Shake It Up

This week we begin a series looking at one of the more exciting additions in the Tome of Whispers, alternate rules. We'll look at each of the different types of alternate rule schemes that appear in the book individually in their own entries. First, we'll talk about them conceptually. We'll explore why they work before going into more detail about how they work. It's important to understand where these rules are coming from in order to appreciate what they can bring to your table.

Every rule system is designed for a certain expectation of setting. This might be a conscious design choice, such as making an RPG meant to emulate a specific fiction franchise, or it might be an emergent consequence of individual decisions made along the way. For Realm of Runes, it's the latter. The various options and mechanics create a very high-fantasy expectation, with a more advanced technology level than many other fantasy rules systems. Games using these rules necessarily have a very specific feel to them.

But that specific feel doesn't always fit the vision for a specific campaign idea. In my time as a player and a GM in other systems, I've experienced several different styles of adventure. There's been more traditional dungeon crawls, but there have also been political thrillers, cosmic horror, post-apocalypse, war stories, and culture crashes with advanced alien technology. One thing I've noticed is that game systems tend to struggle to handle situations that are outside the expected design setting. It's inevitable. Or is it?

One of the benefits of the Tome of Whispers as a supplemental resource, is that it can assume that its user already has a greater amount of familiarity with Realm of Runes than the core rules can. Where the core rules must assume that each concept it introduces is completely new to the reader and thus must keep things consistent and as straight-forward as possible, the Tome has much more freedom to include things that are weird, complicated, and might even completely change the status quo. Enter the alternate rules.

Alternate rules can be thought of like house rules. They either add entirely new systems, or they tweak existing ones to achieve a specific experience goal. But these alternate rules are designed specifically to interface with the existing Realm of Runes structure and are tested and integrated. This is not to say that any other house rules are forbidden, of course. Just that if you're looking for a different feel of game, there are a whole slew of variations that are ready to go, without having to design them from scratch. Furthermore, the inclusion of these variant rules in a widely accessible format also allows for a greater degree of freedom when it comes to designing adventures for Realm of Runes.

The alternate rules we'll explore in this series each targets a different specific experience, but next time we'll return to the Card Game to introduce another of the villains, so stay tuned!