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Although Runequest has always been tied in with the world of Glorantha as its core setting, from the start I had no interest in running any game in a world where magic was commonplace and monsters included talking ducks and bears with jack-o-lantern heads. This had been one of the things which put us off playing Runequest before, and made my players very suspicious when I suggested running a game of RQII. To escape from Glorantha I decided to create a setting based on my own interest in Greek mythology. This was to be a mix of real world historical Greece and the myths and legends that had been such an influence in getting me into roleplaying in the first place. Doing some further reading around the subject I discovered that following the events described in Homers The Ilaid there were several other quests which took place before the whole episode of the Trojan Horse. I decided therefore to set my game in the last year of the siege of Troy with the player characters as minor Greek heroes hoping to make their mark on history.
Creating a setting like this proved remarkably easy with RQII. To start with the game uses a set of attributes STR, CON, SIZ, INT, POW, DEX and CHA similar to a lot of other games. These in turn determine a lot of derived attributes which decide how fast, how strong, how tough and how clever your character is. In my game I had four player characters and I made up the characters myself using the optional points based system to determine their scores. Using this system I emphasised different strengths and weaknesses for each character, making one exceptionally strong, another exceptionally fast, etc, as I wanted to see how this would affect combat. At this point I could already see how the basic scores affected the derived attributes and it was nice to see that no one attribute seemed overly powerful.
RQII uses a basic percentage system of rules which is very easy to change and adapt to whatever setting you want. In character creation your basic starting scores are determined by a mix of cultural background and professional training. For my ancient Greek setting all I had to do was decide on a set of skills that would be common to anyone from Greece. I then needed to select which professions were suitable from the long list suggested in the rulebook. As this was a one off short campaign I decided that the heroes would all be Warriors. I wanted to see how much characters could vary given the same background skills. There is some flexibility in character creation allowing you to focus on the skills you want. Although this was the age of the spear and shield I made an effort to have all four warriors specialise in a different weapon so I had one with a bow, one with an axe, one using sword and shield and one using spear and shield. There was also the opportunity for characters to have one or two Advanced Skills. These were rare skills like Tracking or Healing that very much helped to define each character.
Magic is another area of Runequest that is highly flexible. You can choose exactly how much or how little magic there is in your game. There are different types of magic, each with its own set of rules and spells. What I didn't see though was much attempt to balance magic with other aspects of the game. If you allow one type of magic in RQII there are few penalties for using it, you can still wear armour, use any weapons you like and a mage could therefore be just as good at fighting as a warrior. So there is the likelihood that by allowing magic eveyone would want it, making any world magic heavy. As this did not seem suitable for my ancient Greece setting I decided none of the characters were going to be able to use magic.
As I understand it the RQII combat system is designed to be a lot more realistic than D&D. On first reading the rules I would agree with this but I was also worried that it could therefore prove too deadly. To balance this out RQII uses a system of Hero Points, which have pretty much been copied from the idea of Fate Points in WFRP. Spending a Hero Point allows you to automatically make a roll, or avoid the effects of an opponents roll ( especially useful if it would have resulted in your character being decapitated for example ). In my game I decided Hero Points represented the favour of the Gods. Although no one had magic spending a Hero Point allowed PC's to call on their patron God or Goddess for divine intervention. This happens a lot in the Iliad with Gods whisking away their favourite warriors in times of danger, or guiding their hand in combat.
So with the characters made up, the rules and setting explained we settled down as a group to see how well RQ could represent ancient Greece. The first thing that struck me as the GM was how worried the players were about their characters vulnerability. This was extremely refreshing after so many years of D&D where most characters have more HP than an Abrams tank. Looking at their character sheets my players were quick to realise that the damage weapons did could result in them being killed or maimed by one blow.
The adventure started with the Greek heroes being sent on a quest to Mount Ida to appeal to Zeus for his help in ending the war by siding with the Greeks once and for all. The Greek heroes first challenge then was to sneak through the Trojan lines and cross the river Scamander. This involved using some of the basic skill rolls like Stealth and Swim which was a simple percentage roll against the skill. It was clear though that every percentage roll needed to be given bonuses or penalties based on the situation. What are the average conditions for sneaking ? Is this easier or harder than average ? For swimming the main concern became what are the effects of failure ? If you fail a swim roll do you start to drown ? In this case the rules clearly stated that failure on a swim roll just meant you didn't move anywhere and ended up treading water. But all this seemed very absolute. Even with 60-70% in swim characters were failing rolls often enough to make it a real effort to get across a river. Eventually one character even fumbled his swim roll and started drowning and the others struggled to succeed on their swim rolls trying to drag him out. In the end I took pity on the group and once they had made at least one roll allowed them to cross. This episode did highlight a weakness of the percentage system though that unless you have 100% in a skill there is always a chance of absolute success or absolute failure.
Having made their way through the Trojan lines the group then travelled for several days before taking shelter in an abandoned village at the base of the mountains. Unfortunately the village was abandoned for a reason and while they were there the heroes were attacked by a pack of starving wolves. This allowed us our first taste of combat and in this particular encounter it was the bowman that shined. Combat rounds in RQII are a lot faster than D&D being only five seconds long. Each round is then further subdivided into individual Combat Actions. Imagine the whole combat taking place in slow motion with each Combat Action being each individual swing of the sword, or block of the shield. Each characters Combat Actions are determined by DEX and INT and most have two or three each round. In the case of the bowman I had actually changed the rules beforehand as I found the ROF too fast. The archer character was able to fire about one arrow a round from the roof of one of the houses and although they did not do much damage the wounded wolves wound ran off in pain, so it proved very effective.
The next day the Greeks continued on up the mountain which became steeper as they went. This again called for more basic percentage rolls but this time they had taken rope with them, realising the consequences of failure. Without a rope even an expert climber with 80% skill could fall to their death just from the result of one bad dice roll.
As they climbed up the Greeks became aware of a Trojan patrol following them and by the time they reached the shrine at the top they were prepared to defend the summit. Once again the bowman used his arrows to good effect, although the Trojans armour made serious wounds unlikely. RQII uses hit locations and subtracts armour points from any damage taken to a location. with arrows only doing 1D6 damage and the Trojans having 4 points of armour on most locations the arrows had little impact.
One of the characters had the idea of using a Hero Point to call for divine aid and as a result Poseidon shook the earth causing a rock slide that knocked four of the Trojans off the mountain. This had a good dramatic impact and allowed for some imaginitive story telling on the part of the player and myself as GM. It was good to see Hero Points being used for something other than avoiding being hit.
I was worried that the fight itself would prove cumbersome to manage as GM. RQII does provide a short cut for monitoring NPC HP though. Rather than tracking individual HP for each location each NPC has a general total HP score and a specific location HP score. Any damage is taken off the total score and if any one hit exceeds the location HP that location has taken a major wound, decapitating, dismembering or killing the NPC.
The combat system proved surprisingly quick and simple to run. Initiative is rolled just like other games and you then go round the table in initiative order, each player using one Combat Action at a time until they have run out. Combat Actions are used when parrying or dodging blows as well as attacking, so when all your Combat Actions have been used you are pretty much helpless. How succesful an attack was is measured against how succesful the defence was and compared on a combat manoeuvers chart. Obviously critical success is better than a success and a fumble is worse than a normal failure. Each step between the attackers success and the defenders failure can give you the option to choose combat manoeuvers such as maximum damage, bypassing armour, or calling a shot on a specific location. Although these manoeuvers are reactive rather than proactive tactics they do provide a lot of colour to fights. During combat we found that they were fairly common and the players enjoyed the opportunity to choose different options. It made combat a lot more colourful than simply trading blows and crossing off hit points.
Despite the worries of instant character death none of the player characters were seriously wounded. Their skill levels for parrying, combined with decent armour and Hero Points were enough to see them safely through this fight at least. Importantly though the combat had been exciting and the risk of character death much more of a concern than it usually is in D&D.
One of the Trojans surrendered at the last minute, using his own Hero Points to avoid an otherwise fatal blow. He turned out to be Helanus, son of King Priam who provided the Greek heroes with a prophecy which if fulfilled would lead to the fall of Troy. Successful on their mission the Greeks returned to their camp feeling happy that they had achieved something. As GM I granted them five Improvement Rolls which are opportunities to improve skills. For each Improvement Roll a player attempts to roll over a skill ( effectively failing a skill roll ). If they succeed they get to increase the skill by 1D4+1%. This system seems to be copied from Call of Cthulhu but it works well as the better you are in a skill the harder it is to improve it.
In all then the group were quite impressed with the rules system but were aware that it had its flaws. While the increased level of realism made combat more exciting it also made Hero Points a virtual necessity. A player character without Hero Points is virtually a dead man walking. The system also proved fairly intractable in its basic skill rolls which seem clunky and old fashioned compared to more modern systems like D20. My own particular bugbear was the appalling design of the character sheet where hit points and armour points are crammed into a tiny diagram with no room for recording damage. The whole character sheet in fact seems hand drawn and amateurish compared to other games. Despite all this the RQII system had allowed me to run a game set in ancient Greece with a minimum of rules changes. We had all enjoyed the experience and hopefully we will have several more adventures before our heroes finally defeat the Trojans. How good the game is for long term campaigns is something I will reserve judgement on for a later date but for now I feel I may have previously underestimated the potential of Runequest as an alternative to Dungeons & Dragons.
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