New Book Planned for RQ6

Well, it’s been a very long time since I last posted – all my free time has been taken up between running a game and writing a new book. But there’s big news for the Age of Treason setting today – if you are someone who checks in at the Design Mechanism’s website, you’ll see they have announced that a new book is in preparation for RQ6, and we hope to have it published around the middle of next year.

Working title is Shores of Korantia and will feature in detail a new region of the world, dotted with some 40 city-states, one where the Taskan empire is a threat on the landward side while the open ocean offers new worlds of opportunity to the West. Working the RQ6 rules into the setting has been a dream so far. Many of the features – such as Combat Style Traits – add real colour to the game in simple ways, and every time I wonder how to work around the rules I discover that the old RQ design elegance is present in spades and the RAW can support most of what I set out to do.

Meanwhile you can still get the Age of Treason Iron Companion book from Mongoose, however the core AoT book is out of print and no longer available – so if you see one lurking in your FLG, snap it up - it’s a rarity!

  • Kirche

    Excellent news! One possibly silly question How does the RQ6 rules set differ from legend?

    • Jonathan Drake

      Same basic engine. Complete ruleset in one book (bestiary included). More colourful sorcery spell list; theism (divine Magic) has some fairly large changes in how it’s done but it doesn’t require much shift to get your head round it; mysticism rules added; combat style traits; skill difficulty refined; simplified chargen - essentially lots of cool little shifts and changes. And it’s called RuneQuest.

  • John Holmes

    Jonathan,

    very good news.  Would you be able to help us out in the immediate terms by putting a brief pdf together with guidance on how to convert Legend over to RQ6.  There are some things that are quite different: AoT combat styles and char gen, the way divine magic works compared to RQ6 and Spirits.  A steer as to how to apporach conversion at the least would be great!

    • Iron Simulacrum

      Thanks John.
      Not sure if you mean ‘Legend’ generally or AoT’s particular mods to the RQ6 rules? I’ll be taking a play group through this shortly and could possibly post my notes to them when I have done it, but I don’t have time and space to produce a PDF at this point. With blessing from TDM I will produce a conversion doc in the future for those who have the 2 AoT Legend books. But briefly – you don’t need to change all the combat styles at this point, but you should consider adding traits. Folk Magic skill = Rites, but can be used as an augmenting skill to other magical operations if you take time to ritualise the casting (only Assabian rites can do this for sorcery). Theism – deserves a longer note when I have time, but the devotional pool is fine, in some cults (particularly demonic pacts and Taskan Emperor-Worship) you cannot regain the MPs devoted to it although the pool istelf can renew (largely same effect as dedicated POW). And I’ll work with Pete on the spirits side before posting anything, I am keen to maintain the setting-specific approach under which spirits can appear and attack people without discorporation to the spirit plane. We are a way off launching an RQ6 book yet, but close to the time I will, as said, try get some official notes out.