[Rq-rules] MRQ

[Nick.Middleton at invensys.com]

Well, finally Mongoose have started to release some information:

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/detail.php?qsID=1232&qsSeries=RuneQuest#

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/detail.php?qsID=1180&qsSeries=RuneQuest#

For those of you who can't access the site:

"RuneQuest - Main Rulebook

Series: RuneQuest


Price: $19.95
Format: Hardback (100 pages)
Distributor on sale date: 10th July 2006


Designed to bring the original RuneQuest up to the 21st Century, this main
rulebook contains all you need to explore the many fantasy worlds possible
with RuneQuest.

Attention has been applied to keep this main rulebook down to a sensible
(and easy on the wallet!) 100 pages, while layout has been refined to make
the book easy to read and fast to pick up, allowing players to comprehend
sections of the rules with a mere glance - meaning less time flicking
through the book and more time playing!

As well as character creation, the RuneQuest main rulebook provides full
rules for skills, cults/guilds, combat, adventuring, monsters and Rune
Magic, the first magic system introduced for the latest edition of
RuneQuest.

Eminently expandable to any fantasy setting, RuneQuest is supported in 2006
by Mongoose Publishing with the Glorantha and Lankhmar worlds, while other
publishers are free to introduce their own settings, due to the Open
Content licence available for the game.

RuneQuest has come of age. Go adventuring with one of the most powerful and
flexible rules systems available."





Leaving aside the arrogant vacuous marketing speak, it's pretty much s
expected: $19.95 for 100 page core book, competent but uninspiring cover
art. The idea of Mongoose "refining layout" is quite alarming (to say the
least...), but we shall see.


The interesting bit is that the OTHER license is Lankhmar - if ever there
was a setting NOT suited to the usual RPG company approach to licensed
settings#, it's Leiber's Nehwon, but equally it's always seemed a natural
fit for BRP / RQ to me - so I am genuinely intrigued to see what Mongoose
do with Lankhmar.





Cheers,





Nick Middleton





# The last thing Lankhmar / Nehwon needs is papering over with second rate
RPG writers ideas about what Leiber might have done if it been writing an
RPG supplement. One could cover the entire setting in single book - the key
thing is to capture and instruct the GM/Players in Leiber's sense of
inventiveness, sly wit and ironic plotting. Interminable setting books
("This month, the secrets of Quarmall, with complete floor plans, four new
character backgrounds and an entire new Quarmallian magic system!") would
not so much miss the charm of the setting as to trample all over it in size
12 hob-nail boots.