Chatter #6 - September 8, 2000

12/14/2001 — I started the Chatter section on July 27, 2000 when I noticed that the rest of my site was sometimes getting cluttered with lots of text. I'm a talkative guy, after all! So now I talk about my life here, instead of all over the place. Originally this was one huge section, but in December of 2001 it simply became too large to remain as one page, and I broke it into dated sections, as you can see. —>PM

QUICK CORRECTION

My new adventure (the one that I've already run, and am in the process of writing up), is no longer called A Breath of Evil; instead it is called Fear The Night, which is a much more appropriate title. I was blocked for a while, but the writing is starting to flow.

I have notes available for the next adventure I'm going to run, which is provisionally titled A Breath of Evil (until I come up with yet another more appropriate name). I can't post them since that would spoil the adventure for my players, but if anyone would like a copy of the notes I'd be glad to send them out via email. I honestly think that this one will be the largest and most complex single adventure I've ever created, and probably the most gripping and horrific.

FINDING RQ2

Several people over the past few years have asked me if I know where to find copies of the old RQ2 books. It isn't easy to find a copy of RQ2 these days, but there are a few places to try. Crazy Egor's is a mail-order source for used games; they don't have the RQ2 book in stock, but they do have a lot of stuff and their stock changes often.

Other places to look are the various used book web sites. Again, none of them actually has the book right now—but their databases churn frequently, and you can put in a standing order which will tag the book as soon as it becomes available. I have never been *unable* to get any book (no matter how rare) through these services, although sometimes it has taken a couple of months of watching the sites.

Bibliofind is now owned by Amazon, which is unfortunate since Amazon has driven so many small used book stores out of business; it's ironic that the remaining stores must use Amazon as a gateway. By the way, if you ever order a used book through Amazon directly, they use Bibliofind to find it and charge you much more than you'd pay directly.

The American Book Exchange currently lists FIVE rare RQ2 supplements on their site, but not the source book.

I should make it clear that both BiblioFind and ABE are databases which show the stock of many hundreds (if not thousands) of used book stores around the world. When you choose to buy a book you buy it directly from the bookstore that has it, not from some giant centralized company.

Finally, perhaps your best chance of finding the RQ2 book is at a RuneQuest Con (which I suppose are called GloranthaCons these days—I wouldn't know. Back at the first one the books were going for upward of $80 at auction, but they *were* available. Now that the oh-so-wonderful Hero Wars is out, perhaps all the former RQers are eager to dump their inferior old books for some quick cash (there, does that sound sarcastic and bitter enough, Mr. DeMille?). :-)

One last word: if you can POSSIBLY find it, get the RuneQuest 2 *hardcover* edition—the one with the red cover! I have one, and I can tell you that it wears like iron. The company that produced that book (some Canadian publisher, as I recall) did a splendid job. It's much more durable than any AD&D book, for example.

Whups, told a lie—I just thought of another place to try. I've seen several gamers who've auctioned off their stuff when they've given up gaming. It's not necessarily easy to find them, but it's probably worth keeping an eye on Ebay, as well as the RuneQuest-Rules Digest.