RuneQuest

For many players, RuneQuest unveiled a new era of fantasy role playing. Unlike most other role playing game systems at that period of time that were mostly reduced to characters crawling through sinister dungeons, picking up treasure and power all along their way, even the first edition of RuneQuest (that was published long ago) focused on a rather realistic approach of simulating a game world. This goal could only be reached via a certain amount of complexity in regard of its rules set. It went hand in hand with a sophisticated skill system and customized character generation system. Comprehending the game mechanics may take some time to get used to for novice role players. Yet, after only a couple of hours, players learn to enjoy the mechanics' supportive aspect, while the game itself runs quickly and smoothly. Even better, players will rarely need any secondary tables or charts to follow the rules apart from what they have at arm's reach all the time: most principal statistics can be derived from the character sheet.

Like other RPGs published by Chaosium, RuneQuest, too, employs the Basic Role Playing system, a rules set tailored around the display of humanoid characters. It provides the same basic attributes and primary skills to build each setting's specific extensions on top of it. This works out amazingly well due to the fact that even epical fantasy characters mostly develop their skills instead of achieving supernatural feats and powers, thus becoming superheroes after having slain dozens of dragons as it is often the case with other systems. These rules give you the impression of being realistic, at least, to a certain extend. This is why it is likely that those players, who abandoned RuneQuest, may have ended up with Hârnmaster rather than with Rolemaster when it was discontinued after the third edition.

In the beginning, RuneQuest came with an original setting, Glorantha, a feature rich and nicely tuned, yet extendable, medieval environment perfectly fitting with the rules that accompanied it. Later, RuneQuest became more generic. After being discontinued, all that survived was Glorantha and HeroQuest/HeroWars, a new star that was born out of the ashes of the dead titan, a phoenix that, in a certain way, arced back to the roots where RuneQuest once began.