Balastor's Barracks

Balastor's Barracks, published by The Chaosium in 1978, is the first adventure created for the fantasy role-playing game RuneQuest.

Cover art by Guy Conrad, 1978

Setting

Centuries ago, the god Pavis transferred the spirit of the dying hero Balastor into a mighty axe. The axe has been hidden deep beneath the city of New Pavis since then, but now both the Lunar Empire and the Sartor Exile army want to get their hands on it. If the player characters can find it first, they stand to make a lot of money from the highest bidder.[1]

Publication history

Balastor's Barracks, the first adventure created for Chaosium's new fantasy role-playing game RuneQuest,[1] was written by Steve Henderson, Warren James, and Steve Perrin, with cover art by Guy Conrad. It was published in 1978 by Chaosium Inc. 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.[2] The exact placement of Balastor's Axe is left up to the gamemaster.[2]

The scenario was later revised and included in Big Rubble.[1] Chaosium re-released the original version as a softcover 24-page book in 2016.[3]

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.[2]

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."[4]

gollark: That's probably impractical.
gollark: ```For instance, say I want a wooden chest: I've got several solutions: - Use an existing chest- Craft a chest from existing planks - Craft planks and then craft a chest Now, normally I'd say the first is the best. But what happens if I've only got 1 dark oak chests, and I've got 1000 oak planks. Surely it'd be better to create a chest from the planks in this case, as it results in a more balanced system.```Mentioned by the people on the CC discord I asked.
gollark: And no good way to tell which one is "best".
gollark: Well, there are multiple patterns for most items, see.
gollark: How to generate the list of crafting tasks and their order.

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. Donohoe, Jim (August–September 1979). "Open Box". White Dwarf. Games Workshop (Issue 14): 14.
  3. "Balastor's Barracks". RPG Geek. Skotor Tech Ic. Retrieved 2020-06-26.
  4. Bianquis, Jérôme (October 2009). "Balastor's Barracks". Guide de Rôliste Galactique (in French). Retrieved 2020-06-26.
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