RuneQuest Starter Set

I got my Starter Set a few days ago, along with the stunningly beautiful 40th CoC book, and I have to give praise to Chaosium's amazing warehouse team. My order came double boxed with heavy duty shipping tape and lots of packing paper. As someone who is brand new to Glorantha (I've been gaming since 1984 and only got into Glorantha in 2018 with the RQ:G book), I love it. I love the sturdy box. I love all the maps and the magnificent artwork and the PC portfolios. I especially love Book 2: Glorantha. Even though I have the Sourcebook and the two-volume Guide, it all still feels overwhelming sometimes. There's just so much depth to the setting. Which I love, of course. But this Starter Set booklet really gives me a good overview of the world without inundating me in detail. If I could make one request for us poor newbs though, give us a pronunciation guide!

A box set may be nostalgic to older TTRPG gamers but this set is produced with the highest quality. The print quality, materials chosen, and layout are each top notch. That doesn’t even begin to touch on the content. The set contains 14 new playable PCs, 4 books (more on that in a min), an awesome map of the Dragon Pass region, dice, and player handouts. The books are organized and well written. With a book for the game rules, a book for the setting of Glorantha, a book of written adventures, and my favorite is the Solo quest. The solo quest is a great way for new players to experience the wonder of Glorantha and learn the mechanics of the game as they play out an important part of the Glorantha Lore/History. As a final note, the price point is amazingly low for the amount of content within the box set. I recommend this set for any curious new comers to Runequest and a solid purchase for old timers as well.

For a player new to Glorantha this is where you need to start. Everything is streamlined and ready to go. You can explore the world and various character archetypes (over a dozen). It is colorful and vivid with a well laid out package and an initial solo adventure set to get you all in. There is a lot in this box that will keep you going for a fair amount of time. Warning though: Soon you'll be so excited by this whole world you'll have a whole bookshelf of Gloranthan books and materials from Chaosium and fan written materials at the Jonstown Compendium as well as writing yourself.

Adventuring in Glorantha can be daunting (as in, on Earth, playing Runequest) as there is likely no richer, more fantastical world that gamers can immerse themselves in. It's a lot to take in - and coupled with Runequest's oft copied game system that is is famed for its gritty realism - starting off in Runequest Glorantha can be vertigo inducing. But the Runequest Starter Set puts your players on solid ground with a selection of richly rendered pre-gen characters thrown into an epic age of action called 'The Hero Wars'. You really do get to walk a mile in someone else's shoes - or rather, SANDALS, as Bronze Age Gloranthophiles will pedantically remind you! The 'grounding' of adventurers, their background and motivations, is the real sparkling innovation of Runequest Glorantha (it's possibly 7th version since 1978), as instead of dry and abstract alignments, adventurers have history! And in the Runequest Starter Set, players will get a front row seat in The Solo Quest, playing Vasana, a warrior riding headlong into battle. I can't stress how immersive and ingenious this is (just like the background generating system in the main rule book): players learn so much about the world and their place in it. For me, the Solo Quest is a stand out part of the Starter Set, as it's so richly described and wonderfully illustrated. The other booklets and maps are of course great - but I must confess - I haven't read the Adventures supplement, as I WANT TO PLAY THEM! (I'm going to twist somebody else's arm to GM!). The slightest gripe is actually also the Starter Set's main selling point, or raison d'etre; it's that players don't get to roll up their own adventurers, but instead are given pre-generated characters... But, you know. The pre-gens themselves are also so richly rendered, that if you buy this Starter Set and don't want to buy the rest of Runequest Glorantha and roll up your own adventurer with their own backstory, life history and motivations....then........WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!? Welcome to Glorantha. You'll never leave.

RPGs have become so crunchy. The rules need to cover pretty much every circumstance you can think of, BEFORE you open the books. More and more, a quickstart or beginner's rules set is necessary. The RuneQuest Starter Set fulfills this need nicely. First: I know at least one person who was put off by the fact that this box does NOT contain character creation rules, but instead has 14 pre-generated characters. They forget that the point of a Starter Set is to START PLAYING, not get bogged down in character creation. The wide variety of pregens is, I think, an excellent compromise that will get people actually playing hours earlier than they would if they had to learn all about character creation. Second, after 40+ years, the RQ mechanics are still rock-solid, and still easy to explain to anyone in moments. Technically, there are a bunch of charts, but it all still comes down to: you have a percentage in each skill; roll equal to or less than that percentage, and you Do The Thing. While the extra rules are not as comprehensive as the RQG rulebook, they cover most of the things beginning players are likely to have to handle. The Glorantha book is a thing of beauty. The maps are glorious. The solo adventure is fun. The GM adventures, especially the reboot of the Rainbow Mounds, are exactly the sort to show off how Glorantha works. RQ has never been strictly dungeon-bashing and murder hobos. Now, with this Starter Set, people can get a genuine taste of how different, exciting, and fulfilling a role-playing game can be.

The best starter set I have seen. Basic and ideal for new players and really interesting to more advance GMs, stunning art, lot of content, thrill adventures, dices.... and cheap... you can't ask for more.