“If you break down the walls that conf ine your view, and if the immensity and its endless uncertainty inspire you with fear, then the ancient stupor awakens in you, whose messenger is the white bird. There in the whirl of chaos dwells eternal wonder. Your world begins to become wonderful! Man belongs not only to an ordered world, he also belongs to the wonder-world of his soul.” —Carl Jung, Liber Novus SPECIAL THANKS GO to all those who contributed greatly or a little, but whose impact has affected the game: Dan Barker, Andrew Bean, Simon Bray, Nick Brooke, Pam Carlson, Hervé Carteau, David Cheng, Ray Chopping, William Church, Ian Cooper, Gene Day, William Dunn, Christian Einsporn, Daniel Fahey, Mark Galeotti, Todd Gardiner, Jonathan Geere, Christopher Gidlow, Sven Grottke, David Hall, Rob Heinsoo, Martin Helsdon, Catherine Hibbs, Genevieve Hibbs, Phil Hibbs, Simon Hibbs, Reid Hoffman, Kris Alice Hohls, Jennell Jaquays, Oliver Jovanovic, Sebastian Körner, Fabian Küchler, Robin Laws, Steve Lieb, Claudia Loroff, Penelope Love, Steve Marsh, Scott Martin, Mike Mason, Daniel McCluskey, Edward McDonald, Max McGloin, Anne Merrill, David Mil- lians, Michael Moorcock, Mark Morrison, Pete Nash, Susan O’Brien, Otherland Buchhandlung, Luise Perrin, Andreas Pittelkow, Ben Quant, Colin Philips, Christine Reich, Mark Rein-Hagen, Andrew Richardson, John Sapienza, Dana Schack, David Scott, Harald Smith, Domenic Swan, Steve Thomas, Jonathan Tweet, Gianni Vacca, Lawrence Whitaker, and Robert Hewitt Wolfe. Our apologies to any others who were unrecorded. RUNEQUEST A Chaosium Game First Chaosium Edition 1978 Second Chaosium Edition 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983 Third Chaosium/Avalon Hill Edition 1984, 1993 Fourth Chaosium Edition 2018 Copyright ©1978, 1980, 1984, 1993, 2018 by Moon Design Publications, all rights reserved. RuneQuest, HeroQuest, and Glorantha are trademarks of Moon Design Publications. The reproduction of material from within this book for the purposes of personal or corporate profit, by photographic, optical, electronic, or other media or methods of storage and retrieval, is prohibited. Art provided by A Sharp is copyright © 2018 A Sharp and is provided under license. Art provided by Petersen Entertainment is copyright © 2018 Petersen Entertainment and is provided under license. Chaosium Publication 4028 ISBN-9781568825021 SamplePrinted in China. First Printing. file CHAOSIUM INC. www.chaosium.com 3450 Wooddale Ct, Ann Arbor, MI 48104 Copyright 2018 Contents Introduction .............................................................. 5 Glorantha .................................................................13 Adventurers ..............................................................23 Pregenerated Adventurers ....................................... 84 Homelands .............................................................. 99 Game System .......................................................... 137 Skills ...................................................................... 163 Combat .................................................................. 191 Runes .....................................................................227 Passions & Reputation ............................................ 233 Magic .....................................................................243 Spirit Magic ........................................................... 253 Rune Cults ............................................................ 269 Rune Magic ............................................................ 313 Shamans ................................................................. 351 Spirits & the Spirit World ....................................... 365 Sorcery ................................................................... 381 Equipment & Wealth ..............................................403 BetweenSample Adventures ............................................... file415 Conversion Guide ...................................................432 Sample file Introduction ythology is more than old lies and stories, Glorantha’s main theme is religion and the magical rela- pseudo-scientific explanations for natural phenomena, tion of man to god. In Glorantha, the gods and goddesses or hidden secrets of forgotten lore. It is a state of mind are real, and through their followers and cults they play an and a way of life. It has a sentience and life of its own: active and important part in most major events. The Sun, a power. RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha lets you Earth, Air, Water, Darkness, and Moon have powerful deities experience that state of mind and explore that way of life associated with them, as do powers such as Death, Fertility, through the mythic realm of Glorantha. Change, Stasis, Illusion, Truth, Disorder, and Harmony. There are lesser deities associated with things as diverse as cats, cows, boats, vengeance, and volcanoes. What is RuneQuest? Glorantha is a complete universe. It is self-contained, and RuneQuest first appeared in 1978, as the first roleplaying from its myths to its molecules it must be taken on its own game published by The Chaosium, a quirky three-person terms. You will find no worshipers of Zeus or Allah here. company from the San Francisco Bay Area. RuneQuest took There are no Romans, Vikings, or Huns; although there the young world of roleplaying games by storm; it cast aside are certainly empires, pirates, and nomads. Many creatures many of the approaches most other games took. RuneQuest commonly rooted in other fantasy settings have no repre- has no character classes, no experience points, no levels, and sentatives here. far fewer restrictions on how weapons, armor, and spells The world of Glorantha is fully described in The Guide can be used. It uses a percentile-based D100 system instead to Glorantha from Moon Design Publications, but a sum- of one based on the twenty-sided D20. Most importantly, mary is presented in this book. instead of being set in a pastiche of medieval Europe and the stories of J.R.R. Tolkien, RuneQuest is set in Glorantha, a Bronze Age setting of myth and fantasy. Purpose of the Game This book is the fourth edition of the RuneQuest rules This game’s title, RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, written and published by Chaosium (although other com- describes its goal. Players create characters, known as panies have published licensed versions as well, most notably adventurers, and play them in adventures managed and The Design Mechanism). moderated by the gamemaster. Each player plays their adventurer consistent with how the adventurer is described on its adventurer sheet—defining the adventurer’s abilities, What is Glorantha? personality, loyalties, loves, and hatreds. The rules model Glorantha is a Bronze Age world, where people hold the adventurers’ physical, mental, social, and spiritual allegianceSample to tribe, city, and cult, not to abstract alignments characteristics, governing any interactionfile they have with or ideologies. Although humanity is the dominant species, the setting. This interaction is represented by the percentage their dominance is due only to the quarrelling of the Elder chance to succeed in an action. Races, who still rule large parts of the world. 5 RuneQuest Each RuneQuest adventurer is tied to several Runes, the cosmic powers that define Glorantha and are manifested Maximum Game Fun by the gods. Adventurers join the cults of their gods, from When writing, thinking, and gaming in Glorantha, which they get magic and aid. As an adventurer progresses always ask yourself, “Now, in this situation what is the most fun?” and then go with it. That’s Maximum Game in their cult, they strengthen their connection to the Runes, Fun (MGF). Keep this principle in mind whenever you gaining power and questing towards becoming a true Hero. apply the rules of RuneQuest to any situation. A RuneQuest adventurer is a member of society—a clan, tribe, city or other community. Adventurers have duties, loy- alties, and conflicts beyond being mere freebooters, with ties Occasionally, specified die rolls require that different to the world of Glorantha and the Runes as deep as they dice be rolled at one time. If a weapon does 2D8+1D4 are profound. damage, for instance, the actual damage is found by rolling Together with the gamemaster, the players create and those three dice (two 8-sided and one 4-sided) and adding negotiate the story. The result can be magical, like musi- their results. cians jamming and coming up with something completely new and unexpected. A roleplaying game is not limited by Reading the Dice constraints imposed by technology—the only limit is the D100: Called percentile dice. To generate a D100 result, imagination of those playing it! roll a D10 twice. The first roll is the “tens” roll, and the Despite the breadth of situations covered by the game second is the “ones.” If you roll a 5 the first time, and an 8 mechanics, the rules of RuneQuest are robust, not complex. the second time, you’ve rolled 58. A roll of “00” equals 100. Anyone new to tabletop roleplaying games should be able to Some types of D10s are numbered as tens (10, 20, 30, etc.). quickly and easily master the game’s mechanics. These should be used as the “tens”, and a normal D10 used for the “ones.” In such cases, a roll of “10” (tens) and “0” (ones) means a result of 10, while “00” and “0” indicates a Materials result of 100. RuneQuest uses a variety of different dice—10 or 20-sided D20: The result is the number facing up. dice, 8-sided dice, 6-sided dice, and 4-sided dice.