Eyeballing Runequest 6 for the next alt-night Fantasy Campaign

Source!

Magic World has been on hold for a few weeks due to thw whole D&D 5E thing sucking up everyone's game time, but I am getting a serious itch to return to the split game nights, in which we rotate campaigns with D&D one week and "something else" the next. My plans currently are as follows: introduce the Wednesday night crowd to The Void, and expose the Saturday night crew to Runequest 6. The Saturday group has already got a decent Magic World campaign under their belts, but I think they are ready to graduate to the Big Boy of the BRP family of games now. This will open them up to the full range of exotic magic in Runequest, as well as the more tactical/maneuver based combat system which is where RQ6 has a definite leg up on MW.

Apparently Design Mechanism has been busy when I wasn't paying attention, because there's a short "Ships & Shield Walls" supplement out as well as a campaign setting book. I've ordered a copy of the former in print through frpgames, and the latter may be nabbed in the future, if only for the fun of reading it.

For many GMs, the question of "what campaign to run" is a matter of what resource you want to read, or whatever setting you devise in conjunction with your campaign. For me it boils down to which one one of my existing worlds I would like to exploit for my RQ6 campaign. Right now I'm using Enzada for my Wednesday D&D setting, Chirak for my Saturday D&D setting, and was using my newly created world of Pergerron for Magic World. Pergerron, being customized for MW already might be a very easy fit for RQ6, and could in fact benefit from the additional magic systems. However, if I were to run it, then I would have to explain why we were using RQ6 and not just continuing with the MW characters where they left off. So.....

There's my old venerable setting for Lingusia. The World of Lingusia has received so much weird attention from me in the last few years that it's timeline and setting details are all over the place now. I used it most recently for my 13th Age games, but decided that ultimately 13th Age is a little too epic and super-heroic for a world that was originally grounded in a mixture of AD&D 1st edition, T&T 5th edition and Runequest 2. So now, with my latest "update" to that setting I'm thinking maybe Runequest 6 would be a fine choice.

D&D 5E would be, too....but I don't want to just run D&D into infinity anymore. I was to keep it mixed up  a bit.

What I think I'll do going forward is devise the new setting (a revisionist timeline of Lingusia set in the year 2,090 AW for those actually familiar with the setting) with RQ6 as the focus. Make RQ6 the de facto engine for Lingusia going forward, essentially. Given how much I've used time traveling campaigns to revise the setting, this may be more than a little appropriate....and the grittier RQ6 mechanics will be more than sufficient to handle the Age of Strife era I am working on for the next iteration of the world.

So....goal now: try to develop this setting and campaign with RQ6 in mind, and sprinkle blog with liberal doses of both!

Magic World and the Teacher/Student Dynamic in Campaigns

My Saturday Magic World game continues in all its eldritch glory, but the campaign is taking a darker turn as the group at last has met the liche Aruman, and instead of taking the guy out (which the two lone human barbarian types in the group would like to do) everyone is instead bartering with him, offering to work for the liche in exchange for magical training. This is not unexpected, as there are six opportunistic spell-casters (or wannabe casters) in this group. It demonstrates a fundamental divide between D&D style storytelling and other types of fantasy RPGs....in Magic World, as with other BRP/Runequest systems you gain power, spells and skill through experience and training. As a result, it's important as the GM to account for the fact that players will need time in the campaign for their PCs to find growth opportunities. Now, the idea that they will happily aid the local evil liche in exchange for power is a clear sign that my campaign is rapidly moving toward an "all shadow, all the time" sort of campaign, but hey, that's okay....it seems to be what the players want.

What's interesting of course, is that D&D games will never, RAW, offer the players a direct incentive to negotiate a working relationsghip with the evil wizard in this manner, because D&D's leveling process has been largely divorced from its environment (at least since 1E, which had training costs, but not much else). Now yes, you could probably have the lich (for there is no e in the D&D analog) offer up spell scrolls in exchange for deeds, sure....but the PCs still gain more by just killing the lich, taking the scrolls and gaining the XP. In Magic World, killing the lich kills the mentor, and he's the one you need to train you...

Anyway, this did get me to thinking a bit about how the need to advance being an integral part of your course of action in a BRP/MW style game can have a decidedly significant impact on player character behavior, one which is rarely seen in D&D.

Gaming Synergy - Savage Worlds, Magic World, D&D 5E

I've hit a weird gaming synergy lately. The current mix of D&D 5E (only just begun) with Savage Worlds and Magic World is having a rejvenating effect on my overall interest in RPGs. This is a good thing for someone like me, who has averaged two game nights a week for fifteen years now.

I have to say, Savage Worlds has proven to be a big boon. The system is quirky, and I worried about whether coming back to it in actual play would be problematic, but the mechanics held up very well and made for some exciting, fast-paced sci fi adventuring. Whenever the SF campaign closes I am going to propose we just keep doing Savage Worlds every other week, rotating to different settings. Next up would be Broken Earth, Zombpacalypse, Pirates of the Spanish Main or maybe a healthy dose of some straight up Supers with the new 2nd edition Super Powers Companion.

Meanwhile the decidedly non-D&D-like Magic World night continues to kick ass. I'm experimenting heavily in that setting, taking advantage of the copious resources for Basic Roleplaying to add in more than a little Dark Ages Cthulhu to my weird sword & sorcery setting. Magic World is proving even more enticing than Runequest 6, if only because it's level of accessibility is just right for my group.

And of course D&D 5E.....really though the Basic and Starter material is just a place holder. We need the real thing, all three core manuals ASAP. D&D as it used to be...the D&D I remember from back before it felt like a chore to run, is back. It's honestly hard to believe.