Tabletop RPGs have a strange dual nature. On the one hand, they're a cooperative story-telling experience where plot, characters and world-building are extremely important. On the other, they're also a board game with rules and structure to keep things smooth and make sure everyone is playing in the same sandbox. This dual nature can be difficult to reconcile, with some systems focusing on story with light rules, while others put tons of effort into a coherent rule system that makes the story feel almost like an afterthought.
Realm of Runes tries to straddle that divide. Great care is taken to present a set of rules that keeps gameplay quick and fun, but isn't so complicated that it distracts from the importance of the story those mechanics are being used to tell. Everyone, friend and foe alike, uses the same basic action economy and has the same suite of intuitive, universal activities available to adjudicate common interactions quickly and concisely. Anything more complicated is something that you bring to the table yourself, through your choices during character creation and advancement.
TYPES OF PLAY
Another, often confusing, area of tabletop RPG design is what happens when the tightly wound and precise rules used in combat are warped and stretched when there isn't any urgency. This can cause bizarre situations where characters speed-run through dungeons like madmen, acting as if everything is a combat and the ticking clock of initiative enforces this incredible tempo. On the other end of the spectrum, you might have situations where one character, often the most Perceptive or involved, wanders through the encounter space solo, interacting with traps and puzzles, while the rest of the group seems to stand around frozen wherever the last combat happened, waiting for the next one.
Realm of Runes seeks to resolve these conflicts by fully embracing these vastly different thematic elements. Play is broken up into three distinct scales, each of which uses a variation of the basic rules in order to keep things flowing smoothly, both within each scale of play and when play transitions from one to another, often suddenly and without warning. Let's take a look at each of these scales in greater detail.
COMBAT
Combat is the most rigidly defined scale of play. Time is broken up into discrete rounds, each of which represents a fixed amount of "real time" from the character's perspective. Each actor in a combat encounter has its own turn in the initiative order, making events transpire in a turn-based environment. In each turn of combat, everyone has the same number of actions and reactions to work with, and once used the active turn passes to the next creature in the initiative order.
Everything a character does in a combat turn uses some of its available action pool. Very quick activities might cost just one action, and can be used many times before the turn is exhausted. Longer activities require more action investment, and some even cost all of a turn's actions to complete. Some activities have a variable cost, allowing a character to decide how many actions to spend, with different results based on the level of investment chosen.
Combat has a paradoxical existence. It frequently takes up the majority of "real time" in a session from a player's perspective, while taking up a shockingly small amount of "real time" from a character's perspective. While this is in many ways inevitable, smooth, clear rules help reduce the percentage of a play session combat takes, while at the same time helping to avoid making it feel like a chore.
DOWNTIME
If combat is the most granular scale of play, downtime is the least. Downtime is used to play out events that require a lot of time investment. This scale is measured in shifts, with each shift representing 8 hours of activity. Long-term activities in Realm of Runes, such as crafting or training animals, list how many shifts are needed to complete the task, and characters can fit these shifts in whenever they have time.
With a robust system for assisting others, even characters that don't seem to have important things to do can have an impact on downtime. Many of the longest-duration downtime activities can be completed quicker with better performance, and a friend helping to craft can make the difference between getting an important item finished before the next adventuring session, or not.
Downtime is a pretty straight-forward scale of play, and is used when there are long blocks of time that aren't filled with anything in particular. This scale allows characters to get the most use out of the time spend between intensive adventuring sessions to recuperate, resupply, and prepare without having to skip over sections of time to keep things interesting.
EXPLORATION
Exploration is the fuzziest scale of play. Sitting between the granularity of combat and the breadth of downtime, exploration can be the most difficult part of any play session to adjudicate. Realm of Runes seeks to make this easier for players and Game Masters alike by letting this scale of play warp to fit the situation at hand. Depending on circumstances, exploring characters might make new decision every few minutes or might keep doing the same thing for hours, all while utilizing the same flexible set of rules. Even within a party of adventurers, some might regularly change approach while others consistently stick with the same activity.
When adventuring using exploration, there are two complimentary sets of tactics that Realm of Runes uses to keep things running smoothly, but without letting anyone get left behind by the action. Activity Tactics are things that a character does actively, such as Examining a wall for traps or Repairing broken items. Each exploration activity says how long it takes to perform, so everyone knows when the next decision needs to be made. If you have an hour left on your spell's duration, deciding to spend 10 minutes repairing your shield is an informed decision.
Positioning tactics describe a group's passive approach to movement during exploration. A group might decide that it wants to Bunch Up or Stay Loose, or Split Up into separate, smaller parties. A party moves together, using positioning tactics used to make rulings on who is affected by surprises, such as traps, and where everyone is placed if combat breaks out. By using these positioning tactics to keep groups moving together, Realm of Runes avoids situations where one party member ends up getting left behind by more active players because all they want to do right now is Keep Watch.
These robust scales of play help keep Realm of Runes feeling fresh, interesting, and active - no matter what situations characters finds themselves in. Next time we'll take a look at overall character creation and advancement to see how the modular nature of Realm of Runes makes creating a character easy and unique at the same time.
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