[RQ-Rules] Any news of Mongoose RQ?

[Nick.Middleton at invensys.com]

>Is anyone able to divulge any specifics about the new rules currently in
>playtest? I'm very curious and finding it difficult to wait another year
>or so for the game to come out...but there seems to be little info
>available at the Mongoose forums.

No one in the "open playtest" group has actually signed a formal NDA as far
as I  am aware, but we were told that if any of the playtest files became
public, that group would be shut down. So I'll not be quoting specifics,
and the playtest is not yet finished - Greg Lynch (the writer assigned to
the project) has said he expects to put at least one more iteration out to
the playtest group and the group consensus would seem to be that there is a
lot still to be done... But assuming Mongooses typical production cycle,
there isn't much time.

>Glad it's coming out though...I am currently preparing my first RQ game
>in 10 years and in persuading the players to give it a go (a mix of D&D
>and Rolemaster players) it was helpful to be able to assure them that it
>is not just a defunct artifact of the 1980s :-)

I hate to say this David, but leaving aside Chaosium's BRP monographs, the
game you and I (and everyone on this list) know as "RuneQuest" _is_ "a
defunct artifact of the 1980s" because whatever else Mongoose's new games
is, it is NOT a new version of the old RuneQuest by an commonsense
definition of "new version".

The current game (playtest draft 1.4) is NOT a RQI - RQII step change, it's
not even an RQII - RQIII. It's closest analogy is the difference between
Classic (Little Black Book) Traveller and Marc Miller's Traveller (T4): a
lot of similar concepts, same sort of dice, some shared terms. But _not_
the same game.

Whether it is a good game is harder to answer - it's not finished yet for
one, and various members of the playtest group (myself included) are still
unhappy about a lot of details. On the other hand, there are some nice
large scale touches which have generally been well received (including
several significant contributions from Mr S Perrin...) and the groups views
against some earlier ideas (in drafts 1.1 and 1.2 for example) have been
taken on board : and I at least am under no illusions that the entire
playtest group will be completely happy with the final version. But we are,
in general, happier with 1.4 than 1.3, and with 1.3 over 1.2, so it's been
moving in the right direction.

So we shall have to see where it goes.

Cheers,

Nick Middleton