Runequest & Lankhmar

kwinland

Mongoose
Howdy,

We can't WAIT to see the new RQ (my groups have been playing it off and on for 25 years)! Glad to hear that whilst there are some changes, it is keeping the core mechanics/flavour.

I am also VERY happy to see that MP is doing Lankhmar for RQ! Now we just have to convince them to do a Conan sourcebook, and one for Karl Edward Wagner's Kane series.... :D

Ken
 
kwinland said:
Howdy,

We can't WAIT to see the new RQ (my groups have been playing it off and on for 25 years)! Glad to hear that whilst there are some changes, it is keeping the core mechanics/flavour.

I am also VERY happy to see that MP is doing Lankhmar for RQ! Now we just have to convince them to do a Conan sourcebook, and one for Karl Edward Wagner's Kane series.... :D

Ken

I totally agree. Conan and Kane, definately something I wish to see. Too bad Chaosium will not release their grip on Elric and the Eternal Champion (especially since they are doing nothing with it).
Other than that, I plan to convert both my Midnight and Eberron campaign to use the RQ rules. I feel that both settings could work well with something akin to Basic Role-play.
 
Archer said:
Too bad Chaosium will not release their grip on Elric and the Eternal Champion (especially since they are doing nothing with it).

Note that Lawrence Whitaker and Charlie Krank just presented their Corum book at Tentacles Convention in Germany.
 
jorganos said:
Archer said:
Too bad Chaosium will not release their grip on Elric and the Eternal Champion (especially since they are doing nothing with it).

Note that Lawrence Whitaker and Charlie Krank just presented their Corum book at Tentacles Convention in Germany.

Is that 'Corum' and not 'Hawkmoon'?
 
Well, I included Corum. It was quite a long time ago they introduced that product (2001). That is five years ago, and since then there has been nothing.
I would very much call that a dead product line. And I do not expect that Chaosium will do anything new, unless they need to do something to keep their license.
If you look at darksyde's website, it still says that Hawkmoon is due to arrive "mid-late 2002". Yeah, big chance of that...
 
They have been writing on Hawkmoon for ages, and I have mailed Lawrence himself. The plans for Hawkmoon has been put on hold, time and again. I guess by the time we will see it, it will also be time for a new edition of the Stormbringer RPG itself.
 
Archer, the Hawkmoon manuscript, or a part of it, is currently available from Chaosium in the form of a monograph.
 
An aside, to supply some facts, as opposed to speculation:

Since the Wizard's Attic implosion and the truncation of efforts on the Dragon Lords of Melnibone d20 line, Chaosium have also published two Eternal Champion monographs: Gods of Chaos (in 2004) and, more recently with Darcsyde and Lawrence Whitaker's cooperation, the new Hawkmoon (a specifically written "sub-set" of the larger work Darcsyde still hope to publish at some date). They also have at least two other EC monographs near completion: Charles Green's Gods of Law sequel to Gods of Chaos and Richard Watt's A Guide to Old Hrolmar. Plus there are a couple of other's being worked on I believe. Meanwhile some 11 existing titles are available in print form from Chaosium that support Stormbringer 5 (inclduing the Core rulebook), and 17 (including several previous editions of the core rules and the old 1980's version of Hawkmoon) are available as watermarked PDF's from Drive-Thru RPG.

Hardly "a dead product line". Whether it's "good enough" is debatable - but not, I'd suggest, in a thread about Mongoose's new RuneQuest and Lankhmar books.

Now, back at the topic, how do folk imagine Nehwon should be dealt with in terms of sourcebook(s)? Leiber was, in the Fafhrd & Mouser stories at least, definetly a writer of the pulp style, where invention and wit were far more important than meticulous world building. Adding simple factual detail to Nehwon to enable a game is frankly trivially easy - doing so in a fashion which captures Leiber's sense of irony, dark humour and poetic sense of invention is trickier, but surely essential to enable games that actually "feel" right?

So would people really want to see a Lankhmar sourcebook and a Quarmall sourcebook and an Ool-Hrusp sourcebook etc etc etc? Or is there a different paradigm that might suit Nehwon better?

Cheers,

NDM
 
Two questions:

Are there still places left for Continuum, as it looks like it'll be the replacement for GenCon (UK) for me this year?

Second question:

I'm really not that familiar with the Lankhmar setting beyond a few references to Grey Mouser, etc. Would anybody care to give me a good lowdown on what the settings like, what type of adventurers we would normally use, and the types of story/adversaries we would see?
 
Basically the world of Nehwon was conceived and written by Fritz Leiberin the 40s but came into popularity in the 70s to 80s when ACE books in the States published them with Frazetta like coversd.

Basically Nehwon is your typical fantasy setting(without Orcs, goblins etc. but populated by its own unique races: Ghouls, etc.) and its center being the massive city of Lankhmar where most of the stories of Fafhrd and Grey mouser are set. Lankhmar is the largest city in Nehwon and its variety and exoticness you would akin to Shadizar or New York. Its one of the most detailed and developed cities in the fantasy genre. It is protected by undead beings called the gods of Lankhmar who are not revered or worshiped but feared and only reluctantly called upon when the city is in grave danger(they lair in their temple somewhere in the city).

The best sourcebook on the setting is a book published by TSR sometime in the mid 80s called Lankhmar. Also the gods of Lankhmar stats can be found in the first or second edition of the old AD&D deities and demigods book.

Marvel/Epic also published them as a comic limited series adapted by Howard Chaykin and drawn by Mike Mignola(Hellboy) in the late 80s.

A boardgame was also published by TSR called Lankhmar in the early 70s and is designed by Fritz Leiber himself who is said to have started design of the game in the 40s so its probably the first fantasy boardgame ever made.

I highly recomend you pick up the first 6 books of Fafhrd and Grey Mouser which I consider the best of the series. The excellent writing style of Fritz Leiber lends sort of a dark fantasy look for the setting in my opinion.

If you want info online you can go to:

http://www.stormbringer.net/mouser.html

http://www.scrollsoflankhmar.com/
 
andakitty said:
Archer, the Hawkmoon manuscript, or a part of it, is currently available from Chaosium in the form of a monograph.

I know.
But the latest word I got from lawrence (which was about 2 months ago) was; "It is delayed, once more.".
The "release" by Chaosium is just a thing to keep the license for now.

But as Gallowglass says; this is a discussion for another forum.
 
If you want to buy the download copy you can go to drivethrurpg:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=826

You can also download the Hawkmoon adventure called Shattered Isle there.
 
tetsuo said:
If you want to buy the download copy you can go to drivethrurpg:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=826

You can also download the Hawkmoon adventure called Shattered Isle there.

I have it. But thank you for the help anyway :)
What I really want is a new version of Hawkmoon, the one promised by Darcsyde, and written by Lawrence Whittaker.
 
TrippyHippy said:
Are there still places left for Continuum, as it looks like it'll be the replacement for GenCon (UK) for me this year?

There are still some residential places left at Continuum 2006.

Go to the website[link in my sig. below] and register on-line.
 
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