Runequest

I don't know anything about it but I am curious to know what's good about it and what's bad about it, which editions people play, etc.
My players keep on going back to D&D all the time so I want something different that's good and doesn't have the D&D baggage.

>what's good about it
No levels. A skill and attribute system. Combat has the potential to be very lethal. There is a large amount of compatible supplements and systems available as well.
>what's bad about it.
Rules can be a little daunting at first. Like Gurps it has too many skills.
>which editions people play, etc.
I like MRQ2 or Legend. The Design Mechanism Runequest/ Mythras has an additional magic system if you want monks/ physical adepts.
>My players keep on going back to D&D all the time so I want something different that's good and doesn't have the D&D baggage.
You could try Pendragon. Knights of the round table adventures. Dice resolution uses a D20. It is also not too difficult to adapt the D20 roll high system to Runequest. Jus treat every 5% in a skill as a +1 bonus.

Runequest is a neat beast. It's one of the oldest RPGs, and it's developed its own nice niche. The game from the ground is somewhat more grounded and realistic than D&D. People will die in two or three hits of most weapons, hit locations, armor as DR rather than avoidance, etc. Runequest 6 (now known as Mythras due to licensing bullshit) has refined this to include a lot of special effects and maneuvers to perform in combat, like impaling someone with your sword, tripping them, disarming them, etc. It makes martial combat extremely interesting yet light enough to run quickly. The focus on a grounded character includes character creation, where your stats depend on your culture and you can optionally generate your whole damn family.

At the same time as this, magic is also a very big part. The game originally shipped with the setting of Glorantha, which has a sort of bronze age myth feel, bordering on gonzo at times. There's no hard separation or class system to prevent anyone from learning magic, and so most people know a couple little charms. In modern Runequest, this means there are a bunch of different magic systems that you can drop in and out of the system, from petty magic to weird kung fu sorcery. You can run something without magic or absolutely flooded with it, and it just werks.
(cont)

The three editions most people would point to are 2nd edition, 6th edition, and the new one coming out called Runequest Glorantha.

2nd edition is simple, concise at like 150 pages total, and has a lot of great material for it. It's a bit antiquated in design though. However, it's considered a classic for a reason.

6th edition, Mythras, is a bit crunchier and front loaded in character creation, but has a lot of interesting tools to play with, like those combat maneuvers and modular magic systems. It also has a bunch of great supplements, like sourcebooks for Rome and Early Medieval Britain, a sword and sorcery setting with dinosaurs on an island, and a book called Classic Fantasy to integrate more D&D style play if you want. I really, really recommend it. You can find a free version online called Mythras Imperative that has a simplified, stripped down version of the rules and see what you think.

The newest edition, Runequest Glorantha (or Runequest 4th Edition because Chaosium is a bunch of dickbags) isn't out yet, but has a pretty promising playtest that was just released. It's being built from the ground up to include more Glorantha materials if you're interested in that setting, and also includes a few more modern gameplay concepts like personality attributes based on the magical runes that define you. Unfortunately, it steps back a bit on the modernizing of the rules that 6th edition did, and has some kind of clunky opposed roll skills and an antiquated way to determine difficulty. It's a step back to 2nd edition in a lot of ways, for good and for ill. However, you really can't go wrong with any of them. It all depends on how crunchy you want things and what kind of setting you want to go for.

Seems like Mythras would be what I look for, thank you.

It seems like OP's question has been answered so lets make this a rune quest general thread (there are so few these days).

I am currently laying out my rune quest campaign, I plan on giving the PC's the choice of starting out either as a member of the equites class (setting is mostly a thalocratic league of city states drawing heavily from Greek, Etruscan and early Roman culture) or as a slave owned by one of the payers starting in the equites class with the lower social standing made up for by giving them more character options at character creation (You want to play a NOT! Conan then you start out as a slave)

Thinking of having minor gods inhabit all aspects of the world and flavor folk magic as invoking those minor gods.

Also having a bit of trouble thinking up al the potential fighting styles and cultures for barbarians and nomads that could be used as slaves in the setting. Care to assist me in this Veeky Forums?

I have been playing a 3rd edition campaign for half a year now. I really liked the system especially the whole skill system.

Mythras is my system of choice. I just love how it offers good rules for character creation, it encourages you to make a really fleshed out character and not just in terms of crunch, but fluff.
The combat system is heavy, I'm not going to lie. I have simplified it a lot to make combat smoother, but if you aren't running a combat heavy campaign or combat focuses on 2-6 participants, it works just fine. It's just that most of my combat encounters consist of 10-20 participants, so streamlining the system helps a lot.
The combat is lethal, and people have many opinions of that fact. I like it, as there is no unnecessary hp bloat and there is a genuine feel of danger - almost any hit can disable your hero if unlucky enough. Usually though it's 2-4 solid hits and the combat is over, either because the opposition is dead or more often, they flee or surrender.
The passions system is cool, it makes fleshing out the character's fluff to affect the crunch, too.
Magic systems are many and range from basic folk magic to complex and extremely flexible sorcery, for example.

Have been running two campaigns with the system for about 2 years now, and I give it a 9/10

How did you streamline combat?

I have ran a RQ2/3 campaign for a about 30 sessions and I did not find combat heavy at all. Combat is smooth and fast but deadly and interesting at the same time. My players really liked it. I had some old timers that had played DnD and Riddle of Steel with me before, and I had some completely new players as well. Everybody liked runequest, except for one guy who thought magic was too weak.