# RuneQuest - Work: Tabletop RPG - Date: 1978 (1st ed.); 1979 (2nd ed.); 1984 (Avalon Hill 3rd ed.); 2018 (RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha) - Made by: Steve Perrin (Lead designer); Greg Stafford (Creator of Glorantha; Chaosium founder) - Houses: Chaosium, Avalon Hill, Games Workshop - Platforms: Rulebook, Percentile and polyhedral dice - Canonical: https://www.lanternhall.org/works/runequest/ > Chaosium's 1978 answer to D&D: no classes, no levels, percentile skills that improve as you use them, hit locations for every blow — and the mythic Bronze Age world of Glorantha. **Why it matters:** RuneQuest was the first major skill-based fantasy RPG. Its percentile engine became Basic Role-Playing, the foundation of Call of Cthulhu and a family of d100 games, and its setting showed how myth and religion could drive play. ## Quick answers **When was RuneQuest first released?** RuneQuest was first released in 1978 (1st ed.); 1979 (2nd ed.); 1984 (Avalon Hill 3rd ed.); 2018 (RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha). **Who created RuneQuest?** RuneQuest was made by Steve Perrin (lead designer) and Greg Stafford (creator of Glorantha; Chaosium founder). **Who published or developed RuneQuest?** Chaosium, Avalon Hill and Games Workshop. **What kind of work is RuneQuest?** RuneQuest is a tabletop RPG in the Tabletop Roleplaying Games and Universal & Generic RPG Systems tradition, released for Rulebook and Percentile and polyhedral dice. **Why is RuneQuest important?** RuneQuest was the first major skill-based fantasy RPG. Its percentile engine became Basic Role-Playing, the foundation of Call of Cthulhu and a family of d100 games, and its setting showed how myth and religion could drive play. ## Overview *RuneQuest* is a fantasy roleplaying game first published by the Chaosium in 1978, designed by [Steve Perrin](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/steve-perrin/), Ray Turney, Steve Henderson and Warren James and set in [Greg Stafford](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/greg-stafford/)'s world of Glorantha. It rejected the scaffolding that [Dungeons & Dragons](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/original-dungeons-and-dragons/) had inherited from wargames — character classes, experience levels, ever-growing hit points — in favor of skills measured in percentages and improved by practice. Where D&D's adventurers were professional dungeon-robbers, RuneQuest's were members of clans, temples and cults in a mythic Bronze Age world. The result played more like a simulation of a society than a hunt for treasure. ## Origins Stafford founded [Chaosium](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/chaosium/) in Oakland, California, in 1975 to publish his board wargame *White Bear and Red Moon* (later *Dragon Pass*), set in Glorantha, a world of living myth he had been developing since the 1960s. A roleplaying game in that world was the natural next step, but an earlier design team failed to produce the planned supplement to an existing game. Perrin, who had written an alternative D&D combat system known as "The Perrin Conventions" (1976) and co-created the monster collection *All the Worlds' Monsters* (1977), then worked with Henderson and James on an original system, and Turney soon joined. Perrin had been a founding member of the [Society for Creative Anachronism](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/society-for-creative-anachronism/), and his experience of mock medieval combat shows in the rules. RuneQuest appeared in 1978; a revised second edition followed in 1979, supported by more than twenty supplements in the next few years. ## How it plays A RuneQuest character has characteristics such as Strength, Constitution, Size, Intelligence, Power, Dexterity and Charisma, and a list of skills, each rated as a percentage. To do anything uncertain — climb a wall, spot an ambush, swing a sword — you roll percentile dice (two ten-sided dice read as 01–100) and try to roll equal to or under your skill. A very low roll is a special or critical success; a very high roll can be a fumble. Combat is detailed and dangerous. The round is divided into **strike ranks**, which order actions by weapon length, size and dexterity. An attacker rolls against weapon skill; the defender may try to parry with weapon or shield. A successful hit lands on a rolled **hit location** — right leg, left arm, chest, head — and each location has its own hit points, so a character can lose the use of a limb or be felled by a blow to the head while still having general hit points left. Armor protects particular locations. There is no level progression to make characters vastly tougher; a skilled warrior can still die to an unlucky spear-thrust. Advancement comes from use. If you succeed with a skill during an adventure, you mark it; afterward you roll percentile dice and must roll *above* your current score to improve it. Magic is open to everyone. In early editions all characters could learn battle magic, while priests and devotees of a cult gained more powerful rune magic from their gods. Joining a cult — of the storm god Orlanth, say, or the Lunar Empire's Red Goddess — gives a character friends, enemies, obligations and a place in Glorantha's mythology. The bestiary encouraged players to play non-humans too, from trolls to ducks. ## Reception & impact Reviewers found it a coherent alternative to D&D. *The Space Gamer* called it "a gem of a game"; *White Dwarf*'s Jim Donohoe gave it 9 out of 10; Greg Costikyan in *Ares* called it "the most playable and elegant fantasy role-playing designed to date." Critics also found its combat cumbersome and Glorantha dense for newcomers. It quickly became, by many accounts, the second most popular fantasy RPG after D&D. Its greatest influence was its engine. In 1980 Stafford and Lynn Willis distilled the rules into the sixteen-page *Basic Role-Playing*, and that percentile, skill-based system underpinned [Call of Cthulhu](https://www.lanternhall.org/works/call-of-cthulhu-rpg/) (1981), *Stormbringer* (1981), *Worlds of Wonder* (1982) and many more Chaosium games — a foundation for the [Universal & Generic RPG Systems](https://www.lanternhall.org/atlas/universal-rpg-systems/) approach. ## Legacy RuneQuest's publishing history is tangled. Chaosium licensed a third edition to [Avalon Hill](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/avalon-hill/) in 1984, which placed the game in a fantasy version of Earth's Dark Ages with Glorantha as an option; it was not a success, and [Games Workshop](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/games-workshop/) published it in Britain. Stafford later took Glorantha to his company Issaries, and the name passed through Mongoose Publishing and The Design Mechanism before returning to Chaosium, now merged with Moon Design, in the 2010s. *RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha* (2018) built on the beloved second edition. Its ideas became everyday design: skill-based characters without classes or levels, percentile skills, hit locations, and "learn by doing" advancement became standard tools of later tabletop design, and use-based skill growth is familiar today to players of computer RPGs such as the Elder Scrolls series. ## Facts - Glorantha began in [Greg Stafford](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/greg-stafford/)'s board game White Bear and Red Moon (1975), the first product of the newly founded [Chaosium](https://www.lanternhall.org/houses/chaosium/). - [Steve Perrin](https://www.lanternhall.org/makers/steve-perrin/), a founding member of the [Society for Creative Anachronism](https://www.lanternhall.org/culture/society-for-creative-anachronism/) in 1966, shaped its combat around real armored fighting. - A blow strikes a specific body part — a leg, the weapon arm, the head — each with its own hit points. - To improve a skill you must roll higher than your current rating, so the better you are, the slower you learn. - Every adventurer can use magic; membership in a religious cult grants spells and shapes a character's life. - It became, by many accounts, the second most popular fantasy RPG of its day after D&D. ## Sources and further reading - [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuneQuest) - [Wikipedia — Glorantha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorantha) --- From The Lantern Hall (https://www.lanternhall.org/), a museum of fantasy literature and roleplaying games.