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, 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 a 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 Ant 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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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!
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 were going to be the next planned books for the QuestWorlds line (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 hot to become a hero or a god. Also rules for converting RuneQuest characters into QuestWorlds.
- Pioneer Space: A space setting is mostly written, 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.
13:00 Lunch
I went to buy a sandwich at the bar, and saw Michael O'Brien 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 liked the 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 County («Vrok 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 a 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 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 from the Waha cult 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.
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 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!
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 will take the scenarios in the GM Screen and make 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 being developed. 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.
- 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 of which 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 this 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.
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"."
- Dead Letter in July, a solo adventure!
- No Place Like Home: a collection of case files in August.
- Quickstart for free on June 27th (only in stores): 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Some of Chaosium's planned publications for the second half of 2026
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario