Review: RuneQuest

Hello everyone!

It's been a little while, it was a tough week. My right eye turned into Terminator eye, fully red, so I had to rest a little bit. Since I'm better for now, I'll try to talk about different games, again. There's RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha on the menu.

What is RuneQuest

RuneQuest is the first game created by Chaosium Inc. in 1978. It was technically an alternative to d20-style games. It doesn't have experience points, character classes and levels. Also, its inspiration has drawn from mythical Bronze Age, instead of Tolkien-style modern fantasy.

What is Glorantha

Glorantha is a Bronze Age setting, where people stick with their tribe, city and cults. This setting has big bonds with its belief system, and it effects both daily life and magic system in the game. It's not a real-life Bronze Age environment, it has its own regions, gods and terms.

Multiple Publishers

RuneQuest had been published by some different publishers, like The Design Mechanism, and this version of the game is Chaosium's 4th edition. Before I check this book, I thought I tried its older edition, but I probably tried The Design Mechanism version, which had evolved into Mythras.

How to Create Characters

Character creation has eight steps. Each step is as neccessary as others.

1. Choose your adventurer's homeland. Homeland brings cultural behaviour stereotypes, common cults you could join, and suggested occupations.
2. Create your family's history. This brings more occupation options and expand the character's story.
3. Choose your character's runes. These runes are related with gods and cults, and affects personality and social impulses. Your homeland gives a little modification to your affinity to a rune, like if you're from Sartar, you gain +10% affinity to Air Rune.
4. Calculate the characteristics. 3D6 for calculating STR, DEX, CON, POW and CHA, and 2D6+6 for SIZ and INT. Different from Cthulhu, there's no Education, and there is Charisma instead of Appearance.
5. Pick an occupation.
6. Choose your cult.
7. Allocate your personal skill bonuses. Add 25% to four skills, and add 10% to other five skills. You cannot raise any skills above 100%. Skills have their base values, and your occupation gives you some extra values.
8. Fill up your character's other informations, like name, gender, equipment etc.

Magic System

I guess you know me and you know that the magic system is kinda important for me, as well. The game introduces three magic mechanics; spirit magic, rune magic and sorcery. In my honest opinion, rune magic and sorcery are kinda same.

Spirit Magic: People who use this discipline can use the energy of the spirits around their environment, and some say that a master of this discipline could pass through the Spirit World and could directly interact with spirits.

Sorcery: People who use this discipline do detailed research about gods, runes, and their usage, and formulize them. Like wizards in D&D.

Rune Magic: People who use this method simply asks favour to gods, to be able to use their runes' powers. In exchange, they have to offer a living being, a special physical object, or some sort of service, like praying, fasting, certain ritual, or maybe a special quest.

How the Game Works

The game works exactly like Call of Cthulhu. You have skills with percentage value. You should hit the score or roll below of it to succeed. Everything has a related skills and skill groups. Combat has its skill group, so does magic. It's easy like this.

My Thoughts

RuneQuest: Glorantha has a more realistic approach to combat system. You have hit locations and armors are partial. Which means, if I insist on hitting your right arm and give enough damage, I could break your arm or you could lose your arm. Magic system seems good enough as roleplaying approach, but I think I like Design Mechanism's magic concept better. Because it still gives the vibe of a video-game-character-spells effect, and I'm more into less bang-bang magic. Anyways, the game is tasteful and deserve a try.

I didn't dive into details because of protection of the copyrighted content. But if you want to try a different type of fantasy, I highly recommend it. I guess I'll add more games in time, when I publish a review video on my YouTube channel. If I ever could finish my list, I'll force my content into horror and darkness. See you in another post!