Other RuneScapes
Before1 I attempt my own RuneScape-inspired game, I wanted to survey the existing field of analog RuneScape adaptations. There are two notable ones that I found: an unofficial game developed on 4chan c. 2018, and an official one developed by Steamforged Games, releasing early in 2024.
RuneScape the Table Top RPG
RuneScape the Table Top RPG is an unofficial tabletop RPG adaptation of RuneScape that grew out of 4chan c. 2018. It exists as a loose collection of PDFs in a shared Google Drive.
The PDFs are:
- Basic Rules—What it says on the tin, plus a sample adventure and some stat blocks.
- Player Book—Exactly the same as Basic Rules, but without the monsters or sample adventure and with slightly different (newer?) rules.
- Advanced Skills—Just a bunch of ideas about skills, and other optional rules.
- History of Gielinor—Nominally a setting guide.
- Atlas of Gielinor—Effectively a bestiary.
- Bestiary—A slightly different bestiary.
Mechanics
The mechanics themselves are kind of a mess here. There are two different skill test resolution rules in the “Basic Rules” and the “Player Book,” which are both versions of a d% roll-under system with six different possible outcomes: Critical Success (001) > Matched Success (doubles lower than skill) > Success (lower than skill) > Failure (above skill) > Matched Failure (doubles above skill) > Critical Failure (100). Each type of test then outlines a separate suite of effects for each outcome.
Combat looks tedious: a single attack consists of the attacker’s to-hit roll, the defender’s defense roll, and a damage roll. Each of these is a full skill test with six possible outcomes, most of which are modifiers to the later tests.
When in doubt, the game adds more stats: two linked metagame currencies, four attributes that group the skills (and can be used in their stead), a spendable cool-down timer for weapon special abilities, a faith tracker separate from the prayer skill. And it never hesitates to add a complication: a table for converting XP to skill points at different levels, four pages of status effect descriptions, a table to determine how many nails are lost constructing something. Two mechanics, “Advantages” and “Anomalies,” were either never finished or incompletely scrubbed.
Highlights
Every now and again though, the game goes off-script, and something special shines through. Some details of optional starting races are charming (“goblins can eat raw food,” “monkeys start with an amulet of human speak”), and even though I think they’re generally over-complex, lots of skills have completely novel subsystems, like using Firemaking to craft pyrotechnics, or gaining special Prayer benefits for choosing a single god to follow.
I especially wanted to point out History of Gielinor, which currently only describes two eras, both non-canon. In “Small Stones,” Runecrafting is still a lost art, but “crude” runes can be created through intricate rituals that are generally frowned upon or dangerous. In “Runepunk 2200” runes are so cheap and common that society has warped around them. Legal magic items are bound to the purchaser, and legally crafted runes can be traced. Everyone knows a little magic, but the wealthy think nothing of the cost of runes. And runecrafting is tightly regulated by the wizard’s tower, except for the illegal crafters called … runerunners.2 I love this.
Impressions
I don’t want to be too hard on this game because it’s clearly a labor of love and it’s free. I don’t know exactly what the development process was like (although some of it is evident in the Google drive), but I suspect that a bit of everything went into it, which is maybe why the final product is a little underwhelming. At the same time, it looks like people were definitely having fun with it! It hasn’t been updated recently, but I hope everyone involved is doing well.
RuneScape Kingdoms: The Roleplaying Game
Overview
RuneScape Kingdoms: The Roleplaying Game is an officially-licensed tabletop RPG adaptation of RuneScape developed by Steamforged Games and scheduled for release in February 2024.3 It is available for preorder in hardcover for $39.99 or fancy hardcover for $69.99,4 following a successful Kickstarter campaign.
Although it hasn’t been released at time of writing, a non-final preview version is available to preorder customers and crowdfunding backers. So throughout the rest of this section, bear in mind that the version I am reading may not be the final version.
Mechanics
Like the unofficial game, Kingdoms went through a significant system revision: the initial pitch was for a D&D 5e based game, similar to other Steamforged Games licensed adaptations. For various reasons, they ultimately decided to create a bespoke system instead.
Characters have three attributes, like the three ability scores of an Odd-hack: Strength, Agility, and Intellect. These have values from 1-8. Characters also have 20 skills with values from 1-10, and which are a pretty representative selection of RuneScape skills. To make a test, players add a skill and an ability to get a target number or TN, and then attempt to roll 3d6 equal to or less than the TN.
There are a few complications. Triples are a critical success or failure. The choice of attribute/skill pairing is unfixed and negotiable. Advantage and disadvantage are imported from D&D, and implemented as the lowest or highest 3 of 4d6. But, most prescribed modifications, such as the use of tools or the difficulty of a task are implemented as bonuses to skills or modifiers directly to a TN.
Several tests also care about your degree of success.5 When you gather resources, for example, you gather 1 resource for the attempt and 1 more resource for each point you rolled below the target number. When you attack, that difference is additional damage you deal, and when you defend, that difference is additional damage “soaked.” (Other than this factor, damage amounts are static. All rolls are player-facing, so there is no “enemy” attack roll.)
I haven’t run the numbers on this, but I suspect that the 3d6 core mechanic is a little messy. The bonuses and penalties can’t get too big, because the marginal effects are either much larger or much smaller at one end of the scale than the other. And in the middle, those small bonuses might feel underwhelming. But it’s novel (to me) and could be used well.
There are a few places where tests lack an opportunity cost, and I think this may be an oversight. The book stresses that strict timekeeping isn’t important, so without an opportunity cost, there are some tests that it seems like you should just be able to make again and again. This is easily resolved, but could have been just as easily avoided.
Similarly, there are a few rough edges that may be unavoidable in any system of this complexity. For example, a weapon’s special effect may only be activated on a roll under the TN (not equal). This translates awkwardly to magic, where a “combat” spell (which deals damage) carries this caveat, but a spell whose only effect is to inflict a condition only needs to roll equal. This is less easily resolved, but nuances like this appear rarely enough that I’m not as worried.
Lots of little things were lost in the digital-to-analog conversion. Without the ubiquity of bones to train Prayer, one of my favorite spells, Bones to Bananas got the axe. Similarly, all the teleport spells were merged into one. And protection prayers (usually a completely game-warping regime-changing effect) are perfectly reasonable now. Some of these losses are tragic, but I assume no adaptation could avoid them all and still be as streamlined.
Highlights
Creating a bespoke system was unambiguously a good decision for this product.6 The system gets to be mega-crunchy and unencumbered by everyone’s existing conceptions of D&D. I think making “mining” or even “crafting” exciting within the existing framework of D&D is (and has historically been) an uphill battle.
And when this thing is good, it’s really sharply observed. I love capes as exclusive achievements. The breakdown of what makes a RuneScape quest tick is honestly better than my own. The “Death’s Prize” mechanic could be worth stealing. And I think that outlining enemy combat actions as a small random table really captures the predictability of combat in RuneScapewithout the bycatch.
Impressions
The book is good! It’s slick and professional, but it’s charming, and it’s clear that a lot of care went into it. It’s unafraid to take only the parts that it likes and to riff on RuneScape in a loving way. It’s also full of very reasonable, modern advice about things like “dealing with canon” and “making up rulings.” It has a few unexamined pitfalls: pitching the “five room dungeon” and repeating “rulings not rules” like a priest exorcising a demon. I think a couple notes about Jaquaysing might serve some people better, but it’s all common enough advice and it’s not bad.
Overall Notes
Both games, to different degrees, import pages and pages of information from the game, more or less directly. Lots of this is tied up in the fixed progression of materials and equipment by level and the many recipes to craft various commodity goods. To my mind however, in an analog game, this is about as accessible and as fun as a printed spreadsheet. It’s important to RuneScape, perhaps, but it’s not the part I want. I would prefer shorter progressions and recipes, with punchier and more memorable effects than a granular accumulation of “+1”s.
Both games also ultimately land on a structure of “roll under to succeed, roll over to improve.” This is a really good structure for modeling RuneScape-like skill advancement. Instead of the familiar tables of increasing XP/level, it’s self-limiting: as you get better at a thing, it’s harder to train it.
It’s been really interesting to finally take a look at other attempts to emulate RuneScape, specifically, and see how they approached the problems that I’ve spent the last year rotating in my mind. I think I’d play in either game, given the chance, but I might only have the ability to run Kingdoms if I had to. That said, neither game is “final” yet, and I look forward to any and all developments that come.
This is rhetorical, I’d already started sketching and circulating drafts and so on before I got to this step. Which means I can still feel a little pleased with myself whenever I landed on a similar solution to some problem.↩︎
This joke is very funny, I promise.↩︎
Alongside RuneScape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg, a board game adaptation with fancy miniatures and lots of expansions, which is beyond the scope of this project.↩︎
Both of these prices include the PDF, but the PDF isn’t yet available separately. This is a shame because shipping from the UK can be a lot (~$20 to the US, at time of writing). But if it follows the pattern of other Steamforged Games releases, we can expect the PDF to be $20-25 on release.↩︎
Technically, the unofficial RPG also had rules for calculating degrees, of success, but then it seemed to forget about them, and I’m not sure they were ever used.↩︎
Condolences, though to the backers who expected a 5e product and are now upset because “their players won’t play anything else.” There is still a thriving community of people making 5e (and Pathfinder and more) content for RuneScape games.↩︎