Runeblade - Part 1

Runeblade

R.U.N.E.B.L.A.D.E

A game for three roleplayers
A Parenthesis Press game, Written by Neal Stidham
A small rules light narrative game for three players that can be played over one or more sessions.

I like simple games, and I like narrative games. I am not averse to wading through tomes of complex rules crunch, nor am I averse to rolling bags of dice for combat based dungeon crawls, but sometimes you just want to roll a few dice, and tell an interesting story, and not think to heavily about things.

I came across Runeblade several years ago and managed to get myself a copy of the two page rules.

The game runs on an interesting concept, as the author calls it, Diceconomy. You gain and lose dice across the run of the game, and the ultimate goal is to gather 10 dice of a particular colour, thus allowing you to narrate the closing scene of the game. The ebb and flow the game works by “winning” dice rolls allowing you to add narrative points to the story.

I did a quick solo test to get used to the rules (there are about 10 in total) and become familiar with the flow of the game. The creator, Neal Stidham, put up a post on his blog about the game and how the diceconomy system works which really helped with learning the game.

 https://parenthesispress.com/2011/07/11/how-the-diceconomy-system-works/

 I did try (very hard, honest) to get people to play it, but as it turns out because it was quite different from most other games and I found it hard to sell the concept. Come lock-down however, I saw my opportunity to get a game of Runeblade in action. I decided to get Runeblade set up on Roll20 (and the heartache I went through for this I will keep for another blog!) so that given even the slightest opportunity I could grab a couple of players and spend an evening doing something different.

I made a nifty cover page for the Roll20 game using some stock photos and an evening with GIMP.

Fast forward to early 2021 and our regular GM was out of action for a few weeks with work commitments and so I suggested I'd run a game of Runeblade. I got two willing volunteers to play and we ran my first full game. Notwithstanding the glitches I encountered with Roll20, we all had a good time and told a good story (I will get this written up for Part 2). Post game I managed to sort out (most of) the glitches on Roll20 so hopefully next time I want to play this online it will be easier.

Having now play-tested at home and run the game online, due to the moving of dice back and forth between players, I can say that this is definitely a game that would be better suited to face to face play (unless someone out there wants to build an all singing all dancing script for this!!).

On a side note, Runeblade is one of a set of three games based on the Diceconomy system that Neal Stidham has created. The other two are Vector, a sci-fi version, and Double-cross, a cold war espionage version. I haven't played either of these other versions yet.

J