Balastor's Barracks

Balastor's Barracks is a tabletop role-playing game adventure for RuneQuest, originally published by Chaosium in 1978. Set in Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha, against the backdrop of an ancient ruined city, the adventurers search for a lost artifact.[1]

Balastor's Barracks
Balastor's Barracks
published by Chaosium in 1978.
Cover by Guy Conrad 1978.
Designer(s)Steve Henderson
Warren James
Steve Perrin
Publisher(s)Chaosium
Publication date1978 softback
1983 in Big Rubble
1999 in Pavis & Big Rubble
2016 Classic Edition softback & PDF
2019 in Classic Edition Big Rubble PDF
2020 Classic edition POD
2020 in Classic Edition Big Rubble POD
Genre(s)Fantasy
System(s)RuneQuest

Publication history

As RuneQuest Scenario Pack 1, it was the first published adventure for RuneQuest in 1978. In 1983, a revised version appeared in the Big Rubble: The Deadly City boxed set.,[1] this set the adventure in the Griffin Gate area of the Big Rubble, along with other related scenarios. It was republished in 1999 by Moon Design Publications in Gloranthan Classics Volume I – Pavis & Big Rubble .[2] The original edition was republished in 2016 in softcover and PDF format and included in the RuneQuest Old School Resource Pack as part of Chaosium's RuneQuest: Classic Edition Kickstarter.[3] with a POD edition in 2020.[4] Likewise, a Classic Edition of Big Rubble including Balastor's Barracks was republished in 2019, with a POD edition in 2020.

Contents

Originally published as a 24-page booklet with a cardstock cover. The booklet is divided into an introductory section, two maps, and a description of 35 rooms containing over 60 monsters who seem to have no relationship with each other or the environment.[5] The revised version in Big Rubble shrank it to 14 pages, mainly cleaning up the layout, and reducing the number of monsters to around 45.

Reception

In the August–September 1979 edition of White Dwarf (Issue #14), Jim Donohoe thought the adventure was "too much of a killer dungeon to be satisfactory as a campaign." However, he believed Balastor's Barracks might be usable as a single introductory adventure, since "If used as a solitaire dungeon, Balastor's Barracks will give a feel as to what a party of Runequest characters can handle. The layout of the Barracks — three tough complexes and a few odd rooms —— means that only a party of very tough characters can expect to survive." Given its lack of general usability, he gave the adventure a poor rating of only 5 out of 10.[5]

Writing a retrospective review for Guide de Rôliste Galactique in 2009, Jérôme Bianquis thought that even though this was a very early publication by Chaosium, it was a poor effort that did not fulfill the potential of RuneQuest. Bianquis especially noted the numerous monsters shoehorned into a succession of rooms that "have no particular reason to be there, and one wonders how they manage to live together, and to feed themselves." He concluded that it was an adventure "without imagination, and without any interest."[6]

References
  1. Schick, Lawrence (1991). Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games. Prometheus Books. p. 209. ISBN 0-87975-653-5.
  2. Glorantha Classics Volume 1, Pavis & Big Rubble. Moon Design Publications. 1999. ISBN 978-0-9777853-5-3.
  3. "Balastor's Barracks". RPG Geek. Skotos Tech Inc. Retrieved 2020-06-26.
  4. "RuneQuest Old School Resource Pack - POD". Chaosium. Chaosium. Retrieved 17 October 2020.
  5. Donohoe, Jim (August–September 1979). "Open Box". White Dwarf. Games Workshop (14): 14.
  6. Bianquis, Jérôme (October 2009). "Balastor's Barracks". Guide de Rôliste Galactique (in French). Retrieved 2020-06-26.
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