I see many reviews of Runequest from a few years ago that say the game is too tightly tied to the setting, and they wish it wasn't. Most complaints are from those who did not use the setting but liked the rules. Mythras, the BRP fork supported by the creators of Runequest 6, solves the problem by creating a set of rules not tied to a world.
I like Runequest 7 being tightly tied to the setting, making the game different and unique. I am tired of the cookie-cutter, planar-linked, faux-modern, non-colonial, neo-Renaissance, Harry Potter meets pop-culture settings that Wizards puts out, and they are all the same at this point. Baldurs Gate 3 takes the entire D&D genre into sci-fi, and it is hard to call anything D&D fantasy these days. Call them Spelljammers, but they are starships, and most D&D settings are now wannabe sci-fi settings that force characters to start as primitive stick-using townspeople.
There is so much sci-fi in fantasy these days. This Conan meets Buck Rogers stuff gets tiring, and all it serves to do is put every genre in a blender and press the highest number on the machine to create flavorless multi-genre scop paste.
The science-fantasy fad also subconsciously tells every fantasy character, "You are a low-intelligence primitive." It is the designer's way of describing the audience as inferior for wanting to play fantasy archetypes and is also colonialist in theme. Fear not, stupid barbarians and primitive peoples of the world! The space people are here! Sorry, our cleaning robot killed you. Don't kill yourself figuring out our space artifacts!
Sci-fi in fantasy, unless this is the game when it starts, sideswipes the players and their expectations and feels like the DM and module writer talking down to the players.
And how do you return to caring about the everyday fantasy world when you know UFOs are out there? Do I care that the Black Knight ruined the King's celebration? Am I mad that the Dark Elf raided the Border Keep? Do I care about the lost island? We need to rescue the princess, but we really want to be chasing aliens.
I have never had a fantasy campaign recover from a sci-fi incursion.
And frankly, Gamma World is a better mix of the genres. Post-apocalyptic is the place to be for mixed sci-fi and fantasy, and it does the genre the best, with mutations as the power source. You belong here, and the great mystery is figuring out what happened to the world and who the ancients were.
Dungeon Crawl Classics does it right, too. The sci-fi elements are so crazy and strange that they are alien and unrelatable. You are not getting a "Star Trek" ship that is more civilized than you up there, with a crew teleporting down and telling the characters what primitives they are.
Runequest is pure bronze-age high fantasy, with even everyday people using magic. You think "everyone knows magic" as something that blows out the game world, but it works here with a heightened sense of spiritualism and magic being a part of life. The magic is minor and more like charms or incantations, something used to help clean a room, like the old AD&D cantrips. In 5E, cantrips became "laser" attack spells like a video game (and fell into the 'why take anything else' category). In AD&D, they were minor incantations, like magic tricks, with no combat use.
If I were using Runequest for a generic fantasy game, I would use the old Basic Roleplaying game 'Big Yellow Book' before using Runequest since the assumption that 'everyone knows magic' is nonexistent. These days, we have even better...
The only answer here is the same one that was true back then as it is now: the Basic Fantasy Game is the generic d100 system for non-RQ fantasy, and it always was. These days, we have an ORC-licensed system ready to expand upon and use, and it works out of the box for generic fantasy, high to low. It also works in Gamma World-style settings.
But letting Runequest be Runequest is a strength. I love runes and passions as part of the character. I love the tight tying to tribe, cult, and family. No other game does this! Let the game's systems reflect the world, culture, and experience of living there.
BRP is for everything else except Cthulhu. BRP is designed as a toolkit and fits better as a generic fantasy starting point. And the starting point is an excellent way to describe it since fantasy games are always better when the generic part is tossed out, and the group adds their ideas and magic to the system.
Mythras is also a great option if you go off-Chaosium, and they have a classic fantasy supplement if you want less Bronze Age and more high fantasy. Yes, the font size is small, and I use a PDF on a tablet (and I bought reading glasses). Hopefully, when this team goes ORC license, they reprint the book with a larger font.
The BRP-like d100 systems are a great place to play and are also very compatible with each other.
BRP is the best thing to happen to all of Chaosium's games since it takes the 'universal system' pressure off them. This also allows Runequest and Call of Cthulhu to be their own thing, with system-specific game rule extensions. This also sets the model for your worlds and creations, inviting you to build subsystems to add to the game.
I love GURPS, but with Chaosium games, the parts unique to the world are essential to the flavor and play of the game. You need to flip optional rules in GURPS to get the same thing, but there is a freedom in BRP that allows the designers to customize the game for the setting—and it invites you to do the same.
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