It must be that time of the year - a major project we have had under wraps for well over a year now is rapidly becoming one of the hobby's worst kept secrets. We won't be making any 'official' announcements until nearer the end of next month, but it is just you and I here at Planet Mongoose, and I am sure you won't tell anyone, right? :)

I am, of course, talking about RuneQuest II.

The reason it has become a badly kept secret is because round this time of the year we tend to save the 'big' announcements for the State of the Mongoose (which you will be able to read on our forums around the end of November). However, distributors and book stores require information on new books some months in advance, and they are under no obligation to keep such things quiet - keen gamers have long since discovered the little dark places on the Internet where this information gets released, and so the news is starting to circulate.

Rumours that RQII is being used as a smokescreen for one or more other announcements are, of course, completely untrue. Report all rumours to Internal Security.

Or is that another game?

Anyway, I am not going to spill all the beans about RQII here - after all, we would still appreciate you reading the State of the Mongoose (there is all kinds of other funky stuff in there anyway)! However, I can go through some of the philosophies driving the development of the new game.

The primary reasons for bringing out a new RQII are twofold. First, we wanted RuneQuest to match the same development pattern of Traveller (which, to be fair, has been very successful). Specifically, a strong line of core books, backed up with multiple settings released over the years - the important factor is that each of the core books is useable with any of the settings, with no conversions necessary. The current RuneQuest kinda went that way, but it was not a core premise of the line. That will change.

The other reason is that we had always felt that RuneQuest had been designed by committee - mainly because it was. There are thus some things it does well, but others we have never been really happy with.

To change that, we drew up a brief of what we wanted the new RuneQuest to achieve, and then passed the entire project on to Lawrence Whitaker. Long term RuneQuest and Gloranthan fans tend to call him either Mr RuneQuest or Mr Glorantha. Lawrence has been the one steady hand at the helm for RQII, and he has developed a new system that, while retaining the feel and atmosphere of all RuneQuests before (to the extent that older material, such as campaigns and adventures, can be used with little or no conversion), has become world class - for my money, it is truly the best iteration of these rules that have been seen yet.

Of course, you will be able to judge that for yourself come early January.

Anyway, Lawrence has rewritten the rules from the ground up, but kept things like stat blocks more or less intact, so all your older RQ material is still useable - he has tended to change how things work, rather than how they are presented. The results, though, have been amazing. Combat, for a start, is going to blow people away. Then there are the new magic rules. . .

You may also have heard that all core RuneQuest books are going to be leatherbound - this is absolutely true, and the collection is going to look stunning on any gamer's shelf. We have already been asked whether material from the older line is going to be reprinted. The answer is. . . a little. The latter supplements (such as Guilds, Factions and Cults - nd Lankhmar Unleashed, for that matter) were actually written with RQII in mind, so either work completely with it or have elements of themselves already incorporated in the new rulebook. Most new supplements will be completely new, written from scratch for the new rules. A small number of older titles are being reprinted (reskinned, I suppose, to match the format of the new books), but none are being left unscathed - vast areas are being rewritten while a great deal of new material is added.

For example, the new Empires book (due out around Summer next year) is expanded to 160 pages, meaning it packs more than half again as much material as the original. Cults of Glorantha, on the other hand, is being rewritten from scratch. It all depends on what the line needs.

As for settings, well, there will be Glorantha, of course, as well as the Eternal Champion (we were hoping to get the Elric, Hawkmoon _and_ Corum core books out in 2010, but that is unlikely). There will also be a brand new line called Deus Vult popping up around April, but more news on that later. Finally, there are some other bits and pieces we cannot announce right now (see reference to smokescreen above. . .).

One way or another, if you have any interest in RuneQuest and its related games, 2010 is going to be a good year for you!

Oh, and if you are after any of the current RuneQuest books, grab them before the end of December this year. They'll be gone after that.

I just had to share the great news with the folks that have been reading my stuff for years now...

http://angryrobotbooks.com/2009/10/moxyland-short-story-winners/

Thanks everyone, for helping me get to this point.

Cheers,
Bry

Some chaps on our forums have been asking today whether Planet Mongoose is dead, as we have not had an update for a quite a while. The quick answer is no, of course not!

The longer explanation is that we have all been very, very busy here at Mongoose, trying to get various projects completed on time. Between holidays, illness, approvals and other factors, we have slipped behind on a few projects, and have been working hard to claw back the release schedule. With the exception of some Paranoia books and one or two Traveller titles, we have mostly succeeded. Not everything we planned for an October release will appear this month, but everything should be back on line by the end of November.

Just in time for Christmas, in fact!

As it is, the Traveller Character Pack (well worth checking out), Ardanyan's Revenge and Prince of Darkness will be winging their way to distributors (and mail order customers) within the next few days, and I have heard a rumour today that Strontium Dog is heading to our warehouse right now.

So, slight delay here and there, but most books are on track, and the rest are following up quickly.

The other thing that has been taking up much of our time lately are some licences that have all hoved into view (after months - years in one case - of negotiating) pretty much all at once. Not all are signed just yet but I am told contracts are already on their way to us, so expect some cool announcements in the State of the Mongoose at the end of next month.

One of these new licences (well, actually more than one, but I'm looking at the first right now) will be turned into a miniatures game as well as an RPG. In fact, it is a project we looked at before but discarded as being too expensive - funny how things change.

We have been spending a fair bit of time today refining its development, and have made some real breakthroughs. It is an evolution of the BF Evo system, but zeroed in for skirmish combat. If you were part of the new Judge Dredd playtest earlier this year, you will have a sense of what it plays like, though a lot has changed since you saw the core rules. It flows very quickly now, yet retains enough granularity that it matters what type of rifle you plan on using, rather than just having a default 'assault rifle' like the current BF Evo rules. Which is just what you need in skirmish battles.

There are two rules we are particularly proud of at the moment. The first is the 'roll to hit' which has been made a little more dynamic and now reflects someone actively trying to get out of the way of incoming shells, rather than standing still, waiting for their turn. The second are the movement rules for one side in the game. Can't say much about that, as it would give the game away, but when you try it out, I would hope you think 'yes, they have caught that aspect utterly - and so simple too!'

Ah, the dreams of a games designer. . .

The two action/reaction system is still in there, though it has not survived completely unscathed. We did try one action per model per turn, but that did not really work. It added a certain layer of tactics, but was not very exciting - 'I run round the corner, brandishing my gun and. . . get my face ripped off as I have run out of actions.'

Not the desired effect.

On the other hand, you can now only do reactions (go on Alert Status - veteran Mongoose gamers may remember that one) if you perform a Ready action first. Which means you can go in, all guns blazing. . . and probably die, or be a little more tactical and have someone actually cover you. Works well, except most models only have a 90-degree line of sight, which means flanking comes into its own.

We almost have the very core forces balanced right now, and are shaking the last kinks out of the basic rules. Once that is done, we can start tinkering with new units and 'global rules' for the various factions - which is always the fun part of games design.

This game is intended for an April-May-June release (at the very latest, as we hope to have the first new A Call to Arms variation out towards the middle of 2010 as well), so we need to get out skates on. Fortunately, the sculpting has already started, and our NDA'd-up-to-the-eyeballs sculptors have been producing some great looking miniatures already - I hope to have some in my hands within the next couple of weeks.

We'll be revealing this one as soon as we have some prettily painted miniatures to show you, probably in S&P, so keep your eyes open. Meanwhile, I am going to be spending the rest of the afternoon trying out some new rules for the cannon fodder of the game. . .