Jorune
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{{Infobox RPG |title= Jorune |image= |caption= |designer= Andrew Leker |publisher= SkyRealms Publishing |date= 1992 (3rd edition) |genre= Science-fantasy |system= Custom |footnotes= }} Jorune, or Skyrealms of Jorune, is a role-playing game set among the eponymous Skyrealms: Floating "islands" of earth levitated by mysterious crystals in the crust of an alien planet. Three editions of the game were published in the mid-1980s to early 1990s, but all are currently out of print.
Skyrealms of Jorune was based on a science-fantasy background 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. The buildings, races, and bizarre creatures of Jorune were brought to life by the appealing, highly realistic artwork of illustrator Miles Teves.
While Jorune had many original and quite different ideas in its setting (compared to the role-playing games of its day) it was often perceived as a poor man's Tekumel due to a number of similarities. These included the idea of human's colonising a distant planet and subsequently losing contact with the rest of humanity (a dimensional rift in Tekumel's case, civil war in Jorune's) leading to the regression of the colonist's society and war against the planet's native inhabitants.
The game also suffered by comparative shallowness. For example, some game terms were derived from the language of Jorune, such as the use of "Sholari" ("master") for the gamemaster. Overall, the effect smacked of tokenism with a few "colour" words and no real attempt to describe a new culture, language or society. In practice, adventures on Jorune did not stray too far from the model of other fantasy role-playing games of the day, with alien characters and technology closely paralleling the denizens and magic of typical fantasy settings.