is up and going, and about 50% funded at time of writing after about a day and a half with thirty days to go.

I’ve funded this modest campaign, which I reckon will have modest stretch goals, but if you want a hardcover version of the most excellent RQ6, which won’t be available via retail, go check it out.