There isn’t a fifth printing of Snake Pipe Hollow (yet) so here’s Rune Masters, a supplement for Chaosium’s second edition of RuneQuest published in 1980.

A lot of early RuneQuest supplements were of dubious usefulness – many were just collections of stat blocks for monsters and NPCs, which, I suppose, considering RQ’s elaborate hit location mechanics, maybe made a bit of sense. Still, I’d much rather wing my monsters with a minimum of stats and a maximum of dramatic impact, but I guess these things were useful for early GMs with a focus on excruciating simulation.

Anyway. Rune Masters is also a collection of stats, but one that illustrates a key facet of the game in a useful way. In the context of the game, there are three powerful types of members of the game’s cults – Rune Lords (warriors), Rune Priests (magic users) and Rune Lord-Priests (both). While the core rules and cult supplements reveal the existence of such high-level characters and the requirements to become them, they don’t give a good indication of what they look like in a mechanical sense. Rune Masters, by providing a selection of different NPC builds for each cult, shows GMs what high powered characters look like in RuneQuest and gives players something to strive for. As RuneQuest is very much a game about the accumulation of power balanced against responsibility, this is a key book for the game.

It also has a sweet cover. I’m a little split on Luise Perrene’s art. Sometimes, like that dragon snail in Snake Pipe Hollow, the result is like a doodle done on loose-leaf while you were supposed to be paying attention in class. Other times, like the cover of the RuneQuest box set and here, the result is that perfect mix of awesome and amateur that is such a draw for me when looking at vintage roleplaying books. The interior illustrations are also pretty good characters studies that are evocative of the character and beliefs of the various cults.