Chaosium explains its decision regarding RuneQuest

Since I previously criticized Chaosium (under the new leadership of the gentlemen from Moon Design) for their decision to abandon RuneQuest 6, and to produce yet another version of RuneQuest (the fourth within a decade!), one embedded within Glorantha, it seems only fair that I should link to their official explanation for that decision.

I don’t have much to say about the rules-related reasons offered. Since I think that combat special effects are the best thing about RQ6’s combat system, and I have no interest in Glorantha, this forthcoming version obviously is of no interest to me. And even though my earlier post was strangely interpreted to be a comment on Chaosium’s financial condition (even though I said nothing about that in the post itself), a new Glorantha-based, 2^nd edition-compatible RuneQuest may very well be a grand success for Chaosium. After all, there seems to be a healthy number of fans of Glorantha with deep pockets out there. I hope that those folks are happy with the new version of RuneQuest.

That said, there are some puzzling things about Jeff Richards’s explanation of Chaosium’s decision. He writes, “we had imagined that the new RQ would be a streamlined RQ6,” but that, in part because “RQ Classic was a smashing success,” they decided that “the new rules had to be backwards compatible to RQ2.” 

This suggests that the decision not to proceed with RQ6, at least in part, was motivated by the outcome of the RQ Classic Kickstarter. Yet the decision to not use RQ6 came well before the Kickstarter. I knew this already (as a semi-regular RQ6 play-tester with Loz’s group in Toronto). But MOB publicly stated this in a recent post at RPGnet:

We actually formed the design team last year directly after Gen Con and we first met in person (including Ken, Sandy, Jason and Chris) in late September. It's only Steve who is a recent addition, and we're delighted to have him on board!
 MOB
VP - Chaosium

So “directly after Gen Con” (August 2015) the new design team for the new RQ was formed.* Yet somehow, according to Richards, “The RuneQuest Classic Kickstarter resolved the question” – despite the fact that that Kickstarter did not happen until many months after Gen Con. 

Hmmm...

While Chaosium’s decision not to use RQ6 obviously was disappointing to fans of that system, what many found especially annoying (including myself) was how Chaosium miscommunicated this decision. As late as December 3^rd – long after the decision to not use RQ6 had been made (as MOB’s post indicates), Chaosium’s Rick Meints publicly stated the following:

The RQ6 "Glorantha" project is progressing. We have it as a 2016 release, most likely later in the year. Lots of writing and editing is underway.

What could have motivated Meints to post such a misleading statement? Even if Chaosium did not want to make public their decision at that time, surely some other, less misleading statement could have been made. (And of course the decision did become public very shortly afterwards.)

To summarize: 

(a) Chaosium’s ‘official explanation’ for their decision not to use RQ6 suggests that that decision was made, at least in part, because of the success of the RQ Classic Kickstarter -- yet the decision not to use RQ6 was made months before the Kickstarter. 

(b) Chaosium unnecessarily put off announcing their decision -- and in fact made public statements that suggested that they were continuing with RQ6, long after they in fact had decided not to proceed with RQ6. 

Perhaps I've misinterpreted Chaosium's public statements, or there is a straightforward explanation for the prima facie contradictions of those statements?

[Finally, I should note that I stated in my comment on December 14: "I don’t intend to post anything more about Chaosium’s new direction for RuneQuest here (unless something especially newsworthy occurs)." I took Chaosium's recent statement to be "newsworthy," hence this post. Barring any further developments on this matter, though, I do not anticipate writing more about the new RQ here.]

* UPDATE (2016-03-01): MOB informs me that the team that formed directly after Gen Con included Loz and Pete (the Design Mechanism). I had assumed that they were not part of the team, as they were not mentioned in MOB's post. I thank MOB for the clarification.