id like to see some support here guys.....granted when i bought the game, i promptly had to alter a few things to make it playable in my group, but thats just the nature of the beast.

what can we look forward to for Rune?

~Alex

havent heard of it... however im sure it would be helpful..

right now im using my old legends and lore book from 2nd ed AD&D for norse weapons, and ideas for new divine gifts...

i've already created two divine gifts, and made sure i hade real disarm rules, so i dont have to lose that one loki they say to remove...lol

i guess what im really looking for is a place to get ideas for divine gifts (which could honestly come from any source) and probably some more magical items and stuff...the book is a good start, but sometimes theres some stuff you'd like to add..but it just isnt in the rules base

All of these books are written to be run under either game system. The idea is twofold: first, to get more sales by selling to some D20 customers; second, to show off what's unique and interesting about these non-D20 games of ours. Someone who enjoys the background, cosmology and attitude or flavor of one of these adventures (all elements that should come through even when playing with d20 rules) might take an interest in learning more, perhaps even trying the other game.

So, to be clear, doing this adventure is not making Rune into a D20 game. ;-) (And, as you can see, we're trying the same dual-state experiment with a title for each one of our RPGs -- there's even an OTE/D20 book in the works.)

well im about to head back up to Constellation, however thought id drop a small line... the majority of games up there were d20 D&D games, and i did run my own from 6-10 pm, however at 10-3 was my Rune RPG game.. i tried to run one at the last convention (deepsouth con), and im sorry to say that no one was even slightly interested.. i had one player show up last night (not counting my wife) and all he could do during the game was gripe at how the skills were dopey, and how the character creation process was retarded...i dont think i'll be letting him in my games today...

anyways i have done alot of tweaking to the Rune rules base, allowing it to become more of a roleplaying combat game, instead of just a hack and slasher... however with this guy in the game he reduce my fun level to next to nothing...

im trying to get the word out on Rune, but it doesnt appear to have much of a following here in Huntsville, Alabama..

just letting you guys know

http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/rune/399/fonts.html

I think I have Rune English 1 & 2 (1 is allcaps, 2 is mixed case) and Viking from that site.

The original Rune system works best as a competitive game. Myself, I love the feel of the Rune interpretation of Viking fantasy. I'd like to play in such a setting using a more standard (i.e. D20) method of fantasy role-playing.

When I tried doing a D20 Rune-esque setting of my own, the only thing that felt right was to nearly dump all of the typical PHB/SRD classes and come up with a whole new set in the manner that Atlas did with Nyambe and Holistic did with Fading Suns. That's probably too ambitious for Chris to do with a Coriolis product, however.

Eric Anondson

It's certainly more ambitious than I wanted to be with this project. So I didn't do that. :)

My primary design goal for the D20 sections was to show how to use the D20 system to evoke the *feel* of Rune at its bloody finest, not create a wholesale conversion system. My method was to bend a few rules and add a few rules, not replace whole systems.

OTOH, the book supports four distinct modes of play: regular Rune, single-GM Rune, regular D20 games in the Rune setting, and competitive D20 games in the Rune setting -- all with minimal changes to the rules so it's easy to transport the concepts I used into your own D20 or Rune campaigns. I'm pretty happy with that.

cheers,

Chris Aylott
Writer, Retailer, and Itinerant Grave-Robber
http://www.spacecrime.com/

i felt this needed to be placed here, John, i have been working on a game using the basic system behind rune, i think i sent an email to you about it several months ago, but i dont remember if i got anything back about it..

i know you guys probably arent looking for any new games, but i feel that there is a definate market for what i am making, please contact me through email, so we can talk more openly about it prophet@hiwaay.net

It's called Ars Magica. :)

Seriously, that's what the basic Rune engine is based on. I recommend downloading the free main rulebook from rpgnow.com, squealing in delight at the goodness of it all, and then buying many Ars Magica supplements.

cheers,

Chris Aylott
The Space-Crime Continuum
Northamton, MA

True, but you can take Ars Magica background material, combine it with the Rune system, and have Instant Medieval Rune.

Check out "The Medieval Bestiary", "Mythic Europe", "The Mythic Seas", "Ultima Thule: Mythic Scandinavia", and "Ordo Nobilis". I really think you'll find useful material in there, even for a game that's not revolving around magic.

yours,

Chris Aylott
The Space-Crime Continuum
http://www.spacecrime.com/

....... again more people tell me to go buy books.....yay, let me tell ya how happy i am at that one.....wonder how bosses would take it if their employees always told them to go buy the book, when they wanted to know something......

this is starting to get rediculous

Let me recommend the following books, which should all be available for BORROWING at your local library.

"A Distant Mirror", by Barbara Tuchman
"A World Lit Only By Fire", by William Manchester
"The Civilization of the Middle Ages", by Norman F. Cantor

These three books are classics of both readability and scholarship, and are by themselves a pretty good start on a medieval studies degree. (I should know; I have one.) If you combine them with any book o' monsters you have lying around the house, you should have enough material to run years of Medieval Rune.

cheers,

Chris Aylott
Owner, The Space-Crime Continuum
Author, "Last Hero in Scandinavia"

that should fit in with my budget.,lol

The rules are so similar I was considering throwing a rune session into our ars game as a mythic/fantasy/dreamworld/flashback thing. Different feel but with essentially the same rules.

Yes, ars has the additional magic system, but you can ignore that if need be and concentrate on the mundane aspects.

People do keep suggesting you buy the books, I was one of them, but that is only because so many of us have found them so enjoyable and useful. If you don't like that suggestion, then the library offers a wider range of options (between you and me though, until my interest is piqued, some of the "grown up" books can be a bit dry).

So, if you want to use rune with a medieval feel, then go for Ars and, if you fancy putting those short arms in those deep pockets, splash out on Ultima Thule, Dragon and the Bear and Fire & Ice which should give you enough info on the cold places of the world to keep you going.

Mark

any hope of updates for Rune?... anything at all?

ive just about giving up on atlas here... i know Rune isnt their big selling game, but thas how other companies lose out... they drop games that dont seem to be as big as their big gun (in this case Ars Magica)

i dont want to see Rune go the way of Changeling, Adventure, Trinity, Abberant... and many others by other companies

The sales of the supplements, unfortunately, have been too low. We can only do so many products just for the fun of it...we've got salaries and winter heating bills and health insurance and whatnot to pay here...and the whole RPG field has been brutally competitive of late.

The RUNE main rulebook has actually done pretty well. We're down to only about 60 copies left in the warehouse. What we will do when it runs out, I don't yet know.

well, when i mentioned the other games, i wasnt trying to say you guys would just give up..lol

or do it for free

basically white wolf canceled a few game lines, due partly to them just not caring to put stuff out for it..lol, (in my opinion)

Rune has done well, then again, no one i know, has really heard of it, or if they have, they have played the computer game, and go "uhh.. they made a game out of THAT!" (disgusted look on their faces)

im just trying to see what the future looks like

For whatever it's worth, I know people who were working on some of those game lines, and I think it's fair to say they were not cancelled due to "not caring to put stuff out." Sometimes publishers actually find that they'll lose less money by paying for work already done on projects and just eating the loss, rather than completing the projects and expecting to incur greater losses in the process.

Mind you, sometimes publishers go ahead and publish projects they know are doomed -- the Last Unicorn/WotC game of DUNE comes to mind -- and still wind up taking a lot of flak for it.

i suppose that true, though it certainly doesnt always feel that way though

course i suppose Rune didnt really have a good market anyway, nor the correct amount of exposure, then again, i had never heard of Nyambe til i got Rune, and the only Feng SHui i had heard of dealt with rearranging furniture..lol

i had heard of Ars Magica thugh, but only when it was white wolf, and only because i had been doing some tracing of Clan Tremere..lol

which brings up an excellant point... which came first Tremere in Ars or Tremere in vampire... im pretty sure it was in ars long before vampire... but i was just curious..

its kinda interesting.

yeh, i had a feeling of that, i was just curious..

course Mage also links with Ars, as one of the traditions is Order of Hermes..

im not sure if any other link, i think thats probably it

not gonna make a big scene, it was just one of those questions that had me curious for many years, and i havent (until recently) been in a position to ask anyone about it... i had asked Ethan Skemp and Conrad Hubbard, but they werent the best people to ask im sure..lol

still no one posting much if any info on rune huh?

can we look forward to any new releases anytime soon?

Nope, no more releases are planned.

Mind you, I was pleasantly surprised that we had 3 supporting titles published -- the original plan was that we were not going to do anything besides the core rulebook...

hah, quite..lol

all i have is the main book, though its been written in, and parts scribbled out... basically the amount of the book i use, could br printed in a dragon magazine (nothing against atlas for robin) i just had to modify the game to be a roleplaying game...lmao

the issues my groups had with it, was

1.) its a combat game and nothing more, no story.
2.) they didnt want to run encounters, ever.
3.) all the archery people were pissed that archers got screwed
4.) the sorcery people were pissed as well (but im not adding in sorcery..lol)
5.) they all hated the competitive nature of it..

so to get enjoyment out of the game, i rewrote alot of it, unfortunately, new groups dont want to play it, because its a house rule game now (as opposed to a game i modify for that group), and, because of my rewrites, a few Rune communities have branded me a heretic... oh well

it happens..

id love to be able to get some of my ideas for rune and do something with them, but, you guys probbaly have lawyers who protect you from seeing work of that nature (WOTC does for magic the gathering)

anywho, the only big huge major issue ive had, is the amount of number crunching you have to do at the start of the game (plus the mathmatical equations for figuring out init,atk and stuff.. althoughy it is actually pretty realistically done)

the changes ive made to rune dont alter it into something its not basically, just, additions.

Well, I'm all in favor of people doing whatever they please with RPG products...modify Rune to run a Live-Action Barbie Dream House, if it suits you. :-)

As far as lawyers...as a general rule, we've tried to avoid suing our customers. Rune has the complication that the underlying "property" is not ours, but belongs to Human Head Studios, and I can't speak for them. The game system is ours, though. And if you look around the web, you'll see lots of modifications and ideas and stuff that people share for free for Ars Magica (on which Rune's system is built). If you wrote up ideas you have for the game and share them through a web page or something else that is free/non-commercial, you're not likely to encounter problems. (And if you do, they're likely to be in the nature of you being asked: "Please take these web pages down." Which is easy enough to do, without anyone involving lawyers!)

heheh yeh, that was the main reason i contacted you when i was working on that game idea i had, ive still gotten no where with it, i did more work on it, but the system itself (rune/ars magica) seemed a bit restrictive for what i wanted to do, or perhaps if i knew how the AM system worked it would have helped..lol

anywho

question for ya

if i were to try and incorporate magic into Rune, would the ars system be a good way to implement it?

or should i just do a vague kind of things, something like "gift of fire" for fire related castings..

Ars should be easy to port in because of the underlying commonality of the game systems.

However, you might find it better to go straight to "Ultima Thule," the Ars supplement that includes Norse magic. Or "Land of Fire and Ice" (which covers Iceland).

I would say that covering the bases for Rune in terms of the competitive play, encounter balancing, etc., would be a lot more work in any case. For that reason, it might be easier to do something inside Rune (like the "Gift of Fire" idea you suggest).

-jn

lmfao

basicalluy what i dont want is for it to play a HUGE role, which was why i suggested a divine gift, instead of a stat, or other thing

i had toyed with them before being a mysterious kind of new thing, similiar to some games where you have vague concepts of magic... but that never worked well enough.... i think i'll do it as divine gifts... thanks for the input

ok, heres the first draft idea

Magical Divine Gifts

Gift of Fire (granted by Loki), (Cost: 100, Max Level 10)
each level in this allows you to control/summon/effect an amount of fire, level one would be candle size, level 2-4 would be varying sizes of torches, 5-7 would be varying size of a campfire, 8-9 would be a bonfire, while 10 would be a full immolation (house size)

Gift of Water (granted by ?) (cost: 100, Max Level 10)
same as fire, except with water

Gift of Air (granted by ?) (cost: 100, Max Level 10)

Gift of Earth (granted by ?) (cost: 100, Max Level 10)

New Skill: Runic Magic (title not certain)
this skill allows control, and refinement of Divine Magic, all rolls for doing magic is based on skill+level of gift being used (+1d10)

sample difficulties:
control small amount: 7
medium amount: 10
large amount: 13
huge: 20

Summoning 10/15/20/25
Effecting 12/20/28/32

Summoning: the element doesnt need to be present, a short prayer to whatever diety offers the magic is given, and then the spell goes off

Effecting: this is different from controlling the element, as this makes you immune to its effects for a short period of time (1D10 rounds)

well, thats what ive got so far

the only thing left to figure out is damage..lol

i was thinking of some sort of standard damage per level of the magic (up to 10th of each) plus escalating damage, possibly

question on the open ended-ness of rune (dice wise)

when i roll a 1, i roll again to see how much is taken off, if i roll a 10, do i roll again?

and keep subtracting?

It's been a LOOOONG time since I've look closely at Rune's rules, but I vaguely remember having a conversation with Robin about open-ended "good" rolls, to the effect that YES this can go on pretty much forever. The idea was to allow for super-mega-phenomenal results.

I'm not as sure about negative results rolls, but I'd think it would be similar. Just the same, it's worth checking the rules closely to be sure it's not stated explicitly one way or the other there.

Michelle Nephew
Atlas Games

from as far as i could tell it was pretty vague... lol

some of my players thought if they rolled a 1, then a 10m they got to get back to a positive number

weird..lol