[smascrns]

Originally Posted by Tori Bergquist

I liked your suggestion that the current edition of Runequest lacks some of the more anthropological and mythic recognition or identification in the text of earlier editions, as I think you are essentially right; the earlier editions of Runequest read very well, in terms of conveying the ancient world and its mythic parables.

Well, a lot of people that loved RQ2 considered that RQ3 lacked as well in this regard, if not in terms of content at least in terms of tone. The problem is that the more specific a game is about this kind of stuff the harder it is to use it for a different setting. Personaly I prefer a fantasy game that is more generic and adaptable than one that is too tied for a particular setting, even if that setting is delivered with great anthropological and mythic depth. I prefer to see this depth in setting books, not in the core rules book. In other words, this is a field where I think MRQ compares well with its predecessors. As you say, "MRQ being more open to multiple settings remains a good thing".

In actual play (with my group at least) this proved to be a non-issue and became a big portion of the role-playing plot elements. Also, the use of runes as physical qualities proved to be a novel and interesting take on magic in my (non-Glorantha) campaign that seemed to really appeal to my jaded gaming group.

When I reviewed MRQ it seemed to me that it could work in play, and your experience shows it does. I still think that Mongoose didn't play the idea as well or as deeply as they could.

In some ways, MRQ feels like two games: a variant of the old RQ we are all familiar with, and then a Legendary edition in which a group can start with bad-ass characters from the get-go. But getting from standard RQ to "we're all bad asses" is actually a very, very long process. Kind of like how getting to play a 21st-30th level character in D&D is a rarely seen event in most campaigns (in my experience, anyway).

Interesting. Your play experience shows I was right when I considered that RQ with legendary abilities turns into a different game, and that it's also a different level of play. Either one wants to stick to pre-LA level and plays traditional RQ, (what I called "junior level" in my review) or one goes for LA level and we are with another game to a great extent.
Once more, why doing this? Why didn't Mongoose focus on one of the two and drop the other? Until now your experience has been with playing the pre-LA level, I hope you and your players move to the LA level and see how it plays.

the players tended to survive better (as intended in the design, I suppose) but the monsters often held out far longer, as well.

It seems that Mongoose intended to have a less lethal game all along, what with Hero Points and similar devices.

I pretty much ended up house ruling that most non-boss monsters would just fail their resillience checks and keep over when they hit -HP in a critical location, to save myself some book-keeping nightmare work.

This is something I didn't get. Why keep HP-location instead of general HPs? It requires a lot more book-keeping.

I found the real issue turned out to be Combat Actions. CAs are defined entirely by one's attributes (skip)

CA are a poorly done pain-in-the-ass by just reading the book, but it's nice to see that game play confirms it.

A question: Did you use in your game any of the supplements that Mongoose (and other people) are publishing for MRQ? If yes, which and how did they help?

Now, a suggestion: Your post looks right like a small review of MRQ. Why don't you expand it into a full fledged actual play review? Please do so, I would love to read it.

I may not be a fan of MRQ and I may think that previous editions are better but I also hope that Mongoose comes out with a second edition of their game, one that corrects the things that need to be corrected and where they decide what game they want: One without LA or one that focus on LA.

PS Do you recall our interaction at the time of my review of MRQ? Then we touched on rules legacies and the case of D&D rolled attributes was mentioned. I stated, "I would not be surprised if a future generation of D&D drops the rolled attributes, though". It seems I was not far off from what came to be, if I can rely on reviews of DD4 (my copy is on the mail right now).