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Reading RuneQuest: Chapter II (Character Creation)

RuneQuest character creation was pretty startling for me way back when. Tunnels & Trolls and Dungeons & Dragons were close relatives — sure, you swap out Luck for Wisdom but that’s not a huge change. RuneQuest retained the 3d6 rolls and had a reasonable seven stats, but what’s the bit where the ability to work magic (Power) is a primary stat? And where’s the conversation about classes? The previous chapter did not warn us that there weren’t any classes.

Oh, and adventurers are assumed to be human. There’s a note that elves, dwarves, and dragonewts will be discussed in the section on monsters, which doesn’t make them sound much like playable races.

We also meet Rurik, our sample character. He’s really interesting. It’s clear simply from the explanation of his stats that he’s going to be both engaging in combat and casting spells. I distinctly remember reading this the first time and going “Whoa.”

Next, there’s a section on abilities. Combat abilities first, of course. The system for calculating these is pretty straightforward; add percentage points up based on how high the controlling stats are and you’re done. In another little sign that magic is pivotal to the world, Power figures into almost every ability. There are nine abilities total. This system wouldn’t look weird if it came out for the first time today; maybe a little fiddly but not out of the norm.

We then divert back to characteristics for a moment, with rules on increasing them. There’s a cute little bit in the ongoing saga of Rurik: “Thus we see that if Rurik had the money, he could put 4000 L towards bringing his STR up to 16, and another 15,000 L towards building his DEX up to 21. Where would our hero get this money? That’s what the rest of this book is all about.” And I thought the point of the game was either a radio play or simulation of life! It does make a good segue into equipment rules… no, sorry, that’s just starting equipment. You get a list of things, and there’s no discussion of shopping.

A parenthetical: for the first time, an insert from Wyrm’s Footnotes appears. It’s charmingly old school to run into these little random Q&A sections from the pages of Chaosium’s house magazine. More indie games need house magazines, not even totally kidding.

The total chapter length is eight pages, and two of those are character sheets. Hm, there’s something new there. The abilities appear to have base percentages, and presumably you add the calculated modifications to those? But in the text on abilities, there’s no mention of a base. The boxed text detailing Rurik’s abilities doesn’t give us any clues and there’s no sample character sheet for him, so who can say?

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