Coursing & Crawling - More Commentary On - Runequest Cities A Generic Role Playing Supplement

Now let's pick it up right back here on the blog with Runequest Cities.  But what makes Runequest Cities so damn useful for Sword & Sorcery OSR and BRP games?! When it comes to Stombringer Rpg cities, the Runequest fourth edition's Runequest Cities is an excellent resource and one that is especially useful when round out the Sword & Sorcery's Young Kingdom. Why?! Because between adventures there's a catch up system that allows Stormbringer & Elric adventurers to have events outside of the dungeon. Even in the description says so;" The Fourth Edition of the Cities supplement from Midkemia Press was brought into the Avalon Hill/Chaosium Runequest series as a generic sourcebook. This served as one of a number of AH Runequest supplements in their "Gateway" series, intended to broaden the RQ system beyond the Glorantha setting." 

"From the publisher:
RUNEQUEST CITIES: the natural arenas for fantasy roleplaying adventures, city events are the most interesting, city dungeons the deepest, city biways the darkest, city dangers the most invidious, city activities the most tempting, and city rewards the most fabulous.
A unique guide to urban possibility, RQ CITIES includes clear instructions, more than 60 tables, additional dozens of sub-tables, and many illustrations and silhouettes.

RUNEQUEST CITIES: Entertaining, systematic, indispensible.

• Challenging Encounters
• City Populating Procedures
• Character Catch-Up System" 

As I stated my own recent experience with Runequest Cities has been Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg. Where the PC's are between adventures and need to have experiences on thier own terms many of which have gotten rewoven through back play and the like into the Borderlands campaign that we've been doing on and off for years now. The Borderlands is rich with several Bronze Age civilizations and societies. And because of the very nature of Runequest Cities we were able to bring to life many of the lesser areas around the Borderlands to life as minor cities and the like. 
And the same was true with the Young Kingdoms there were minor kingdoms and road  side towns that needed to be fleshed out. And Runequest Cities was a God sent of a product. Many of the plethora of random tables allowed us to flesh out Sword & Sorcery cities without the need for other 'official D20' style supplements. This went hand and glove with many of the ideals that echoed in the aftermath of the D20 implosion.  

Because of it's very nature Runequest Cities is perfect for the Young Kingdoms allowing minor areas of The Sea Kings of the Purple Towns  & Perils of the Young Kingdoms to be filled in with living and thriving areas of vice and trouble across the board. 

OSR Commentary - Rune Quest Cities A Generic Role Playing Supplement

 Let's pick it up from the other day here on the blog.  And now I mentioned yesterday to one of my players how I was shaping a Stormbringer campaign and we started talking about the game. He mentioned having a collection of early Chaosium material and mentioned that there was a book that I was going to need from 3rd edition Runequest. That book is Runequest Cities from 1988 is one of the best generic universal urban supplements ever. 

Rune Quest Cities is a solid sixty six pages of urban encounters and random tables that isn't simply useful for Runequest but game after game of Sword & Sorcery as well as fantasy. 
And it's all keyed with dice matrixes across the board. Rune Quest Cities is even useful for Cepheus Engine or old school Traveller where you need primitive or other Bronze age world encounters. And so it's incredibly useful for a game of Stormbringer or even another OSR game. 

And my most recent use with  Rune Quest Cities has been with Adventurer, Conqeuror, King.  Yes that's right Rune Quest Cities works very well with a late Roman Empire Style campaign. 
And this was around the time when I had quit D&D completely for about two years. D20 had taken over the entire spectrum of the market. And older players wanted something or anything besides 3.5 or even 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Our Stormbringer campaign had seven or at one point as many as ten players who rotated in and out of the game. 

It All Begins In A Pirate Town - 'Sea Kings of The Of the Purple Towns' by Fred Behrendt For Both The Stormbringer rpg & Your Old School Or OSR Campaigns

" Between the Oldest Ocean and the Eastern Ocean lies the Isle of Purple Towns, the center of commerce and trade in the Young Kingdoms.

Sailing into port, visitors are impressed with the magnificent buildings, the splendid markets, and friendly people. Few see the undercurrents, the dirty deals, and the politics which threaten to rip apart the apparent serenity of the island.

The Isle of Purple Towns is a haven for adventurers, a safe port to count money and plan future deeds of daring. It lies literally in the middle of the world, and ships sail from Purple Towns ports to every other nation."

If there's one or more essential books for the Stormbringer rpg or even running a Stormbringer rpg style game then its for us at least its gotta be 'Sea Kings of The Of the Purple Towns' by Fred Behrendt. Not a really well known book today which is too bad. This series of loosely interconnected adventures has everything going for it. This sitution with the adventures, they make an excellent starting point for a Stormbringer or OSR campaign. 

 'Sea Kings of The Of the Purple Towns' by Fred Behrendt presents a two part campaign setting & adventure  package.The first half of the island is very well  detailed within this  125-page sourcebook. The people,history, background, notable NPC's, etc are all gone over in this book in detail. The island & its environs were once the home of  the Melnibonean navy & the piratic sea kings have carved out their own niche as responisble merchants who worship the forces of Law. The adventures within  'Sea Kings of The Of the Purple Towns'  can be played invidually or as a linked campaign. 
"The Strong Arms" is a sort of a shell of an adventure that centers around the aquistion of a tavern & can serve as the central hub of the campaign or not. "Sisters of Chaos" is a cut above the usual Stormbringer weirdness. This is a solid adventure & flows right into the "The Unholy Fortress"  which is a straight up epic adventure in full on Sword & Sorcery goodness. This adventure is one part Sea Kings & three parts guarding the bones of a dead god against the forces that wish to exploit them. This is an epic adventure unto itself it remains true to the Stormbringer spirit. 
"Kariss Burning" ties up the adventure ends of all of the above adventures with another adventure. Part parable & part higher level heroes in almost retirement mode. Needless to say that  'Sea Kings of The Of the Purple Towns' is to me at least as a DM one of those essential books for a gaming system in this case the Stormbringer rpg system. The combination of authors such as Fred Behrendt, Nick Hagger, Mark Morrison, Anthony Utano, & Richard Watts that push the quality of 'Sea Kings of The Of the Purple Towns' past the usual stuff on the night rack. 
One of the things that we did with  'Sea Kings of The Of the Purple Towns' is to use the island as a base of operations for our adventurers. We also became merchants & traders within the Young Kingdoms. And to trade we used the Runequest rpg book  'Cities'. We used this book for our ports of call & various urban locations. This is what we did with it. 

'Cities' came out in 1990 & is a series of very well done random encounter charts that can be adapted for any system. And this is where things get very interesting because 'Cities' can be used to fill in the gaps for a campaign as easy of the roll of the dice. And this makes these books perfect for OSR campaign. This is especially true if you like tinkering with systems. This means that Adventurer,Conqueror, King rpg can't be far behind. 

Both books quite readily fit the vibe of Stormbringer quite nicely but they can easily be part of an on going sea faring ACK's campaign.The base system provides everthing that the DM is going to have to pull apart to make a successful campaign. The thing about this campaign is that it has to be pulled off in sections from the beginning to the epiosidic nature of such a campaign. 

All in all 'Sea Kings of The Of the Purple Towns' by Fred Behrendt was way ahead of its time in terms a series of adventures that links together to form both a great beginning & continuing campaign. Highly recommended.