Ophidian wrote:
> Jaap de Koning wrote:
>
> > Runequest is a funny game: nobody ever seems to have heard of it,
>
> Kids today. ;(
>
> > but
> > everyone who's played it loves it!
>
> Not true. 
Yeah, some people dislike the idea of not being shoehorned into a tired
archetype that adventures for gold and kills orcs. I could go on and on
about Runequest vs DnD (both of which I love), but I'll leave it
simple:
DnD pros and cons: Universally played and so heavily based on
archetypes that anyone from an experienced RPG geek to Joe Cool off the
street can sit down for a few hours and have a good time. On the
flipside, the same cardboard stereotyping that makes it such a success
also leaves the game lacking from a flavor standpoint. It tends to boil
down to the level of bad fan fiction where monsters roam freely with no
rhyme or reason, and the story serves as a background for combat and
resource aquisition. Combat and resource aquisition are the game's
strong points: if you want to know how to jump across a chasm, smash an
orc upside the head and then land facing said orc, you can look up a
sequence of variables that will tell you the die rolls needed to
complete that action. The rules are cumbersome and (although greatly
improved in the current edition) many are unecessary.
Runequest pros and cons: Like Jaap said, nobody ever seems to have
heard of this obscure 80s geek staple, that even during its heyday was
a niche game. An atrocious base setting and extremely varied quality of
support materials (also both probs with DnD as I see it). Its strong
point was character individuality, which led a small group of people
sick of the Generic Sword and Sorcery popularized by DnD to make the
conversion. While the rules aspects of Runequest (which was one of the
first "universal" systems) were modular and simple, a lot of people
tire of the fact that resolution mechanics are pretty much the same
across the board no matter what action is taken. (I want to do the
previous example, roll some % dice, I want to do x or y, roll % dice).
In some people's minds, Runequest's rules were <too> simple. I for one
believe that there's got to be a middle ground between the two games,
but all of the existing ones blow hard.
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