Search
Review of RuneQuest Expansion Dice: Beige & Burgundy, Turquoise & Gold
Blurb from the publisher: 'The RuneQuest Expansion Dice provide Gamemasters and players with three essential play aids: a Hit Location Die, a Random Rune Determiner, and a Strike Rank Marker.
Master luck and death with these special dice!
There's no such thing as too much dice. We think that for RuneQuest one more die will be not enough, three dice sound better. One big die and two normal beautiful dice sound awesome. Isn't it? The set is composed of one giant d20 Hit Location die, one d12 Strike Rank Indicator and one d20 Random Rune Generator. All sets are in the same color scheme as the regular Q-Workshop Runequest Dice Sets (Beige & Burgundy and Turquoise & Gold).
This giant die, made with high-quality plastic, is destined for rolling and throwing on the table in the times of all battles. The names of faces indicate the chance to hit parts of the body, so it's easy to wound the leg, but a thrust through the chest will be difficult. But for playing RuneQuest this knowledge can be indeed a matter of life and death. Then you can tell epic stories on how perfectly your hero attacked the weak spot of your enemy's armor. We created a tremendous die, and it's not only the size we're speaking of. We hope that you will have great rolls and many direct hits!
Strike Rank determines who acts first in melee round. The participant with lower SR hits first. This die will be irreplaceable on the table because it shows your Strike Rank number. This help makes combat faster and more exciting because everybody can see who's first. This die is very readable, but beware, and don't sneeze! One careless move and the die will be moved. Then the will of Fate will decide if you are faster or slower than your opponent.
Many times a player character becomes attuned to the story rune, which can be determined randomly. This can shape the turn of events around heroes or empower them before one of many challenges. Thanks to these dice in the tables in core book for the right rune obsolete, so the storytelling can become far more complex. Additionally, all rolls with this die are like fortune-telling. This enhances magic and enriches the adventurous atmosphere of the RPG session.'
What you get: Your EUR 8,61 or equivalent will buy you one of the two sets of RuneQuest Expansion Dice, be it the Beige & Burgundy or the Turquoise & Gold. Each sets expands upon the relevant RuneQuest Dice Set, the dice produced by Q-Workshop after license from Chaosium, for the brand new edition of RuneQuest Glorantha. Each set contains three dice: a Hit Location Die, a Random Rune Determiner, and a Strike Rank Marker. All three dice are thus mechanically entrenched in the workings of that system first and foremost.
The two sets share common characteristics. Namely, they have the exact same design while only altering the colours, which are either burgundy on beige and gold on turquoise. That is the reason I decided to examine them together in a single review. There is no shadow reviewing, as usual. I comparatively perused both sets.
The Random Rune Determiner and the Strike Rank Marker are of a standard RPG set size. The former is a 20-sider. It is not adorned by the ornaments prevalent on every other dice of this expansion and of the initial set overall. Each of its sides is dominated by a rune. The runes used here are the same found on the d20 of the original set, namely all six Elements, all six Forms, and all eight Powers. For reasons beyond my understanding, the Water rune has been reduced to one zig-zagged line instead of two. In its lower right corner each side also hosts a number from 1 to 20, in case no other 20-siders are available to roll. The font of the numbers is similar yet not identical to the one used on the other sets due to its minuscule size.
The Strike Rank Marker is a dodecahedron, each side stating a number and the letters SR above it. As much as it could be used as a 12-sider in case you don't have another one at hand, purists would cringe at the idea. The numbers do not follow the usual dice distribution where the sum of any opposite sides always equals the sum of M+m (where M is the highest and m the lowest number on any given die). If you have ever paid attention to your dice, 6 is always the opposite of 1 on a six-sider, 12 the opposite of 1 in the 12-sider, and 20 the opposite of 1 on a 20-sider. Here numbers are placed next to one another, so that the player will twist the die to alter his strike rank the least possible. 1 is next to 2 which is next to 3 and so on and so forth. The numbers all share the same font with this expansion's mother set, an elegant design reminiscent of major technological and artistic achievements at the height of a classical civilization. The numbers are surrounded by small meanders in a pattern that follows the sides of each die.
The 20-sided Hit Location Die with its diameter of 40 mm from peak to peak is double the size of the others It follows the exact attribution of RuneQuest for hits on particular body parts, as described on page 145 of RuneQuest Glorantha. That would be Head (2), Chest (1), Right Arm (3), Left Arm (3), Abdomen (3), Right Leg (4), and Left Leg (4). It thus has a very different distribution from the Q-Workshop D12 Hit Location Die (Beige & Black) and cannot be substituted by it. There are no drawings on the dice, just the body locations in English capital letters ('LEFT LEG', 'HEAD' etc).
The strong points: There are dice that match the aesthetics of a game, dice that serve its system, and dice that do both. The RuneQuest Expansion Dice fall in the last category, potentially sacrificing their overall appeal in order to better serve their system. There is nothing to comment on their aesthetics; they are are pretty as their original mother sets. The Random Rune Determiner is admittedly simpler due to the lack of ornaments, when one rolls that die however he cares for the eternal runes, not for the fleeting constructs of man. I don't need to warn you that you should better know your runes when you are using this die since each rune only appears once. Thankfully, all of them can be found on pages 14 and 15 of HeroQuest Glorantha.
Doubling the size of the Hit Location Die is a brilliant idea; I am wondering how come other systems didn't think of it first. It gives to the die the gravitas and respect it deserves. This die will fell miniatures, it will move tokens, it will dominate your table until it rests and dooms a body part. Hopefully it will be that of your opponent's and not yours.
Unless the dice come poorly manufactured, there aren't many flaws one can find on a set. There are no defects or imbalances when it comes to dice-rolling. I rolled each die around a hundred times (including the Strike Rank Marker). Even though the numbers obviously did not come out as statistically expected, there is nothing to suggest that there are inherent flaws.
The weak points: Attention: these dice are very hard to use with other games, not only due to their theme but also due to the prevalence of the RuneQuest rules on them. The allocation of this Hit Location Die is not the same not just compared to the aforementioned 12-sided system-agnostic die from Q-Workshop, but also compared to other dedicated hit location 20-siders like the one in the Conan Dice Set. Not only the present Hit Location doesn't share the same distribution with the one of Conan's, they don't even share the same body parts. This die here is good for RuneQuest and any other system that uses that particular allocation; nothing else. Idem for the Random Rune Determiner. The biggest thing on each of its sides is the Gloranthan rune; the number right next to it is a couple of millimetres long and barely visible, even though it is ultimately usable if you need it. The die hosts no ornaments, so it comes out as a kind of a poor relative in relation to all the other dice on the mother and the expansion set. The Strike Rank Marker on the other hand has the ornaments yet strictly speaking it is not a die. If you buy this expansion set, you will do so because you play RuneQuest; not because you want to use these dice elsewhere.
As I had stated in the reviews of the original sets I consider both colour schemes to pass the necessary benchmarks when it comes to visibility. Yet, it is very clear that the Beige & Burgundy set performs better than its brother. If you have issues with the lighting in your playing area and you don't want to risk it, go for that. On the other hand, the Turquoise & Gold set is so reminiscent of a small-sized artefact that a bronze age civilization would have been likely to build that it is impossible to resist its allure. I was torn between the original sets, and I am torn here.
I understand that at some point during production the Hit Location Die had the wrong allocation on it. This lead to a major recall, and some delays in fulfilling orders. The issue has been since resolved. The die that has reached me is free of any errors. It states exactly what page 146 of RuneQuest Glorantha states. Were I grumpy, I could have complained about how this is just the standard table, and that other Hit Location tables exist like the Pike Hit Location on page 220, and how come that table didn't get its own dedicated di- ok, I stop it here.
The Hit Location die's letters are bleeding some of their burgundy on the background. It is not immediately perceptible, yet when one peruses the dice carefully it is impossible to miss. I wish it weren't so.
I am not at all happy with the inclusion of only one Strike Rank Marker. So how does this work, will only one player have a Rank Strike Marker? Or does the publisher really expect every single player to buy a set like this, just so that all players have a Strike Rank Marker without needing as many of the other dice? Or are some players expected to use it, while the proles around the table use standard d20s? This should have been a six-item set, fixed at an appropriate higher price. There should have been four Strike Rank Markers in there, for all the players of a standard group to profit.
Conclusion: The two sets of RuneQuest Expansion Dice are dedicated to HeroQuest and Gloranthan fans which want to take their game to eleven. They are pretty, easy to use, and support their system well. They don't do the same however for all the players around the table (more Striker Rank Markers should have been included in the set) or for other systems outside of HeroQuest Glorantha.
To find out more about Q-Workshop take a look at http://q-workshop.com. Each set can be found separately on the following pages:
the RuneQuest Expansion Dice: Beige & Burgundy
RuneQuest Expansion Dice: Turquoise & Gold
Shameless plug: for more gaming news and content (including, for example, pictures of the RuneQuest Expansion Dice: Beige & Burgundy, Turquoise & Gold that I am unfortunately not able to upload on RPG.net for the time being), and to better keep track of my reviews, subscribe to my Antonios S facebook and twitter page.
