Fate of the Norns Conversions, Cards

Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok is a beautifully presented game, with a unique system of play and well designed mechanics. The game is run with the Rune System where you draw runes to play from your "hand" for various actions and effects. This system is simple to understand once you grasp the basic concepts, and can create a tense but fun experience.

Using runes is unique to Fate of the Norns (FOTN), but it does not create a very practical experience for players. To play FOTN properly, you're going to need multiple bags of runes to play with, which are expensive and the card packs will also run you some money if you're playing as the Norn who could end up using multiple decks of runes.

To help simplify the game, I've been trying to work on some conversions for the Rune System, so that I can play FOTN online with friends. Here is the first and most basic idea I've come up with.

Using Cards:

Decks of cards are cheap, and they're available everywhere. The first thing you need to do, is separate the cards by suit. The suits will represent the three attributes of the game. My suggestion is:

Hearts = Physical Runes
Spade = Mental
Clubs = Spiritual

What each suit represents doesn't really matter so you can have Hearts represent Spiritual runes instead if you want. However, you will need to remove one suit from the deck entirely.

For each suit, you will be using the ace through eight cards since there are eight runes in each set. Just set aside all the other cards. Use one of the Jokers as your Void rune.

If you're feeling creative, you can even write what power or skill is tied to the rune on the card with permanent marker. This will help speed up the game immensely if the effect is right in front of you. You can also draw a rune symbol in the corner.

You can also use the unused cards as initiative trackers. Just writer the Denizen or Dweller's name on the back of the card.

If I find anything in the core book that needs to be changed to use this conversion, I'll update this post.

Next I want to convert Fate of the Norns to a very flexible system that is easy to use: Savage Worlds. The goal is to convert Fate of the Norns to a system which uses dice, without sacrificing that unique charm that this game provides.