Stefano Buonocore
In this review, we are pleased to tell you about Runecairn – Wardensaga, a role-playing game with extremely particular atmospheres. First of all, we would like to thank you By Odin’s Beard RPG for sending us a physical copy. Thanks also go to Coline Le Sueur, the author and designer of the game. It’s important to say right away that Runecairn, as it is abbreviated, is a game designed for two people, Guardian (master/facilitator) and Adventurer. However, it also includes mechanics to expand the table, or on the contrary to be played solo.
Runecairn has just returned from one enormously successful Kickstarter campaign. This is a second version of the game, revised and in great shape. Some mechanics have been updated, some added, and the bestiary expanded.
You can purchase the physical version from the publisher’s website for £30 (50 in the case of the variant cover). The PDF is included in the price. The Italian version is available on the site of Nigredo Press: 18 euros for the physical version including PDF, or 10 for the digital version only.
Runecairn: Volume Review
From an editorial point of view, Runecairn is an incredible product. Pocket size, nice thick hardcover, bookmark cord for a small volume of eighty-four pages, in thick and nice rough paper. Despite the (beautiful) cover of Crom, with strongly acidic colours, the manual is full of decidedly more sober colours, with an excellent layout. As we will see later, it is a volume designed for frequent use: as practical and resistant to browse as it is to consult.
The artistic level is incredible. In addition to the aforementioned cover, the internal artworks taken from illustrations of the Viking world are of a bewitching beauty, assisted by a team of illustrators who contributed to completing the work. The full-page images (of which there are quite a few) take up the Norse epic in a classic style, brightly recoloured to contrast with the black-and-white surrounding elements. The result is astonishing and helps to immediately immerse yourself in the lore of the game.
A Soulslike (TT)RPG
Runecairn starts from role-playing games like Cairn It is Into the Odd, from a game design point of view. It openly refers to the trend NSR, New School Revolution. It, therefore, takes inspiration from old-school games but brings them into a world where the centre is not the hero, but the character. This game does this by exploiting an emergent narrative which puts fiction first, and not mechanics.
In practice, in Runecairn this translates into an extremely simple, almost minimal regulation, but extremely focused on the gaming experience. Runecairn sets itself an objective and aims directly at that: recreating the gaming experience of a soulslike. The reference is that of the videogame saga of Dark Souls and similar titles, united by some of the most important mechanics of recent years in the gaming world.
The mechanics of souls-like games are quite simple. Starting “class” provides a set of characteristics and equipment, but there is no limit to the future development of the character. Special abilities are strictly linked to the defensive and offensive items you choose to use, and their effectiveness in how you progress the characteristics. These games have high mortality, often frustrating, but with the possibility of starting over from time to time from a bonfire, a save point, often at the cost of some of the character’s humanity.
Review of the Mechanics of Runecairn
The mechanics of Runecairn are designed to replicate this mechanism as faithfully as possible, without becoming cumbersome. The character has only four characteristics: Strength, Dexterity, Intuition and Spirit. To these are added three other scores. Vigor allows you to keep track of how many times a character can “die” before fading into a willless shadow; Vitality indicates the general state of health of the character, and Resilience indicates the damage he can suffer before the opponent’s attacks affect his Strength, becoming lethal.
In Runecairn there are not classes, but Backgrounds. The regulation is very clear on this matter: you select a character’s past, his evolution is not already written. Even because the abilities are linked to the equipment: the Background gives the starting one, but players are free to change it during the game. A character can then start as Warrior, Skald (a singer who channels divine power), Scout and Seer (the game’s arcane spellcaster). There are also as advanced classes Berserker and Pyromancer.
Leveling by Equipment
But precisely the background reflects the character’s past; changing the starting equipment radically changes what the character is capable of or his possibilities of defending himself, especially with the key object (a single object fundamental to the character’s basic abilities). From this point of view, the inventory is very important. A character has 10 slots, and each item takes up one (except some heavy items, which take up 2). But a slot is also consumed to use some capabilities (via the Fatigue mechanic).
Filling yourself with equipment means having more options but less possibility of exploiting them, traveling light is the exact opposite. It is up to the player to find the right compromise that best reflects his playing style. In all this one fundamental dynamic is that of the Bonfire, where the characters can rest. In particular, they recover Fatigue and Resilience, but not the lost Vigor (except in exceptional cases). And here they can consume souls to enhance their characteristics, which in all this are never actively used in combat. A peculiarity of the game is in fact that the blows and spells always hit the mark. Players only roll for damage, or defense, just to make things more interesting.
Review of Runecairn: the Role of Souls
Anyone who has played any soulslike, especially the chapters of the saga of Dark Souls or Fire Ring, will have recognized familiar mechanics. Runecairn it is a perfect transposition of this gaming experience into a paper role-playing game. The greatest advantage is which does not do so by seeking the pedantry of simulation. It doesn’t try to replicate all the combat options in a cumbersome way, but aims at directly recreating the game’s feeling, and it succeeds perfectly.
A corollary of all this are the Souls, the fragments of the spiritual essence of the fallen gods. Available in the most inaccessible places or as a reward for defeating particularly valuable creatures, Souls can act as exchange currency, be spent to recover Fatigue during the course of the game but above all be consumed at Bonfires to increase Characteristics. Here is another mechanic imported and perfectly adapted from video games, which above all acts as a bridge with the lore of the game.
Lore
Effectively Runecairn does not have a well-defined setting, but rather a reference lore. The game world is that of Norse mythology, which following Ragnarok saw the boundaries between the nine worlds collapse and the gods fall. You will not find adherence to the Edda: direct references are relatively scarce. The objective is more than anything else to provide a lore that can access a common imagination quickly and easily. You are Vikings, the world has ended, survive.
Moreover, this very minimal style, based more on the background lore than on a complex setting, matches very well with the soulslike game style. This also allows us to enhance the emergent narrative aspect of the game. Runecairn presents three pages of very concise but very interesting “principles”. One for the Guardian, one for the Adventurer and one for the setting. There are no innovative “tricks”, but very basic and well-ordered advice on how to best manage the table. Some are generic ideas that can be useful to any novice Guardian, but many others are tailor-made for the gaming experience proposed by Runecairn. The result is brilliant in its simplicity.
Runecairn: Game Material Review
The manual presents everything needed for the Adventurer to face an inhospitable world while trying not to let it consume him. Equipment is fundamental in this. Armor determines your defense score, which reduces the damage you take from enemy attacks, but even more important are weapons and objects. The character’s strategies, the type of attacks and even access to magic depend on these of the Seers, to the invocations of the Skalds or to pyromancy.
A character armed with a sword and one armed with an ax are profoundly different. Especially if the weapon held is a “key” object. The Adventurer can only use one at a time, but its effects have an often decisive impact on the game, influencing the choice of the rest of the equipment. There is also no shortage of consumable objects and enchanted rings: everything that allows you to replicate the experience of a soulslike at the table.
In full NSR style, however, there is no shortage of tools to help Adventurers and Guardians play with very little preparation. Let’s find summary diagrams of the creation and combat phases, advanced rules to introduce greater complexity into the game; a useful bestiary, further expanded on the by Odin’s Beard RPG. The SRDs of the game and the links to the original and licensed adventures are also published here. Between these Beneath the Broken Sword, also published in the manual, an adventure that allows you to play the first awakening at the Adventurer’s Bonfire and the acquisition of his equipment.
Game Modes
Furthermore the manual has a good set of random tables to generate the character’s appearance and name (with relative pronunciation guide). But also the type of mission, the territory to explore and the encounters he will come across. This refers to another fundamental aspect of Runecairn. The game, in fact, was designed to be played by the Guardian with an Adventurer, in a not very widespread formula.
However, optional rules allow you to also play in solo mode, using the tables to generate an entire adventure in a completely random way and moving the narrative forward thanks to the player’s choices. To be honest, they are designed precisely for this type of use, but can also be used perfectly to facilitate the Guardian’s work. To give greater depth to the game it is also recommended to keep a travel diary.
For those who don’t want to give up playing with a larger group, there are the game options to summon allies and be invaded by a black specter. The first is a cooperative game mode, in which the other players are spirits summoned through a specific symbol who come to the Adventurer’s aid. The second is instead a “pvp”, where a second player tries to kill the Adventurer himself. Here too the references to soulslike dynamics are extremely evident.
Conclusions of the Review of Runecairn
Runecairn It’s an extremely interesting game. Many have tried to revive the dynamics of soulslike at the gaming table, with fluctuating success. Often it is a real trend, a declaration of inspiration for this type of mechanics only to exploit its commercial success. Runecairn instead he succeeds completely, without looking for minutiae or re-proposing the original lore, but developing his own and taking care to present a complete experience.
Recommended for NSR wave lovers as for those of oppressive and smoky atmospheres, for those who love the challenge of the game without losing the narrative side. A nice mix of simple and effective mechanics, a game that can be put together in a few minutes but which can offer a lot of satisfaction in more than one session, although it hardly lends itself to long campaigns; however, it is not a flaw so much as a design choice. In the end, for those who love soulslike games and want to relive their experiences at the table, it is simply unmissable.
