Has anybody played Robin Laws Viking game where there is no fixed DM? This looks like another game that could garner some hostility, but it either isn't "indie" enough for that or too obscure.

The combat system looks a little too involved for a small pick-up game, especially when everyone needs to know it well enough to master small parts. I really wonder where Robin Laws got his good cred from...

Robin is really good at tweaking mechanics to suit very conceptual needs.  In particular, he's been successful at making sensibly "crunchy" mechanics serve "narrativist" purposes.  HeroQuest, for instance, while apparently being a so-called narrativist game, is really a solidly mechanically-driven powergame.  Dying Earth gets at much the same end, though from a different direction.

As for Rune, I own it, but haven't played it.  The mechanics are a tweaked version of those in Ars Magica, which are pretty simple, so I don't view that as a potential problem.  What stopped me in my tracks is that Rune is a computer game.  Heck, it's actually based on a computer game, and I failed to see how the pencil & paper version added anything to a game that could be played with more satisfaction on a computer or game console.  In that sense, it reminded me of the old Games Workshop board game, Chainsaw Warrior, or the Aliens board game, both of which could have been executed to the same (or better) effect as computer games.

!i!

Nope haven't played the game, but I did come very close to  buying it @ the used books store.

In the end it just didn't look that hinteresting to me. It looked interesting, but the Gming thing truned me off.

I have it, I like it a lot, but it has some confusing points.

Specifically, it needs to streamline encounter creation.

I really struggled with building encounters for the thing: GM's get points for monsters and obstacles (essentially platforms and conditions and so on). This has to be balanced against what treasure you give as part of the encounter. But I never seemed to get it right.

Other than that it looks very cool. Tried to build some encounters for it, but my group wasn't intrested in doing any work themselves. ...So I never got to play it.

I have a book called "Last Hero in Scandinavia" that's a dual-stat d20/Rune supplement. It's been a while since I've read it. Since I don't have the Rune core book, I never really understood the Rune sections of the book.

Oh, and I still regularly play the computer game, Rune: Halls of Valhalla.

It was weird I'll give you that.
Based on a computer game, it came across as more of a bunch of silly vikings killing for fun, and creating their own encounters to earn experience which you got the moment the encounter was done.