The World of Ge.

I called the world for my RuneQuest campaign Ge. It's simply Greek for Earth, the campaign though takes it's name from the island nation in which it is mainly set Nimodea.

I'd like a better name, but I'm not sure it matters so much. I will be posting parts of the background of the world here in a series of posts. The world was originally created sometime in the late 1980's once I got sick of running Gloranthan games. Since then it has been through a few iterations, the latest a total cleanup and rewrite for RuneQuest 6. I've made new maps and changed a lot of things that were lacking in the game earlier. It's more like ancient Greece than before, the previous incarnation had a later Roman influence.

Borea and Lastos

The continents of Borea and Lastos are in the southern hemisphere of the world and the centre of civilization is the Arigos sea, on the eastern side of which is the island nation of Nimodea. From my source book:

Nimodean philosophers have long realised that the world is a sphere. This idea was tested by Andumax when he had the length of shadows in Lastos and Borea 1000km apart measured at midday, from this he deduced that the world is 12,600 kilometres in diameter. There are further arguments to support the sphericality of the world, ranging from the shape of the shadow when Ge eclipses the moon, to the fact that ships appear mast first when crossing the horizon. Various barbarian people will tell you that the world is a flat disk, floating in the oceans above the underworld and below the dome of the sky. Actually, that is what most civilised folk would say since the ignorance of philosophical matters is very widespread. It would seem that the ordinary man cannot overcome the persistent illusion that the world is a flat plane, and I really cannot blame him for that.

The map of the world is very uncertain outside of the immediate region of the Arigos Sea. Very few travellers pass outside that region and the only maps we have are based on the descriptions from those few. The inner ocean is well mapped. Some of our cartographers achieve stunning accuracy using modern instruments such as the compass and the sundial. The most famous maps of course are those made by Thiris of Pelea. You would be wise to examine these for a better understanding of the world. Beware that the hand of Prodotis even affects the lovingly crafted maps of Thiris, there are inevitable omissions and mistakes to be found in them.

Nimodea is a large volcanic island in the Inner sea. The island is roughly 400km across at it's widest. It is in the centre of a cluster of several dozen smaller islands. Nimodea is mostly under agriculture and has been settled for a long time. The island is dominated by the volcanic peaks at it's centre one of which is active.

Nimodea has little forest left, the largest forest is in the north. Most of the wood has been cut for agriculture, shipbuilding and construction. The soil is very fertile due to the volcanic sediment and with plenty of sun agriculture thrives on the island.
The west coast has a mediterranean climate whereas the east coast, being more exposed to the open ocean weather is, in general cooler and wetter.

There are two main cities on Nimodea. There is Nimodopia, the capital on the west coast, and Pallokoris a smaller fortified city on the south east coast. The whole island has a population of about seven hundred thousand. Nearly a quarter of these people live in the cities, which is remarkable.

Full Size Maps:

• Borea and Lastos 
• Nimodea

Rune Cards

I have created a set of Rune images  for RuneQuest using Inkscape. If you see some unfamiliar ones that is because there are some in here that were created specifically for my campaign, such as the Copper Moon runes.

I then made some cards to use in Roll20 for each Rune. I'm not sure what game mechanic I will use them for as yet. I'm toying with the idea of using them for luck point tracking, each time a player uses a luck point they can explain how that rune is associated with the fortune that the character has just
received. I hope this will inspire players to use luck in creative and interesting ways.

The files are zip archives of the individual images.

Download Rune Images

Download Rune Cards

Sample Card Front

Card Back

The Trail Back To RuneQuest

I have been playing RuneQuest since the second edition made it to Australia in 1980. I played a lot of RuneQuest 2 and then RuneQuest 3. A long hiatus then ensued...

RuneQuest 6th Edition came out last year and I purchased a copy. It's been good reading. The game feels like it is the legitimate heir to the RuneQuest legacy. I missed out on the Mongoose editions
of RuneQuest, after reading previews of them I somehow felt they did not really seem like RuneQuest as I knew it. The 6th Edition is well organised and has all you need to get a game up and running.

Style wise it reminds me more of RQ2 than later versions. It has some line art images, not too much to be distracting to the main text. The text itself is well written, concise and clear. The game is generic enough, not tied to Glorantha, and feasible to set in anything from the stone age to late mediaeval but not so generic as to be GURPS all over again.

Character creation is points based, which is a change from earlier versions. In a nutshell, after rolling characteristics and calculating various scores from that a character gets 350 points to spend on skills, 100 from their culture, 100 from their career and 150 to spend at will. This allows for the flexibility in character creation that has always been a hallmark of RuneQuest.

The combat system is very different from the earlier systems. A character now has a number of action
points to spend based on INT and DEX. (I can see these becoming very important stats to power gaming types) There are still strike ranks to determine order of attack, but you get a number of actions equal to your action points. Generally characters have 2 or 3 action points to use per round. Apart from this instead of the old critical/impale/fumble rules there is a system of special effects that an attack or
defense may get when they beat an opponent. This includes the impale but also trips, closing range,
bleed, rapid reload and others. The special effects seem to really capture some of the tricks and
odd things that happen in real combat, making it much less of a 'damage per round' slug fest and much more tactical in nature. I am yet to try the combat system with players so this should be interesting to find out about. The special effects seem to me to be a good replacement for the old
fumble rules.

Other changes are to the Magic Systems. There are now five! Folk Magic, Theistic, Sorcery, Animism  and Mysticism.  I will be interested to see how these pan out. Apparently Mysticism is pretty powerful wheras Folk Magic is minor and weak, the writers did not intend to make all the systems balanced. I intend to start with a very low magic campaign, and introduce it slowly as I get a feel for how the magic system works out. I felt that in previous campaigns magic was a bit too common, and became too ordinary, losing all it's mystery.

There is still a focus on Cults, but also on other organisations, loosely grouped as 'Brotherhoods' (the feminist gamers may have a problem with this). I'm working to add a few of these to my campaign background. They seem to be good ideas to create jumping off points for adventures.

All in all I like RuneQuest 6 from what I have read and from working on a rewriting my old campaign material for it. I have created one adventure so far and have an over arching story to start with. Balancing this will be the key, it looks like RuneQuest 6, like the previous versions is very harsh on player characters that make bad mistakes, combat is brutal and fast. I like that, it makes it more 'realistic'. It pushes players to find non-combat options to problem solving and to really think strategically.

Its worth taking a look at RuneQuest if you liked the previous versions or are sick of D20. Drop into the DesignMechanism forum and see what the fuss is all about.