Tags
Fantasy, Jorune, Mini-Review, OSR, Review, RPG, Skyrealms, Skyrealms of Jorune
So, I finally got a chance to read Skyrealms of Jorune after semi-lusting over it since I first saw the advertisements in Dragon magazine all those decades ago. For some reason I own most of the FGU boxed sets, but never pulled the trigger on Jorune, which has a cover twice as evocative as most of the contents of most of the FGU sets I have.
This game DEMANDS a quality rewrite.
It manages to be boring. Really really boring. It’s like reading the appendices in the Lord of the Rings boring. But so much of the boring is soooo cool.
It’s a setting after my heart – a post-science-fiction setting that’s firmly and solidly fantasy instead of sci-fi. It gives you a huge variety of odd races running around (although you can only play the three human variant races, there are stats for a dozen more, including many “furry” races… wolf-folk, bear-folk, cougar-folk, lizard-folk even earwig-folk and preying-mantis-folk), hints at high-tech stuff, a solid social environment that encourages adventuring, and even awesome excuses for megadungeons and why they are unexplored and why you should explore them.
The name…
The game is called “Skyrealms of Jorune”. And yet within the main books the whole skyrealms thing gets a passing mention when describing the weird geography and minerals of the setting. It’s not until the sample adventure (in its own book) that we get a good description of skyrealms and how they come into existence and what happens on them. Except for the footnote that this one detailed skyrealm is not much like the normal skyrealms.
Further, the sample adventure COULD be an epic little sandbox crawl on a contained area (the skyrealm) with a timetable and invading enemies and then large scale politics. But the skyrealm itself is given fewer than a half dozen points of interest. Not even that. It has THREE points of interest – a tunnel, some stones, and the thing in the middle of the lake. It’s really weak. The best part of the adventure is the material leading up to that – getting to the skyrealm. And there is the option to skip all that stuff right at the beginning of the adventure too.
Ahhh….
Given to a modern writing team, this setting could be written into something that would grab you and play fun games with your brain. Instead it still has a lot of coolness and potential, but it’s buried under boring writing, third-party exposition, and weak adventure design.
I think the setting is brilliant. I would run a game here in a heartbeat. I love the controls over old Earth-Tec hardware built into the game, the races, the politics, the whole setting. Hell, the races aren’t presented as monocultures – that’s huge for an 80’s fantasy RPG, it’s still big news in a modern fantasy RPG.
If we ignore that the magic system feels like a weird “hadouken” system, I find few faults outside of the writing of this game. I’m really glad to own it and look forward to tearing all kinds of awesome ideas out of it for other games.
Dyson's Dodecahedron 
I, too, saw the ads in Dragon and was curious. Thanks for the review.
I worked in a London FLGS one summer and we had a running joke where one of my friends would phone the shop and (with a fake voice that would catch me outout every time) ask for Sky Realms of Jorune. It had stored being in stock years before.
Sorry to hear it was boring, perhaps consign it with that girl in high school you always wanted to kiss.
I played the PC game Alien Logic, when I was a kid. Good fun. Lots of exploring. Crystal-hunting. And hadoukens. 🙂
–Dither
The first edition with an orange-ish cover and a John Carter feel was MUCH better. The squeezed out all the good stuff in the second edition. Great art though.
I agree with everything you say, except, “It’s like reading the appendices in the Lord of the Rings boring.” I loved the appendices. But, then, some would say I’m boring, too. 🙂
Like you said, Jorune is a great setting (and that art!). In fact, this post reminds me I should mine it for material for a lost colony/science fantasy setting I’m toying with.
Yeah… I can’t stand Tolkien’s writing beyond the Hobbit.
Double agreement, Dyson. Looking forward to what you put up as you get through your own skyrealms.
Hi, there!
I’m converting the Skyrealms into Monte Cook’s Cypher System, along with creating new art for the game over at http://www.skyrealmsofjorune.com and the Facebook group for the conversion at https://www.facebook.com/groups/skyrealmsofjoruneconversion/.
I’ll be adding two story arcs to the game after I complete the conversion that I hope will alleviate that “everything is here, but what do I do?” sense one gets when reading the original Jorune rules.
The first chapter on Isho will be up soon, and everything will branch out from there.
Glad to see Jorune is still getting reads–it really is my all-time favorite RPG setting without a doubt!
Long time Jorune fan, have both 2e and 3e but never played it. I just picked up Troika! and, although I’ve never played it either, I’m working on a Troika! system hack for Jorune. I’ve got about 18 backgrounds (e.g., Salu Sailor, Thivin Flute Merchant, Woffen Authew, Dyte Punk, Gloundan Shadow Warrior, Maudra Caji, Bronth Thomboc) and am working on the Isho system with dyshas as spells. Pretty straightforward conversion given how streamlined Troika! is and how little variety and utility there is among the dyshas–they are almost entirely offensive blasters of some kind (pew! pew! pew!). Will share once I get it done since i know you enjoyed Troika!