Who writes the runes?

[Host of Angels]

Where do runes come from? What makes them? Does a stone rune just pop into existence with the rune marked on it?

I guess I find the idea of writing just appearing naturally as distinctly un-satisfying. It would work better for me if the rock / leaf / bark had magical potential. It was found by a practitioner of magic (using magic) and they then marked the item themselves.

According to the book - runes are made when drops of divine blood hit the ground and transform natural objects. This has a few implications.

What if the drop of blood hit not a small pebble but a huge cliff of rock? Is the whole cliff the rune-stone? Or is the magic concentrated in the bit of rock where the rune is carved? In which case the rune could be chipped away and made portable. This also implies that you can nibble away the material of the rune to make it smaller, or drill holes in it to thread it on a necklace.

What if the drop of blood landed on a creature? Can a living thing become a rune? What then? Would that count as just having the rune integrated?

If runes are popping into exsistence all over the world, all the time - is there a trade in finding them? Do urchins in Glorantha spend their time flipping over rocks on the beach looking for runes? Do they concentrate in any areas (lots of drops of blood falling) and could they be mined?

And finally what is a rune worth? Obviously for such a rare and powerful item the price will depend very much on the market. But what sort of ball park figures are there?

Many questions..

 

[soltakss]

If you start taking the runes literally, you'll end up with a headache.

They seem to be poorly thought out, in my opinion.

Where do runes come from? What makes them? Does a stone rune just pop into existence with the rune marked on it?

I guess I find the idea of writing just appearing naturally as distinctly un-satisfying. It would work better for me if the rock / leaf / bark had magical potential. It was found by a practitioner of magic (using magic) and they then marked the item themselves.

Yes, that would make more sense to me, too. Then you get the classic case of magic users creating magic items to sell rather than anyone being able to find them.

According to the book - runes are made when drops of divine blood hit the ground and transform natural objects. This has a few implications.

The idea that runes come from the drops of blood shed by deities is definitely a Gloranthan thing, as that's where crystals used to come from. I doubt if it would be true in other worlds, although there's no reason why it wouldn't be.

What if the drop of blood hit not a small pebble but a huge cliff of rock? Is the whole cliff the rune-stone? Or is the magic concentrated in the bit of rock where the rune is carved? In which case the rune could be chipped away and made portable. This also implies that you can nibble away the material of the rune to make it smaller, or drill holes in it to thread it on a necklace.

See, I said you'd get a headache.

I'd say the whole rock was rune-enabled but didn't count as a rune itself. So, it would be a place where runes would regularly pop up, in other words a sacred site. So, smaller stones would drop off it with runes, some runes might manifest on its surface and on plants growing on it. So, yes, you could cut bits off it, as long as those bits had the rune.

What if the drop of blood landed on a creature? Can a living thing become a rune? What then? Would that count as just having the rune integrated?

If it integrated the rune then it would have it, otherwise it would simply be something to be caught and skinned for its rune.

If runes are popping into exsistence all over the world, all the time - is there a trade in finding them? Do urchins in Glorantha spend their time flipping over rocks on the beach looking for runes? Do they concentrate in any areas (lots of drops of blood falling) and could they be mined?

Probably. If a site was known for runes, then I'd guess that people would search it regularly. Then they'd sell them on. So, that would make it quite difficult to find runes at a known site, making lesser known or newly discovered sites more important.

And finally what is a rune worth? Obviously for such a rare and powerful item the price will depend very much on the market. But what sort of ball park figures are there?

In our game, we set the price at 1000SP, but that's because we are using a version of Steve Perrin's runes where you can find more than one rune of one type.

You might want to set the cost higher, to make them difficult to get, in which case 10,000SP seems reasonable.

Many questions..

 

[duncan_disorderly]

If you start taking the runes literally, you'll end up with a headache.

Indeed. I'd treat the rulebook presentation of Runes as a "generic" "possible" way of doing things and expect an individual campaign to determine whether Runes are physical or metaphorical, common or rare etc etc

 

[zozotroll]

I find I like the idea of the runes, as it feels a lot like the old battlemagic. I dislike how they are supposed to work, as it keeps comeing out clunky, and raises more questions than some of the old divine spells.

 

[TRose]

I would never allow a rune the size of a boulder in my game as I don't trust what my players would do with it
OK , the monster can only be hurt by magic, then we are going to drop that one ton Rune boulder on it. How much damage does it do?

 

[atgxtg]

Two answers\

The orignal runes in Glorantha (the setting for which RQ was orignally written) had runes as a sort of abstract reprensentation of excellence and command over a particlar aspect of exisitence (plant, beast, air/sky, etc.). The written runes were somewhat symbolic and were as a sympahtiec link to the deity that was the "owner" of the rune.

With MRQ the physical runes are, I think, supposed to be formed from drops of blood and such shed but the gods in the past. The god gets hurts and the runes are the form the droplets of blood take. This seems to be so that the game's name "RuneQuest" can be justified by in game actions, with characters Questing for Runes.

Personally, I don't think the physical runes concept is a bad one, but the generic approach to them doesn't work too well. A GM really needs to tailor this to match whatever campaign setting he is using.

 

[gamesmeister]

I would never allow a rune the size of a boulder in my game as I don't trust what my players would do with it
OK , the monster can only be hurt by magic, then we are going to drop that one ton Rune boulder on it. How much damage does it do?

How can this not be good? Imagine the fun trying to maneuver a monster next to a cliff just so you can drop a huge boulder on its head 8)

If my players came up with a cool way to do it I'd certainly let them try!

 

[Utgardloki]

Personally, I don't think the physical runes concept is a bad one, but the generic approach to them doesn't work too well. A GM really needs to tailor this to match whatever campaign setting he is using.

In two campaigns I am contemplating: Runequest Modern and Iron Kingdoms: Runequest, I am making provisions that runes can be made by those who have the runecasting skill. The difficulty is in getting the skill to go with a specific rune. Especially for IK, my concept is that the runes themselves are very plentiful and do not limit casting of magic -- anyone with at least 50% in the runecasting skill can make his own runes.

 

[atgxtg]

How can this not be good? Imagine the fun trying to maneuver a monster next to a cliff just so you can drop a huge boulder on its head 8)

If my players came up with a cool way to do it I'd certainly let them try!

TAKE THAT GABARA!!

( I've seen Godzilla's Revenge too.)

 

[dmccoy1693]

A GM really needs to tailor this to match whatever campaign setting he is using.

What about this idea for a homebrew setting: The item is imbibbed with raw power in some way (god's blood, major battle, etc) and part of the process of intigrating it into ones self is to actually scribe runes onto the item. How does this sound?

 

[Host of Angels]

I think it is interesting that so many of us don't like the idea of rune stones being formed with the runic writing on them already.

And - on reflection - I think this is because in our atheistic, modern world we find the idea of any direct evidence of the divine intrinsically wrong. When people find images of Jesus in sliced aubergines or on a bit of toast - they get labelled as crackpot and end up featured in Fortean Times.

However, in Glorantha, divine evidence is all too real. So, maybe presenting runes as items created by Gods (writing and all) is a more powerful way of evoking the mystical and inherently different world system.

On a bit of a tangent, but still possibly interesting, a lateral connection to the real world occured to me. I was reading a Stephen Jay Gould essay on the "Lying Stones" (Lügensteine) found by Johann Beringer in 1726. Basically Beringer was a professor in Würzberg and found a whole load of fossils in the hills nearby. However, they were fakes and had been placed there by jealous colleagues. One of them was even a fossil showing the name of God in Hebrew script. Now, at the time he took them seriously because the idea that fossils were mineralised animal remains was not universally accepted. Instead people believed that fossils formed when some inherent quality of the rock caused it to change and mimic animals. In which case there was nothing too freaky about the name of god appearing in the stone - especially in the 18th century.

So, maybe a less reductionist view is more in keeping with the Gloranthan mythos.

 

[zozotroll]

On a tangent, but everytime I come back to this thread I envision Barry Manilo singing "I write the runes, I write the runes".

 

[Rurik]

On a tangent, but everytime I come back to this thread I envision Barry Manilo singing "I write the runes, I write the runes".

That is the first time reading a forum has ever made my ears hurt.

 

[Host of Angels]

Well yes - but which is the rune that makes the young girls cry?

 

[Utgardloki]

And - on reflection - I think this is because in our atheistic, modern world we find the idea of any direct evidence of the divine intrinsically wrong. When people find images of Jesus in sliced aubergines or on a bit of toast - they get labelled as crackpot and end up featured in Fortean Times.

Actually, my reasoning is a bit more pragmatic. For Iron Kingdoms: Runequest I like the idea of sorcerers having runestones, but the idea of having to find runestones is too much of a change to the setting. (Although, I suppose there could be activated runestones that could be found and grant sorcery powers to non-sorcerers...)

For Runequest Modern, I think the ability to make runestones is essential for a runecaster character to be viable, because the modern world would have no way to acquire runestones otherwise.

Although, for Runequest Modern I could have a "Crystal Casting" skill which allows casting using rock crystals. Different crystals could be analogs of different runes in the Runecasting skill. I'll have to consider that idea.

On a bit of a tangent, but still possibly interesting, a lateral connection to the real world occured to me. I was reading a Stephen Jay Gould essay on the "Lying Stones" (Lügensteine) found by Johann Beringer in 1726. Basically Beringer was a professor in Würzberg and found a whole load of fossils in the hills nearby. However, they were fakes and had been placed there by jealous colleagues. One of them was even a fossil showing the name of God in Hebrew script. Now, at the time he took them seriously because the idea that fossils were mineralised animal remains was not universally accepted. Instead people believed that fossils formed when some inherent quality of the rock caused it to change and mimic animals. In which case there was nothing too freaky about the name of god appearing in the stone - especially in the 18th century.

So, maybe a less reductionist view is more in keeping with the Gloranthan mythos.

Glorantha is fine. The problem is similar to that of D&D where the magic system designed for one world has aspects that may be difficult to shoehorn into another world not specifically designed for the game. I have no problem with gods granting powers to rocks, but it does not always fit the world I am working on.

I do like the idea of fossils being interpreted as animal runes. I think I'll steal that for my Runequest Modern game. It is possible that things can exist on multiple levels, ala the Mage game setting and other White Wolf worlds.

 

[atgxtg]

A GM really needs to tailor this to match whatever campaign setting he is using.

What about this idea for a homebrew setting: The item is imbibbed with raw power in some way (god's blood, major battle, etc) and part of the process of intigrating it into ones self is to actually scribe runes onto the item. How does this sound?

It's a possibility. How well it would work would depend on the details and the setting.

Personally, I'm more for a Norse interpretation of handling runes, where runcasters learn runes and then can draw/carve physical manifestations of them for effect. Something like what Utgardloki wrote.

I think I'd like something where you spend the MP and draw the rune for the Battle Magic effect, but spend POW (permanently) to make a permanent/physical rune, but that's the Chaosium conditioning kicking in.

As for Gloranthan Rune Magic, I'm in favor of Priest being able to create the runes associated with thier cult through divine magic, either a new use for Divine Intervention, or a new "Create Rune" spell.

 

[Puck]

Wouldn't modern and norse settings, not to mention any homebrew or real world setting, even have a different array of Runes? The core runequest runes are quite distinctly Gloranthan.

 

[Utgardloki]

Personally, I'm more for a Norse interpretation of handling runes, where runcasters learn runes and then can draw/carve physical manifestations of them for effect. Something like what Utgardloki wrote.

For Runequest Modern I plan to go a step further and require a prospective modern runecaster to have 90%+ in knowledge of Norse archeology or archeology of some other society that has runes or glyphs (i.e. you can have Egyptian glyphs, Mayan glyphs, Chinese symbols, et cetera). I've essentially made runecasting a legendary ability in Runequest Modern, because there is no societal support for runecasters.

Wouldn't modern and norse settings, not to mention any homebrew or real world setting, have a different array of Runes? The core runequest runes are quite distinctly Gloranthan.

You can check the back pages for a thread on "modern runes" for an Atomic Kingdoms setting I was working on. The premise was that runecasting was integrated with modern technology on that world, with new runes including a Motorcycle rune.

For Iron Kingdoms, I added a bunch of runes, some of which raised some eyebrows around here, such as the Gun Rune, the Machinery Rune, and the Woman Rune. (And yes, that does apply to Walktapi women too.) There is a thread on for that, too.

For Runequest Modern, I suppose the Egyptian, Norse, Mayan and Chinese rune/glyph sets would differ.

I've thought of making an Invent Rune legendary ability, which enables you to invent runes nobody has ever seen before. In most cases, it would not really be worth it, although possibly in the Atomic Kingdoms campaign an enterprising runecaster could invent a rune for a brandname, so you could have an equivalent of a Ferrari Rune, for example. There would not be very many of these runes.

(For what it's worth, I proposed that the Motorcycle Rune was given to priests by a certain goddess who wished to establish a motorcycle cult for her own purposes.)

The advantage of having a special rune like the Gun Rune (instead of a Death-Metal-Motion combination) is that concepts can be specialized. Iron Kingdoms has a type of spellcaster called the Gun Mage, so a Gun Rune is apropros.

 

[Puck]

Makes one wonder..... I would sure pay a lot in pow and cash for that Machinery Rune; I am worthless at fixing anything. A Finish Bathroom Addition rune would come in very handy too . Joking aside, the modern rune idea sounds pretty cool and particularly unique for a modern genre. It might make a good novel or T.V. series.

A rules set for Norse, Egyptian, etc. runes and spells would have been nice in the core set of rules or even as a couple dollar expansion. I am kind of muddling together a new set of runes for a non-Gloranthan campaign. The creating/writing and passing on/regurgitation of runes is still up in the air though.

 

[TRose]

Does that mean spells in a modern game could include detect TV remote?or maybe detect car keys? I need some one to teach me those spells please