RuneQuest 6 Core Rulebook Info

Here is a summary, taken from Lawrence Whitaker’s post at the Design Mechanism site, of what to expect in the core rulebook for RuneQuest 6:

RuneQuest will be 456 pages, soft cover, black and white interior, colour cover. 

Price is $62.00 (£40, €50). There will be a discount for pre-orders, which we hope to begin very soon. 

You will be able to order RQ directly from us via the Products page of the Design Mechanism website. 

Shipping within the US and Canada will be $10. International orders $15. 

We will be distributing to the retail trade via our fulfilment and distribution partner, Alliance. This means RQ will find its way into game stores across the world. 

RQ will be available as a bookmarked PDF close to the release date of the hard copy. If you buy the hard copy directly from us, you'll get the PDF free of charge. If you decide to order the PDF singly, it will cost $25. It will be available through DrivethruRPG and the other One Book Shelf sites. 

I cannot give a precise date for publication, but it should be no later than mid-July and, hopefully, a little earlier. We will open pre-orders the minute the production files are in the hands of the printer. It usually takes about three weeks for production, so factor-in a fourth for transit to our warehouse.
 
We will be releasing a free PDF, available here and on Drivethru, for Games Masters. This will contain all the major charts and tables, a two page character sheet, a combat tracking sheet and an introductory scenario called 'Meeros Falling'. This scenario uses the setting found throughout the examples found in the rules and is a mixture of investigation, intrigue and combat. It directly continues 'Anathaym's Saga' as found throughout RQ6. 

So, more information to come, but I'm pleased to say that RQ6 is nearly with us.

I’m thrilled that RQ6 is coming so soon!  This is the game – not ‘D&D Next’ or the ‘Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG’ – about which I’m most excited.  And it’s great that the core rulebook will be ‘complete’ – all the rules, magic systems, monsters, GM info, etc., in a single grand tome.  Nobody should be able to complain that the rulebook is missing anything essential (in contrast to the MRQII core rulebook, which included a very meagre beastiary).

The length and price of the rulebook, however, very likely will discourage many people from checking out RuneQuest for the first time.  RQ6 certainly will not be an ‘impulse buy’!  Thus I wonder if it might be prudent for Design Mechanism to take a page out of Chaosium’s book and offer a free or inexpensive ‘quick start’ version of the rules.  Such a product (perhaps PDF only) would include only the bare essentials (e.g., one culture, the bare elements of a single magic system, a few creatures, a small set of combat manoeuvres, etc.).  A starter adventure also would be helpful.  Such a product would be sufficient for interested folks to give RQ6 a spin, without having to commit significant denarii.

Of course, the price and length is no disincentive to me.  I’ve pared back my RPG budget considerably over the past couple of years, but RuneQuest 6 is a ‘must-buy’ for me.  (I’m also looking forward to Magic World and OpenQuest 2 far more than ‘D&D Next’.)