Hero Quest

What is HeroQuest.

It is RuneQuest thirty years on...

Well thats mostly what it is to me. Sometime around 1975 somebody introduced me to Chainmail and D&D and I was addicted. Shortly after I got a copy of RuneQuest, with Cults of Prax, and I was overwhelmed by the setting and the system. I always loved Prax, and went through many many characters, the last being a Duck (who was the most fun).

Eventually Avalon Hill bought RQ and re-editioned it, and I didnt like it. I tried a few times but it just didnt have the spark I once knew. I left Glorantha and moved onto other worlds. I didnt forget however, and kept track of what Chaosium and then Issaries were doing. When they brought out Hero Wars (the new Glorantha) I bought it up and was again excited. I kicked and whined at some of my role playing friends until they gave in and tried it.

And it was not good. Hero Wars was a major change in roleplaying style for us. We had become AD&D style players (well we always were actually), which means we were mostly playing it as a war game, rather than a role playing game. Hero Wars had a much more narrative drive behind it, and it took us over a year of playing to come to grips with this. And then they brought out Hero Quest.

Well I wasnt terribly happy with a new edition so soon (shades of D&D), but the reports suggested that HQ would be better, and HW was certainly giving me some problems. As I was the only one spending the money on the game at the time (actually buying books), it wasnt as expensive as all of us buying a new edition of AD&D. Well I am happy to report that I am glad I did. HQ is a much better game than HW, and by now we had also adjusted our play style enough to make HQ a much easy nut to crack.

HQ is Glorantha, pure and simple. The rule books are written around the Glorantha setting, and several of the extra books are totally Gloranthan (Thunder Rebels etc). The emphasis however has moved from Prax to Sartar and the Orlanthi-Lunar conflict. This doesnt stop you running the game in Prax if you want to, there is still quite a bit of information out there, and any of the old RuneQuest material can be easily converted.

So, HQ is roleplaying in Glorantha. It is a much more narrative based game (less mechanistic, meaning fewer dice rolls in theory), and certainly much more immersive into the world of Glorantha. Currently my biggest problem is coming to grips with the depth of the world. There is a vast store of material out there about Glorantha, but quite a bit of it talks about stuff that remains hidden or obscure. In the end it comes down to making some decisons about "your" Glorantha and how you want the world to be, and that can be a lot of fun.

I really like HQ, and I thoroughly recommend it. But as always, not all games are for all people.