sábado, 27 de junio de 2026

My write-up of Chaosium Con UK 2026 (Part 2)

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In a previous post I wrote a detailed account on what I did on Thursday and Friday, like the RuneQuest and QuestWorlds games I played. Below you can read my write-up of what I did on Saturday and Sunday at Chaosium Con UK 2026. Get ready for more RuneQuest, QuestWorlds, and Age of Vikings games, Chaosium VIPs, what I bought at the store, and the news about upcoming Chaosium books and games (RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, Rivers of London, BRP, Age of Vikings, Pendragon, and QuestWorlds)!



My annotated map of the venue and some of the things I got at Chaosium Con UK 2026


Saturday 23rd


I sat for breakfast on a table with Brian Holland (Chaosium's Executive Producer for Roleplaying Games) and Paul from Rune Marked miniatures. Nick Brooke (Chaosium's Community Ambassador) sat next to me, and told me the printed copies of Marsh Attacks! had sold out on Friday. Soon after, I was off to prepare for my first game of the day.


That morning was also when the freeform The House of Malan was being played. Daniel Barker and David Hall were the GMs, and I saw some of the players getting ready for the game, already in their costumes (and their armour and clan tattoos!). I wondered whether I was missing a great experience, and remembered what Doc Cowie had told me on Thursday during dinner. 


9:00 The Hunger Beneath: a RuneQuest scenario by Pete


The set-up for this game looked intriguing, as on a big square table there was something big and flat covered by a cloth... It was Fire Season in 1626, the Battle of the Queens had taken place just two weeks ago, and with the defeat of the Lunar troops, the citizens of Furthest were generally on a bad mood. The failed crops on the northern reaches of Tarsh had only made matters even worse. Everyone was complaining about how King Pharandros had sent too many good men to a pointless death.


In this context, Eris and Torotus, a couple Yanafal Tarnils soldiers played by Andrew and me, had been ordered to go visit Yelasta the White at her hut next to the poor quarter of the city, as she had asked the temple for help. At this point, Pete revealed a map of a street and the inside of a hut, and placed lovingly painted miniatures of all the characters on it! As the two soldiers entered the abode of the Jakaleeli healer, they were introduced to Mireya, a young shaman (played by Jim). Meanwhile, Bastos and Votovani, a worker at the river docks and a city rat, played by Quentin and Mark, entered the hut out of mere curiosity, and the healer took that as a sign of the gods that they would also help her. As Yelasta told us, recently there had been many people going missing in the poor quarter, and we needed to find answers. We headed to the place of the most recent disappearance, entered the insulae's courtyard... and then Pete took away the first layer of the map, revealing another map underneath that represented the courtyard, and placed on it all the miniatures of the NPCs we could interact with. Pieces of black cardboard covered the rooms and shops around the courtyard our PCs could not see yet. I couldn't believe the GM had taken pains to make the game so visually interesting!


The courtyard in the tarshite city of Furthest, where a group of adventurers started investigating


During the break, I went to the store Chaosium sets up at the con, where you can find their latest books. For example, the scenario book Clockwork and Claws for Call of Cthulhu was already available, so I flipped through its pages. There were also bags with the RuneQuest minis by Rune Marked Miniatures, which were extremely tempting, and also many publications from the various fan-material platforms on DrivethruRPG, such as the imposing Ships & Shores of Southern Genertela. Out of curiosity, and because I guessed it would not be available elsewhere, I ended up buying a copy of the House of Malan freeform booklet (that is the basic information about the setting all participants in the freeform need to read).


Back to the game, we went down to the next layer of the map: the sewers of the city! We had to face increasingly dangerous foes, fight ghosts, summon fire and water spirits, and in the end we were victorious, even if the mysterious source of evil escaped us this time. It was great to play with Lunar characters, and the visual elements were top-notch. Furthermore, Pete had created custom laminated character sheets that were cleverly optimised for play. For example, the list of skills was cut to just the ones he thought we would use in the one-shot, the Rune points were directly above your Rune spells, and the magic points directly above the spirit spells, making it all easier to find. 


Magic, spirits, and suffering in the sewers of Furthest!


By the way, while I was playing the game, I looked through the wall-sized window because something had caught my attention. Was it a dog on the garden right outside? No, I looked again and for a second I thought I was hallucinating: It was a female deer grazing!!! :-O


12:00 Lunch


I had lunch in the bar, where I met Andrew and Kathy (who does the Never Mind the Dice Rolls magazine). We chatted about big conventions like Comic Con in London and Málaga, and agreed they were too big, too focused on other things to be of interest. I commented a bit on the biggest RPG conventions in Spain (which, ironically, I have so far never attended), real plays on Youtube, how we got started in the hobby, and other topics. After that, it was time to go viking!


13:00 Sea & Salt, an Age of Vikings scenario by Don Ford


Don is Chaosium's Community Ambassador for Age of Vikings, a game I had only played once at Chaosium Con UK 2025. I had enjoyed that short game, so I wanted more. This time it was another demo game that is available for free from the Quest Portal VTT. Don handed us the pregens that are available from Chaosium's Age of Vikings dedicated website, and we got transported to a magical, old Iceland...


I became Birna Flosadóttir, the daughter of a wealthy chieftain who now lives with her husband and daughter in her farm... and is deadly with her bow. We were asked by our local goði to go to a tiny rocky island near the coast in order to apprehend a man named Sygurd. Some weeks ago, he had killed a woman while drunk, and then fled from justice, so we had to bring him back alive to be judged. We rowed towards the island and found a cove with a tent. Sygurd was standing on the beach, waiting for us with sword in hand. Another man armed with axe and shield stood by his side. There was a tense exchange with attempts at intimidation from both sides. Don roleplayed Sygurd convincingly! Then Þrymur (the pregen who knows how to inscribe power runes) suggested something clever with the runes, and Don accepted it, so he was able to find a magical clue pointing to somewhere else in the island. Intrigued, instead of facing Sygurd right away, we decided to get on the boat again and disembark nearby.


The group of icelandic adventurers facing the outlaws on the cove


One of the best scenes was when a hidden sniper started firing arrows at us, and we had to dive for cover and think how to retrieve our wounded comrade without exposing ourselves to the enemy archer! Later we got to the root of the problem, but Don had warned us at the start he unfortunately had to be at an Age of Vikings panel that had been moved from its initially allotted time and now overlapped with our game, so at that point he had to leave soon. Therefore, he just explained what would have happened later, and made a quick ending. I wish we could have played longer, but the game was great anyway.


18:00 Dinner


I had a nice dinner at the restaurant: I filled my dish with lasagna, bread slices with toasted cheese, and green beans with tomatoes. I chatted a bit with Mark, Brian Duguid, Craig, and his son Jack. Mark had enjoyed a Pendragon game, and the other two said they had enjoyed their Call of Cthulhu game in which they had played university students who stumble into an extradimensional room in their apartment (apparently based on a true story involving a safe!). However, being students, they had not acted at all like CoC investigators, but instead had tried to earn some money by selling those strange grimoires they had just found, and other shenanigans.


A sample of what was on offer on Saturday for dinner at the restaurant of the Cranfield Management Development Centre


19:00 To Become a Pirate Queen, a RuneQuest game by Andrew Moreton


I had played in a RQG game run by Andrew Moreton the previous year (see here), and I had enjoyed it a lot. This time... it was also a wacky, epic game! It started with the 6 PCs on a Wolf Pirate ship near Skullport. The captain was dead, so it was time for her second in command to choose a new one. However, she hated the obvious choice, so she decided to hold 6 contests so she and the crew could judge who among the candidates was the best. Callum and Harry (the GM of The Repentant's Tomb!) were playing Kallyr Stormwind, an Orlanthi Windlord from Sartar, and Ulvera, a powerful Ernaldan priestess, who had somehow ended up on the ship. Traycie and Geoff were playing a couple of powerful Humakti warriors (IIRC), while Sonia and me were playing a couple of East Islanders who had ended up in a different ocean after a kraken had swallowed them whole on their native lands! These two characters were actually from the Hero Wars on the East Isles Character Pack available on DrivethruRPG: Ginal (Sonia's character) was the Grand Mistress of an island kingdom, and could turn into a leopard, and his cousin Kentralo (my character) was a proud, veteran ship captain already (and he just wanted to sail back to his homeland).


The 7th contestant was Ariana Iggsdaughter, a scarred, fierce warrior who was a veteran member of the crew and was a close friend of a silent Chalana Arroy healer. The first contest was to see who could hunt the most valuable beast to feed the crew. Ginal and Kentralo ended on second place after hunting a huge walrus, because the Humakti summoned a big air spirit to raise a killer whale from the water and then killed it with their swords. The second contest was a canoeing race, in which Ginal and Kentralo excelled. However, Disorder magic hit one of the teams out of nowhere, and we started seeing signs of foul play. Later that night there was an assassination attempt. It felt a bit weird to be playing in pairs against the other players' characters to get the most points out of every contest, but it was also quite fun, as it forced you to be creative.


If Kentralo's cousin Ginal was appointed as captain, they both would be able to return to the East Isles!


The 3rd contest involved boarding a heavily guarded Esrolian trireme and getting out with the most loot. While the islanders sneaked in and focused on looting the hold, the fighting started on the deck, and soon all hell broke loose. The details get blurry here, but if I recall correctly, one of the NPCs (I guess it was Ariana) cast Berserk, quickly ran out of enemies, and so she attacked the Ernaldan priestess, who cast Dismiss 12 to knock off the Berserk spell. However, all of a sudden the Chalana Arroy healer drew a sword and cast Sword Trance, becoming a murdering whirlwind!!! She cut the Ernaldan's left arm off so she passed out. Kallyr then attacked the berserker, and managed to push her down, while the two Humakti joined the fray and one managed to knock the enemy closer to the water, while the other dealt 31 points of damage to the healer/swordmaster's leg, nearly severing it, and with that, the foe dropped into the sea and drowned (we guessed she must have been an illuminate). At the same time, the Ernaldan's allied spirit healed her up instantly, got up and threw the other foe overboard. It was a flurry of wildly high skill percentages paired with big amounts of Rune magic, which I barely could follow in detail.


After this, the two Humakti were declared the winners, but since they did not know much about shiphandling, they offered the East Islanders a deal: they would train the Humakti how to manage a ship for a year, and in return, they would sail together to the East Isles so they could return home.


Some of the fan publications of the Jonstown Compendium and Miskatonic Repository on sale at Chaosium Con UK 2026


Sunday 24th


I had a good breakfast, and then I went to the room for the first game of the day: a QuestWorlds game run by Ian Cooper (Chaosium's line editor for QuestWorlds)! Ian had run another QuestWorlds game set in Glorantha "Handra Delivery Service" on Friday or Saturday, but the one I had signed up for was a sci-fi game:


9:00 All Fall Down, a QuestWorlds game by Ian Cooper


I was looking forward to playing this game, because I had been reading the printed QuestWorlds rulebook and was very interested in seeing Ian Cooper (its coauthor and line editor!) run it. To begin with, he went over the basic rules in 5 minutes. Then he briefly summarised the setting as sci-fi TV shows from the 70s, so it was like Galactica or Buck Rogers, but with stargates built by ancient unknown beings simply called "the Gatebuilders". We were all members of a search-and-rescue team patrolling several star systems, similar to a sci-fi coastguard. Richard chose to play "Doc" Sable, the doctor, Scott chose Dex Harlow the engineer, Ant chose Rin Nakamura the EVA pilot, and I played Ade Bankole, the captain. There was a 5th PC, a journalist who was making a documentary of our search-and-rescue operations, but the 5th player did not show up, so Ian turned that character into an NPC.


We set our patrol ship Winona in orbit around the gas giant Menoetius, heading the call for aid from the research station London Bridge. The station was floating on the atmosphere suspended on balloons, and there were 12 people at risk. When we got there with our rescue vessel, Louise-7 "Nanny", an android, welcomed us onboard "piri-piri-piri!". Apparently, these scientists were researching the floating living beings that inhabited the planet, when some days ago, a bunch of them called "hunters" had attacked the station, destroying half of the balloons and damaging some of the infrastructure, so the station was slowly losing altitude! However, Dr. Okonkuo the Chief Scientist on board was dead-set on retrieving as much data from those beings as possible. This caused a lot of friction with the captain (me!) who reminded them the priority was saving lives, not data. The captain was stressed further when the journalist started asking the worst questions possible like "How do you feel about being rescued on the Winona, which is about to be decommissioned?".


The handout with the data about the station, and the poker chips Ian used to keep track of the successes in the extended contest


The character sheets were well rounded off with flaws specifically designed for the scenario. For example, my character had previously had a traumatic experience in which he had had to let 3 miners die in order to save a dozen, so if he ever had to make such a big call again, his flaw would surface and make things difficult for him...!


At the start everyone had plenty of things to do to try to remedy the situation as much as possible, so every character had its fair share of moments to shine. In the process of repairing the leaking fuel tanks, the engineer met the helpful "neochimp" Julius. Despite our best efforts, the situation on the station was becoming more and more dire, and Ian's descriptions helped in picturing the increasing danger. He also had a table of "Things That Will Go Wrong" that he kept rolling on. In the end, everything got extremely risky fast, and each of the PCs had to face their own flaws. On the final scene, Ian asked me: "OK, so if this was a sci-fi show, what scene would you like to see at this point?". I had a mental block at that moment, but thankfully my team mates suggested the coolest possible solution, and the rescue team improvised a clever way of saving everyone!


The QuestWorlds character sheet of Commander Lieutenant Ade Bankole


It was an exciting one-shot, and you could tell Ian had run it before, because it worked like clockwork. As with the QuestWorlds game I had played on Friday, we were penalised if we tried to use the same ability twice, so we had to think on our feet to come up with creative ways of using all our abilities for resolving the problems that rose up. I loved it!


Ian also told us what the next planned books for the QuestWorlds line were going to be (I have added some details he revealed in a panel later that day):


  • Ouvergend: A Steampunk genre pack that is already in layout (80 pages). It will describe one of the settings that are used as examples in the rulebook.
  • Glorantha QuestWorlds: How to use QuestWorlds to play in the fantasy world of Glorantha, about 200 pages, with homelands, occupations, cults, bestiary, mythology, Dragon Pass, and Prax. It is already written and going through editing. I guess it will be like HeroQuest Glorantha, but adapted to the small rules changes. It will be also easy to use with the RuneQuest books already published, and it will include rules for heroquesting. It will also include some new bits like how to become a hero or a god. Also rules for converting RuneQuest characters into QuestWorlds.
  • Pioneer Space: A space setting is mostly written, and currently they are thinking about the spaceship battle rules.
  • Probably for next year: Doc Vandal: A pulp fiction setting. Age of Miracles: Superheroes. The Worlds & Quests supplement: How to create settings for QuestWorlds.

After the game, I wandered around the main atrium and was again drawn to a table full of miniatures. These were all the minis Cultist of Sooty had painted for the game with his group, and they were amazing. There were giants of ice an fire, big red bats, Lunar troops, trolls in Mycenaean armour, and more. I also spotted a new vendor had set up their shop with lots of old Chaosium-related publications. Many fans gathered to browse and try to find a lost jewel, although the books were not cheap. In the end, I settled for a copy of a Wyrm's Footnotes magazine from the 70s.

Kraken, giant walrus, fire spirits, the Red Goddess mini from The Gods War, Lunar troops, giants, air spirits, painted by Cultist


13:00 Lunch


I went to buy a sandwich at the bar, and saw Michael O'Brien (Chaosium's Vice President) was chatting with a bunch of people. But low and behold, he came to say hello at the counter! I was wearing my Runeblog T-shirt, and he told me he reads my blog!!! As you can imagine, this was one of the best moments of the con! #^_^# I struggled to get a conversation going, but after having a picture taken with him (thanks, Ben!), I asked him about the RuneQuest game he had run at the con, set in the future of Sun CountyVrok Hawk Down»), and whether he would publish it some day. He confirmed that, and also a supplement with all the material that could not fit in Sun County at the time! He also sent me some of the pictures you can see further down from the «What's next for RuneQuest?» panel.


Afterwards, I sat on one of the tables on the garden with Geoff, Cultist of Sooty, and Mikko. Geoff was telling us all about the Donandari character he's playing in a RuneQuest campaign, and Mikko explained he is running an online RuneQuest game using all the epic scenarios from HeroWars (Sartar Rising) and HeroQuest like the Colymar campaign. If I recall correctly, all the players in that campaign had managed to gather at the convention for a big, epic, face to face game, in which they played through Brian Duguid's The Winter King scenario using many awesome miniatures painted by Cultist of Sooty.


14:00 To Cross the Zola Fel, a RuneQuest game by Peter Hart


Peter Hart is a long-time Glorantha fan who has published quite a few scenarios and books on the Jonstown Compendium, such as Bad Day at Duck Rock, Ghosts of the Golden Horde, Hydra! or Korkos Keep. For this one-shot he had prepared a scenario in Prax, in which all the characters were members of the same bison rider clan. In fact, he was playtesting a scenario he is going to include in a future campaign book. Moreover, he had prepared the backgrounds of the pregenerated characters using a dedicated family history system he later published in The Burning Rope Clan Saga: Players' Guide. This included famous ancestors and purely Praxian events. The 5 bison riders were: Torastil, an assistant shaman follower of Waha played by Geoff, Indatha, an Eirithan sheperd played by Andrew, Jerendala, a hunter played by Quentin, Kunchari, an Eirithan healer played by Harri, and my character: Dagatai, a noble initiate of Waha. Our clan needed to cross the Zola Fel river, but in the past we had offended the water spirits, so the river god was not going to let us through easily. Enchala, the clan shaman, had tasked us with appeasing the river so our clan could cross it safely.


My character sheet with the detailed Praxian family history created with Peter's The Burning Rope Clan Saga Players' Guide


Therefore, Torastil performed a ceremony on the riverbank in order to speak to the spirits, and we helped him with some singing and dancing. Frog Woman manifested and told him "Seek the newtlings, seek the traskars, to placate the river spirits...". Kunchari's uncle had told her once there were supposed to be newtlings towards the north, so we rode in that direction, following the river. On the way, we found a strange gathering of Basmoli warriors having a meal in some ruined building guarded by a Chalana Arroy wandering priestess. There, Torastil fought a duel unarmed against one of the lion warriors, and when he was finished, we continued north.


Eventually, we arrived at a clearing in a bog where a group of Chaos monsters was attacking a newtling village. We had to dismount because the terrain was swampy, but Torastil charged immediately on his bison, as he had cast the Windwalk rune spell allowing his mount to ride on the wind! There were some broos, a walktapus, and further away a bunch of broos were stealing a stone idol using a dragonsnail to drag it. We figured the dragonsnail was not going to get very far ("Yeah, it's a snail, after all", pointed out Jerendala, wisely, which made me laugh), so we focused on saving the newtlings first. Dagatai summoned a spirit of Law against the tentacled beast while attacking the broos left and right, Jerendala peppered the goatmen with arrows, and Kunchari was healing us as soon as we got hurt. After a brief fight, our magic and martial prowess helped us in crushing all the monsters. We tended to the surviving newtlings, and we learnt that the slab the broos were trying to steal was in fact one of Tada's fabled Treasures. In thanks for having saved them, they agreed to appease the hostile river spirits for us, and finally our clan was able to safely cross the Zola Fel in order to return to sacred Prax. Hooray!


Peter placed a couple pieces of paper on the table to make a rough sketch of the combat scene


18:00 The Closing and dinner

The Chaosium team gathered again on the stairs of the central atrium and thanked all attendees, and particularly the GMs, for a wonderful event. There will be another Chaosium Con UK in 2027, and there is also Chaosium Con Europe 2026 in Gdansk, Poland, at the end of October.

I had dinner at the restaurant while chatting with other fans about the news that Chaosium had shared in the different panels (see further down). I thought that was the end of the convention for me in terms of games, because I had not found any more games with open seats for the evening. Luckily, Harry told me he was not going to make it to an Age of Vikings game he had signed up for, so he told me I could perhaps play in his stead! I thought about it for at least 20 seconds... then accepted!!! :-D

19:00 Age of Vikings game by Paul Mazundar

We used the same pregens as in the previous games, and this time I decided to play Sigmundur the Poet. The adventure kicked off during a worship ceremony to Freyr, in our goði's hall. When he was about to sacrifice the goat, in came an unknown man yelling: "Trooolls!!!". We managed to calm him down enough for him to explain he was a merchant who was coming towards our village on his wagon with his little daughter. Something had suddenly knocked over his wagon, and when he had come about, his daughter was gone. According to him, some trolls must have kidnapped her, because he had seen huge footprints on the snow.

Here Paul was pointing to where our village was on the map of Iceland

We were sent to investigate, and we soon found out that there was more to this than it initially seemed. Our trip became much more dangerous when we reached the island the tracks had led us to. At first we could not find our enemies, but in the end we managed to face them. Finally, after a hard combat, we returned to our village having imparted justice and we returned the little girl to his father.

22:50 At the bar

After my last game, I sat down at the bar and had the chance to chat with other people about RuneQuest and many other topics. I remember Sonia telling us about the RuneQuest campaign she is running, and how, since her players' characters are now becoming quite powerful, she is thinking of staging heroquests with RQG to make life more challenging for them. She is a veteran RQ GM, so I would love to know how her campaign goes, because it sounded fantastic.

Although in the end I could not attend the panel about The Reaching Moon Megacorp and their publications during the 90s, suddenly David Hall sat next to me, and I had the opportunity to ask him some questions about Marsh Attacks! and Tales of the Reaching Moon.

Later that night I also enjoyed chatting again with Matthew Cole, who showed me some cards he had developed to help players use their Rune magic when playing QuestWorlds in Glorantha. We were later joined by Doc Cowie, who told us about the playtests of RuneQuest Fantasy Roleplay he is helping Jeff Richard to do on many conventions around the world.

We stayed a little bit longer after the bar closed, and then we went to our rooms. What a weekend! 9 games in 3 days, lots of lovely people, chatting with other enthusiastic fans... It's an experience I fully recommend...! For me at least, at a time when I mostly play online, it is nice to get to play so many of my favourite games face to face. But wait, there's more...!



----- BONUS TRACK: Announcements about several games


I did not attend any of the "What's next with..." panels because they overlapped with the games I played, but I have gathered as much information about them as I have managed to find on the Internet!


What's next with RuneQuest?


Chaosium shared a video recording on YouTube of this panel, and Brian Holland gave some more details on the Chaosium Discord and other channels. If you do not want to watch the video, here are the plans for RuneQuest:


  • Lands of RuneQuest: Sartar is coming out in September. This will describe this kingdom, all the Orlanthi tribes and their clans, cultural details, a description of the city of Boldhome, and with the book you will be able to download a 40-page scenario in PDF by Andrew Logan Montgomery (the author of Six Seasons in Sartar): Welcome to Boldhome.
  • In October Chaosium will release The Apple Lane Campaign, which takes the scenarios in the GM Screen and makes a short campaign out of them, with some material added. It will also have new art by Ossi Hiekkala. Since the GM Screen Pack has been out of print for some time, this will be the chance to get the contents in the booklet it included (read my review). The screen itself will be reprinted too, but in a different format, see further down.
  • In the 1st quarter of 2027 the revised rulebook will come out. Currently there are two RuneQuest rulebooks in development. One is RuneQuest Fantasy Roleplay, a new streamlined edition Jeff Richard is working on (see the panel of Chaosium Con UK 2025). The other is the revised RuneQuest, which is not a new edition, but RuneQuest Roleplaying in Glorantha, only with less lore, and less pages, so that new players do not feel overwhelmed by all the information. Brian Holland, Mark Morrison, and Michael O'Brien are working on it. It won't include: family history, sorcery rules, shamanism rules, phalanx rules, chariot rules. It will include only two human cultures for adventurers: Sartarite and Bison rider, but also three non-human species for adventurers: ducks, baboons, and minotaurs! It will include just 9 cults (Orlanth, Ernalda, Yelmalio, Storm Bull, Humakt, Issaries, Lanbril, Maran Gor, and Chalana Arroy), and it will also include a short bestiary, all with new art by Ossi Hiekkala. It will also include optional rules to play combats with minis. The existing text will be edited for clarity. Meanwhile, the current rulebook will still be available, at least as long as they don't need to do a new print run, which according to Rick Meints won't happen soon (they haven't decided what will happen at that point). On Discord, Brian Holland pointed out that the character sheet will have less skills, because there will be spaces to write the less common or cult-specific skills (like Prepare corpse or Peaceful cut). So they are not removing any skills.
Some of the player character samples in the revised RuneQuest core rulebook

  • In the 2nd quarter of 2027 Chaosium will release the GM Screen. It will be a 3-panel screen with new art by Ossi Hiekkala, and it will include the quick reference booklet and the Gloranthan calendar.
  • Afterwards they will release RuneQuest: Welcome to Glorantha. They want to focus on releasing more books with playable material, and this will be a collection of short scenarios. Some have already been released in PDF, like The Hunt for the Storm Calf, A Darkness at Runegate, or Stealing the Eye. Each scenario highlights a different aspect of Glorantha and includes its own set of pregenerated adventurers, so you can start playing immediately, and you just need the Starter Set to get started. One scenario will be a mundane heroquest (I'm guessing the one that was available from the Cult of Chaos years ago about Ronance's Chariot).
  • In the 3rd quarter of 2027 Chaosium will release Return to Snakepipe Hollow, an adventure about a classic den of Chaos creatures, where now other creatures live, so the caves of Chaos have changed since the original scenario from 1981.
  • In the 4th quarter of 2027 they will release On the Royal Road, a collection of encounters with full stats and adventure seeds you can include in your campaign in different ways. Originally, this was going to be part of the Sartar book (see above), but since it made the book too thick, they are releasing it as a separate publication.
  • The cult book for the gods of Darkness will also come out in the 4th quarter of 2027. Aside from the cults, it will include rules for creating troll adventurers and possibly fully statted NPCs belonging to these cults you can use as allies or enemies.


Future supplements for RuneQuest: campaign, adventures, encounters, GM Screen, and Darkness cults (some covers are still WIP)


According to Brian Holland, "The GM handbook is not on the roadmap because the team felt there were a number of products we could complete in a more timely manner. I suspect it will be one of the first on the next "wave", if that makes sense. As for heroquesting, one of the adventures in Welcome to Glorantha contains a "mundane world heroquest", so enough to introduce the concept to new players, but it is not what any of us would call "heroquesting rules"."


Other news: there is a 50th anniversary edition of the White Bear & Red Moon wargame coming! The rules are the same as in the original game, but the board, layout and art are new (although the counters/chits retain the same art by William Church).

BTW, Greg Stafford’s novel, A Pyre for Gods and Heroes is also going to be released! Susan O’Brien and Andrew Logan Montgomery have completed the 5% that was needed to finish it. It is set in the First Age and follows the early adventures of a great Orlanthi hero: Harmast Barefoot. After that, there will be a Gloranthan Fiction line!

What's next with Rivers of London?

  • Dead Letter in July, a solo adventure!
  • No Place Like Home: a collection of case files in August.

What's next with Age of Vikings?

  • Quickstart for free on June 27th (only in stores, and also freely available later in the year): 4 pregens and a ready-to-play adventure.
  • Age of Vikings Companion in the 3rd quarter of the year. It will include rules for creating characters from other places outside Iceland, playing non-human heroes such as hidden folk, sealskins, jotunn, dwarfs, and ravens; revised devotion rules (like the old allegiance system), rules for being godless, and rules for Christians; community creation rules, an expanded bestiary, human NPCs, several stand-alone adventures, and a four-part campaign!
  • The Saga of the Fire-Starter: A four-part campaign.

What's next with Basic Roleplaying?

  • BRP Magic is on its way.
  • They plan to place the BRP Creatures book under the ORC license! And the magic book too!
  • There will probably be supplements for vehicles and equipment.
  • Lords of the Middle Sea (see the game I played in 2025) is still coming! It's just Jason Durall has been busy with other projects so far.

What's next with Pendragon? (There is a recording for this panel too)

  • The Noble's Handbook is already out, and that completes the 3 core rulebooks.
  • The next phase of books will focus on expanding gameplay for players and GMs.
  • The art director Paul Tobin worked for James Cameron in Avatar, and the artist Ben Wootten, who designed the Balrog for Peter Jackson, is doing art for Pendragon!
  • The Boy King in August (pre-release at Gen Con). This is the first volume of the three that make up The Great Pendragon Campaign. Each is going to be over 256 pages and will contain the updates Greg Stafford noted down before passing away. This will allow you to play each volume as a stand-alone campaign if you want. On top of the leatherette and normal editions, there will be one limited edition with a different cover, for the same price as the normal edition (all the covers are by Tyler Jacobson). Volumes 2 and 3 will come out in 2027 and 2028.
  • Bestiary: Much more extensive than the one in the rulebook: lamias, basilisks, hippogriffs, water horses... each with full-page art. It wil come out in the 1st quarter of 2027.
  • Knights & Ladies Adventurous in the 2nd quarter of 2027. New cultures and backgrounds, so you can play knights from Ireland, Constantinople, etc.
  • Second volume of the Great Pendragon Campaign in August 2027 (title yet to be decided).
  • In late 2027, either the Salisbury sourcebook or the Codex Meritorious (the magic sourcebook, possibly with a new title) will come out.

One of the pieces of art that were shown during the panel


What's next with Call of Cthulhu?

After the scenario book Clockwork & Claws, which is already out, this is what is next in the pipeline (there is also a video recording of this panel):

  • Innsmouth in July: Detailed updated description of the coastal cursed town. Includes a chapter on the Esoteric Order of Dagon, how to send the investigators there, how to use the main bad guys in different ways (all you know about Innsmouth could be wrong!). Scenario seeds, secret caves, swamps, artifacts, monsters. It includes a poster map for the keeper and another one for players. It also includes a copy of the last issue of the Innsmouth Courier.
  • Refurbished Keeper Tips in August.
  • Keeper Companion in September: It is not a reprint of the old companions. Over the last 10 years, the authors of the current edition have gathered ideas and optional rules f.ex. for automatic fire and chases you can incorporate in your games. An optional rule for hordes to make it easier for keepers to manage a group of low-level enemies in combat by treating them as just one big enemy. It also includes 3 scenarios set in Arkham.
  • Cthulhu by Gaslight Keeper Screen: 4 panels in two parts, quick rules reference and NPCs, maps, telegrams. It will be available at the end of the year.
  • Tools of the Trade: A supplement with equipment and weapons of the 1920s. Also tools that provide bonuses to certain skills, clothes, medical stuff, services, accommodation, dinner parties, university fees, etc. Prices also for the 1930s. Also for the end of the year.
  • Curse of Seven, a Cthulhu by Gaslight big campaign in 7 parts across England and Wales. Two volumes in a slipcase. "This is going to be the next Masks of Nyarlathotep", according to Keris McDonald. By several authors like Penelope Love, each part is inspired by a different Victorian writer, like Dickens or M.R. James. It is planned for release on the 1st quarter of 2027.
Work in progress for the covers of the two volumes of The Curse of Seven campaign


Moreover, the ElfQuest box set is coming in July, the board game Credo in August (see my write-up of Chaosium Con UK 2025 for more info), and a new board game based on the classic campaign The Masks of Nyarlathotep is planned for the end of the year! :-O


Some of Chaosium's planned publications for the second half of 2026


So, what do you think of all this? Were you there? Did you have fun? Please tell me about the games you played! Did I miss anything? Please let me know in a comment below! :-)

martes, 9 de junio de 2026

My write-up of Chaosium Con UK 2026 (Part 1)

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In May 2025 I went to the first Chaosium Con UK in Cranfield for a weekend of intensive gaming and some socialising. I had so much fun that I decided to go back in 2026, and here you can read my write-up: the games I played, the lovely people I chatted with, and the news Chaosium announced about their upcoming publications.


When I started signing up for games on the Tabletop Events website, I regretted not having started earlier, because many interesting games were already fully booked. For example, I would have loved to play in Michael O'Brien's RuneQuest game set in Sun County "Vrok Hawk Down". Or in Ian Cooper's QuestWorlds game set in Glorantha: "Handra Delivery Service". Still, I managed to sign up for very interesting games, some of which appeared on the website later than expected... and I gorged. I managed to play 9 games in 3 days!!! So, one tip for this convention is: Never stop checking the website until the start of the convention! You can even suggest games once the convention has started by posting them on a flipchart in the main hall.


Picture of my con badge for Chaosium Con UK 2026 on top of my annotated map of the venue



Thursday 21st


After a combination of car, plane, coach, and bus, I got to Cranfield University in Bedford in the afternoon, chatting with Adan (who I had met the previous year), and Colin Driver (author of the maps in The Guide to Glorantha). Adan was in a hurry because he had to play in a game in a question of minutes! I bought some fruit at the Coop minimarket, and went into the Cranfield Management Development Centre, where the hotel and con venue is.


At around 14:00 the hotel rooms were not ready yet, so I went straight to the convention centre to get my con badge. With it came a small gift celebrating the publication of Campfire Tales for Call of Cthulhu: a patch of the Miskatonic scout-investigators and a scout identification you can use as a prop if you play those scenarios.


A patch of the "Camp Miskatonic World Jamboree" and a member card where you can record the scout badges you have earned.



15:00 Vistas of New Pavis


Matthew Cole offered a presentation of his New Pavis in 3D project and told us all the ins and outs of bringing to life the city of thieves. Even though the Blender program crashed when he tried to show us a panorama of the city, minutes later we were flying through every quarter at a time. He stopped by the pieces and nooks he is most proud of, like the inside of several temples like Orlanth and Storm Bull, the house of Kost the Tracker, and many others. I was particularly impressed by the inside of the Humakt and Yelmalio temples, and by the wooden and stone stairs that lead up to Rich Hill. The realistic textures he has applied to all the buildings are also impressive. His Vistas of New Pavis book should be ready for the Jonstown Compendium soon, but he is also being sidetracked by adding more and more details, and by doing some commissioned pieces for Ian Thompson's publications about Pavis. Aside from that, my hope is that some day, all this work is used in some sort of videogame!



Collage of some of the pictures I took from Matthew's presentation - I should have taken many more!


As in the previous year, Matthew was also offering several opportunities during the weekend to walk around his 3D New Pavis through his VR headset, which must be an out-of-this-world experience for any Glorantha fan! Maybe next time I'll get a chance!


Afterwards, I hadn't been able to sign up for any game, so I signed up for the...


19:00 Chaosium Mixer


This was a dinner in the hall of the convention centre, where there are several big round tables, and you could sit there and chat with whoever from the Chaosium team was sitting there too. In the queue to get our food, I started chatting with the person standing next to me, Mark Davidson, who told me he is currently running a Rivers of London campaign, so I told him about the game I played last year (The Font of All Evil), which he had obviously run to his friends. Later, I just sat on the first empty chair I found. The Chaosium team had spread out in 4 or 5 of them. On my table were Doc Cowie (who is helping Jeff Richard playtest the upcoming RuneQuest Fantasy Roleplay), Jeremiah Evans (Chaosium's convention coordinator), and Rick Meints (President of Chaosium), but also other fans like Andrew and Kathy Smith, and Mr. Moose. I had contacted Doc Cowie through Facebook that week in case he was going to run any games of the RuneQuest Fantasy Roleplay game that is in development, but either they overlapped with games I had already signed up for, or they were already fully booked by the time I saw his reply on Facebook. Anyway, he told me to be around the Atrium zone on Sunday at 14:00 to maybe play in his playtest!


At the start, the Chaosium team gathered together on the stairs in the atrium and Rick Meints gave a brief welcome speech


The conversation on the table soon turned to the Gloranthan freeform House of Malan that David Hall and Dan Barker were running on Saturday. Jeremiah told me about his experience in the freeform he had played in Chaosium Con 2024 in the US: Home of the Bold. He had played the role of a cook cooking a walktapus, and he had also been in charge of the bets, so he had rigged the odds to earn a lot of money because no one had checked his math! He also managed to pull off many other shenanigans, like getting paid in mercenary pikemen (!) and later on putting some of them in service to the Lunars and some in service to the Sartarites, to fight a battle for Boldhome!!! Doc Cowie commented how he had also had misgivings about participating in freeforms, up until the point he had played in Home of the Bold, and now he loves them. He jokingly compared participating in freeforms as swinging, because it does not seem like much when you are not doing it, but apparently it is great when you are! For more information about Gloranthan freeforms, listen to this podcast. We also talked about THE KRAKEN convention in Germany, and Doc mentioned the Christmas edition, on early December, is very relaxed. I told him I had been there on October 2016 and 2018, and agreed they are really nice (except for the Snoratorium!). Later on, I realised I had lost the opportunity to chat with Rick Meints. Oh well...


After dinner, I came across Brian Duguid on the terrace (author of some Jonstown publications like The Children of Hykim, The Voralans, or The Winter King) and we chatted for a short while. He told me he is playing in a QuestWorlds Glorantha campaign run by Ian Cooper, and also in a RuneQuest campaign in Sandheart. He informed me Ian Cooper has the manuscript for the Glorantha book almost finished. Their campaign is taking them from Handra in Maniria all along the coast, involving merfolk and heading towards Nochet, with a lot of referencing Martin Helsdon's impressive Ships & Shores of Southern Genertela. He also told me his RuneQuest GM is mixing the Sacred Earth, Sacred Water scenarios with the 4th volume in the Sandheart campaign. Since I am also currently running a Sandheart campaign, I told him needed to speak to his GM!



The garden terrace of the Cranfield Management Development Centre is a nice place to sit, drink, and chat.


Afterwards I got a Guinness for 6.90£ at the bar and chatted further with Mark Davidson about the best Call of Cthulhu campaigns, and things players do. I went to my bedroom at around 22:00.



Friday 22nd


I had breakfast while chatting with Mr Moose and Nick Brooke (Community Ambassador for Chaosium). Nick told us all the varied cool projects he is now doing the layout for. Some of which I can't divulge, but you could tell he clearly loves his dream job. Afterwards I headed towards my first game of the convention:


9:00 The Repentant's Tomb: a RuneQuest game by Harry Parker


The blurb of the game claimed this was going to be a dungeon bash, and it did not disappoint! We were a party of adventurers in New Pavis and a Lanbril priest offered us a job while celebrating at Gimpy's: to find an ancient magical item in a Mostali tomb recently discovered in the Rubble. I had also run a dungeon bash on the previous year, so I was interested in seeing what the GM had in store for us. We soon found out the tomb was defended by several cool traps and puzzles revolving on the different metals of Glorantha. I played a huge Agimori hunter with lots of fire magic, and the other players were from different Praxian tribes. At first, I wondered if the morokanth PC (a tapir-like creature) would be useful at all, and he actually was key to resolving a puzzle thanks to his high Swim skill!


The GM had prepared an image of one of the most challenging rooms we had to go through in the tomb


We had to think hard, but we also came up with crazy ideas like placing the Impala rider on a wheelbarrow with a copper helmet that was too big for her (it made sense in the scenario, I swear!). The game was also enhanced by the participation of lovely players like John, Luzya, Adan, Jack, and Craig. In the final scene, Craig's character was brutally cut in half, but the laconic Humakti PC (played by Adan) came to our rescue, while the berserker Storm Bull PC (played by Jack) was cut down and quickly magically healed up again twice! I rolled a critical with my magically charged firespear and destroyed one of our enemies' arms right off. In the end, we managed retrieve some treasure, but we also released an ancient evil into the world. That would have led to further adventures, but alas, this was only a one-shot. Even so, I had lots of fun and I enjoyed the game a lot.


Harry told us he is currently running a Six Seasons in Sartar campaign, and they have just finished the first volume. Finally, I found interesting one little prop the GM is using in his face-to-face campaign so that players can track their location hit points in an easier way: a black plastic tray with indentures for placing green D10s in the 7 hit locations, so you just need to turn the dice in each location to note the current hit points, and then when you reach negatives, you replace them with red D10s. Have you ever seen anything like that?


My character sheet: Hama Tsa, a powerful Agimori hunter, and the dice tray for keeping track of his location hit points


Later I saw Katrin Dirim was selling prints of her beautiful art, and I could not help buying the piece he did for the Yelmalio cult in Cults of RuneQuest: Gods of Fire & Sky. Then I chatted a bit with Dan Barker, who was also selling his art. He told me he had created Orlanthi tattoos you can stick on your skin! He was selling them for 2£ and they were primarily for the freeform on Saturday, as the symbols stood for the several Orlanthi clans involved in the story. Such a cool idea!


After the game I went to the bar to buy a sandwich for lunch and I sat there chatting with Mr. Moose and Brian Duguid. His friend Craig sat down next to me and we immediately started gushing excitedly about our respective Sandheart campaigns in Sun County, exchanging ideas, funny anecdotes, and evil plans. Uwahahaha...! It was great fun.


Afterwards I headed towards the room for the afternoon game, and I came across Chris Went, who was nervous before the RuneQuest game he was about to run: a heroquest to find Pinchining, the last surviving goldwheel dancer... perhaps in the Green Age? He had prepared lovely background sheets with art for every pregen, drawn by Phil O'Connor. I admired them for a few minutes, feeling strangely envious of the players who were about to play in Chris' game, and then I went to my next game.


Chris' nice background sheets for the pregens in his RuneQuest game. With biscuits on top of a map of the Rubble.


14:00 Lost in Moonbroth, a RuneQuest game by Ben


Ben handed out the character sheets he had prepared for the game. Paul played an Issaries merchant whose name was Saradra, IIRC), Brian Duguid played Arale, an Ernalda assistant priestess, Darren played a Humakti warrior named Yenir, and Andy played a Storm Bull warrior called Natalir. I played an Eirithan High Llama rider whose name was Varanyne, and whose job was to take care of the beats of burden in Saradras' caravan. We were all members of the White Quartz clan in the Aranwyth tribe. Recently, a fellow clan member, an Issaries salt trader named Dangstan Watertongue had gone missing in the oasis of Moonbroth. Actually, he had been in a spying mission to find out exactly how strong the Lunar garrison there was. However, the gods had told our priests that he was not in the hands of the Lunar army, although he was still alive in the oasis. I loved the premise!


So, we went to the oasis, left our beasts in the pens, paid for rooms at an inn, and slowly and carefully tried to investigate where Dangstan was. Arale tried to get some gossip from the local temple to the grain goddesses, but Brian rolled two fumbles in a row (!!!), and so we had to get out quickly after apologising profusely. :-D She then went to relax at the spa next to the inn, and she fumbled her Scan roll. Yeah, not a great start... but she got an important and mysterious clue anyway, and we laughed out loud when she said "I will come back for further stimulation...". Another funny scene was when that night, at the inn, we tried to make friends singing songs and playing the flute, and we got such good rolls that the whole inn started singing along loudly with us!


Ben used a map of the oasis of Moonbroth he got from The White Bull campaign on YouTube.


Meanwhile, the Issaries merchant went to the Issaries shrine in the marketplace. The following day he participated in a holy ceremony before the market started, assisting the local priest, but he also had to walk a thin line and not arouse the suspicions of the local Etyries priest. I loved how Ben described the place and the NPCs, particularly the worship ceremony involving the two trade deities. The oasis of Moonbroth is a cool place for a scenario, and Ben revealed some of its secrets (gathered from Nick Brooke's article in Tales of the Reaching Moon #15). In the end, we managed to get our comrade out (ironically thanks to the Ernaldan, who much later cast the Rune spell Charisma on herself, and rolled a special success at the right moment), and had to ride away while being chased by the Lunar forces, with missiles raining on every side. It was a cool scenario in a cool location. I only felt bad for the two players who were playing the bodyguards of the merchant, and who were itching for a fight in the final scene, as they did not get their chance for combat. At the same time, it was great that the scenario could be solved without resorting to violence.


Ben later told us he runs RuneQuest and Call of Cthulhu at a hobby store and is developing a campaign for the Aranwyth tribe that he may end up publishing in the Jonstown Compendium.


18:00 Dinner


That day dinner was a lovely BBQ on the garden. I stuffed myself with food while chatting with Ben, Brian, and Matthew. I recall chatting about the upcoming Sartar book for RuneQuest, and Brian revealed he had had a sneak peek into it! How cheeky! :-O Soon after, I went to my evening game:


19:00 Dam You, a QuestWorlds game by Simon Phipps


I have been a fan of Simon Phipps' website since my 20s, so it was an honour to finally get to play in one of his games set in Dorastor, the most Chaotic land in Glorantha, and a heroquest no less! I played with Matthew, Ant, Mikko, who is Finnish, and Andreas who had come from Germany. Of all the character sheets, I decided to choose Mallar, the Eurmali PC (an illusionist thief and peddler), who had lots of interesting keywords, magic, and abilities. We played a houseruled version of the QuestWorlds rules Simon calls QuestWorlds Lite, and he let us assign a set of fixed ratings to each of our abilities and keywords so we could each customise our PCs. 


Our characters were Orlanthi settlers in Dorastor, and we had been chosen to perform a heroquest to dam the Sludgestream, a heavily polluted stream, so the ducks in Fowlvale (Foulvale actually) could have pure water. To achieve that, we needed to follow on the steps of the hero Dirty Den who in the past had managed to dam another filthy stream in the region. But how were we supposed to accomplish such a heroic feat? Easy: You just turn into beavers with some hsunchen magic, swim upstream past the gloomsharks, chop some chaotic trees to help the Chaos elves, push the trunks upstream, ask the river god for permission, build a dam, and then just summon a giant Chaos slug and bind it so it swallows the Chaos in the water so that the stream is purified. Euh... OK? I know it sounds crazy, but hey, this is not only Dorastor, but a heroquest!!! So, we put on our beaver pelts, chanted the magic, and on we went!


Simon used a map of Dorastor to point at the several locations our heroquesters went through.


At some points it felt like we were in a cartoon film, and Simon actually agreed that is how it must feel to be on the heroplane, often. Although the scenario was linear because we had to tread on the hero's steps, it was fun to try to use our skills in original ways to overcome each obstacle. Besides, if you used the same keyword twice in a row, Simon did not grant the full bonus to your roll, which encouraged us to be creative in our descriptions. "You are not here to have fun" warned us Simon right from the start, smiling "...you are here to provide me with amusement". Haha! Despite that, something we all learnt (by rote) is: "Simon Phipps is a nice GM!!!". :-D



My character sheet and some doodles of what I was imagining. On the back of the sheet there was a rules summary.


In the end, it was an extremely trippy, fun session, that produced scenes like the Eurmali character in beaver shape turning into a sexy slug to seduce the giant Chaos monster. Just a regular day on the heroplane! On top of that, Simon noted our names down as playtesters of his supplement Hahlgrim's War, gifted us a digital copy, and even sent us a sneak peek into his next publication: Hahlgrim's War Part Two! Isn't he a nice GM or what? :-D So if you want to run Dirty Den's Quest in your RuneQuest campaign, be sure to buy a copy of that book. Then you will have proof I have not made up any of this! And you will get a ton of playable material too. :-)


After the game, I met Chris again, who had brought his miniatures of the Cradle and the Watchdog of Corflu, together with the tiny miniatures of yelmite troops, wyrm riders, bison riders, and even Yello Mello the baboon, and was displaying them on the main hall. I stared at the miniatures while chatting with him. I had seen his miniatures on Facebook, and I thought he had made them for a RuneQuest campaign, but actually he had not run any campaign with them yet, he just thought it would be a nice pastime to build the giant cradle and paint the minis! :-O


Chris Went's amazing miniatures of troops and the giant cradle on display


So these were my first two days and first games at Chaosium Con UK 2026. Get ready for more games not all of them of RuneQuest (including the VIP game I played!), interesting people and the panels about the upcoming books by Chaosium! Follow the link:


😄👉Read I all I did on Saturday and Sunday at Chaosium Con UK 2026! 👈😄






 
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