Venerable MMO RuneScape is branching into the tabletop realm

In a world full of more modernized MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV, it’s easy to forget that the 21-year-old RuneScape is still going strong. Developer Jagex has been bought and sold a couple of times in the last few years but it appears that its acquisition last year by The Carlyle Group has provided opportunities for diversification and growth if recent news is anything to go by.

In a press release today, Jagex revealed that it joined forces with Steamforged Games in order to create two table-top games based on RuneScape. Neither game has a name attached at present, but the announcement stated that one will be a board game, while the other will be a more fully-fledged TTRPG, in which Jagex promises “fresh-but-faithful adaptations of classic quests and characters.” The board game will take between one and five players on quests throughout RuneScape’s world of Gielinor, with crafting, cooking systems, and more. The TTRPG, meanwhile, will feature a core book allowing players to craft their own experiences in the world of Gielinor, with the ruleset described as “fully compatible” with D&D 5E.

The games will launch later this year, with the TTRPG coming straight to storefronts and the board game kicking off on Kickstarter. The crowd-sourcing approach is not unusual for Steamforged, which has previously launched successful board game adaptations for properties like Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, and Horizon: Zero Dawn.