INTRO We’re back for more podcasts in 2017! We’re returning to our origins and looking again at the game that we began with back in 1981.
OPEN BOX 4.31 – the only President from the USA who really matters is the President of Chaosium, Rick Meints, who joins us to open the box on his early years of play and to talk about how he transformed from a player and collector of Chaosium games, to running the company.
WHITE DWARF 36.50 – @dailydwarf examines my favourite department of White Dwarf – RuneRites with its new creatures, magic and rules for combat.
JUDGE BLYTHY RULES! 50.00 – RuneQuest 6 has been rebranded as MYTHRAS . Ahead of Dirk running his Luther Arkwright scenario at Convergence in March, Blythy casts his critical eye over the rules.
OUTRO: I’ve been appearing on various podcasts as a RuneQuest zealot – Dissecting Worlds and the RPG Academy as well as appearing wild-eyed on Twitch.
The Patreon campaign is being reviewed and renewed for 2017.
People do think I look very confusing… lol very cool. Am happy to support your guys.
It is funny that you talked about Strike Rank and such in the podcast, as it is something I had a hard time trying to come up with a new approach that still felt old school d100 for Skaerune’. I think I have something that works, but we will know soon enough.
Do you have an email contact? I have a question/theory about Alignment of all things that I would not mind hearing your opinion on. Suffice to say I have thoughts on the old Red Box Basic three alignment system versus the common nine alignments in D&D over the years.
Anyway, keep up the great work.
Glad you are happy with your chaotic feature! You can contact me at dirk the dice at g mail dot com.
Dirk
Great show guys. Always wonderful to hear Rick’s stories of his long and illustrious career in roleplaying, and a very nice, thoughtful, balanced review of Mythras too. Very much obliged to you. Keep up the good work!
Lawrence
Thanks Loz – I’m currently preparing my pre-gen characters for Luther Arkwright (I’m running a one-shot at Convergence in March) – the supplement is excellent.
I don’t know if you caught the second part of our first episode – we rightly sing your praises there!
Thanks again – Dirk
I didn’t – I have to rectify that… Do let me know how Convergence goes.
I certainly will. Thanks for the offer of an interview too. I’ll be in touch. There’s a lot of love for RingWorld amongst the listeners and I know that was an area that close to your heart back in the day!
Tremendous as always. Imagine teasing Rick’s Glorantha collection, Dealing with Demons AND Borderlands for the next show. I am crossing off the days in fevered anticipation. .
Two minor comments. Firstly – in the White Dwarf section you sounded more like Patrick Stewart than the cheery Boltonian we have come to know and love. Was this a deliberate decision for your overseas visitors or an inevitable result of your stratospheric rise to fame? Perhaps I was simply mishearing in the car, of course, but it does mean I will have to work on my near-famous impersonation (Mike Yarwood, eat your heart out).
Secondly, can I clarify that the other Andrew and I would never upload Rick’s famous index onto our phones due to our tremendous respect for copyright. Plus it’s out of date these days :- ) I also think it is another unfair dichotomy to split playing and collecting. The real Manichean division is between playing/reading/collecting and Real Life.
Thanks as ever, and good luck with the unpacking!
Dealing with Demons isn’t coming in the next Grogpod, from me at least – I sort of meant “some unspecified episode in the future”. It’s such a good series though I think it demands a detailed look at it. And I doubt Dirk will need much persuading to return to RuneQuest once more at some point.
Dirk sounds like Patrick Stewart in the White Dwarf bits because that’s exactly how my voice really sounds – doesn’t it?!
Wow, you’re suggesting Dirk was doing an impression of you? We appear to be going down a dangerous imitation spiral…
And you’re saying I have to listen to not just the next GrogPod, but another one in the future? Looks like a busy 2017 for me.
Thank you very much for the fulsome praise of the episode. As the Daily Dwarf has said, he’ll return to Dealing with Demons at a later date, when we come back to RuneQuest. We’ll be coming back because we haven’t touched on our home-brew worlds for RuneQuest or Eddy’s RuneQuest on Harn.
Thanks too for the comparison to Patrick Stewart. I was aspiring for Ian Mckellen (a fellow Boltonian) in my characterisation of the Dwarf from day one: pompous, aloof but over excitable, however I’ve never been able to achieve it. This time, thanks to a Christmas cold, I had the appropriate timbre to the voice. I doubt it will be sustained.
You’re right of course, I was being over simplistic about collecting vrs playing, however I do think that there is a different geek impulse at play. I have loads and loads of stuff, but I would never describe myself as a collector as I only ever get stuff that I’ll actually use. I would happily trade a copy of Guide to Glorantha for a weeks worth of solid gaming. It’s a different geek impulse that seeks out rarities and collects things for the sake of collecting. I really don’t have an issue with it. I respect collectors, I just don’t understand them. My friend is an avid collector of film rarities, for example, but I treat film memorabilia as ephemera and not nearly as interesting as actually watching them.
That said, you’re right of course, we’re all geeks together!
No, no – you’re right. My longest continuously running D&D group have been playing together for 25 years, and during that time several players have bought perhaps 6 roleplaying books each, a couple have a shelf or two full, and I… well, you know what has happened to me.
I see the truth now.
It’s an illness…
Hey there Mr. Dice,
As a recent recruit can I just offer my thanks for a really entertaining pod. Loved the Runequest discussion and the call-back to Quincy Super-Hero Barbarian Duck, Master of Quack Fu fired a whole stream of memories of early RPG days. RQ was always our group’s go-to for fantasy gaming and we were terrible snobs about D&D. As for Glorantha, I love it and hate it in equal measure, mostly for the same reason: detail. My biggest bugbear (damn, there’s D&D creeping in) was that you’d be happily gaming with some fairly standard Tolkienesque elves and dwarves and then you buy the Elder Races supplement and learn that elves are walking shrubs and dwarves hideous, mindless automata (the picture of elves in RQ 2 has much to answer for) so massive rewrites ensue. But, on the other hand, I love Sun County. I want to retire there.
Keep up the excellent work!
MC
Pleased to have you on board Mr Cookie. I bring up the subject of the esoteric details of Glorantha with Rick in the next part …
“…then you buy the Elder Races supplement and learn that elves are walking shrubs and dwarves hideous, mindless automata (the picture of elves in RQ 2 has much to answer for) so massive rewrites ensue.”
Ha – Yes I remember these exact same emotions after reading through my Elder Secrets. A double whammy of shocking revelation, as the presentation and drawings were so awful in that supplement. The flavour had been carefully sieved out of it ….grain by grain…followed radiation treatment to get rid of any remaining drops of flavour 🙂
If truth be told I’m still trying to come to terms with Gloranthan Elves and Dwarfs. Hoping the new Runequest will present them in a much better way, all be it Gloranthan Elves and Dwarfs, rather then the Tolkien conception.
I really enjoyed hearing your comments on MYTHRAS.
I read as much of the RQ6 version as my poor, aging brain was capable of absorbing.
I liked the ‘special effect’ rules: it was something I’d had as a houserule since RQ3. We were always forgetting to specify which of the two ways we were using our swords before attacking so it made sense to say you chose a slash or impale after the dice roll. It is always gratifying when the rest of the role-playing hobby catches up with my genius!
I was willing enough to see the need for Luck points (though I’d have liked more of an in-game justification for them) and the unification of attack/defence goes back to STORMBRINGER and ‘fighting styles’ came from HEROQUEST>
But the thing that made me stop and put the tablet down was Action Points. For me this is not only unnecessary (RQ3 had perfectly workable if harsh rules about multiple opponents), but also got rid of the elegant Strike Rank mechanic and smelled too much of wargaming rules and things like the TRAVELLER skirmish rules.
Perhaps I should give it another try… Or perhaps I should wait for RQ-Whatever-The-Hell-They-Decide-To-Number-It.