By 1983, Chaosium’s RuneQuest was the closest fantasy RPG that rivaled D&D. Avalon Hill, meanwhile, wanted to get into the RPG market. A partnership between the two gave Chaosium access to AH’s massive distribution and AH got their entrance into RPGs. Sounds good, right? It was a disaster.
It started to fall apart immediately. RQ 3rd Edition streamlined the rules, but introduced new ones, many of which were needlessly complicated. The rules saw release in several varieties – a GM’s box, a player’s box and a Deluxe box that contained both. This drove the price of entry up, forcing the publication of a Standard box in 1986 with a stripped down ruleset and magic system at a cheaper price (the Deluxe was $38 in 1985 money!). This created another problem – RQ products after ‘86 had to reconcile the two versions of the system, making the books longer and more expensive in turn.
Worse, Avalon Hill wanted RQ to be a generic RPG. The box introduced the new setting of RuneQuest Earth to this end, but for most players, RQ is entwined with Greg Stafford’s rich fantasy world Glorantha (which gets a full booklet in the box, in fairness). Stafford maintained editorial control of all Glorantha material, though – something AH didn’t want to deal with, despite the fact that most of the AH RQ material was written by Chaosium (resulting in Chaosium earning less for their work than if they had just produced RQ3 themselves – a fact that would nearly destroy the company).
Despite all this, the production quality of RQ took a big step forward. The boxes are pleasing and well made. The art and design is more polished. There isn’t a ton of art in the Deluxe box, but I love the little tableaus in the monster section.
A coincidence: This week, as I am discussing RQ’s near death experience at Avalon Hill, the PDF of the new iteration of the Chaosium’s RQ just came out. You can bet that you’ll see it here once physical copies are available. My hope is that this new edition of RQ restores the game to its rightful place as one of the greatest fantasy RPGs of all time…
