Jorune Revisited

After a long hiatus, I’ve decided to revisit Jorune.

From Wikipedia

“Skyrealms of Jorune was based on a science-fantasy background (of the planetary romance subtype) created by Andrew Leker, initially for a school writing assignment. The setting was somewhat comparable to the Barsoom of the John Carter novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, in that it was a barbaric fantasy world populated by sword-wielding heroes who encountered strange alien beings and technologies.”

Jorune, first edition was published in 1984 (which means that next year it will celebrate it’s 25th Anniversary). I was first introduced to the game by John (a friend who has moved on) and from then I developed a deep and long-lasting love for the game. It inspired me more than Tekumel, left me hungering for more and irked me when I discovered that due to personalities and high claims on the value of the intellectual property, Jorune would never again be printed in another edition. (Reviews on RPG.net)

Second edition boxed sets still show up every now and then and Chessex still have a stock of the books they published:

SRP 02000 Skyrealms of Jorune™ RPG $20.00
SRP 02001 Sholari Pack™ (Jorune™ GM Screen & Modules) $16.00
SRP 02010 The Sobayid Atlas™ (for Jorune™) $16.00
SRP 02100 Innocents of Gauss™ (Jorune™ Module) $10.00
SRP 02101 The Gire of Sillipus™ (Jorune™ Module) $12.00
Call 888-243-7739 if you want to order any.

For my weekly group I’ve been toying with many ideas what to run. First of all a GODLIKE game seemed right as it would give me my superhero fix. Secondly I considered a 1950s era superhero game inspired partly by Warren Ellis’ Planetary. But at the moment my heart is set on running Jorune – converting the system to BRP (using Nick Middleton’s BRP rules as a basis and Cthulhu Dark Ages as the medium). It’s similar enough, and yet different to, the other games we have been playing. (The group is heavily slanted towards BRP-based games – we’ve played RuneQuest, Delta Green and Gaslight so far over the last two and a half years).

Jorune never really caught on though it seemed more popular than some culture games insofar as it managed to have an entire computer game created for it.

So, what have I done?

Firstly I’ve created a Jorune character sheet, (front and back) which is in PDF format and can be downloaded. I’m not challenging copyrights here – just enabling some gamers. While a character sheet is only a start and not a destination by any means, it’s going to be the first thing that my players experience – other than the Tauther guide – that is!

And where can you find more information?

I’d start with the Jorune Yahoo Group. Move quickly on to Jorune.org. And the have a look at Robert Dushay‘s and SholariJames‘ pages.

I’m going to give it a go. I need to do more work on Jorune BRP I think but it’s a starter for 10.