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Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok
[978-0-9865414-3-8]
$29.98
Publisher: Pendelhaven
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by Seth R. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 09/25/2013 14:27:00

I have been meaning to post this review for the last 6 months at least HA! Better late than never! The subject of my review is less about the core rulebook, cuz I’m sure lots of people have already reviewed it, and more about the RGS. I have been playing the RGS since 2006 and I think my review will be better if I focus my efforts on the RGS 2.0 that was released in the 2013 edition.

For those who never played before:

The futhark set of runes governs all of the game mechanics. You don’t need dice, and your need for a pencil and paper is relegated to taking quest notes. The runes with the personal playmat handle every aspect of the game that requires non-narrative resolution of bookkeeping. The runes are your hit points, your skills, your powers and your actions. When looking at someone’s playmat you can, at a glimpse, know everything about their state and what their potential options may be. If may be daunting to begin with, but to be honest, it’s super easy to pick up. My trick to all new players: each rune you draw is an action. Ie. You draw 3 runes = you have 3 actions. If you are comfortable with that, you are good to go. If you want to go deeper into the rabbit hole, then you can look at the color of each rune. Red runes are physical, blue and mental and green are spiritual. If you want to perform an action that really stresses any of those traits then you can play those runes to create a greater effect. Want to swing that larger than life troll maul? Play a red rune! Comfortable? Want more? Now each of your runes is bound to skills and powers. You want to fire off that power? Play that rune! Easy? Want more? You can combine runes to change the way powers work! Want to double the damage and strike three targets? Play your power with 2 other runes (1 that gives you multi targets and another than amplifies your power). Easy? You pretty much understand RGS 2.0 now! Obviously I am overlooking some of the nuances of the game, and there are many, that make it a crunchy system for those that want to explore it to the max! Now I said runes were your hit points right? And you know you draw your runes at random from a bag when you need to do a skill check and/or start a new round of combat. OK so when you take some damage, you randomly LOSE runes from your bag. They leave the bag and travel down the playmat. See the consequence? You won’t be able to draw those runes ‘till you get healed! OUCH! Damage hurts and you feel it! Again no need to calculate numbers nor use any pencil/eraser. Wheat else? Damn there is so much more cool stuff that I’d say hit up the community on the official forums. We love to help new players get the ropes.

For those who started to play before the 2013 edition, here are the new improvements:

  • Conditions no longer use tokens, but instead are capped at 4 intensities and represented by a rotated and flipped rune (personal beef of mine now fixed!)
  • There are 2 new damage types: spiritual and mental. They play differently than physical damage
  • There are 3 wounds tracks so you can throttle the lethality of your campaign
  • The Void rune is a customizable rune that cannot be assigned damage and it is always drawn into hand
  • Each archetype has 3 specializations which now means when all the archetypes are written up, there will be over 50 choices! Core rulebook has 5 archetypes (with 3 specs each) Honestly at first I wasn’t sure all of the above were improvements especially the Void rune. But after playing for the last year, I can now say that each and every addition made RGS a better system.

All in all, this game rocks my world. Best RPG by far, it’s replaced all other RPGs at our table for the last 7 years. I can’t go back to dice. Rolling, missing and losing my turn… I don’t want to go back to that. It would be like going from Catan/Dominion/7-Wonders to Monopoly… no thanks!

Peace!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok
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