14th October, 2018.
Yes! I’m up on time!
I can now officially, sing, dance and prance naked around my front room!
No, maybe not.
At least … not with the webcam on … !
~≈§≈~
At any rate … ?
I’m am still — slightly — saddened about the death of games designer, Greg Stafford.
While I never got to play, or referee, RuneQuest, I couldn’t help but notice the rules.
Which were, for the time, quite revolutionary.
Most role playing games used levels as a way of measuring experience: RuneQuest’s focussed on the improvements of individual skills.
Its predecessors treated magic, and spells, as bullets: used once, then not again, until re-learnt.
After RuneQuest? After RuneQuest, which had two forms: at least one of which drained a character of strength, and meant they had to rest before casting, again. Something later games started to emulate.
And combat … ?
Don’t get me started!
But that was just half of the game.
The other half, as I mentioned in yesterday’s Teaser?
Was Stafford’s. Was the background world, Glorantha.
Where other games of the time — Dungeons and Dragons, and Tunnels and Trolls, most noticeably — had sketchy backgrounds descended from Middle Earth, RuneQuest’s built-in background was far more detailed.
And only grew …
Having been built on work Stafford had been doing since his college days in the 1960s.
That background … ? That background, rooted in Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Stafford’s interest in Bronze Age Europe?
With its unique interpretation of the standard fantasy races, and its uniques ones, like the Dragonewts?
Was and is unique.
Giving that RuneQuest was being revived at the time of his death?
Greg Stafford will be much missed …
~≈§≈~
