RQ > les runes

Dans la partie previews du site de Mongoose, il y a les runes des nouvelles règles de RQ. Je les avais déjà reçues en tant que playtesteur, et j'avais fait quelques remarques qui ont été royalement ignorées par Mongoose. Je les reposte ici pour ceux que ça pourrait intéresser.

I compared the list of ‘all the known runes of the world’ with the list from RuneQuest II and Cults of Prax. There is only one rune missing, Ice, which was unnecessary in the first place since we already have Water and Cold.

[It’s important to have backwards compatibility with the old set of runes, and especially with the Cults. I have plenty of RQ2 material, and I intend to use the new Mongoose RQ rules with my old RQ2 supplements and my Gloranthan Classics reprints.]

There are four more runes that were not part of the original RQ2/Prax set of runes: Communication, Law, Metal, Shadow.

Communication. I’m not sure how useful this rune could be. Back in RQ2, Harmony was supposed to cover this aspect of life. Communication, trade, language, this was all the realm of Issaries.

Law. I’m not sure about this one either although I agree it seems a natural counterpart to Chaos. However, the latter concept (‘Law is the opposite of Chaos’) is more Moorcockian than Gloranthan. In Glorantha, Chaos is a form rune, and form runes do not have opposing runes (whereas power runes do have opposing runes – quote from RQ2: ‘Power Runes are unique in that they are formed in mutually antagonistic pairs’). Also, the most fanatic enemies of Chaos in Glorantha are Storm Bulls and Trolls. And neither Storm Bulls nor Trolls are particularly ‘lawful’ types à la D&D Paladin! And neither was Arkat!

Metal. This is a very welcome addition. I can’t believe it wasn’t in the original set of RQ2 runes.

Shadow. Not sure about this one either... we already have Darkness. In the list of Rune Magic spells, Shadow appears only once (‘Cover of Night’) and so does Darkness. This makes these two runes little useful. Please remove Shadow and make the Darkness rune more useful (Uz Rule!).