Ran the second Runequest 2nd edition session the other night set in that famous Sartar lane known for its apple orchards. The Tin Inn and environs were still hopping from the Spring festival. I say “Spring” because I have yet to memorize the names of Gloranthan days, weeks, and months, and seasons. As an aside, speaking of the calendar names in RQ, I have been reminded of how much I snagged out of Glorantha as a kid to plug into my game world Acheron (I still hate that name for a game setting, but I was a kid, man). The names for seasons and some of the names of days (such as “Godsday”) were apparently shamelessly ripped-off by me. I totally forgot about that over the decades. That’s OK of course; I hardly ever use them in my D&D game anyway. I get lazy and just call the days Sunday, Monday, Tuesday…
Before I go any further, let me lay out the characters for any Runequest fans who might be reading. Their backgrounds were all rolled out of the RQ 2nd edition chargen section. None of the characters are laymembers of any cults yet (well, Paul’s barbarian “Bjorn” being a herdsmen is automatically a lay member of the storm god Waha).
Catuanda – from the sage-heavy city Jonstown. He himself is scholarly, but like all the other kids he is setting out on the bloody road of violence to better himself physically. Instead of being a follower of Lankhor Mhy, the main knowledge god in Sartar, he went with a minor one (the name escapes me). Has a preference for the long spear, and is pretty lucky with it in combat.
Rowan – from main Sartar city Boldhome. At 21 years old, she is the oldest of the PC’s. Her father was a successful weaver in the city. Like all the new young fighters, ask her why she is setting off down the road to violence and she will tell you “because everybody else is doing it.” She has a liking for the warrior girl goddess Vinga, daughter of Orlanth. This last game she met “Siobhan Lomand,” a Rune Priestess of Vinga, who has offered to make her (and some other girls at the festival) lay members of the Vinga cult. So Terry will probably be the first character in the campaign with a god connection (BTB you need to be a lay member for a year before you can get to the Initiate stage of worship, and all the perks it comes with). Rowan currently uses a short sword as her main weapon.
Bjornheld – the only “barbarian” of the group, Bjorn comes from a sheep herding tribe. He left because they made a lot of fun of him…he has a size of 4. That makes him small. He could wear Vern Troyers kilt. Bjorn makes himself look even smaller by preferring the long spear in combat.
Tensen – From Boldhome. Started with a dagger for combat, but has a bow and is favoring its use. I see a bow-master in the future! This last game Big Ben decided out of the blue that Tensen would be very vocal of his hatred of the Lunar Empire who are occupying Sartar. Just goes to show you, you need a couple of sessions before characters start to differentiate themselves. Even in RQ, where human characters can seem very similar, these characters are standing out from each other pretty good.
Yuri – Little Ben’s new character (LB missed the first session the other week). Guess what? Another townsperson from Boldhome (that makes three character from the capital city). Hasn’t been fleshed out fully yet. I can’t even remember what weapon he used.
Yuri showed up in town while the festival was still going on, and the other characters had finished up their blood combat initiation from the previous game. To give Yuri his own combat, the character volunteer to fight again as teams in the Humakt battle circles.
Which gets me to the topic subject; strike rank. Ah, the buzzkill of it. It’s crunch man. I had forgotten how much there was too it. Too much Call of Cthulhu in the 90’s, where Basic Role Playing left SR out of the mix. The system is soooo easy without SR.
OK, it ain’t rocket science (I have Champions for that). But it requires a lot of rewriting the order folk go in from round to round, especially if they are using missile weapons. Basically, your strike rank is an attacking order based off of weapon length, dexterity, and size. So a fast guy with a spear is going to hit before a slow guy with a dagger, capishe?
Look, I like the grim and gritty nature of RQ combat. Every blow can be crippling or deadly. Odds are some of these characters will be missing a limb or dead before somebody is advanced enough to have a six point healing spell (needed to attach limbs and bring you back from the brink of death from a stoved-in head or skewered torso).
But the busy work of strike rank – is it worth the trouble? Well, although I am a 50% combat/50% roleplay kind of guy, the group on a whole might actually be more like 75% combat/25%roleplay. With 50% I feel like I can relax, have a beer, and paint a world around the characters shenanigans. When the combat encroaches on that, I start feeling like it’s work. Don’t get me wrong, I love the action, irony, and heartbreak of RPG combat. I just don’t want it to be what it is all about. I put heart and passion into my GMing in part because I think that is a bit of a lost art these days. People are either too much on the serious side, or too much on the “beer and pretzels – games are a party” side. I just want to be in that sweet, sweet spot in the middle. But not sure there is room for both me and SR.
Next session things are going to heat up, and combat situations are going to get a bit more complicated. But we have had some good practice over two sessions now. Two combats among characters in the battle circles, and last game a nice fight against some weapon snakes (snakes with swords and maces for tails – chaos creatures), and also a couple of Broo. So for next game, we’ll continue to use strike rank as is (but without movement and encumbrance considerations). But I’m still looking at toning down the crunch factor a bit so I can relax more.
