RuneQuest Classics

One of the unalloyed goods of recent years has been the technology of print-on-demand. Not only has it made it practical for individuals or small groups of people to publish their own RPG books, such as the excellent Planet Eris Gazetteer, but it's also enabled larger publishers to make their older titles available once more. Steve Jackson has done this with its GURPS library, for example, as has Game Designers' Workshop. 

Now, Chaosium has joined their ranks. Numerous RuneQuest books published in the 1970s and '80s are now available as POD books. These include not just the first and second editions of the RQ rulebook itself, but other classic volumes, like Big Rubble, Borderlands, Griffin Mountain, Pavis, and Trollpak. Making these again available is important for players discovering RuneQuest for the first time – the game, along with Chaosium itself, is currently undergoing a very welcome renaissance lately – as well as for roleplayers simply wishing to read some of the finest RPG materials ever written. Nearly all of the books now available through print-on-demand are justly called classics; several, though, continue to tower over the hobby decades after their original publications. 

Chaosium is to be applauded for releasing these RuneQuest classics. I hope they will one day do the same for their other superb games, like Call of Cthulhu and Pendragon, both of which also have vast libraries of wonderful books that have been out of print for far too long.