Dwarf (Issue 11), Jim Donohoe thought the rulebook was "116 pages of well thought-out and comprehensive rules," but he found the character generation system "quite complex." He advised new referees to use the monster loot tables with caution, since the treasure was randomly generated, which meant "the amount of treasure a monster can have can vary wildly using these tables, and a weak monster can have a fortune while a tough one is impoverished. This is one area of the rules which could use some revision." He concluded by giving the game an excellent rating of 9 out of 10, saying, "These are a set of rules which I can recommend as a good alternative to Dungeons & Dragons. Using the Runequest rules, a campaign can be set up simply and quickly with little effort to the referee." In the March 1980 edition of Ares (Issue #1), Greg Costikyan commented that "RuneQuest is the most playable and elegant fantasy role-playing designed to date. Its only drawback is that it does not cover enough ground for a full-scale role-playing campaign, and is, perhaps, a bit simpler than experienced frp'ers would desire." He concluded by giving it a slightly better than average rating of 7 out of 9. In the July 1980 issue of Ares, Eric Goldberg reviewed the second edition and commented "When RQ came out, it was well-organized by the FRP standards of that time. The rules are not painful to read, and a second edition, in which the charts are easier to find, has helped matters considerably. The drawbacks of the game are that the foundation of the game (combat) has play problems and that the individual systems do not mesh together as nicely as one would hope. Among the strengths are its freshness of design concepts, the elimination of the odious 'level' progressions for characters, and the detailed background." In the 1980 book The Complete Book of Wargames, game designer Jon Freeman liked the rulebook, calling it "coherent, understandable, and full of examples to illustrate." However, Freeman major issue with "the cumbersome combat system, which is more realistic than most but rather tedious." He also noted that the world of Glorantha was quite dense and hard to comprehend for new players. And if enterprising gamemasters wished to borrow the best parts of the setting for use in other role-playing systems, Freeman thought this would be very difficult: "the