The Sartar bottleneck: Why Chaosium is splitting RuneQuest books into parts

The Glorantha fan community has been a hive of debate this week following accusations that Chaosium Inc. is adopting a “DLC” business model for its flagship roleplaying game, RuneQuest. The dispute, which began as an open letter from fan advocate Filip Bobiński, has forced a rare, transparent response from Chaosium Vice President Michael O’Brien, revealing a significant shift in the company’s publishing strategy.

The controversy centres on the recent release of three standalone PDF scenarios: The Hunt for the Storm Calf, Stealing the Eye, and A Darkness in Runegate. Filip Bobiński argued that partitioning what would normally be a scenario collection into individual digital downloads felt akin to the “frowned upon” practices of video game developers, urging fans to “vote with their wallets” until a physical book is released.

The “Bridge-Gap” Strategy

Responding to the concerns in an official Chaosium statement, Michael O’Brien (known to fans as MOB) clarified that the company is not intentionally “cutting a book to pieces.” Instead, he revealed that the final product, a compiled scenario collection, does not yet exist in its entirety.

To be clear, we’re not “dividing the product into small parts to be sold separately”. There’s nothing to divide. The final product – a collection of one shot scenarios – doesn’t fully exist yet… Simply put, the alternative to this would be we’d not be releasing anything until then.”

Michael O’Brien admitted that the rate of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha releases had slowed to “barely one a year,” and the PDF releases are a “temporary situation” designed to maintain momentum while the company pivots back to playable content rather than dense reference tomes.

The Stealth Reveal: A Revised Core Rulebook

Buried within the defence of the PDF model was a major revelation for the line’s future: Chaosium is working on a Revised Core Rulebook. According to Michael O’Brien, the game needs a “revised rulebook that is easier to use for newcomers” to grow and prosper.

Insiders suggest this revised edition will be significantly more streamlined, reportedly around 60% of the size of the original 2018 core book, and will incorporate combat rule clean-ups and a built-in Bestiary. The move appears aimed at lowering the high barrier to entry that has defined the current edition, which many newcomers found overwhelming due to its encyclopaedic density.

Looking Toward Sartar

The production bottleneck appears to be clearing as the company moves toward the release of Lands of RuneQuest: Sartar. This upcoming title is expected to kick off a regular release cycle of print titles, eventually including a physical compilation of the controversial PDF scenarios, plus at least one exclusive adventure that will not be released in PDF beforehand.

For now, the friction appears to have eased. Filip Bobiński noted he was “satisfied” with the explanation, provided this “bridge-gap” solution remains an exception rather than a permanent shift toward micro-transactional publishing.