Possible Rune Revival

[Brian Rubin]

Hey y'all, remember Rune, the awesome axey slashey game from the early oughts? Well, according to this story on Blue's -- based on this facebook post it might be coming back, which would totally fill me with glee. :) I had a grand old time with the first game, so I'd love to play more. Yay!

[Nightgaunt]

What I always think of when I think of this game is the weird table-top RPG that was made with the RUne license. I think it was one of the earlier (probably failed) attempts from the pen-and-paper game world to bring video gamers into the fold. But it actually tried some daring things, like making it truly competitive between the players and the GM. In fact, I think it was competitive between all the players, with points for killing creatures (I don't think you did much else than kill creatures).

[Brian Rubin]

What I always think of when I think of this game is the weird table-top RPG that was made with the RUne license. I think it was one of the earlier (probably failed) attempts from the pen-and-paper game world to bring video gamers into the fold. But it actually tried some daring things, like making it truly competitive between the players and the GM. In fact, I think it was competitive between all the players, with points for killing creatures (I don't think you did much else than kill creatures).

Players compete with the GM? How so'? Never heard of that concept before.

[Pyperkub]

I really loved that game, though the initial crawling around and fighting crabs seemed a bit long. Once you got into the combat it was really cool though. One of the few games like it that I actually finished back in the day.

[Theodore Rex DX]

I remember Rune, but I don't remember it being awesome.

[Nightgaunt]

Players compete with the GM? How so'? Never heard of that concept before.

I sense some sarcasm here, so I guess I should say that I come from a generation where the GM's job was to make a fun story for the players. Not to kill them mercilessly. The RPG market was deep in that mentality when the Rune RPG came out. It was kinda heretical. Again, the GM literally earned points for hurting players and they earned points for killing his monsters.

But anyway, they did other unique things like had a formal system for switching GMs within the group, a "level design" system for making balanced encounters (before D&D 3E, I believe), and player-to-player competition. Wacky!

[DKDArtagnan]

I remember thinking the game was an incredibly mediocre fantasy "shooter-slasher" - that looked rather good.

[Arbit]

Rune was pretty good, but you had to install the coop mod. Not only was it coop, it multiplied the number of enemies by 5 to 20 times. It also added minibosses (scaled up versions of basic enemies), made rune magic more accessible, made it so you could actually charge up bloodlust or whatever it was called, etc. It transforms it from typical late 90s/early 2000s style gameplay (stumble around in dark hallways and kill two or three enemies) into Doom or Serious Sam style gameplay (wading into hordes of enemies so thick you decapitate goblins accidentally on the backswing).

Multiplayer was pretty fun too, in a spazzy sort of way. Many fond memories of decapitating someone then chucking their own severed head at them when they respawn. Capture the flag was surprisingly fun as well.

[krayzkrok]

I remember Rune took a while to get going, and a lot of people likely gave up in the fairly average opening stages. But once you started meeting the tougher humanoid enemies and could hack off their heads, it really took off. I'd be interested in what they might do with a sequel if it focused on what made Rune work, the fun melee combat, but it's going to be harder to differentiate itself these days.

[MrCoffee]

Multiplayer in this was hilarious, one of the most fun deathmatch games i have played.

[Warning]

There is an updated DirectX 10 renderer that works with Rune.