RuneQuest 6

What's in a Name Anyway?
According to the rumor mill, RuneQuest 6 is changing its name this summer and will be known as Mythras from now on. I have to say, as much as the name RuneQuest means to me as my second love in the hobby, I am rather excited about the changes ahead. I am pleased that Pete Nash and Lawrence Whitaker of the Design Mechanism will retain rights to the excellent game they have designed and look forward to purchasing a couple copies of the new Mythras as I anticipate the Design Mechanism will take this opportunity to tweak and improve the system a bit. the name RuneQuest will return to Moon Deign and Chaosium who will (according to rumor) be working on a new version of RuneQuest more closely resembling the classic 2nd Edition I first fell in love with. All good news as I will soon hopefully have two new game-books to read and enjoy with two lines of supplements, etc.
Mr. Nash and Mr. Whitaker designed the Mongoose RuneQuest II rules which have become Legend since Mongoose lost the rights to the RuneQuest name some time ago. Legend is also a nice game and continues to be supported by Mongoose Publishing. So history repeats itself with the renaming of the Design Mechanism version of RuneQuest. How many versions of RuneQuest does the hobby need, one might ask? I can't answer that of course, but taken one bite at a time I am enjoying them all. There isn't a one of the several versions of RuneQuest (renamed or out-of-print) that I don't think is a good game. I have played them all and enjoy them all. They are all similar in that they use the same basic d100 mechanic, are skill driven, classless and crunchy systems. Some are no longer tied to Glorantha and that is OK, there is so much more one can do with this game than play in the world of Glorantha (although I consider Glorantha one of the best game worlds).
RuneQuest 6 isn't strictly Glorantha based, although it certainly is compatible. The Design Mechanism folks created Meeros, a fictional bronze-age, Greek-like setting for the examples, of which there are many and they tell an interesting story themselves. The Design Mechanism has also released several settings for RuneQuest 6, my favorite being Mythic Britain, a version of the Arthurian myths. I certainly hope to see many more products from The Design Mechanism under the new Mythras name. Classic Fantasy (pictured below) is the first such release using the new Mythras name and logo. A version of Classic Fantasy was previously released by Chaosium as one of their BRP Monograph Series publications.

Classic Fantasy is a toolkit to play classic dungeon crawls with the d100 RuneQuest/Mythras system. Now if this sounds a little odd, having spent many hours trying to do that with RQ 2nd Edition, I think some rules help is in order. Classic Fantasy also brings the traditional races and class and level mechanics into the d100 system allowing a blend of styles. The Design Mechanism version is expanded (338 pages) and updated to use the new Mythras version of d100.
RuneQuest 6, at 456 pages, is the largest and most extensive treatment of the RuneQuest system to date. There are five magic systems - folk magic, animism, mysticism, sorcery and theism - a small bestiary and a lot of play examples as well as material dealing with culture, economics, cults and careers. The combat system is on the crunchy and deadly side, which is consistent across the other RuneQuest editions. The authors state this is the edition they always wanted to make. It is a big book, but it is also all one needs to play the game.
As a fan of both the Design Mechanism's RunQuest 6/Mythras and Chaosium's classic Runequest 2, I am hoping both systems will continue to be supported by their respective publishers. The news I have read regarding Chaosium's plans for RuneQuest are very inspiring and I am looking forward to a lot more d100 goodness in the future.