One important aspect of any tabletop roleplaying game is not covered in the rules, but is the rules themselves, and how they're supported and delivered. Realm of Runes divides itself into three paths, each with its own variant on the overall logo to help you know which one it is you're dealing with when looking at a book. These types of books are Rulebooks, Menageries and Adventures. In this post we're going to take an overall examination of each category.
RULEBOOKS
The most important line, and the first one that will become available, is the Rulebook line, including the core rules. These books are the ones filled with rules for making player characters, but are more than that. The rulebooks contain all rules needed to run a game as well, including background mechanics and a how-to guide for creating or converting important aspects like monsters, NPCs and deities.
As a veteran player and game master of roleplaying games that has weathered edition changes, I know that there are some fantastically detailed first-party game worlds out there. If you're invested in those worlds, steeped in their lore and idiosyncrasies, it can be tempting to stick with the system that birthed that system, even if the rules style isn't to your taste, or became that way through an edition change. It's therefore important that, even as Realm of Runes grows its own world and identity, it remains malleable enough that you, as players and game masters, can pull in and use your favorite worlds from other versions, or those that you created yourself rather than making assumptions about it in the rules.
It's also extremely important that each rulebook in Realm of Runes contains everything you need to both play and run the game using those rules. For the core rules, that means you have everything you need in one book to run the whole game, and never have to expand to other books if you don't feel the need. There are no aspects of gameplay sneakily divided into other sources. When there are rules supplements, the same philosophy means that any new rules are contained entirely in that book, and can be added or subtracted with ease. Realm of Rune's basic "op-in" rules approach makes using, or not, subsequent rules expansions as easy to learn and incorporate as the basic rules themselves, and that's important for combating the mental bandwidth dedicated to "rules bloat" that tends to grow with an edition over time.
MENAGERIES
While the rulebooks contain all the rules needed to run the game, and to create or incorporate appropriate challenges, it can be extremely convenient to have readily-created monsters, NPCs and challenges to take some of the mental load off of creating a game from scratch. This is where the Menagerie line comes in. More than a bestiary, the Menageries contain ready-to-use challenges of all kinds. Monsters? Yep. Quirky NPC allies and enemies? Sure. Traps and Hazards? You bet. It even has a section with several plot seeds designed to showcase groups of challenges in the Menagerie.
Each Menagerie is a self-contained, optional supplement designed to make your life easier as a game master, no matter how experienced you might be. Having stat blocks designed from the ground up to integrate the system rules to pull from is especially handy when an adventure goes off the rails and you have to wing it until you get more time to prepare. Even if you like to run your own homebrew campaigns from scratch, having statistics to compare against can serve as a good comparison to make sure that you're in the right ballpark when it comes to difficulty. Each Menagerie also incorporates a repeat of important rulebook elements like the challenge table and Monster/NPC creation guide, to make sure everything you need for using and creating excellent challenges is right at your fingertips in one place.
ADVENTURES
Pre-written campaign arcs are a staple of the industry, and are a great way to build mastery with a system, or take some of the mental load out of preparing a session or even a whole campaign. As a player and game master, some of my favorite stories have been told using pre-written campaign books and modules. The malleability of the Realm of Runes rules makes it easy to directly incorporate your favorites from other systems, but it is even more convenient to have modules and adventures designed to use the system from the ground up. Realm of Runes will be putting out its own 1st-party adventures to flesh out its world, and make running games in the system easy, even if coming up with plot lines isn't your forte.
More than the coming adventures, however, this category also includes one of the most important aspects of making the game work: the character sheet pack. As the rules have been designed, the character sheets have evolved right along with them. The character sheets are especially thorough, so let's take a preview of how they work.
The character sheet pack contains a lot of pages, but each character will only need a few of them to start. The first two pages are universal, and provide plenty of spaces to hold your vital statistics and equipment. One important aspect of these character sheets is the feat blocks. Incorporating room for notes on how each feat works is important, as it helps to cut down time pulling out books and looking things up during play. Also important is how the equipment section is broken down into containers, which helps make your inventory management easier to track on the fly.
Besides the first two universal sheets, each class also has its own custom page. These sheets contain summarized class features for quick reference, as well as customized spaces for class feats and everything your class needs to function, including space for keeping track of optional, but impactful, character customization like a Rogue's spells.
Finally, there are a few optional pages included for making your life easier overall. A minion tracking sheet contains a condensed version of the statistics and equipment page tailored to have everything you need to keep track of your animal companion or familiar, without wasting space on rules elements that the minion isn't likely to use. Also included is an addendum page, with extra space for if and when you've completely filled out other aspects of your sheet. As a sheet dedicated to extra space it holds only those aspects likely to need overflow space. Finally, there's a downtime worksheet. This sheet can help keep track of long-term projects like crafting or teaching your animal minions new tricks.
Realm of Runes is a full system designed to service all possible aspects of play without making any of them required. No matter how much or little of the extras you want to make use of, you'll always have a play experience that feels complete. Next time we'll continue our exploration of classes with the Sorcerer, perhaps the most flexible primary spellcaster of the whole bunch.
Comments