Adept Play
A fantasy game by Steve Perrin and Ray Turney, first published by The Chaosium in 1978; includes the slightly edited version published in 1979.
Sometimes people email me with questions. Since I don’t know them, and don’t know the (sometimes) complicated process that led to them deciding to ask, I have to ask dense-seeming questions back in order to know what they’re talking about before I can answer anything, or know if I can answer at all. In this…
This was a remarkable opportunity and experience. Adding my old-book RuneQuest game session to the Gothcon schedule caught some attention, as the Swedish version of the new edition has been organized, and its publisher and authors asked if we could add a panel for some conversation. I swallowed hard. I would be sitting with Gunilla…
There’s a little story behind this one, in that I’d prepared for a session of that weird RuneQuest setting I keep working on at Gothcon. The planners noted some interest had arisen, including the Glorantha Etcetera panel, and suggested I do another session later that day (Saturday). I said yes, and then discovered that meant…
My goal at Gothcon was to be, basically, not weird. I didn’t want to show up as representative of some sector of hobby identity, but as fellow role-player. I’ve been playing a lot of Sorcerer lately and felt like resting it a bit. I knew that the founding Swedish RPG was originally a RuneQuest hack…
Earthsea was clearly on everyone’s mind in early role-playing. Due to rambling, I didn’t include some of the time we spent realizing how many systems and settings dipped into its terms and the organization of magic. It’s also – at first glance – genuinely perfect for fantasy role-playing, as attractive a package as any. You’ve…
There was one thing left to discover: what happened with Karva, priestess of Oome, devotee of Qar, and Jynathon, who is simultaneously the greatest threat to her power and its best immediate shot at restoring it – perhaps re-making it. After all, the first few minutes of our game brought these two characters face to…
The one thing I regret is not making up twenty characters across seven game titles and launching into fervent play right away. This was so much fun. There was a Renaissance, and no one noticed. Or only in scattered experience, in the insistence upon the recognition of this or that title (for me, The Fantasy…
Here’s our final session of RuneQuest (“RQ2,” 1980) which presents and invents my sketchy setting-notions through play. It’s also a personal experience for all of us in diving into the system and text of that time. I’d love to keep developing this setting idea and enjoying the game. The coming-of-age, weird-grit fantasy has been remarkably…
This is when something really complex develops and expands right within my grasp, while I’m learning just what it is we’re making only at the last possible moment, and knowing I’m not quite good enough to do it justice at the moving margins. Now I know that the area is called The Haven by its…