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Well after publishing RuneQuest III, Avalon Hill decided to revive the name RuneQuest. Slated for a 1998 release, RuneQuest: Slayers, did not resemble the original RuneQuest in regards to rules or its original setting of Glorantha.
Avalon Hill hired new designers on the project to start over with a fresh approach. This included shelving the original rules system (which Chaosium co-owned) and focusing on a low-magic setting inspired by pulp, sword and sorcery fiction.
Despite the game being finished and "at the printers", Hasbro, who had recently bought Avalon Hill, decided to shelve the game in mid-1998. RuneQuest: Slayers was destined to never see the light of day.
The rights to RuneQuest: Slayers, however, reverted back to the original creators, J.C. Connors and Christopher Lawrence. It was renamed Runeslayers and put into PDF form on the web for free.
User Contribution:
System is NOT mechanically nor setting related to the classic RuneQuest, though it does share some thematic elements with the newer Mongoose edition of the game, specifically the collection of supernatural runes as part of advancement).
The RPG includes a short solo-module as an introduction, as well as two short adventures, one for each of the game's two settings.
The main "class" players choose from is the WarClan, which decides the character's personality traits and supernatural runic advancement. Players customize their character with a point-based system and can add professions, races, and weapon maneuvers to further differentiate their heroes from each other.
Combat is d6 dice-pool based, non-combat is d10 based, using 2d10 to 4d10 versus attribute or less, with rerolls to represent professional advantages. The group's play style will determine which mechanic (d6 or d10) they use more.
Glyphs are attained by roleplaying according the the WarClan's traditions. Gaining glyphs gives characters access to sets of runes which grants supernatural powers. Other than the runes, Runeslayers is a low-magic setting, with sorcerers and wizards playing the roles of villains rather than heroes.
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Source: Wikipedia, "RuneQuest: Slayers/," available under the CC-BY-SA License.