Steve Perrin, RIP

 

Influential game designer Steve Perrin passed away recently at the age of seventy-five.

In addition to RuneQuest, Perrin authored or contributed to numerous other role-playing games, including two of my all-time favourites: Stormbringer and Call of Cthulhu. And RQ's system, of course, informed all subsequent Basic Roleplaying (BRP, or “d100”) games. He also authored the influential AD&D module, Under Ilefarn, which was the first original adventure for TSR’s Forgotten Realms setting. 

Arguably, Perrin’s influence on RPG design was second only to that of the genre’s creators, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson.

Shannon Appelcline provides a nice overview of Perrin’s work here.

Greg Stafford RIP

Greg Stafford passed away on October 11^th.

Stafford was the founder of Chaosium—one of the most important companies during the early days of role-playing games (perhaps second only to TSR)—and creator of the acclaimed Pendragon RPG. He helped to create—and provided the setting (Glorantha) for—one of the greatest and most influential RPGs of all time: RuneQuest. In his role at Chaosium during its ‘golden age’, he helped to shape and support two of my all-time favourite RPGs: The Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer. By all reports he was a generous genius. It is hard to believe that another one of the greats from the mythic era of role-playing is gone.

Here is the announcement at Chaosium.

[Part of William Church's map of Glorantha from RuneQuest 2nd ed.] 

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. 

Chaosium Comment Confusion

In response to my last post – in which I criticized Chaosium’s decision to abandon RuneQuest 6 and instead develop yet another version of the game (the fourth one in less than a decade) – I received the following comment from 'MOB', Vice-President of Chaosium:

You are of course welcome to voice your opinion about Chaosium's plans for the new edition of RQ. But what's with the OTT headline? Anyone reading just that could come away with the impression the company has been mortally wounded and is about to go under. Which is absolutely not the case. Not cool at all. 

Despite whatever "insider knowledge" you say you have, the ongoing relationship between Chaosium and TDM continues to be completely amicable: we are not just professional colleagues but long-standing friends. Someone's already posted the link to our Q&A about the new edition, which makes clear it is far from being just a "modified version of RuneQuest 2" and in fact retains many core elements of RQ6. Loz and Pete will rightly feature in the credits of the new Chaosium edition, and we have wished them well for the direction they are taking with the TDM successor to RQ6 (just as they have wished us well). While Chaosium and TDM have mutually decided to work on our own things for now, we all agree the door remains firmly open for future collaborations. 

MOB  VP – Chaosium

While I’m grateful to MOB for his contribution to the discussion, I found this to be a rather strange comment, for a few reasons:

1. I can’t imagine that anyone who read my previous post would interpret it, or its title, as commenting on Chaosium’s financial condition. I think that it’s obvious that my remarks concern only Chaosium’s decision regarding the future of RuneQuest. I cannot control how others interpret what I write, obviously, but Chaosium’s interpretation does not strike me to be a very plausible one at all. (And anyone remotely familiar with Chaosium would surely know that the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game is far more popular, and thus presumably far more important for Chaosium’s financial health, than Runequest.) 

2. As for my “insider knowledge,” I didn’t reveal any of that knowledge in this post – except for the timing of Chaosium’s decision not to use RQ6 in the future (which MOB obviously does not dispute, as it's knowledge that I did in fact have).   

3. Chaosium goes to great pains in the comment to emphasize how amicable things are between them and the Design Mechanism. That’s wonderful. But it has no connection to anything that I stated in the post. At no point did I claim or even suggest that relations between the two companies are now unfriendly or hostile. 

In any case, RuneQuest aside, I certainly do hope that the new Chaosium succeeds, as I am a huge Call of Cthulhu fan. Moreover, I actually am pretty happy with the (somewhat controversial) 7th edition of CoC – as is clear from my review of it (the RPGsite version), and my ongoing use of it in my current CoC campaign. I was a backer of the kickstarter, and am grateful that the new management has taken charge of sorting that out. My impression is that they’ve been doing a very fine job with it. I’m also excited about Chaosium’s reinvigorated Cthulhu Mythos fiction line.

To conclude: (a) I don’t intend to post anything more about Chaosium’s new direction for RuneQuest here (unless something especially newsworthy occurs); and (b) I wish them well, and likely will continue to support (and blog about, etc.) their work on Call of Cthulhu. So that’s that.

Chaosium fumbles fatally with its plan for a new RuneQuest

Chaosium’s ‘new’ version of RuneQuest will not be based on RuneQuest 6.  Instead, it will be a modified version of RuneQuest 2. Thus there has been a divorce, so to speak, between Design Mechanism, which will continue to publish and support RQ6 (albeit eventually under a different name), and Chaosium.

I’ve known about this for a few weeks now, but had to keep my lips sealed until an official announcement was made. (Ironically, I received initial news of the split the day after my post on the bright future for RuneQuest 6 with Chaosium.)

Here is the official announcement from Design Mechanism:

As you may have heard following announcements and comments made at Dragonmeet today, it appears that the next version of RuneQuest (to be published by Chaosium) will be based on a new version of Basic Roleplaying using RQ2 as its underlying core, with some adaptations made by the Chaosium team. Pete and I cannot say anything ourselves about these developments, except to note that Chaosium’s RuneQuest will not use RQ6 to anywhere near the extent originally envisaged following the GenCon announcements back in August. 

We are delighted however, to announce that RQ6 will continue under a new name. We will be announcing that name in due course, but the game system you have grown to care about will live on – as will all the supplements we have created so far, and the ones we intend to release. Pete and I have no direct involvement in RuneQuest’s future per se and so will be devoting our energies to Design Mechanism products. 

I’m sure this news will raise many questions, and some we will not be able to answer – a fact that is simply beyond our control. However we can talk freely about the next printing of our rules and will be very happy to do so. 

We wish Chaosium every success with both BRP and RuneQuest.
Loz and Pete

This is, in my view, an absolutely horrible decision on the part of Chaosium.

Why would they want to split the RQ fanbase yet again? And why would they think it wise to go back to RQ2?

Now, I could see Chaosium opting to use the Call of Cthulhu 7th edition rules as its base for BRP and the new re-Glorantha-ized RQ (even though it's not as good a system as RQ6, and has been somewhat controversial amongst longtime CoC players). That at least would 'unify' all their RPGs under one system. But what they're doing instead is baffling.

I will continue, of course, to play and support RQ6. And while I prefer a setting-neutral version of the RQ6 rules, and so am happy that that version will continue in the future (with a new name), I do regret that RQ6 will not enjoy the additional exposure and distribution that it would have had it been part of Chaosium's line.

Ah well…