The player assumes the character of a hero/Legend, and builds a deck/combat team out of cards that represent different fantasy archetypes — knights, mages, healers, etc — or creatures that attack the opponent or aide the Legend, or simply cards with weapon buffs or extra card draws. Runescape Legends is set in Gielinor, the world in which most of Runescape takes place. The collectible card game was announced this weekend, at RuneFest, and will enable fans of the MMORPG (and all the other card game enthusiasts, of course) to engage in some miniature role-playing game adventures in single-player, as well as in grueling multiplayer combat.
 
Runescape created another hit out of nowhere when they released Hearthstone, the collectible card strategy game for PC that acted as a spin off and supplement to the Warcraft universe (while being set in it and based on it) earlier this year. The free to play title was an instant hit, and became the most played online card game easily, supplanting genre stalwarts such as Might and Magic and the Pokemon Trading Card Game. The game play surprise is in finding out how one’s deck matches up against the other player’s.

Pretty early on players figure out a build order that works best, but the level of uncertainty in not knowing exactly what the other player has done keeps the game from being just another CCG and Hearthstone clone. Of course, Chronicle‘s case is not helped by its cards looking Hearthstone derivative in art style. Your own personal adventure isn't Chronicle's only consideration - there's also a rival player to account for. Rivals are online opponents who complete the adventure alongside you, and will be your final boss on the last chapter. They'll fight enemies, upgrade personal abilities, or directly influence your own game. Many card effects can reduce a rival's gold or health, destroy weapons, and spark brief combat exchanges.

This could throw an unexpected wrench into your adventure, leaving you without enough gold to play an ally - or without your weapon just before facing a deadly beast. All of the environments are inspired by RuneScape locations, so we've taken some artistic license with them to get them into the book, but we've also re-envisioned them in this higher fidelity than you'd not necessarily see in RuneScape. A Chinese mining company no one’s ever heard of, Shandong Honda, is in talks to purchase RuneScape developer Jagex for $300 million.

The news was first announced by the Financial Times, although Jagex has gone on to state that the sale has yet to be finalized. At this stage of development, the single player campaign is not yet in place. There are practice matches against generally capable AI, online matches against other humans, and not all of the Legends or hundreds of different cards are yet available. The developers are making daily changes in crafting — players collect tokens during matches that allow them to craft special Legend-specific cards — the size of decks.

And balancing, not to mention minor tweaks in the interface or the way cards are manipulated. Players can assemble their decks (limited to 10 in the beta) from up to 25 cards earned in battle or purchased through microtransactions. Only players entirely new to the genre will need much help understanding these systems, which is great, as the game’s tutorial feels pretty rushed, incomplete and not always completely transparent.