Where did the Pocket Dragon Runes come from?

Here's the story direct from Real:

Several people have had questions over the years about my choice of runes. First, I would like to say that I believe the power in runes comes from their historic function as a means of literate communication... not from any other magic associated with their shapes. Magic is just another way of seeing. But sharing "whispers" (the traditional meaning of RUNA) or learning any other "code" for writing can be very magical!

A part of my basic education in the 1960's included Latin and Greek. While most of that knowledge unfortunately has evaporated through disuse, it did inspire a greater curiosity about written languages. So it was not too strange that in my art I often declined to use simple repeat patterns, but opted instead for little jokes written in whichever of many futharks I had most recently discovered. This was a time-honored tradition among scribes and it was decorative without being tedious. It didn't really matter if I mixed Latin written in a Scandinavian futhark with English or Italian in a Celtic futhorc in the same painting. This was for my own amusement.

However, in the 1970's it was brought to my attention quite forcefully that people were attempting "unassisted translations". Which, I can assure everyone, is not easy. Tens of thousands of rune systems stem from many traditions with what Cyrus Gordon called the "mutability of time and location". Most had no great governmental or religious entity dedicated to their standardization.

Two things happened at about the time I was deciding how to proceed. I purchased a copy of Cyrus Gordon's Riddles in History in which he almost casually validates the authenticity of three disparate stellae through a commonality of unusual uses of several runes. And I found a 1926 copy of Winston's Dictionary in which the example of a "Gothic Futhorc" is shown. This Gothic Germanic futhorc had several unusual features, but it was simple and it worked better with English than many of the runes I had been using recently. Also it had the attraction for me of coming from a slightly strange source. So I adopted it, deciding that it would be easy to translate with a key and it had been affected to a great extent by the Latin alphabet so it would be easy to remember. I added simple punctuation and where there was a choice of several runes for the same English letter, I just accepted the one most closely resembling the Latin form. Over the years, to simplify further, I have also ceased using the thorn and other archaic English letters.

People believed in the magic of these runes and that tradition was important to me. I did not want to create a sterile "Synthetic Futhorc" for my little world. But modification seemed within the best tradition of rune writing.

In retrospect, I probably should have used a more typical Germanic futhark, but the keys have been published in many places now and I no longer have the full discretion of the scribe's secret jokes (except for an occasional bit of ogam). Anyway, as I said, the Magic is just another way of seeing. I hope you will enjoy this for what it is.

With Magic!