History
In 1975, games designer Greg Stafford released the fantasy board game White Bear and Red Moon (later Dragon Pass), produced and marketed by Chaosium, a game publishing company set up by Stafford solely for the release of the game. The board game introduced the region of Dragon Pass and many of the creatures and personalities that would appear in the world of the RuneQuest games. In 1978 Chaosium published the first edition of RuneQuest, a role playing game set in the world of Glorantha (first explored in White Bear and Red Moon). RuneQuest quickly established itself as the second most popular fantasy role-playing game, after Dungeons & Dragons. The first and second editions are set in the mythical world of Glorantha, while the third edition in the mid 1980s is more generic and was much less successful. RuneQuest is the original percentile die-based and skill-based rule set.
The game was sold to Avalon Hill under a complex agreement that required all Glorantha-related content first be approved by Chaosium. In an attempt to also have a setting they could release freely, Avalon Hill also supported a new "default" setting, Fantasy Earth, based on fantasy interpretations of several eras of earth's pre-modern history. Later Avalon Hill published "generic"/"Gateway" fantasy material (Lost City of Eldarad, Daughters of Darkness). Critics consider these later "generic"/"Gateway" publications inferior to the earlier RuneQuest publications.
Although both supplements for Fantasy Earth (Vikings, Land of Ninja) were well regarded, the popularity of RuneQuest as a system seems to have come from the strength of its original setting, reflected in the remarkably high sales of materials that were new editions of out-of-print Glorantha content. A proposed fourth edition was originally meant to return the tight RuneQuest/Glorantha relationship, but it was shelved in 1994, mid-project.
Glorantha is the official setting of a new rules system called HeroQuest, which is the successor to Hero Wars. One reason for the new Glorantha-based game was that Avalon Hill retained rights to the "RuneQuest" name but not to the game's rules. A new game called RuneQuest: Slayers entered development in 1997, but it was shelved when Avalon Hill was bought by toymaker Hasbro. At some stage in 2003 the rights to the trademarked name "RuneQuest" were acquired by Issaries, Inc.
Mongoose Publishing released a new version of RuneQuest in August 2006, under a license from Issaries, Inc., and "developed under the watchful eyes of Messrs Stafford and Perrin". However, Steve Perrin was no longer associated with the Mongoose RuneQuest project as of December 2005. The new rules were released under a variant of the Open Game License, and the official setting takes place during the Second Age (previous editions covered the Third Age). In 2010, Mongoose published a much-revised version called "RuneQuest II", this time with no OGL system reference document (SRD) for third-party publishers.
In May 2011, Mongoose Publishing announced that they had parted company with Issaries, Inc., and that the RuneQuest II rules system that they had devised would live on under a Wayfarer banner, but without the Gloranthan content. A month later Mongoose announced a further name change to Legend, so as not to conflict with the already existing Wayfarers RPG.
In July, 2011, The Design Mechanism announced that they had entered a partnership with Issaries, Inc. and would be producing a 6th edition of RuneQuest. RuneQuest 6 is being released in July 2012.
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