Date: Fri, 16 Apr 93 17:15:27 +0200 From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer) To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest) Subject: The RuneQuest Daily, Fri, 16 Apr 1993 This digest was generated automatically. You may find messages that should not belong here, like subscription requests, etc. Sorry. You will of course send such requests to RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM. All mail sent to RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM will automatically be included in a next issue. Selected articles may also appear in a regular Digest. If you want to submit articles to the Digest only, contact the editor at RuneQuest-Digest-Editor@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM. -Henk Langeveld -- Send Submissions to: Enquiries to: The RuneQuest Daily is a spin-off of the RuneQuest Digest and deals with the subjects of Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha. Maintainer: Henk.Langeveld@Sun.COM --------------------- From: sogcity@aol.com Subject: Response to Adam's "Flame" Message-ID: <9304152304.tn07453@aol.com> Date: 16 Apr 93 03:04:14 GMT Fixes, errata, and Avalon Hill In response to Adam (awr0@aberystwyth.ac.uk) First off, I think it is a bit naive for you to think that every product coming out is going to be perfect, and need no correction. These things are complicated, they are produced under a deadline whether we like it or not, and the world of Glorantha is extremely complex. Given that combination of factors, there is no possibility that there won't be mistakes. I for one feel that the number of mistakes has dropped remarkably across a very short number of products. This seems to me an excellent sign that AH and Ken are getting their organizational house in order. If you think things are in bad shape compared to RQ 2 or RQ 1, I suggest you look back through some of those old products and notice the often poor graphics, amateurish layout, huge sections of white space, and sometimes laughable typoes. Not to say that it wasn't the best stuff out at the time, nor to suggest that I don't want to buy your old copy of Pavis. :-) Adam writes: "The point is, that AH expects to find errata in there products. " As explained above, it would be close-minded of Ken to expect his product was perfect. Would you prefer that he had the attitude of companies like Palladium, where if you offer the slightest criticism, the head guy decides you are Evil Incarnate? Most people who do RQ keep up with the magizines and every other source (like this list) as best they can. Certainly, we can use the Digest, America Online, and GEnie to distribute erratta. But there are people who have no access to them, and mag article and the like are the best way to reach them. Mailing lists have been discussed, but simply are not practical. A SASE gets you all the erratta available for RQ. WE want to compile that erratta so that the SASE gets you all erratta for all RQ material. Adam writes: "Another method would be to consider changing the published packs, by including errata sheets, or (This may seem quite logical really) correcting the publication." A fine idea, but any of these suggestions entail an entire new print run, with all the associated work and costs. I'm sure you don't want to make people buy the product again to get the erratta. Adam's various "flame" points: >1) Issaries write-up in Cradles, where did the Rune-Lord status go to? >Merchants need protecting. Similarly, I would conisder that Lankhor >Mhy would possibly have 'Explorers'. As you probably know, many priest or lord categories were eliminated in the RQ3 version of the cults. I prefer this, since it makes each cult more individual. Issaries need protecting, true. In Orlanthi society, it is Orlanth cultists who do this. Traders trade, not fight. Same for Lhankor Mhy. This specialization helps to eliminate one of the major complaints about RQ2, that every character ended up capable of doing everything. (On a side note, this also matches the restriction of spirit magic availability, which I also like for the same reasons.) >2) Do the words Lanbril, Pavis, Flintnail(Not sure on this one) mean >anything. Pavis was half covered in Cradles. It would of been nice to >have the more 'Cult'ural aspects of the city covered. Books can only be so big before they cost $40 or break their spines, or both. What would you have cut from the book to put those things in? And regardless of your personal dislike for the "skeleton" format of Cults of Glorantha, the short form of the cults does give the basics necessary to run them, at least for me. Note that Lanbril appears in CoG, Pavis falls under City Gods, and Flintnail is a TINY and extremely secretive, elite cult. >3) Thief God's, what happened to the trickster cult? I haven't seen a >write up of that cult anywhere. It would be nice to have a decent >write-up of a thief cult. The only one I've seen is in the old Pavis >pack. Which is not published anymore. I can't follow this. Do you want more on thieves, as you stated in 2), or on tricksters? Everybody wants more info on everything, and there is only so much that can be published at once. I want to do the West, but for the moment I have to help Ken get the Center going, so he will sooner feel it has been properly covered, so I can do the West. Adam says " If I had enough money I would like to buy the rights to RQ2 from AH or whoever owns the rights and print it. I know it would sell." You are not the only person who feels this way. Until one of those persons hits the lottery ( and decides to put a big chunk of those winnings into a long term possible money pit) we must live with the arrangement Chaosium made. If wishes were publications, we'd all be able to run a campaign set in Glamour.... Does anybody know if the original material published in the early eighties will ever be published, ie The Big Rubble, The Original Cradle adventure, etc. ? Portions of this material will be recycled into new products. I have mentioned the Cradle to Ken several times. He is less than convinced of its desparate need to be published. Balastor's barracks needs a few changes to be redone, but really, I think that most of the other _scenarios_ from Pavis and Big Rubble are pretty forgettable. It is the source material that really made it. None of the above is Official, but I guess it does come from someone who thinks he knows a bit about what it takes to publish RQ. I can't wait to read what you guys think of Shadows. My first big RQ contribution, unless you count the Ostrich Riders in HEROES magazine, years ago. And Adam, it didn't really strike me as a flame. M >|< Mike Dawson (not Kirsten Niemann, my patient girlfriend) sogcity@aol.com eco0kkn@cabell.vcu.edu --------------------- From: marks@slough.mit.edu (Mark S. c/o Tom Yates) Subject: Flames and Society Message-ID: <9304160710.AA24552@Sun.COM> Date: 16 Apr 93 07:13:46 GMT Flame On >Ok where to start, how about a flame. Evidently not a Yelmalio. > Excuse me?! We should correct your material? That when I >go out and spend my 15 pounds or however much this supplement >will cost me, I must also buy magazines etc which support RQ >just to get the corrections to the product that I have bought. >Personally I would prefer waiting an extra 2 weeks for >a quality product rather than a shoddy 'Get it published as soon >as possible so we can make money quicker' product. You may, perhaps, have taken Ken's friendly colloquial banter a bit too seriously. There is no good reason to believe that our Rune Czar expects us to find either huge mistakes or prose worthy of hosanas. If you have engaged in a creative project, you must be aware that small minor glitches are inevitable. It should encourage you that AH wants to hear about any faults we find. Playtester's can't catch everything. Besides, we're not talking ASL here, what sort of crippling Errata can there be in a scenario? >I'm in a flaming mood so onto other points. > 1) Issaries write-up in Cradles, where did the Rune-Lord >status go to? Merchants need protecting. Similarly, I would conisder that Lankhor Mhy would possibly have 'Explorers'. RuneQuest Three did away with silly rules-mechanics driven Rune Lords for non-fighting cults. Deal with it. > 2) Do the words Lanbril, Pavis, Flintnail(Not sure on >this one) mean anything. Pavis was half covered in Cradles. It >would of been nice to have the more 'Cult'ural aspects of the >city covered. This was a River of Cradles product, not a Pavis specific one. It had a hell of a lot of source material for the money. We live in an imperfect world, and can not expect to get everything we want at once. > I could go on about GoG and what a waste of paper that was, and >maybe a book with 10 cult write-ups rather than 400 would have >been more worthwhile. Really. As a GM, I find that the GOG Cults book is my most valuable reference, both when gaming and when designing. Also, as an aside, I'd like to air my hunch that the Seven Mother aren't "healed" or "corrupted" Lightbringers, but rather a cheesy way to fit as many Lunar gods as possible into Cults of Prax. ************************************************************** Magic and Culture >This is all getting off the track really, as I intended it as an >example of how ordinary people might have their lives changed by >widespread use of magic. I think the culture would tend to be much >more like 20th century than ancient. There was a big discursion about along these lines on GEnie. The Gang O' Four (back before they were the Gang O' Four) and the rest of us were talking (arguing) about Sorcery. Someone consulted Stafford and confirmed that there is NO Gloranthan Internet or Fed Ex based on teleport. Bad Things happen when mortals start doing stuff like that. Besides, the gods don't have to kill innovators who alter the course of nature; the fanatically conservative lynch mobs will string up the "God Learners" first. In the end, of course, Gloranthans are neither ancient nor modern. The RuneQuest rules were written for a game, not a social or physical model. Extrapolating from them can be tricky. >In fact the magic has always been there right from the start, >whereas early cultures on Earth initially got along without any >technology/magic at all, and thus developed before it became available. >If the magic was there before the culture, that is going to cause >BIG differences. This is very true. >I suspect that those tables have been frigged for player character >backgrounds, and don't necessarily reflect the 'real' population >breakdowns. I don't really have any idea on how real populations >do break down into percentages... Yes, this has been my interpretation as well. I mean, one may dislike Lunars, but does anyone believe that one Pelorian in twenty five is a thief? ----------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Sabalauskas-Marks@slough.mit.edu --------------------------- "The laws of economics are statements of tendencies expressed in the indicative mood, and not ethical precepts in the imperative." Alfred Marshall ----------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------- From: rab112@cscgpo.anu.edu.au (Rex A Bean) Subject: Re: The RuneQuest Daily, Thu, 15 Apr 1993 Message-ID: <9304160749.AA08768@cscgpo> Date: 16 Apr 93 22:49:07 GMT Adam writes in the Thursday Digest: > > The point is, that AH expects to find errata in there products. If that > is the case and it cannot be helped, then provide a mailing service for people > who have bought the product and keep sending them updates to the various > products that need correcting. > Another method would be to consider changing the published packs, by > including errata sheets, or (This may seem quite logical really) correcting > the publication. I would suggest that AH could also use this Digest as a Forum for publishing errata. It would get to a lot of people as well and obviate the need for physical mailing by AH to those of us who have access to email. Just a suggestion and I hope Ken Rolston reads it, For another topic. I've haven't had a chance to read the new RQIV draft rules but with all this discussion re. Martial Arts I wonder if people aren't falling into the trap of making the system much more complicated in an attempt at their idea of realism. This is fine for inidividuals who want to go to all that trouble but is AH doing something like this for RQIV? Sorry that I don't have time to read the RQIV draft myself but could someone who has, please comment on whether it looks like the proposed combat system is getting more or less complicated and time-consuming? Steve wrote: > True, the effectiveness strictly goes roughyl as the square of those who > actually fight (excluding logistic tail). The argument goes roughly as > follows: if you have a force k times bigger than the opponent's then your man > only has to kill [incapacitate, rout, whatever] 1/k men to wipe out the > opponent, whereas each of his men have to kill k. Thus each of his men has to > kill k**2 times as many for parity - but given equal quality of men , this > means that your force is thus k**2 as effective. Please run that last sentence by me again! I don't think my maths is that rusty and as I see it his men only have to kill k times as many to maintain parity. To achieve victory you would have to kill more than k times but is k^2 really the lower limit for that number? I'm a physicist so mathematical proofs are not something I like doing. Mark Buckley writes: > True, but I suspect that there is an awful lot of communication in > Glorantha (telepathy spells, teleports, air elementals, spirits...) Yes, all this communication magic is available. However considering Priests are comparatively rare and they have to spend a day worshipping in a consecrated spot to recover the spell once used and have all their normal day to day duties of ministering to the flock to keep them busy. I really don't think this magic would be used enough to make a huge difference. Maybe in the Lunar Empire there would be special Priests on special duty for veerrry important information communication but to the person in the street I don't think it would make any difference. I have always thought of this communication magic as being only useful for emergency situations or for helping turn the tide of an important battle. Trying to find time to rest in one spot for a day or more whilst on active campaign would be a nightmare for the general concerned. One advantage I have heard cited for the Lunar Empire is that they were able to organise regiments of magic wielding priests or magicians. Very few other societies have the degree of organisation necessary to do this. However I still don't think that someone important enough to have made the priesthood is going to put up with being a messenger boy for long, even for the Red Emperor. Unless there was a very good reason for it. In barbarian societies they rely on visions from their Gods when something really drastic is going to happen. Otherwise they just use whatever messengers are available. Another thought is why would most people in Glorantha really care what happens outside their small patch anyway. They will probably never go more than 20 miles from their village . It is only lunatics like adventurers or merchants that do such dangerous things as travelling through unknown and potentially hostile areas - according to your average small country town mentality. It is only in the past few decades of our world that travelling long distances has become more commonplace in the First World. I'm sure it doesn't happen much in the Third World at all just due to the cost. > I have a suspicion (and am probably completely wrong here...), that > excluding the use of nukes, modern warfare actually causes less > casualties than previous wars. I've always wondered about the logic of barbarians likeing to go on war parties or cattle raids. If only 10% died then it would only take 10 years to kill off all the able bodied males (assuming it is not a geometric progression). Does this mean that in fact casualties from raids etc were very low and thus they did do a lot of raiding. Or was the number of raids low eg only every couple of years and we have been overdoing our estimates of barbarians willingness to fight. Comparisons to historical pre-fire-arm data would be interesting if anyone knows any figures. Whew! I was feeling expansive. Regards, Andrew Bean --------------------- From: tzunder@cix.compulink.co.uk (Tom Zunder) Subject: Martial Arts Message-ID: Date: 16 Apr 93 09:08:00 GMT I don't really like rules but here goes. RQ Martial Arts stinks. Therfeore Loren's ideas are refreshing. BUT they don't fit with RQIV. I think that the special options concept in RQIV could be developed further into all skills. In other words, like Ki skills in Lands of Ninja (will that seev RQIV?) those who know what they're doing or are members of guilds/cults/professions can do "tricks of the trade" that others can't. These are over and above the norm, but not quite as good as magic. I intend to use this idea, but I felt the RQIV 2.0 draft made the availability of combat special options a little loose. If combat special options exist, why not others, including a set to accurately create the special knowledge of a martial artist? -------------------------------------------------------------------- tzunder@cix.compulink.com.uk -------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------- From: L.P.Williams@newcastle.ac.uk (L.P. Williams) Subject: RQ2 Message-ID: Date: 16 Apr 93 11:29:26 GMT I should have read Adam's 'flaming' message before sending mine. Then I could have included this REPRINT RUNEQUEST 2 REPRINT RUNEQUEST 2 REPRINT RUNEQUEST 2 REPRINT RUNEQUEST 2 Adam is dead right, all the original material would sell. Why? Because it is brilliant, simple and very playable. All these rewrites are pointless. RQ2 had it right. Quite frankly Chaosium where idiots to sell the publishing rights as Ah have f****d the best game ever written. Who needs a profession? I think being in the priesthood (or lordhood?) is good enough. Long live Runequest Two !!!!!!!!!!! Humakt would turn in his grave. (or maybe not) Death to Chaos and AH! --------------------- From: L.P.Williams@newcastle.ac.uk (L.P. Williams) Subject: Chaos 'n' Armies 'n' Stuff Message-ID: Date: 16 Apr 93 10:58:48 GMT In a campaign I ran some years back a Stormbull Initiate contracted a chaos feature while exploring Griffin Mountain. This was despite my best attempts to avoid it. His reply upon realising his fate:- Oh shit !!! My High Priest's going to knack me!!! As it happens he was thrown out the cult until such time as he aleviated the problem. However on reflection this was hardly fair. It was not his fault and he was infact on cult buisness. Therefore I would suggest adding a RUNE spell to Stormbull's list. Remove Chaos - 3pt only usable by a temple High Priest. It could even be limited to being cast on high holy days. Several other alternatives exist. 1 Join the cult of Nysalor. 2 Become a beserker and wage a true holy war against chaos 3 Embrace chaos, this may well happen as obtaining a chaos feature may well effect the mind as well as the body. Also, it mentions (I think in borderlands ) that on the plains of Prax, both Storm followers and Broo live in relative peace. The reason being that if they were continually at war with each other they would wipe each other out. Life is hard enough in Prax without making it impossible. Therefore the Stormbull noted by Mark Gagnon would be unlikely to feud with friends even if they are unfortunate. I think too that even on three power skuling around at the rear is hardly heroic. On to armies:- It is written somewhere in the vast archive that is RUNEQUEST TWO that there exists within the scummy Lunar Empire a Vampire Legion. Now a legion is a lot of wo/men and would require alot of food, but how the hell do you feed a legion of vampires. One final point RUNEQUEST TWO IS GOD sorcery belongs only to those such as Crag Spider and Delecti Aldryami - Go Barmy! --------------------- From: burt@ptltd.com (Burton Choinski) Subject: Martial Arts Message-ID: <9304151553.AA09454@vino> Date: 15 Apr 93 15:53:43 GMT Loren J. Miller notes: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |SKILLS, MARTIAL ARTS (I suggest we totally rework martial arts as | follows) |> 1. How to fall. This is Acrobatics skill, or perhaps Dodge. Slapping out is not exactly the same, but You could apply MA like Acrobatics where having the skill allows you to fudge acrobatics at half level or something. |> 2. How to fight fair. This is the Fight Fair skill, above. It |> 3. How to punch hard. This is a twist of the wrist that |> 4. How to fight dirty (aka street fighting, self-defense). This |> 5. Where to hit. Martial Arts teach advanced students (black Why not just use Martial Arts as it is designated -- a knowledge skill. Thus, You must successfully attack with your Fist skill to actually do damage, but if your roll is also less than or equal to your MA skill you may elect to use one of the above options. A special success allows the use of two options (or double one of them, such as double "fight fair". Critical allows three options, triple selection of certain options, or any combination thereof. #5 How about each selection of #5 allows you to ignore 1 point of worn armor and 1/2 point (round up) of natural armor. #3 Is another tweaking option. Each time the option is taken increase damage base by +1, or AP by 1 when parrying, or whatever. -- Burton --------------------- From: staats@MIT.EDU (Richard C. Staats) Subject: K**2 Kill Ratios, Army sizes and the Use of Magic in Battle Message-ID: <9304151638.AA07883@MIT.EDU> Date: 15 Apr 93 13:49:38 GMT Greetings! Just ignore this if it has already been covered, but the K**2 kill ratio comes from the famous Landchester equations. Landchester's model was based on the idea that if you have two forces and the individual units in the forces can target all the forces on the other side then the rate of kills for a side should be proportional to the number of units on the other side attempting to kill it. This sets up two simultaneous differential equations; the solution of which gives the K**2 result. This works well for air warfare where the participants can see/target all the other participants, but in land warfare, you can only see a fraction of your opponents, and then the kill rations get pretty close to linear. On the subject of logistical support, I believe the adage that tacticians win battles and logisticians win wars. The typical ratio of teeth (combat units) to tail (loggies) in US/European armies is currently about 3 to 1. Usually a combat unit, fully loaded, can support itself for about three days maximum before it either HAS to resupply/refit or become combat ineffective. (Even if you have bullets left, it is hard to close with and destroy the enemy if your soldiers have not eaten for an extended period.) There are several issues that would tend to limit army sizes in a medieval setting. Alexander the Great could muster larger sized armies and keep them functional for a longer period of time, because he had less fear from disease in the areas he traversed. The biggest killer on the battlefield until WW I was disease. Any time you gather several thousand people together all in one place and time and then start marching them about, far away from home and sanitary conditions, you increase the chances for disease. In a dryer climate, you have less chance of contracting something nasty. If the water supplies are wholesome then the chances of contracting diseases go down again. The logistics issue is another problem. It takes A LOT of assets and time to transport and distribute all the fodder, food, water, spare weapons, etc. that a big army needs. The 2d ID (US) lost 3,500 individual weapons out of 12,000 in a single battle in WW II. If a Humakti loses a sword somewhere in a battle in the middle of Prax then he is going to have a very difficult time replacing that weapon unless the commander made some provision for that like carrying some extra weapons in the baggage train. The more logistics tail you have, the more slowly your organization is. Also, there is a huge Command, Control and Communication factor involved with large forces. Unless you have an excellent way of communicating with your subordinates then you are going to have tremendous problems getting a large organization to do what you need it to do. Together, those three factors tended to limit the sizes of ancient/medieval armies. If you could: be close to a water source (i.e. you could send supplies via ship), in a dry climate (i.e. less chance of disease), and had a good communication system then you could have a good sized force. Otherwise it was a risky proposition at best. In all the examples of large forces in ancient/medieval times, the commanders spent a good amount of effort both in planning and execution trying to overcome the factors I mentioned. So, where would magic be used? Command, Control and Communication for sure! Logistical support and especially medical if possible. Combat multiplier functions where applicable. Last, where proactical in combat. Every headquarters should have some form of medium to long range ability to communicate with its immediate subordinates, headquarters and supporting units. As a commander, I would want some way to scout out enemy positions (e.g. long range vision or audio abilities, invisibility or silence for scouts, flying for scouts, etc.) I want someway to support my troops that doesn't require a huge logistics tail. Large scale uses of repair spells are one example. If there is a reasonable way of producing food and water and fodder then I would want that too. I want some way of cutting down on disease, and I want the wounded back in action as soon as possible. On a more realistic note, I want some effective way of tending to the fallen. I don't want bodies stacked like cordwood at the end of a battle (i.e. VERY bad for morale!). I want some way of disposing of trash (i.e. source of enemy intelligence), and I want some way of fooling the enemy commander about my intentions (e.g. illusions, distractions, decoys, etc.) It would be nice to have battlefield augmentation of senses as well (e.g. magical flares, night vision, bat sense/"sonar", etc.) If I could rapidly transport my personnel then I would fight for that capability (e.g. teleporting a group of DeathLords into the middle of the enemy headquarters could ruin your whole day!). I would want combat multipliers. For example, having some way to rapidly cross rivers or break down defensive walls would be good. Making my archers be able to fly and resistant to enemy missile weapons would be virtually invaluable. Of course, I would want to be able to counter all these things if the enemy tried them on me! :-) Wow! Way more than my allowed $.02! :-} I remain In service, Rich Longtime RQ GM --------------------- From: STEVEG@ARC.UG.EDS.COM (Entropy needs no maintenance) Subject: Red Tsars Message-ID: <01GX14NPNEW20020MF@UG.EDS.COM> Date: 14 Apr 93 23:50:10 GMT Thoughts inspired by MOB's posting a few days back:- On the subject of the Red Emperor, one of the things that distinguishes the Lunar deities and demi-deities from those of the barbarian belt is that they tend to have titles rather than names (the same of course is true of the Invisible God or oddities like Comb&Braid). But since we know the names of Jar-Eel, & Hon-Eel, it can't be that there's a mystical "True Name" type of rationalisation. Something I filed away for use in such circumstances is the name of the title character of Aphra Behn's play "The Emperor of the Moon", Irridonazar. Then there's my zeitgeist theory of the Red Empire - Glorantha was developed by a person whose formative years encompassed the height of the Cold War, including such things as the Cuban Missile Crisis; just as in the SF of the time, what is more natural as a threat than a creeping corrupt Red Empire? >From which, folding the analogy back on itself, the collapse of the Lunar Empire could be explained as a Gloranthan equivalent of perestroika. The name squirreled away here is Theonikos (approximate translation into Greek of the Hebraic Michael). --------------------- From: ROBERTSON@delphi.intel.com (Roderick Robertson, SC1-5, x52936) Subject: Re: The RuneQuest Daily, Thu, 15 Apr 1993 Message-ID: Date: 15 Apr 93 17:32:00 GMT >> Looking at the tables in Glorantha, Genertala, we see that >>characters from the Barbarian Belt have a 89% to be in the 'carl' >>class, with 11% in the Thane/Housecarl class (Noble, Priest, Warrior), >>matching the estimation pretty closely. Sartar is listed on p 23 as >>having a total of 180,00 Human adults. Using the Estimation, about >>76,500 warriors can be mustered, 7,650 of which are heavily armed and >>armored. This would seriously disrupt society, but when you are being >>invaded... >I suspect that those tables have been frigged for player character >backgrounds, and don't necessarily reflect the 'real' population breakdowns. >I don't really have any idea on how real populations do break down into >percentages... I don't think they've been mucked with too much, something like 40% chance of being a Farmer? Doesn't sound like too exciting a career... (Especially not to my poor player who, given three chances at the table, still managed to get Farmer as his family's occupation). As far as magic on the battlefield, most Battle Magic (Spirit Magic) is just not that scary. Most usable spells enhance a person's abilities (the Stat enhancers, movement, weapon spells, etc). A few spells like Light- and Dark-wall are also of tactical importance. Not to say that even the most "useless" spell can't be useful on occasion: Ignite to set spears on fire, Light when darkness falls, etc. The point is that even massed Disruptions don't have much chance of breaking a unit (now Frenzy, cast at your enemy at an opportune time could...). Even Rune Magic for the most part only usually affects one person (Sunspear, Sever Spirit). We don't have rules for those really nifty spells, like the Crater Makers and Earth cult pieces have in the game Dragon Pass. As noted in the Giant's Cradle adventure in Big Rubble (sorry for those that don't have it, I started collecting with RQ I), the combined efforts of a Lunar Magical battalion are beyond the scope of the current rules. When facing more "mundane" troops, there will probably more wounds inflicted (bladesharps, etc.), but fewer wounded troops (Heals) in relation to dead troops. Even then, Initiates get to DI (except Humakti) to come back from the dead, Chalana Arroy Priestess or equivalent will accompany units, etc. Just some ramblings... Roderick --------------------- From: burt@ptltd.com (Burton Choinski) Subject: RQIV NPC generator Message-ID: <9304151824.AA09775@vino> Date: 15 Apr 93 18:24:51 GMT I have uploaded it to soda.berkeley.com and it should be available soon, most likely in the programs directory. -- Burton --------------------- From: wroberts@magnusug.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (William C Robertson) Subject: Re: The RuneQuest Daily, Thu, 15 Apr 1993 Message-ID: Date: 15 Apr 93 10:51:43 GMT Mark writes.... > Nice idea...but as you have to recast [bladesharp on a plough]it every 5 > mins, that is a lot of magic points. How many peasant farmers have that > much mp? (The I agree, but I'm sure that most farmers would have it anyway. Not that I have *any* experience plowing, but you could run into trouble spots. Maybe? > True, but I suspect that there is an awful lot of communication in > Glorantha (telepathy spells, teleports, air elementals, spirits...) Yes, I'm sure that there is a great deal of communication by magic, but it's still difficult to convey a LOT of information through speech, much less compile 200 page documents to distribute to fourty of your subordinates by next Fireday. Even today on earth were still learning more efficient techniques of information handling, so I have a tough time imagining this phenominon on Glorantha. Also regarding the use of detect/sense/find [substance] spells. Sure these are useful, and they make information available to armies on Glorantha that earthly armies can't take advantage of, but detect [anything] isn't going to help a commander find the third army that was supposed to be covering his flank if they're not there. Find enemy would be extremely useful in small scale tactics, but it's not going to help the llama riders track down those pesky sable scouts if they're miles away. Cheerio! -Bill --------------------- From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Subject: Re: Martial Arts Message-ID: <9304160208.AA17947@cs.uwa.edu.au> Date: 16 Apr 93 04:34:44 GMT With regard to martial arts, it seems to me that what the Martial Arts skill is intended to simulate is the differences between being trained in martial arts, and actually practising special techniqiues, and such, and just learning to fight by experience. It is a nice way of simultaing the fact that it is easier to learn to fight just by fighting things, but if approached scientificly, it is more sucessul. The most important thing to note is that most martial arts techniques (kicks, grapples, holds, and many unusualy niceties like countering) in RQ4 are covered by seperate skills or abilities (and in RQ3 did not exist). Martial Arts is the skill of responding in an intelligent way (rather than an instinctive way) to attack. (it is worth noting that our insticts are towards non-lethal combat). Learning to attack the most vital points is not a difficult, high powred skill taught only to Black Belts. Basic martial arts training (for hard martial arts) is jaw/throat-solar plexus-groin. Boxing taught not as a sport would be pretty much the same. Note that the differences between martial arts in RQ terms is simply the different skills taught with it, and what skills your martial arts applies too. Full-contact boxing schools would teach martial arts and fist attack and attribute training. Karate schools teach MA, fist attack and parry, and kick attack. Aikido schools teach dodge, breakfall, martial throw, martial hold, and MA. I have even been toying with allowing fencers to use MA (but probably not). Dave Cake