tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post5008330405630175437..comments2024-03-28T15:30:09.903-04:00Comments on GROGNARDIA: Retrospective: BorderlandsJames Maliszewskihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-39570268894363622652021-03-27T14:43:35.313-04:002021-03-27T14:43:35.313-04:00...but not as a boxed set ;)...but not as a boxed set ;)Ludovichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13828738742841060555noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-37750139141098098752021-03-15T07:02:11.009-04:002021-03-15T07:02:11.009-04:00I was 15 years old when Borderlands came out and l...I was 15 years old when Borderlands came out and loved it. I would have been intensely jealous if I'd known the "Hoffman" on the cover was a kid younger than me, his name up there with those famous designers like Greg Stafford, Sandy Petersen, Steve Perrin & co.rabbithatfarmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00383369504234109777noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-47180175100085195792021-03-15T06:59:53.337-04:002021-03-15T06:59:53.337-04:00You can get all the RQ2 maps - including the map o...You can get all the RQ2 maps - including the map of Raus Domain from Borderlands - at Chaosium's Redbubble store: https://www.redbubble.com/i/photographic-print/The-Domain-Map-from-RQ-Classic-Borderlands-by-Chaosium/39720654.Y8UA9 rabbithatfarmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00383369504234109777noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-62542803034653577652021-03-15T00:30:34.221-04:002021-03-15T00:30:34.221-04:00All of the inner art was pen-and-ink drawings by L...All of the inner art was pen-and-ink drawings by Lisa A Free - <br /><br />https://vintagerpg.tumblr.com/post/163935154169/when-i-post-about-runequest-and-glorantha<br /><br />and there's not a great deal of it.Bilharziahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11279297507291173753noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-20744128468924256842021-03-15T00:24:12.463-04:002021-03-15T00:24:12.463-04:00These days with an experienced GM Borderlands woul...These days with an experienced GM Borderlands would be fun taking it in any direction the players wanted. My guess is the intention with the campaign was that the GM would cook up adventures in-between the set scenario booklets. When Borderlands was reviewed on the Grognard files (https://thegrognardfiles.com/2017/02/15/episode-part2-more-runequest-rpg-with-rick-meints/) the role of the PCs was described pretty accurately and amusingly as an "imperialist death squad".Bilharziahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11279297507291173753noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-51894944218907526862021-03-14T23:41:34.961-04:002021-03-14T23:41:34.961-04:00As a young teenager at the time when I ran Borderl...As a young teenager at the time when I ran Borderlands, I would not have a hope in hell of running it as a sandbox. I had not played in anyone else's game, my only clue as to how other people ran games, or how rpgs (frps) were supposed to be played was from White Dwarf and what I read in the few rpg books I bought - mostly from Chaosium.<br /><br />Although my players went along with the scenario plots and stayed working for the duke, they immediately called him "Raus the Louse" because he was a Lunar, and the nickname stuck for the campaign.Bilharziahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11279297507291173753noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-55215143337455239832021-03-12T18:35:30.390-05:002021-03-12T18:35:30.390-05:00My contribution to RQ Borderlands was the write-up...My contribution to RQ Borderlands was the write-up for the Men & a Half (the Agimori) in the Referee’s Book and the description of the three named Agimori NPCs in the Encounter Book. The write-up was basically a reprint of my article on the Men & a Half from Wyrm’s Footnotes magazine #12. (WF was the Chaosium in-house magazine devoted mostly to RQ and Glorantha).<br /><br />I don’t have any stories about what happened behind the scenes; Chaosium was a West Coast operation at that time and I live in Philadelphia. Not to mention that it was 38 years ago (yikes), well before the beginning of the digital age we live in now. It was always a pleasure working with those guys though.John E. Boylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02424841103552780730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-7022240903914268312021-03-11T18:34:30.345-05:002021-03-11T18:34:30.345-05:00I tend to agree with you, Frank. My sense of Glora...I tend to agree with you, Frank. My sense of Glorantha is very much informed by the RQ2 era and, while there are bits and pieces of later material I like, most of it is just too much for my tastes, which is why, as well done as it is, I don't ultimately find <i>RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha</i> a game I can really get into.James Maliszewskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-23271741348060740992021-03-11T17:15:45.691-05:002021-03-11T17:15:45.691-05:00Yea, Glorantha is very approachable if you stick w...Yea, Glorantha is very approachable if you stick with or at least start with the RQ2 era material. Then either roll your own Glorantha from that, or pick and choose.<br /><br />Since I've been running on and off since RQ1 came out, my Glorantha is most decidedly mine. In the 2000s, I got on a bandwagon of buying lots of the fan stuff. In the end, I abandoned most of it. And now I'm back to running MY Glorantha. And if I want to use something from a newer product, I do, and if I need to ignore something in it, I ignore it.<br /><br />Of course my Glorantha looks more like "generic D&D fantasy," but hey, that's approachable, and if you don't want to play "Cultural Anthropology the Role Playing Game", more power to you. Gaming should be fun. Pick YOUR fun, don't be tied to someone else's fun...Frankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15855679156477779666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-27369187809852858922021-03-11T15:34:31.190-05:002021-03-11T15:34:31.190-05:00I have not yet picked up the Borderlands classic r...I have not yet picked up the Borderlands classic reprint, but I can say the Griffin Mountain reprint book is excellent. The only thing they cannot do with POD is decently priced large scale maps. <br /><br />That I feel is a major failure of the POD industry, it should not be that difficult to reach a good price point on those, after all, look at the miracles of 3D printing...James Mishlerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03510782553325944558noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-28108096619076383612021-03-11T11:17:10.396-05:002021-03-11T11:17:10.396-05:00Nifty. had not seen that, although I dimly knew h...Nifty. had not seen that, although I dimly knew he'd worked for Chaosium at one point.<br /><br />Man, 12 years old. That's a kicker.Dick McGeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14521293874696659063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-35947321194852733162021-03-11T11:15:29.422-05:002021-03-11T11:15:29.422-05:00My experience with Borderlands differs radically f...My experience with Borderlands differs radically from yours. As I said elsewhere, our characters wound up getting involved in the Sartarite resistance movement amd eventually betrayed Duke Raus and his entire holding to angry Praxians and some Pavis mercenaries rather than running through the box in a linear path. So while it could be played like a modern adventure path railroad, it also worked fine as a fairly freeform sandbox, at least with a creative DM and a little help from Cults of Prax and Pavis.Dick McGeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14521293874696659063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-84504250702629567662021-03-11T10:42:22.176-05:002021-03-11T10:42:22.176-05:00That is awesome! Care to fill us in on which bits ...That is awesome! Care to fill us in on which bits you were involved in? And what it was like working with the Chaosium crew?JEFFBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08862106711059104379noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-49777558853423521152021-03-11T08:34:23.055-05:002021-03-11T08:34:23.055-05:00I never got to play RQ back in the '80s. A fri...I never got to play RQ back in the '80s. A friend of mine owned, and as kids we tended to buy different games to maximize our options. He never got around to running it though.<br /><br />By the '90s, it already had that intimidating reputation online, and I was wary of picking it up, not so much because I was intimidated, but because it seemed like something hard to get to the table. <br /><br />When Moon Design started reprinting the early books, I broke down and picked them up. It was amazing to me how accessible and table-ready they were. It just shows how fans of a game are often its biggest enemies. Adam Baulderstonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08247875453290704056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-79902802359048274892021-03-11T08:27:56.104-05:002021-03-11T08:27:56.104-05:00Yes, boxed sets are very fashionable again, and no...Yes, boxed sets are very fashionable again, and not just for introductory sets. Free League games like Forbidden Lands and Alien come in boxed sets, as does the Alien campaign Destroyer of Worlds. Dungeon Crawl Classics uses them for campaign settings like Lankhmar. The new edition of Traveller uses them for the larger campaign settings as well. <br /><br />Kickstarter has made them economically viable again. Adam Baulderstonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08247875453290704056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-30399638715853172402021-03-10T21:24:36.288-05:002021-03-10T21:24:36.288-05:00That's fascinating.That's fascinating.James Maliszewskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00341941102398271464noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-19626131004733134942021-03-10T21:18:43.925-05:002021-03-10T21:18:43.925-05:00FYI, the "Hoffman" listed on the front c...FYI, the "Hoffman" listed on the front cover is Reid Hoffman, billionaire founder of Linked-In and PayPal. This was his first paid gig, as a 12 year old. He's shared his foundational experience at Chaosium in profile articles and interviews overt he years, as a small but important part of his successful journey.<br />https://geekandsundry.com/can-playing-rpgs-make-you-a-billionaire<br />rabbithatfarmhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00383369504234109777noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-73378230671646561762021-03-10T19:23:03.789-05:002021-03-10T19:23:03.789-05:00This definitely is a great product, but it does ha...This definitely is a great product, but it does have one downside. It isn't exactly a sandbox. It's not quite a railroad, but definitely they way it's presented it isn't quite a sandbox. It could easily be run as such though.<br /><br />Interestingly, despite the amount of content for RQ, I have mostly run my own adventures or converted D&D adventures. Back in college I did start a Borderlands game, but never made it beyond a session or two. I HAVE run Apple Lane (mostly Rainbow Mounds, but I have run Gringles once), Snake Pipe Hollow, and Lair of the White Wyrm (non-Chaosium module from White Dwarf Magazine).Frankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15855679156477779666noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-71607516277999124012021-03-10T19:12:18.227-05:002021-03-10T19:12:18.227-05:00Borderlands was one of the last supplements Chaosi...Borderlands was one of the last supplements Chaosium published before the move over to Avalon Hill, (perhaps Trollpak was the last? I got both at almost the same time) a move which effectively killed RuneQuest at the time. Borderlands marked that stage in RQ2 Glorantha where it had moved a fair distance from its d&d roots as far as adventures went, and upped production values compared to Griffin Mountain, but it still had enough of a murder-hobo quality that showed the Chaosium writers still had not worked out how to reconcile the setting material with what the nature of an adventure was. There's a fascinating contrast between Borderlands, written in 1982 and River of Cradles, written in 1992 which revisits some of the same territory. The way characters, the setting, NPCs, magic and religion is treated is strikingly different.<br /><br />When I read people today, new to Glorantha & RuneQuest talk about how they are intimidated by running anything in Glorantha it seems so odd, as in the 80s it was all up for grabs, and even Chaosium thought they were playing d&d with better rules in an interesting setting. By the 90s this had shifted because by that time the writers realised this was not d&d, and that's when leading strongly with culture and religion distinguish the 'second golden age' of RQ, short-lived but nevertheless set the tone for RQ in Glorantha ever since.<br /><br />Although I have never had any interest in d&d it seems a shame that contemporary RQ (at least in the way new material for it is published and discussed) has lost its sense of fun because it clings so tightly to being true to the setting.<br /><br />Looking back on Borderlands what surprises me is how thin the setting material is, when it comes to things that would be immediately useful the GM is given so little. In the first scenario you have to act the negotiator for several different Praxian tribes, and you have virtually nothing to go on for the leasers of the various groups.<br /><br />Borderlands *is* an adventure path incidentally - it's a series of adventures which are difficult to play out of sequence. It does not have a sandbox structure (unlike the earlier Griffin Mountain) but I suspect this was a design decision to make it easier to run a Glorantha campaign, which it absolutely did.Bilharziahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11279297507291173753noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-12248099872851368452021-03-10T17:42:52.495-05:002021-03-10T17:42:52.495-05:00I've always been proud to have been a (small) ...I've always been proud to have been a (small) part of that project. I started playing RQ back in 1978 and played many other systems as well, but I never saw any supplement for any game system that was better at getting people to role play their characters than Chaosium’s Borderlands. As you point out, everything in that box was there to help the referee run adventures and it did a heck of a job.<br /><br /> I was one of many contributors and I’ll always be grateful to Greg Stafford and Steve Perrin for letting me be a part of that team.John E. Boylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02424841103552780730noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-70092198729475590762021-03-10T17:13:57.396-05:002021-03-10T17:13:57.396-05:00There are still quite a few boxed sets produced, b...There are still quite a few boxed sets produced, but nowadays they're used almost purely as introductory products; right I stock two D&D boxed sets (starter set and "essentials" kit), plus boxed sets of Shadowrun, Pathfinder, and 40k Wrath & Glory. The only non-intro boxed set to cross my shelves in many a day was the Curse of Strahd box Wizards put out last Halloween, which shipped in a giant, ridiculous coffin-shaped box. Impractical as anything, but fun!Darien Sumnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08586351803319498406noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-87007635583303397632021-03-10T16:23:33.678-05:002021-03-10T16:23:33.678-05:00I literally had no idea this item existed. Maybe i...I literally had no idea this item existed. Maybe it was a distribution variable (I grew up outside of Washington DC) or perhaps it was simply that our initial D&D gear came from older brothers who had been decommissioned from the Army during the Carter Administration and other than the occasional mall-store we didn't have many retail outlets. <br /><br />Either way it looks wonderful and engaging. Practicality has been my favorite word for 30 years. You learn that lesson when you turn a Marshall JCM-800 up to 6/6 and break three windows in your friends' garage. <br /><br />Borderlands: the safer alternative to Heavy Metal. <br /><br />Presumably the inner-art is as cultivated as the cover? <br /><br />HuckSawyerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13381444935904172318noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-52678621648442386812021-03-10T16:00:31.689-05:002021-03-10T16:00:31.689-05:00Worth noting that this available again as a POD so...Worth noting that this available again as a POD softcover, along with the other boxsets/supplements of the RQ 2 era rebranded as RuneQuest Classic on via the Chaosium webstore https://www.chaosium.com/runequest-classic/Newt Newporthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14526248931436220381noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-48956986606790406172021-03-10T15:51:08.600-05:002021-03-10T15:51:08.600-05:00The "adventure path" format really doesn...The "adventure path" format really doesn't lend itself to the relatively sandbox-style gaming of the Chaosium boxed sets, though. AP stuff tends to be very linear, in part because they want you to wind up at the starting point of the next release in the series so you'll buy it to continue. It makes them a bad value IMO, and particularly so when held up to Chaosium's work. Dick McGeehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14521293874696659063noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7487871339000666216.post-3736163248710867912021-03-10T15:17:39.293-05:002021-03-10T15:17:39.293-05:00Glad to see this post today. Along with P & Th...Glad to see this post today. Along with P & The Big R, Borderlands set my standard for setting/campaign adventure materials. As you say, learning the setting through the adventure, not walls of history text ala D&D. Today's writers of the Adventure Path by PAIZO/WOTC would do well to re-visit old products like this to see how one can provide a non railroad, campaign length game experience. JEFFBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08862106711059104379noreply@blogger.com