Episode 33: The House Rules of Sandheart

We said we were back from our summer break with episode 32, but we lied! Joerg’s laptop died and he was busy growing a moustache, and Ludo was ridiculously busy with work. Either way, we are back again, just in time for the end of the year!

Our Guest

This time we welcome Jon Webb again, who appeared on our show back in episode 6 along with Neil Gibson. Jon is of course the wonderful author of the equally wonderful “Sandheart” series of scenarios:

• Sandheart Volume 1: Tales of the Sun County Militia
• Sandheart Volume 2: The Corn Dolls & Fortunate Sun
• Sandheart Volume 3: Tradition
• Sandheart Volume 4: The God Skin & Mad Prax

Disclaimer: the above links are affiliate links of course (please use them to support the show!)

The Making of Sandheart

Our first topic is the Sandheart series of scenarios (see links above) which, although they have been written and published a long time ago, we had not covered on the show before… better late than never!

We chat with Jon about how Sandheart came to be, the strength of its campaign framework, moral choices, “street-level” adventures, designing problems for which you don’t know the solution, culture clashes between characters, custom heroquesting rules, and more.

If you haven’t read or played Sandheart, there shouldn’t be any spoilers for you — only titillating previews of the sort of fun you can expect therein. Note that if you don’t plan on getting all four volumes of the series, we recommend getting volumes 1 and 3. The reason for this is that volume 3 is a scenario that spans multiple years, as the adventurers are tasked with guard duty for a recurring ritual. Getting volume 3 early will let you weave the first couple occurrences of the ritual into the first few adventures.

House Rules and Custom Systems

In the second and larger half of the episode, we exchange all kinds of ideas about tweaking and extending the RuneQuest rules. Among the things we talk about, in no particular order:

• Picking rules from different editions of RuneQuest
• Hit Points formulas
• Initiative systems and Strike Ranks
• Sorcery rules
• Experience checks and experience gain
• Resolving ties
• Failing Forward
• Combat effects and aiming at hit locations
• Custom hit location tables
• Shields
• Granularity of rules per activity
• Gritty tactical combat vs heroic scenes
• Average skill scores vs heroic skill scores
• Fighting styles and converting to other weapons
• Group rolls
• Adopting rules from Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition
• Chaotic corruption!
• Lingering emotions
• Caravan trading rules
• Going into a rabbit hole of research and math, and finding what a mechanic should be about
• Keeping custom mechanics into the “spirit” of the main system
• Post-coital pillow talk rules

We also mention:

• Ludovic’s own adventure, “A Short Detour”
• Mythras
• Troika
• Dragonbane
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
• Traveller
• Alien RPG

Credits

The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.