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Lands of RuneQuest: Dragon Pass
Enter the Domain of Magic and Myth!
Within the world of Glorantha lies Dragon Pass, an intensely magical region home to war and wonder, the birthplace of gods. Lands of RuneQuest: Dragon Pass is a player and gamemaster expansion for the signature setting of Bronze Age Fantasy.
New and expanded Homelands for your RuneQuest adventurer, including Sartar, Esrolia, Lunar Tarsh, the Grazelands, Wintertop, and the Wilds.
The detailed history of Dragon Pass, from the fabled God Time to its occupation by the mighty Lunar Empire.
Additional guidelines for character creation, including new occupations and backgrounds for your RuneQuest adventurer.
Detail on villages, towns, cities, ruins, and places of interest throughout Dragon Pass-perfect for running a sandbox-style RuneQuest campaign.
New creatures, monsters, and spirits to encounter.
A roster of famous and generic characters to include in adventures of your own devising.
Within the world of Glorantha lies Dragon Pass, an intensely magical region home to war and wonder, the birthplace of gods. Lands of RuneQuest: Dragon Pass is a player and gamemaster expansion for the signature setting of Bronze Age Fantasy.
New and expanded Homelands for your RuneQuest adventurer, including Sartar, Esrolia, Lunar Tarsh, the Grazelands, Wintertop, and the Wilds.
The detailed history of Dragon Pass, from the fabled God Time to its occupation by the mighty Lunar Empire.
Additional guidelines for character creation, including new occupations and backgrounds for your RuneQuest adventurer.
Detail on villages, towns, cities, ruins, and places of interest throughout Dragon Pass-perfect for running a sandbox-style RuneQuest campaign.
New creatures, monsters, and spirits to encounter.
A roster of famous and generic characters to include in adventures of your own devising.
- GenresRole Playing Games
192 pages, Hardcover
First published October 31, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 2, 2024
Excellent setting overview, and arguably the supplement that the entire rest of this edition's product line has been building towards. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...
November 30, 2024
A good book for getting a more cohesive overview of Dragon Pass and it's history than the main rulebook.
It has a bunch of useful stuff like good maps, lots of tidbits about various places, statblocks and info on "people everyone knows" and some tribal/society structure that was a lot clearer here than in other books for this edition of Runequest.
The usual "pretty book" for recent RuneQuest books also applies here. Having a poster map included makes the map nerd in me extra happy too.
And sadly, I am also not too happy about the usual RuneQuest Glorantha setting book stuff. The choice to have most of the book be written as an encyclopedia with loads of small entries ("this river is named something else by the people on the other side of the river") does not make for good reading. The constant overlap of information with other books, and references to them. The lack of "what is going on here at the moment" things that could be used for seeds or relations makes it feel lacking as an rpg book, it's comes across as more of a history book.
So my negative things is mostly "me"-things things and not "Chaosium"-things. Maybe I'd get more mileage out of 1e/2e material for the actual playing part. :)
It has a bunch of useful stuff like good maps, lots of tidbits about various places, statblocks and info on "people everyone knows" and some tribal/society structure that was a lot clearer here than in other books for this edition of Runequest.
The usual "pretty book" for recent RuneQuest books also applies here. Having a poster map included makes the map nerd in me extra happy too.
And sadly, I am also not too happy about the usual RuneQuest Glorantha setting book stuff. The choice to have most of the book be written as an encyclopedia with loads of small entries ("this river is named something else by the people on the other side of the river") does not make for good reading. The constant overlap of information with other books, and references to them. The lack of "what is going on here at the moment" things that could be used for seeds or relations makes it feel lacking as an rpg book, it's comes across as more of a history book.
So my negative things is mostly "me"-things things and not "Chaosium"-things. Maybe I'd get more mileage out of 1e/2e material for the actual playing part. :)
November 15, 2025
I'm new to the Runequest rpg (only run one and a half of the scenarios from the starter set), but one thing I've discovered already is that it has a setting quite unlike any other rpg. It's exceptionally VAST and detailed, to a mind-boggling degree, with a feeling to it like an actual history, full of confusing political alliances, genealogies, and figures both important and minor. Add to this a mythology that's anything but simple (gods can have multiple names, can give birth to themselves and their own parents, die, come back to life, and do things in the future that are responsible for stuff they themselves did in the past), and Runequest's setting isn't really one you learn, but rather one you sort of drown in, using the little bits you think sound neat.
...At least that's the impression I've got.
"Lands of Runequest: Dragon Pass" is just like that. It's full of amazing detail that gives you lots of great information on Runequest's big, important setting. It's great! ...But it's almost TOO much?
Divided into different sections for each major territory of Dragon Pass, it discusses the population of each area, lists lots of important locations and important people. ...Yet, reading it, I almost found myself at a loss for what to DO with any of this info. Sure, it's detailed, but it's detailed like a real history book.
I'd compare this to another Chaosium release that also brought detail to a specific area, Call of Cthulhu: Arkham. THAT book presented a host of locations in a style that felt useful to an rpg; listing what a player could buy from a place, what skills they could learn, giving stats for the NPCs who live there, and ideas for scenarios that could take place in that site. After reading it I felt awash in inspiration, thinking up dozens of different game ideas from one chapter alone.
Dragon Pass, on the other hand, feels like someone's exercise in creating a fantasy setting that would impress people with its realism and how well thought out it is. And, well... I am! I am impressed! It's a cool, detailed setting. But this book just hasn't quite managed to inspire me like an rpg book should.
...At least that's the impression I've got.
"Lands of Runequest: Dragon Pass" is just like that. It's full of amazing detail that gives you lots of great information on Runequest's big, important setting. It's great! ...But it's almost TOO much?
Divided into different sections for each major territory of Dragon Pass, it discusses the population of each area, lists lots of important locations and important people. ...Yet, reading it, I almost found myself at a loss for what to DO with any of this info. Sure, it's detailed, but it's detailed like a real history book.
I'd compare this to another Chaosium release that also brought detail to a specific area, Call of Cthulhu: Arkham. THAT book presented a host of locations in a style that felt useful to an rpg; listing what a player could buy from a place, what skills they could learn, giving stats for the NPCs who live there, and ideas for scenarios that could take place in that site. After reading it I felt awash in inspiration, thinking up dozens of different game ideas from one chapter alone.
Dragon Pass, on the other hand, feels like someone's exercise in creating a fantasy setting that would impress people with its realism and how well thought out it is. And, well... I am! I am impressed! It's a cool, detailed setting. But this book just hasn't quite managed to inspire me like an rpg book should.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews