Runequest: I seem to be liking it.
Aug. 27th, 2008 03:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebitterguySo I'm digging through my new acquisitions. The Runequest boxed set is... Man, I think I kind of missed out on something back in the day, eh? Perhaps I would have liked this a lot back in high school, but it's quite the thing to see. It's a deep box (Battlesystem or DC Heroes second ed deep) and it's got five rulebooks and a couple reference books, a map of "Fantasy Europe" that's pretty dull (it’s just like regular Europe, but Fantastic! And by Fantastic, we mean pretty not fantastic), and a few dice.
It also has a product registration card that lets you Do A Friend a Favour and send them a copy of AH's colour catalogue (Only one dollar! But an 1983 dollar, so that would be about $7.98 today). The catalogue that comes in the set is, sadly, only in B&W.
But, seriously, there’s a lot of game in here. The Guide to Glorantha is pretty thin (32 pages?) but has a nice amount of info. There was a Guide to Ernalda (?) for sale as well, but by then I was totally tapped out. I had managed to get half of the members of Power Pack (just need Lightspeed now) and the Isaiah Bradley Captain America Herocilx, though. And Pete Wisdom for the wife.
But, yes, it’s very neat looking, and I like the cosmology of Glorantha so far (but a lozenge floating in the sea? Okay, then). It’s a shame I’m only 22 years late coming to this party. Ah, well.
Of course, like everything I read I the first thing I wonder about it is “could I use it to play Al-Qadim?” I think that it seems a solid enough system that it would work quite well. I don’t know what level of lethality it imposes on PCs (it IS BRP, though) since I like my sand fantasy to be swashbuckling, but I do like how the magic system works on a general level. All pipe dreams, in any case.
What’s kind of impressive is that this boxed set (once again, an impressive boxed set) retailed for $38 in 1986. That’s a fair amount. I don’t remember what my red box cost (since I didn’t actually buy it for myself) but I think I know one reason why I never picked it up. I wasn’t going to be making a decent wage for a couple years yet, anyway.
The catalogue indicates you can get a Player’s Box for $20 and a GM’s box for $25, which each have about half the contents of the deluxe box.
I loved one particular bit from the catalogue:
You ask me, that isn’t exactly a great way to sell your organization. I mean, sure, it means nothing; if printing wasn’t crazy expensive back then, it’s entirely possible that development costs were the most significant part of the company’s expenses (especially if they rolled salaries into it) and it might be more than profit, depending on if they mean net or gross, yadda yadda.
But it just gives a weird impression. Plus, I’d assume that the licensing fees for James Bond might show up somewhere in there, too.
It also has a product registration card that lets you Do A Friend a Favour and send them a copy of AH's colour catalogue (Only one dollar! But an 1983 dollar, so that would be about $7.98 today). The catalogue that comes in the set is, sadly, only in B&W.
But, seriously, there’s a lot of game in here. The Guide to Glorantha is pretty thin (32 pages?) but has a nice amount of info. There was a Guide to Ernalda (?) for sale as well, but by then I was totally tapped out. I had managed to get half of the members of Power Pack (just need Lightspeed now) and the Isaiah Bradley Captain America Herocilx, though. And Pete Wisdom for the wife.
But, yes, it’s very neat looking, and I like the cosmology of Glorantha so far (but a lozenge floating in the sea? Okay, then). It’s a shame I’m only 22 years late coming to this party. Ah, well.
Of course, like everything I read I the first thing I wonder about it is “could I use it to play Al-Qadim?” I think that it seems a solid enough system that it would work quite well. I don’t know what level of lethality it imposes on PCs (it IS BRP, though) since I like my sand fantasy to be swashbuckling, but I do like how the magic system works on a general level. All pipe dreams, in any case.
What’s kind of impressive is that this boxed set (once again, an impressive boxed set) retailed for $38 in 1986. That’s a fair amount. I don’t remember what my red box cost (since I didn’t actually buy it for myself) but I think I know one reason why I never picked it up. I wasn’t going to be making a decent wage for a couple years yet, anyway.
The catalogue indicates you can get a Player’s Box for $20 and a GM’s box for $25, which each have about half the contents of the deluxe box.
I loved one particular bit from the catalogue:
"We spend more on product development than we make in profit"
You ask me, that isn’t exactly a great way to sell your organization. I mean, sure, it means nothing; if printing wasn’t crazy expensive back then, it’s entirely possible that development costs were the most significant part of the company’s expenses (especially if they rolled salaries into it) and it might be more than profit, depending on if they mean net or gross, yadda yadda.
But it just gives a weird impression. Plus, I’d assume that the licensing fees for James Bond might show up somewhere in there, too.
