Pyramid Review
Enter the Viking (for Rune RPG)
Published by Atlas Games
Written by Chris Aylott, Rolfe Bergström, Dave Blewer, Tom Janulewicz, Michelle A. Brown Nephew, Philip Reed & Scott Reeves
Illustrated by Scott Reeves & Human Head Studios
80-page perfect-bound softback; $16.95
If there is a problem to Rune, Robin D. Laws' reductive RPG of Viking hewing, thewing, and pillaging, it lies in the game's scenario design. Not so much in the conceptualizing of ideas, but rather than in the arithmetic necessary to balance the points spent in designing and building encounters. This is multiplied when you consider that Rune is not meant to be run by just the one GM, but rather, each of the players take their turn in running an encounter. Thus each player needs to learn the rules to running Rune and also the whole encounter design sequence as well . . . Until such times as all of a campaign's players can master both, Atlas Games have provided us with no small relief in the form of Enter the Viking, an anthology of encounters that can slipped into Rune campaigns as and when they are needed.
There are a total of ten encounters of the Cushion type to be found within Enter the Viking, plus a complete Plot Sequence. Cushion encounters are run by the other players in between the main encounters of a Plot Sequence, although the events of any Cushion encounter is quite unconnected to the plot of the runner's Plot Sequence. Half of those in this anthology take place in the Underworld, while the rest . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: April 5, 2002
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