From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #3 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk RQ Rules Digest: Monday, 7 November 1994 Volume 01 : Number 003 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Dunham Date: Sat, 05 Nov 1994 23:23:32 PST Subject: RQR: Re: PenDragon Pass spirit magic; what is RQ? Paul Snow asked >Is PenDragon Pass' version of variable spirit magic out? For those who aren't familiar with it, PenDragon Pass is the name I gave to my variant rules which use Pendragon mechanics with RQ magic. For simplicity, you simply learn spirit magic (no variable learning). The amount you can cast is limited by POW/3 -- a really powerful healer could cast Heal 7. Casting is simply a POW roll (POW*5% in RQ). If you fail, you lose no MP (why punish those with low POW even more?), tho if you fumble, you lose all points you were trying to cast. The number of spells you learn is limited to your Memorize skill (which is also popular for Issaries heralds) -- Pendragon has no INT stat. Certain times or places allow larger spells. For instance, in a sacred grove, you might be able to cast healing magic as if your POW were 5 points higher. Chalana Arroy's holy days would be similar. I've never proposed this as a model for RQ -- it's simpler, but there are plenty of other things more in need of simplification (combat is what slows games down, not spell casting). >What are the core concepts of the RQ system that tie any derivative >game to being RQn? I've argued with people that Pendragon is not a RQ variant, on the grounds that it uses an opposed resolution system, rather than having separate attack and defense rolls. It's true that they both have much the same stats, a similar concept of skills and experience, etc. (Prince Valiant is probably in the Pendragon family, since it uses similar opposed rolls.) But as my players would be the first to tell you, it's very different having a system where only one person wins each melee round. Games that use resolution by target number (Star Wars) or dice (Shadowrun) are obviously not derivative. Elric has attack rolls and parry rolls; it's a RQ derivative in my book. It doesn't have hit locations, but that's a matter of detail. So I guess I look to the combat resolution system as the defining feature of a game. David Dunham * Software Designer * Pensee Corporation Voice/Fax: 206 783 7404 * AppleLink: DDUNHAM * Internet: ddunham@radiomail.net "I say we should listen to the customers and give them what they want." "What they want is better products for free." --Scott Adams ------------------------------ From: Loren Miller Date: Sun, 6 Nov 1994 11:59:40 -0500 (EST) Subject: RQ Rules Digest Format Hello Digest Subscribers, I'm having some trouble with the digest. First, automatic digestification of messages isn't happening yet. I've had to login and issue the generation command manually. Second, I don't have the header and footer sections of the digests working yet, so that's the reason they don't have the neato-keeno disclaimers that a few of you have wanted to see. I'll continue to work on these things, and it may take a few days of irregular digests before it all works. Please bear with me while I work on it. - -- Loren Miller I can tell by your shoes that you are a lover of liberty ------------------------------ From: Loren Miller Date: Sun, 6 Nov 1994 12:08:55 -0500 (EST) Subject: Digests Hello All, Sorry for the short digest. I suspect that digests have been disappearing into thin air. Could one of the early subscribers tell me if volume 1 number 1 was the last digest that was sent? - -- Loren Miller I can tell by your shoes that you are a lover of liberty ------------------------------ From: rollin@EQL12.Caltech.Edu Date: Sun, 6 Nov 94 09:31:14 PST Subject: RQR: AiG Shamen Has anyone had an experienced one of these in their campaign? I've been running a RQ4 version for two years now (give or take), and he's just about balanced with the divine types and Sorcerors in the party. We've looked at the AiG Shamen rules, but it frankly looks like they took an axe to the RQ4 shamen in them, making an already lower end magic system (when compared to the other two), and made them weaker. Conversely, has anyone been running a RQ4 shamen and have comments to make on them? (Or new rules, etc?) ------------------------------ From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu (Paul Reilly) Date: Sun, 6 Nov 94 17:13:45 EST Subject: RQR: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #2 Paul Reilly here. > 2. Developing a complete Staff/Vessel system for Sorcery There was a LOT of Staff/Vessel/Presence traffic last year. I will try to look up one of the quick summaries for newcomers. - paul ------------------------------ From: Bruce Lionel Mason Date: Sun, 6 Nov 1994 21:27:36 -0330 Subject: Re: RQR: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #2 Anyone know what the status of any RQ4 project is? Or what The Chaosium's reasoning behind putting the RQ:AiG on hold was? Also what is the motivation behind this group? I guess it is self-evident that there is no such thing as a perfect set of rules but absolutes of any kind a rules tend not to go together any rules set is specific to a campaign or a published product. Simply if I were to modify the RQ3 rules it would be done with a specific purpose in mind. For example I would probably go with a complex skills system for personal use with experienced players, but if I were working on a manuscript to be published I would use a simpler, more user friendly system. I guess my point is I think it could become too easy for this kind of a list to slip into a sterile ``my system's better than yours'' argument that would achieve little. Personally I would like to see this list generate energy that could help to put some kind of a RQ4 product on the agenda. I do think that a good aesthetic to work by is how could these rules be presented so that they are easily understandable by novices within the constraints of a single volume rule book. - ---Bruce ------------------------------ From: Bruce Lionel Mason Date: Sun, 6 Nov 1994 22:09:49 -0330 Subject: RQR: Resist no more This is just my $0.02 worth of ideas about the resistance tables and opposed rolls in RQ. The basic premise is to remove the resistance table and replace it with oppposed rolls, a la Pendragon. The reasons are two-fold: a I find the resistance table quite hard to teach to new players, this allows the integration of skills and stats. Doing this also requires redefining result categories of percentage rolls as the system becomes too cumbersome if criticals, specials, normals, failures and fumbles all have to be modelled, so I've removed specials and slightly broadened what a critical is. To critical a roll you must roll 1/10th or less of your skill%. I also prefer rounding-up to aritmetical rounding so a skill of 74% becomes a critical of 8%. To make an opposed roll using percentage dice quite simply all parties roll d100 and the best roll wins. Simple eh. Eg if someone with hide 43% is trying to avoid being seen by someone with scan 56% then both roll the dice and the best roll wins. Using Pendragon nomenclature there are 2 possible outcomes: * One winner. * No winners. In the case that everyone fails their rolls then the situation is unchanged. Judging who wins is quite simple. A critical beats everything. A normal beats a failure or fumble. A failure loses unless everyone else manages to fumble somehow. A fumble always loses. The only tricky situation comes when both/all parties manage the same sort of success, eg everyone makes their roll but noone criticals. In this case the *HIGHEST* roll wins. I know it sounds dubious but the odds get too skewed if lowest wins. Using stats is quite simple: to compare stats you roll stat*5% vs stat*5%. Eg the good old arm wrestling contest between Burly Bob STR 18 (90%) vs Cormac the feeble STR 11 (55%) is a roll of 90% vs 55%. I'm not a great statisitican but this works out that Bob wins something like 5 matches out of 6. Using the resistance table he wins 85% of the time. Magic is MP*5% vs MP*5% which generally makes it a little harder to overcome resistance. What is the point of these changes? Largely philisophical and slightly in terms of simplification. In theory you could use opposed rolls for everything from combat to magic and I like the fact that you have a simple tool for all those ``what happens now?'' dice rolls. It also gives players much more access to their own dice rolls. You can ask a player to make a scan roll and then make a dice roll yourself. The player does not know if there is anything there and even if they succeed the possible opponent may have rolled better. Of course there be nothing there to see... Just feels better than having to make player's rolls for them. - ---Bruce ------------------------------ From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 1994 13:56:15 +0800 Subject: Re: RQR: AiG Shamen >Conversely, has anyone been running a RQ4 shamen and have comments to make >on them? (Or new rules, etc?) I have only one comment to make about RQ4 shamans in play - my players (all experienced RQ3 players, with a wide knowledge of other roleplaying games, and most of them taking some active interest in the playtest) generally disliked the RQ:AIG shaman rules so much I was unable to get someone to playtest them. RQ4 draft 2.0 I liked. What exact set of rules do you want to discuss? Cheers Dave Cake ------------------------------ From: jonas.schiott@vinga.hum.gu.se (Jonas Schiott) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 1994 14:19:24 +0000 Subject: RQR: Subjects. >What do you want to talk about first? > >1. Why RQ:AIG failed to make it past playtest If there's any juicy gossip in it, sure, but otherwise it's a depressing thing to contemplate. >I was asking >if people wanted to critique the rules and tell us which large >sections of the rules were bad. Umm. OK. No opinion here as yet. >2. Developing a complete Staff/Vessel system for Sorcery Not my cup of tea, but I'm willing to listen in on the discussion with an open mind. >3. Format of RQ4 (omnibook etc, I missed Joe's first post on this) Flogging a dead horse, considering Eric Rowe's statement that: >I'd like to publicly announce Greg has a 'hand picked' team developing >the new Gloranthan game. But then again, we've all heard similar reports so many times... >It should be released late 95, early 96. Am I the only one sceptical about this? :-) >4. House rules Yes. That's what I want to use it for anyway. Playtesting of my own rules is very slow, since it's so hard to get people together for a game these days. Critique via the net would be a welcome addition to my work. I won't be posting for a while, though, I have to translate the stuff into English first... >5. This mailing list, or the rq-playtest list ? ( Jonas Schiott ) ( Institutionen for Ide- och lardomshistoria ) ( Goteborgs Universitet ) ------------------------------ From: "Loren Miller" Date: Mon, 7 Nov 1994 11:01:10 EDT Subject: Re: RQR: Resist no more Bruce Mason writes: >Doing this also requires redefining result categories of percentage >rolls as the system becomes too cumbersome if criticals, specials, >normals, failures and fumbles all have to be modelled, so I've >removed specials and slightly broadened what a critical is. To >critical a roll you must roll 1/10th or less of your skill%. I don't think this goes far enough. If you want to get rid of the "lower is better" philosophy, then why not get rid of criticals and specials altogether? They are nothing more than a very chunky success quality indicator that could be smoothed considerably, and if you are already making big changes (getting rid of resistance table, diluting "lower is better") why not reverse the standard RQ philosophy so that "the highest success is always better"? This is the approach I'm taking with GoonQuest 2. In GQ2 you will use some quality value equal to your roll divided by 10 (or some other index perhaps) to determine the quality of success. I don't want to be mysterious about it, but I also don't want to let it all out until I've reached a near-finished status. - -- +++++++++++++++++++++++23 Loren Miller LOREN@marketing.wharton.upenn.edu I can tell by your shoes that you are a lover of liberty ------------------------------ From: rollin@EQL12.Caltech.Edu Date: Mon, 7 Nov 94 10:42:11 PST Subject: re: RQR: AiG Shamen [Btw: Apologies for the last post: Pretty clumsy of me.] >>Conversely, has anyone been running a RQ4 shamen and have comments to make >>on them? (Or new rules, etc?) > > I have only one comment to make about RQ4 shamans in play - my >players (all experienced RQ3 players, with a wide knowledge of other >roleplaying games, and most of them taking some active interest in the >playtest) generally disliked the RQ:AIG shaman rules so much I was unable >to get someone to playtest them. > RQ4 draft 2.0 I liked. What exact set of rules do you want to discuss? > > Cheers > Dave Cake > Pardon me for being unclear: I,too, liked RQ4 2.0 version. The AiG verson was, basically, unusable. Most of what RQ4 2.0 (or is that RQ4.2? :)) had done to make them a real, usuable magic type had been undone by AiG. Does anyone know why? (i.e., is there something I am missing about the rules?, were Shamen in RQ4 2.0 such a threat, or what?) \Rollin ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #3 *****************************