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This review covers my reading of the rulebook and a two-week actual play session, intended specifically to assess the new rule system.
How Do You Get to Six?
As the name suggests, this is the sixth iteration of RuneQuest. That counts Chaosium's RuneQuest (1978) and RuneQuest II (1979), Avalon Hill's RuneQuest 3, and Mongoose Publishing's RuneQuest (2006) and RuneQuest II (2010).
Nash & Whitaker were notably the authors of Mongoose's RuneQuest II, and thus it's no surprise that this latest iteration of RuneQuest feels very much like a continuation of its current arc. I recently interviewed Nash & Whitaker about the evolution of the RuneQuest gaming system over the last six years, and invite you to take a look at that to learn more.
I also feel like RQ6 answered some of the questions that I had back when I was playing RuneQuest 3 in the '90s. The way certain spells were written, the new fatigue system, and lots more felt like solutions to very old dilemmas in the gaming system.
Putting this together, I feel like RQ6 is a very nice compilation of a lot of different design that's gone into the RuneQuest system over almost 35 years.
Graphics & Layout
RQ6 comes as a thick 456-page paperback book that's printed in black & white. The design is generally simple and clean. The general layout is professional and attractive with boxes and well-designed tables frequently breaking up the text. The art is mostly line drawings which I generally found OK. Some pieces were good and some were poor IMO, but the average was fine.
One of my favorite elements in the book was the use of runes to designate the sixteen chapters. I thought it was a nice graphical nuance that simultaneously introduced an important and unique element in the RuneQuest game.
Ease of Use
Generally, RQ6 seems well organized, with chapters covering major topics from equipment and combat to individual types of spells. That all holds up very well in actual play. When I looked up a reference at the game table I was sometimes able to find topics based on just the chapters, and when I couldn't I always found what I was looking for in the index. I looked up somewhere between one and two dozen topics over the course of the two-week AP, and I found every single one in the index.
Even within the chapters, I found the organization quite good. This particularly showed up in chapter 6, the obligatory chapter full of miscellaneous rules — from acid to weather. To offer an example, the "falling" rules not only included rules for a character falling, but also for a falling object and for falling out of a vehicle(!).
The solid organization is supplemented by a few other elements that improve ease of use.
First up, there are examples constantly running throughout the book in the sidebars. I didn't religiously read them, but when I found something unclear, I went over to these examples and they usually clarified things for me.
Second, RQ6 has occasional references and other aids that help out in the game. A couple of references on character creation (at the ends of chapters 1 and 3) helped out immensely when we were putting characters together (though I found the ordering contradictory at times). Similarly, a Combat Tracking Sheet helped out a lot during conflicts. A listing of combat special effects is needed, but fortunately that can be downloaded for free in the RQ6 Games Master's Pack. I printed up copies of that for all the players and it made a slightly complex combat system very playable.
Trueness to … The Setting
If you're expecting Glorantha or Fantasy Earth or something else in this book, you'll be disappointed. Though many of the examples are set in a Greek setting that Design Mechanism plans to develop, even that's not given much focus here. (It does get some more attention, including an adventure, in that aformentioned free-to-download Games Master's Pack.)
Instead, RQ6 is purposefully offered as a setting-neutral game system. At times it's really more of a game kit. This shows up most notably in the magic system which is offered up as a menu of options.
I do get a feeling of a more primitive setting and one where magic is closely tied to the people who work the land, but that could well be from my long experience with RuneQuest.
Stylistic Conclusions
Before I finish up with the stylistic side of the equation, I should comment on price. At $62 for a largish but black & white book, I feel like RQ6 is a bit overpriced. Oh, you'll get your use out of it if you play the game, but compared to the rest of the industry it's high. Which I think is largely a shame, as it's going to impact the success of this game.
In any case, I found the layout & art for the game at best average, while the decision to (largely) exclude a setting takes away some of RQ6's chance to shine stylistically. I like a lot that's been done to make the game easier to play, but on average I rate RQ6 a (slightly high) "3" out of "5" for Style.
The Game System
When I review RPG systems I tend to split my core discussion up into two parts: a look at how it models characters and a look at how it resolves tasks.
Character Models
RQ6 is largely a skill-base character system.
Character Creation: You roll up (or buy) characteristics, then you get to add skill points based on your culture, your profession, and your age. There are plenty of details as well, covering social status, background events, allies, contacts, rivals, enemies, and more.
Modeling the Character: RQ6 uses a simple, fairly old-school method of character modeling. Each character is defined by a set of characteristics and a relatively small set of skills. Magical abilities, combat styles, and emotional passions use the same system as skills, but define slightly different things. Beyond that, there are a number of attributes which are calculated from characteristic values — among them action points, damage modifiers and more.
Generally, if you're an old-time fan of RQ, the system will look like former editions with three major differences.
- As noted, there's been a real attempt to cut down the number of skills.
- Skills are no longer organized into categories, like they were in the Chaosium editions; instead each skill has a unique base value derived from characteristics (e.g., "Athletics" use STR plus DEX as its base before you put any points in).
- Passions are all new. They're just ways to note your emotional connections to people, places, and things and they aren't a particularly important part of the game (as opposed to, say, Pendragon), but they can be used to help you out in appropriate situations. (And they can, of course, help you define what's important to your character.)
Character Advancement: At the end of each adventure, players get experience rolls. These are most frequently used to improve individual skills, but can also be used to learn new skills and to increase characteristics. Some stuff (like learning a new skill) requires multiple experience rolls.
There's also a "training" system that can be interspersed with gains from experience rolls.
Task Resolution
RQ6 has a universal mechanism for resolving skill usage — though more complex systems like combat have a lot of add-ons.
Skill Rolls: Skills are assessed in RQ6 by a simple roll under against the percentile value of the skill. Skills can fumble, fail, succeed, or critical, based on the exact number roll.
Skills can be rolled at different difficulty grades, which vary the skill value. The standard rules suggest percentages of skills be used (e.g., plus 50% of skill for easy and minus 33% of skill for hard), but I found this cumbersome in play and instead used the simplified rules, which just say to use a flat plus or minus 20% or more.
Skills can be rolled opposed to each other, with the winner being the roller with the higher level of success or else the higher roll if both rollers have the same level of success.
Overall, the skill system has a pretty simple basis but the variations allowed for by difficulty and opposition provide some nice polish.
Specific Systems
The combat and magic systems vary enough from the standard task resolution rules to require some additional comment.
Combat: Combat is divided up into turns, during which each combatant gets to take offensive and defensive actions by using action points. Yes, that means that a character might get to go several times on a turn, taking those actions one at a time. When a combatant expends his action points, he can't make any more rolls during that turn.
For the actual combat, "combat styles" skills are used, which combine together not only attacks and parries, but several different, related weapons (e.g., a huntsman might have a combat style that includes a bow, a spear, and a knife). An opponent makes an attack with his combat skill then the defender chooses whether to parry or dodge with his own.
If an attack lands, but both combatants have the same level of success, it's probably blocked (though comparative weapon attacking and weapon parrying size can limit the efficacy of a block). If instead the attacker and defender have different levels of success (e.g., a success vs. a failure or a critical vs. a success) than the winner gets to apply one or more special effects.
The special effects come from a large menu of options, which are limited by whether the winner was the attacker or the defender and whether there was a critical success or a fumble involved. Some of the most frequently used special effect are probably ones that cause bleeding, that impale, and that allow an attacker to pick a hit location. However, if the defender is the one applying special effects, he can do fun things like trip his opponent (or spring back to his feet if he threw himself to the ground as part of a dodge).
Damage is done to individual hit locations, with special results occurring when a hit location is reduced to zero or to its negative value. The latter can cause death (sometimes) if it goes to the abdomen, chest, or head.
There's some complexity beyond that, mostly involving fatigue (which I found a little fiddly) and comparative weapon length (which I ignored, as I do in pretty much every game system that has mechanics for comparative weapon length).
Overall, RuneQuest has always been a somewhat simulationist system; I feel like RQ6 pushed considerably further in that direction, especially in the combat section.
Magic: There are a total of five different magic systems in RQ6: folk magic, animism, mysticism, sorcery, and theism. They tend to work in some of the same general ways (with there being one magical skill that you have to roll against and frequently another that limits how powerful spells can be). However, the systems feel dramatically different beyond that.
- Folk Magic is the simple magic used by the common folk. RQ6 does a very good job of actually making it feel like common magic, rather than something clearly intended for adventures — while still keeping it useful for those adventurers. It's a difficult balancing act that comes across very well.
- Animism is the magic of controlling spirits. In a lot of past editions, spirits have come across mainly as magic vending machines, but here they feel much more likely fully fleshed-out entities — thanks in part to a great emphasis on spirits in the bestiary.
- Mysticism is a brand-new system that lets mystics improve their natural abilities — everything from augmenting skills to improving damage bonuses. I really loved the "feel" of this magic system. That may partly be its novelty, but it also came across as a really nice simulation of the sort of magical/mystical Asian system that it's modeling.
- Sorcery is a classic system in RQ wherein sorcerers can cast a variety of spells while carefully controlling the attributes of those spells. It felt the most unchanged to me of all the RQ6 magic systems, though I suspect it's better balanced than it was in olden days.
- Theism, finally, is the magic of the gods. It's well integrated with worship here (which wasn't always the case in past editions of the game) and feels appropriately deific.
The Game Design
A Historical Look. RuneQuest 6 is at heart a late '70s roleplaying system. In its first edition (1978) it was one of the earliest games to get past the class-and-level strictures of D&D. It was polished up through its third edition (1984) and in that version it remained a very enjoyable and playable game through the '80s and '90s. I literally played hundreds of sessions of RuneQuest 3 up through 2004 or so and I thought it was very good at what it did.
Of course roleplaying has evolved a lot since 1978. RuneQuest started to recognize that with its first Mongoose release (2006) — a game that I was honestly never sure I liked. It did do some innovative things like creating a more tactical combat system and trying to fix the age-old problem of skills over 100%. However, the result felt both unpolished and un-RuneQuest to me.
Enter Lawrence Whitaker and Pete Nash, who came on board with Mongoose's RuneQuest II (2010). They clearly had an understanding of RuneQuest as a gaming system that better matched mine, and I really liked what they produced. This newest version of the game (2012) is an extension and expansion of their past work. Also, I believe, an improvement. I can clearly see the advantages that were allowed because Nash & Whitaker didn't have the page limits that Mongoose set, but this new edition of the game also feels like it's been polished to a more refined finish.
Here's some of the stuff I particularly liked:
Elegant Skill Systems. The basic roll-under skill system is pretty simple, but RQ6 does some nice things with it, with their opposed rolls and their difficulty grades. Those are nice upgrades to an old system. Mind you, I still find some things less elegant than I'd like, primarily the fact that you subtract skill percentages in opposed rolls if they're over 100% — which sometimes has to be done retroactively — but I think they'd be OK in continued play.
Tactical Combat. The new tactical combat system that's been building since the original Mongoose RuneQuest is nice, just because it gives the players some new options during play (the special effects to apply). Beyond that, it kind of lets you determine combat styles for different characters, based on the special effects that you select.
Going into the game, I had some concerns about the large number of possible effects that you could pick between, but to combat that I printed up sheets of all the effects on a double-sided cardstock sheet for each player. Then when we went over the rules for the game, I told the players to select a couple of offensive and defensive special effects that their characters might like. This apparently helped a lot, because the combats went fairly smoothly and everyone liked the variety that the special effects allowed.
Great Magic Systems. As I've already said, I think this might be the best element of RQ6. I've always liked the RuneQuest magic systems, because they were the basis of the magic-heavy setting for the game, and their effects always felt neat. However, they previously felt somewhat mechanistic to me too. The new systems feel even neater, but they also really give a good feel of the different types of magic — moreso than any of the previous editions of RuneQuest that I've read.
Improvements to an Age-Old System. As I read through RQ6, I was surprised by some of the little things that were changed in the game. Some of them are pretty obvious, like the reduction in the total number of skills and the changes to the various magic systems. However, there were also little bits of polish, like the fact that you always gain at least 1% when you use an experience roll on a skill and that training is now notably limited. They felt to me like they were purposeful answers to old complaints with RuneQuest (and I generally thought they were good answers too).
Modern Flourishes. Finally, I appreciate the fact that the game incorporates some of the new ideas from games of the '80s, '90s, and '00s. Thus there are luck points, which players can use to reroll or to makes wounds less dangerous. Players are encouraged to make character connections to earn some group luck points. Not only do you have passions, but also friends, allies, rivals, and enemies. None of this stuff is super important to the game and none of it is super innovative compared to, say, indie games. However, I think these things are generally improvements, and I was happy to see them here.
And here were the things I didn't like as much:
Toolkit Approach. The game spends a lot of time giving you options instead of specifics. I would have preferred to just be given a setting with its magic rules, its cults, and its other organizations totally defined. However, I will definitely accept that this is a personal like. Some other folks will be thrilled by RQ6's toolkit approach, and I will concede that they do a very good job of it. (I was actually excited by some of the variants they suggested for how magic works, which I think would allow for kick-butt swords & sorcery play. It was really the more briefly outlined lists of magical schools and other organizations that I didn't like.)
Some Character Imbalances. There were a few nuisances that I didn't like in the rules because they imbalanced characters. The biggest had to do with "action points", which are derived from characteristics. Characters all had either 2 or 3. The problem was that I felt that people with only 2 APs had two-thirds as much fun as those with 3, because they didn't get to do as much in combat. There's also a characteristic which modifies the number of experience rolls you get (though only in certain circumstances). That's something else that can impact individual fun, and thus I don't think it should be modified for individual characters (even if D&D did it way back in the day). In a long-term campaign, I'd just house-rule 3 APs and no experience modifier for all characters; easy enough.
Content: The Rest of the Book
RuneQuest 6 is mostly a rulebook. The only other thing of note within its covers is a very extensive bestiary that runs a full 100(!) pages. (That's one of the reasons for the book's size & cost, by the by.) It's nicely exhaustive, particular in its inclusion of spirit critters for use with the animism rules.
Conclusion
Overall, I felt like RuneQuest 6 was not just a good expansion and update of a classic gaming system, but also a good game all on its own. It went on my list of possible game systems to use once my current campaign is done in a year or two (but, I'll have to admit I'm a fan of '80s games, so this might not have been a hard sell).
As a result, I've given RuneQuest 6 a full "5" out of "5" for Substance. I hope that The Design Mechanism is able to supplement it successfully and plentifully.
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