Setting:Mosaic

Mosaic; A Game of Runic Magic

A recent creation of /tg/'s involving, well, Runic Magic. For now it's going to be an info dump of everything I can find; it'll probably get cleaned up the next time a thread rolls around and it gets some attention.

Setting

Very low civilization world. Countries are little more than groups of villages who decided to work together, and full scale wars are rare. Craftsmanship and technology is more advanced than you might think, with plate armor being possible (though still difficult) for normal warriors to aquire, due to the common use of Runes in the manufacturing process. Virtually everyone knows a rune or two, to help them with the daily tasks of living, and a genius craftsman is just as adept with runes as a great mage, but applies them to a different task.

The world is scattered by ruins from various sources. Some are the constructs of Runelords long dead, or the leavings of long lost civilisations. Some are harmless, others perilous, and its irritatingly hard to know which is which. Most of the land is covered by great forests and mighty plains, or soaring mountains and cold ice. All these places hold darker things, which live to trouble the minds of honest men. Only humans have formed open civilisation, and if others do exist, its within secret places where the boots of men have not yet trodden, or have trod once, and then stopped dead.

Religion is odd, with the True Rune being almost universally acknowledged as existing and being the closest thing to a truly Divine being concievable, being an ultimate description and method of control of all that is. If a thinking being could master it, they could become a true, omnipotent god.

Lesser gods exist, and are generally thought to be humans who have mastered, then amplified, a greater rune, taking it into themselves and merging with its essence. They don't act often, but when they do it is impressive. There's no knowledge of what restricts them in their actions, or even if they are actually restricted by any other than themselves.

The true evil in the game, and all the demons and dark god, come from Un-runes. An Un-rune is, essentially, a dark invertion of a rune, creating a sigil which unmakes reality, erasing it as if it had never been. Students of Un-runes seek to obliterate true runes, eventually actualising the Untrue rune, and thereby ending existence. What motives these madman hold is unknown, as seemingly no-one would benefit from their victory.

The known world is one large, ovoid continent, with cold "poles" at top and bottom, a belt of tropics and deserts in the middle, and temperate zones in between the two. The north is more mountainous, while the south is wetter, with more rainfall and rivers.

There's a good mix of cultures and ethnicities, and although people are suspicious of strangers, the trading of stories with travellers is a universal tradition, used to maintain trust and enhance the oral tradition. Nomads, caravans and groups of various sorts are common sights all through the lands, bringing knowledge, merchandise or services to wherever needs them.

Runes are the main source of personal power. Any amount of skill with a sword can be bypassed or augmented by a basic understanding of runes. As such, runes are some of the most important things in life. Most lesser runes are freely given and learned, although due to limits on mental capacity, people don't usually hold more than one or two at a time. However, Major runes and Great runes are much harder to find or learned, generally treated as treasured secrets. Learning a rune requires one who has mastered it to impart to you their mastery, giving you the ability to understand what the rune represents, and thereby utilising its powers.

Runic tattoos are a simple and growing market, not in the grand manner of the Tattooed caster, but in simple things like tattoo's for strength for manual labourers or protection from fire on the hands of a blacksmith. Tattooed casters can make a good deal of money by providing their services, as Tattoo's of this type do not interfere with the general low level casting generally known. Heroes are less likely to get this form of tattoos, as they can conflict with higher casting or manouvers.

System

Same base mechanic as Unisystem, D10+skill+stat, beat a target difficulty. Stats are Physique, Reactions, Intellect, and Essence.

Physique is your physical strength and constitution, Reactions is your mental and physical speed and reaction time, Intellect is your pure processing power and mental prowess, Essence is the strength of your soul and creativity, Capacity is the amount of space in your mind you can devote rune memorising. Stats usually range from two to five, with less than two being below normal, and above five being superhuman.

Skills will be entirely cribbed from Unisystem, with Rune use added, modified to fit a quasi-medieval setting.

For Rune magic, you can hold up to (Runes+Intellect)*2 points of Runes in your head, with the outermost branches being one point, and increasing as you go in. A starting Rune mage knows seven minor Runes. You can string up to (Runes+Essence)/2 runes into a single spell.

Rune magic spells only get the bonus from your Runes skill, as no stat is applicable (This is changed for certain abilities). However, the strength of the Runes used, the relevance to the task as well as a cool description can net you bonuses. The greater the margin of success, the greater the effect of the spell.

Archetypes

Runecaster - Basic magic using class, memorising runes and then linking them together to create spells.

Rune Warrior - Combat class, runes inscribed on armour and weapons and activated during combat manouvers.

Runemarked - Magic user who Tattoos runes onto their body, for a wider variety of effects, but less depth and power.

Rune Dancer - Magic users who memorises runes, but casts them through body movement (i.e. dances). Take longer to cast powerful spells, but can cast minor spells covertly.

Runefist - Martial artist who magically empowers his martial arts via forms and styles based off certain runes.

Rune Crafter - Highly specialised caster, works runes into objects to empower and enhance them.

Rune Priest - Holy caster, worships the spirits and deities of the runes, calls their power via sacrifice of blood.

Rune mimic - Capable of using/mimicking the runecasting abilities of others (to an extent), but incapable of doing much of anything on their own.

I see Runecasters as the usual type. They don't do anything special with runes, they just learn them the normal way, and decide they're good enough at it to do it as a profession. They hold runes in their mind, and project them into reality through word or symbol, thereby warping the world to their whim. Through study they can achieve better mastery over their runes than others. The magic has no particular ill effects on them, and is not tailored to any specific use.

Tattooed casters are slightly more edgy than Runecasters. They forgoe the normal strategy of holding runes in the mind, instead marking them upon their body, having the skill to bind some of that runes Mastery (though not all of it) into their flesh with marks of ink. Their magic is much stranger, a weaving dance as they manipulate their runic tattoos and reify their effects. However, this can be dangerous, and can result in physical or mental warps. At a basic level, this is minor mental issues or slight distortions of the flesh, but can lead to true insanity or abominable mutants if a Tattoo'd caster loses control. Tattoo'd casters also have less control over their runes, and so are vulnerable to the overly powerful effects on a critical success or dangerous feedback on a critical failure.

Rune Warriors foregoe the practice of learning runes or inscribing them in their pure forms, instead mastering the arts of combat to the limit of their ability. Through this great skill, they gain a subtle mastery of the runes, able to awaken fractured runes in the fraction of a second when a parry or strike is about to occur, instantly weaving reality into a favourabel pattern for them. They lack the skill to utilise magic without physical action accompanying it, and most of their powers are not fit for civilian applications. They are vulnerable only in that they are reliant upon their equipment, and without it, they must rely upon their pure skill (Or, if they're smart, a hidden rune or two on the inside of a ring, or some other measure).

A Runefist is someone who has mastered a rune through repetitive movements of her own body, so much so that a maneuver incorporates the shape of a rune, thus granting their unarmed strikes, blocks, motions and stances, power from the rune that they have incorporated. A runefist at the start of play chooses 2 strike runes, 2 block runes, 2 motion runes, and 1 stance rune. The stance is a greater rune, whereas the other 6 are lesser runes.