RUNEvember Session 12: The Scourged City

The Realm starts you with just a Syringe and a Torch. No Block on either. Do you get it? It's Bloodborne, did you get it? To theoretically compensate for the massive problem in the gameplay this immediately creates, the Syringe has Rally 1, which restores 1 Health on a hit if you took Harm last turn. This really doesn't feel sufficient - you'll just about always take at least 1 Harm per fight (more notable when I have 5 Health max!) and, more importantly, it's always annoying to track anything from round to round. As someone who's played a lot of Bloodborne, honestly this doesn't really feel like Bloodborne at all, aesthetic aside? Bloodborne's much more about avoiding getting hit, Rally's a cool feature in Bloodborne but it's not really anything you can lean on unless you really know what you're doing or have very specific weapons. But this isn't a game where you can really avoid things so it ends up feeling pretty much the same as Block except with way more caveats. This might be a good use case for tags like Quick/Slow, where some Harm resolves earlier/later. (You can get your stuff back pretty quick at least if you were coming from another Realm, at the very least, but this would definitely feel weird if that weren't the case!)

I really like the Realm Clocks in spirit! I'm always going to be in favor of things that only track certain actions, and putting a clock on fights is interesting. But it also means that you're much more beholden to whatever gets rolled in a given fight. The Clocks filling aren't as nasty as Infected or Flaming might sound at least so this isn't that bad if you get stuck on a loop of the enemy only rolling a 6 or whatever.

The Lore thing is interesting. I spent through mine to make the Blood-Drinking Blade because I had 4 Lore at the right place in the right time. That said, spending it at all feels like a mistake until you know everything that needs it, because it's not terribly plentiful. (Especially given that discovering citizens is the biggest way to decrease Infected and that's Lore-gated. Better hope you do everything in the right order.)

The random encounter thing only shows up in certain places when Infected or Flaming, and mostly as a replacement for a unique encounter? I'm not sure why it's there, honestly. It's a lot of page space for something that barely comes up and could have just been a set encounter.

The enemies are pretty standard fare, with the note that thanks to the Flaming clock you can't stall them too long if they get stuck on a high Harm ability, which as noted above is definitely a feels-bad kind of thing (as there's basically nothing you can do if this happens other than "get hit" or "tick that clock"). One cool thing is that one of the enemies rerolls 1's if you have high Lore, but my Lore never got that high so I never saw that. (Again, though, Flaming isn't too bad so it's not as bad as that would seem.)

The equipment's a bit all over the place. The Torch is like instantly worthless as soon as you get any other weapon, and the Syringe is fine but not incredible, aside from having Rally which is what makes the earlygame possible. (Being able to move on a 1 is pretty powerful at least.) The Rapier, however, is like the Longsword but strictly better - it can be activated on a 1 as well, and has Move 1/Harm 1 on a 1-2. For a bunch of Lore, you can combine the Syringe and the Rapier into the Blood-Drinking Blade, which is like the Rapier but even better, and has a two-handed mode that gives it the RUNE power-combo of Move + Adj/2 Spaces reach, along with wild amounts of Harm, in exchange for always taking 1 Harm every round. (Which...Rally doesn't stop you from healing that as written, so it's not much of a downside, is it.) You can also gain a handful of Molotovs (though a maximum of three, so don't get too comfortable using them...which means I of course never used it, haha.)

The Rune Lord is...honestly pretty trivial if you got the Blood-Drinking Blade, and not terribly hard even if you didn't. Phase 1 isn't too hard to damage-race and Phase 2 being Adjacent/2 Spaces when every weapon in the Realm can hit Same and has good movement means a savvy player is never getting hit.

Everyone can gain the Scourged Rune (If you roll 3 6's in a fight, you can reroll 1's for the rest of the fight), and if the RNG was kind to you and you had the opportunity to send 3 people to the Cathedral, you can get the Cleansed Rune instead (if you have 2 Move, you can dash over hazards). I grabbed Scourged even though I qualified for the Cleansed because it sounds way more generally useful.