[Testing the Depths] RQIII and Tékumel

[Ian Absentia]

I'm in a funny quandary. My wife and I are organising our storage room in the basement, and I'm staring a big ol' set of shelves filled with roleplaying games, most of which I'll never play again. A lot of them are still with me simply for sentimental reasons, some for very sentimental reasons. However, I'm honestly having trouble justifying keeping some of these -- I'm simply not interested anymore.

In particular, I have two game collections I never thought I'd part with: RQIII and Tékumel. As far as the RuneQuest stuff goes, I'm definitely keeping all of my second edition matieral, and HeroQuest has effectively displaced any perceived need for the RQIII books. With regard to Tékumel, my complete disinterest in the recent release of the Guardians of Order book seems to have convinced me that I'm just...over it.

So, I feel kind of funny about it, but I think I want to sell it all off to people with a more sincere interest than I have. I'm not completely convinced, though. So tell me -- does anyone have an interest in this stuff? I don't just want to throw it all up on e-Bay, partly because it's such a pain in the ass, and partly because I'd rather offer it to my "local community" first.

Anyway, here's what I have and am thinking of selling:

RuneQuest III
Gods of Glorantha
Genertela, Crucible of the Hero Wars
Elder Secrets
Nonhuman Adventure Sheets
RuneQuest Cities
Gloranthan Bestiary
Apple Lane (the Avalon Hill RQIII edition)
Dorastor, Land of Doom
Lords of Terror, the Cults of Dorastor
Strangers in Prax
Shadows on the Borderland
Sun County

Tékumel
Swords & Glory, Vol.1 and Vol.2 (These are the Gamescience editions. They include the large color map, but the dice and one of the boxes are missing.)
Best of the Journals, Vol.1
Gazetteer for the Northwest Frontier Map Set
Empire of the Petal Throne (Flying Buffalo edition)
World of the Petal Throne, Book 1 and Book 2(Flying Buffalo edition)
The Tékumel Bestiary (Theatre of the Mind edition)

I'm definitely keeping my copy of The Book of Ebon Bindings -- that continues to have sentimental value. :)

So, that's it. What do you think? Should I sell?

Cheers,
!i!

(P.S. I should have mentioned, I'd be shipping from the US -- Seattle in particular.)

[Balbinus]

Why aren't the RQ books usable with HQ? I'd have thought them still a useful resource for that.

As for Tekumel, I might be interested, but with your current gaming tastes is it not possible that the problem with the new edition for you was the fairly heavy rules rather than anything else? Have you run a HeroQuest Tekumel game?

Give that a go and then see how you feel, if you still feel like selling I might buy some but I'd see whether it was the new edition or the setting you were bored with.

[Ian Absentia]

The RQIII books are usable with HeroQuest, but many (most?) of them are redundant with either my RQII books or subsequent HQ books I've bought. They also just have...the wrong flavor. They're not my go-to books, in as much as I "go-to" any RQ sources anymore.

As for Tékumel, the reason I didn't buy the new Tri-Stat book was two-fold. One, the book appeared to be largely redundant with materials I already had. Two, I wasn't using the materials I already had and couldn't justify the purchase of more. As for playing a Tékumel game with HeroQuest, I feel confident in saying that the only way I can honestly imagine being involved in such a game would be if someone else graciously offered to GM it, and then I wouldn't need all of my books anyway. Maybe I should just hang onto the Gamescience books and have done with the rest -- just in case.

I'm riding the fence here, obviously. Which Tékumel books do you have an interest in?

!i!

[Calithena]

What is the relation of the Flying Buffalo materials to the Swords & Glory releases? Redundant or otherwise?

[Ian Absentia]

What is the relation of the Flying Buffalo materials to the Swords & Glory releases? Redundant or otherwise?Entirely redundant -- more or less. They took the text from Swords & Glory, Vol.1 (which was in super-tight, tiny little print), and broke it out into three separate books with larger print, better layout, and (sometimes) better art. Only Flying Buffalo never quite got around to publishing the third book (though it was later published privately).

Swords & Glory, Vol.2 was the Gamescience game rules, which are...crunchy. Needlessly so, really. There are also quite a few nuggets of Tékumelani trivia that help flesh out things here and there -- such as the unarmed combat techniques taught and used by the two "knowledge" gods -- but you have to dig awfully hard to mine them out.

!i!

[Ian Absentia]

Brain fart.

In all of my posts above, I kept mentioning the "Flyng Buffalo" editions of certain Tékumel products. That should have been the Different Worlds Press editions. I hope that didn't confuse anyone.

I'm surprised no one corrected me on that. :o

!i!

[rstites]

Depending on current values (no clue here if anything RQIII has any value or has become "collectible"), I'd be interested in picking up some of the RQIII/Glorantha stuff for my brother. I own all of it, but have recently gotten him and some of his friends into Glorantha, so it'd make a decent Christmas present for him and let him try his hand at running his own game.

[Ian Absentia]

...I'd be interested in picking up some of the RQIII/Glorantha stuff for my brother.Do you think he'd be more interested in background or mechanics? For pretty solid background on Glorantha as a gameworld, I'd recommend Gods of Glorantha and Genertela, Crucible of the Hero Wars, followed by the Gloranthan Bestiary. That lot would pack a pretty solid punch, and, frankly, have been my favorites of the collection.

As far as value goes, I know there is some demand for these items, what with them being out of print and there still being a significant community of RQ-Gloranthaphiles who resisted the shift to HeroQuest. If you're still interested, PM me with what you think is a fair offer.

Oh, and to reiterate, I'm shipping from the US.

!i!