From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #4 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Tuesday, 8 November 1994 Volume 01 : Number 004 RULES OF THE ROAD 1. Do not include large sections of a message in your reply. Especially not to say "Yeah, I agree." Those who do will be lynched. 2. Use an appropriate Subject line. RQR: will be prepended to it. 3. Do not engage in a point-by-point analysis or rebuttal of another person's message. It is too confusing for others to follow, qualifies as nit-picking, and it usually leads to flame wars. 4. There is no number 4. TABLE OF CONTENTS RQR: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #3 Re: RQR: Subjects. Re: RQR: Resist no more Re: RQR: Resist no more RQR: *shamen???? Re: RQR: *shamen???? Re: RQR: *shamen???? Re: RQR: *shamen???? Re: RQR: *shamen???? RQR: The plural of shaman RQR: RQ:AiG Shaman rules Re: RQR: The plural of shaman Re: RQR: *shamen???? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Dunham Date: Mon, 07 Nov 1994 11:15:26 PST Subject: RQR: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #3 >From: rollin@EQL12.Caltech.Edu >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. To save wear and tear on my teeth, the plural is shamans. There is no connection between the "man" in shaman (fron a Siberian language) and the English word. Oliver Jovanovic is 100% wrong on this. > 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?) I had a RQ4, then an AiG shaman, in my playtest game, and frankly, I wouldn't want either one as a PC. Even with the more abstract rules, they take up way too much time. And every character now has their full INT of whatever spirit magic they want. AiG was an improvement because it didn't introduce the incompatible Spirit Combat skill. It seems relatively workable, tho the shaman player ignored the suggested fetch powers (as taught by his tradition -- probably sloppy GMing on my part). 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: DevinC@aol.com Date: Mon, 7 Nov 1994 16:54:15 -0500 Subject: Re: RQR: Subjects. Devin here: Jonas writes: ">It should be released late 95, early 96. Am I the only one sceptical about this? :-)" I'm not skeptical...I think 2095 or 2096 is about right......;-) Regards, Devin Cutler devinc@aol.com ------------------------------ From: Bruce Lionel Mason Date: Mon, 7 Nov 1994 19:30:56 -0330 Subject: Re: RQR: Resist no more On Mon, 7 Nov 1994, Loren Miller wrote: > Bruce Mason writes: > > [deleted stuff about opposed rolls] > 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. I'm looking forward to hearing about it. I agree with your comments about the clunky RQ criticals and I once experimented with a system of higher is better which sounds a bit like what you're working on. In it quite simply if you made your % roll you got a `score' equal to the roll/10, rounded up. Eg if you are hide 65% and you roll 43 you `scored' 5. The higher your score the better. For skills over 100% the excess percentage was added to your roll eg 135% hide rolls 43 gets a modified roll of 78% which scores 8. Officially a failure scored 0 and rolling less than 1/10th of your roll was a fumble (or score of -1). It seemed like a nice system in the abstract but no one could ever agree on what scores represented. We tried a system of %/5 equals your score so that there would be a rough approximation with stats but that was dodgy too. I think the biggest plus of the RQ critical/fumble system is that it is fun to play. It always offers that glimmer of life and death when you least expect it. So if someone could come up with a high is always good system with criticals I would play it. -----------oooooooo------------ Bruce Mason, Folklore Dept., M.U.N., St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. Day ph. (709) 737 8403 home ph. (709) 576 3110 also bmason@europa.cs.mun.ca bmason@morgan.ucs.mun.ca -----------oooooooo------------ ------------------------------ From: Loren Miller Date: Mon, 7 Nov 1994 18:10:58 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: RQR: Resist no more In reply to Bruce Mason: > It seemed like a nice system in the abstract but no one could ever agree > on what scores represented. We tried a system of %/5 equals your score > so that there would be a rough approximation with stats but that was > dodgy too. You got pretty close to my nascent system with your first shot. I'm not sure that I understand the problem. Would it have worked if someone had written down a table that gave a bunch of benchmarks for what various scores represented? I was intending to do something like that. I guess what would help me most would be a description of a specific problem that popped up during play with this system. - -- Loren Miller I can tell by your shoes that you are a lover of liberty ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Date: Mon, 7 Nov 94 23:23:08 -0500 Subject: RQR: *shamen???? The plural of "shaman" is "shamans". The plural of "shaman" is "shamans". The plural of "shaman" is "shamans". Thank you very much. ------------------------------ From: Jon Green Date: Tue, 8 Nov 1994 04:52:26 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: RQR: *shamen???? > > The plural of "shaman" is "shamans". > The plural of "shaman" is "shamans". > The plural of "shaman" is "shamans". > I doubt it very much! "Shaman" derives from the Tungusian word "sama'n" (the apostrophe represents an acute accent over the second "a"), from which we get the word through Russian and German intermediaries. Does anyone here speak Tungusian? No? Rats... > > Thank you very much. > My pleasure, mon capitan. :-) ------------------------------ From: Keith Ivey Date: Tue, 8 Nov 1994 06:55:45 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: RQR: *shamen???? On Tue, 8 Nov 1994, Jon Green wrote: > > The plural of "shaman" is "shamans". > > The plural of "shaman" is "shamans". > > The plural of "shaman" is "shamans". > > > I doubt it very much! "Shaman" derives from the Tungusian word "sama'n" > (the apostrophe represents an acute accent over the second "a"), from > which we get the word through Russian and German intermediaries. Does > anyone here speak Tungusian? No? Rats... That's all well and good, but what does it have to do with the plural of the *English* word "shaman"? Do you use "saunat" as the plural of "sauna"? Is "spaghetti" the plural of "spaghetto" in English? "Shamans" is the plural of the English word "shaman", which is not the Tungus word "saman" (with a hacek over the s), though it is derived from it. - --Keith Ivey Washington, DC ------------------------------ From: Jon Green Date: Tue, 8 Nov 1994 07:15:43 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: RQR: *shamen???? > On Tue, 8 Nov 1994, Jon Green wrote: > > > The plural of "shaman" is "shamans". > > > The plural of "shaman" is "shamans". > > > The plural of "shaman" is "shamans". > > > > > I doubt it very much! "Shaman" derives from the Tungusian word "sama'n" > > (the apostrophe represents an acute accent over the second "a"), from > > which we get the word through Russian and German intermediaries. Does > > anyone here speak Tungusian? No? Rats... > > That's all well and good, but what does it have to do with > the plural of the *English* word "shaman"? Do you use > "saunat" as the plural of "sauna"? Is "spaghetti" the > plural of "spaghetto" in English? > > "Shamans" is the plural of the English word "shaman", which > is not the Tungus word "saman" (with a hacek over the s), > though it is derived from it. > Well, my dictionary doesn't show a specific plural for the word (and, strangely, doesn't show the hacek either), but the point I was making - albeit obliqely - was that the roots of a word often affect its derivative forms, in this case its plurals To cite an example: the correct plural of dwarf is dwarfs (as in Snow White) not dwarves (as in Tolkein; he later admitted the mistake). Since the word shaman doesn't come from the conventional Graeco-Roman ancestry, it seemed to me that it might be fun to find out the plural of the original word and, in traditional RQ fashion, derive some obscure modernism from it. Just a warped mind, wibbling in the wilderness. Jon ------------------------------ From: Loren Miller Date: Tue, 8 Nov 1994 10:37:01 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: RQR: *shamen???? Get this shit off the rules discussion list. - -- Loren Miller I can tell by your shoes that you are a lover of liberty ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 94 12:31:16 -0500 Subject: RQR: The plural of shaman The plural of "shaman" is "shamans", to wit: sha-man (phonetic stuff that won't transcribe in ASCII) n., pl. sha-mans [[Russ < Tungusic s^aman < Prakrit s'amana, Buddhist monk < Sans s'raman,a, orig., ascetic, akin to s'ram, to fatigue]] a priest or medicine man of shamanism -- sha-man|ic (more phonetic stuff) adj. Quoted from Neufeld, V. and D.B. Guralnik, (eds). 1988. Websters New World Dictionary, Third College Edition. Simon and Schuster, Inc. New York. You will note "pl. sha-mans". This means that the plural is "shamans" and the syllabic break is before the "m". Is this clear enough? ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Date: Tue, 8 Nov 94 12:48:12 -0500 Subject: RQR: RQ:AiG Shaman rules I liked the RQ:AiG shaman rules. I was able to get my players to test them out. Three different players gave them a try. Three different players liked them a good deal. Only one player had seen the RQIII rules beforehand. I showed the RQIII rules to the other two after they had become familiar with the RQ:AiG rules. What did they have to say? They thought the RQIII rules were to D&D-ish, for one. They felt that the RQIII rules made shamans into a sort of "character class" with cookie-cutter standardized abilities. All three players liked the idea that shamans of different cultures and traditions would have different abilities. They liked it immensely. We all found the implementation of the RQ:AiG ideas clumsy, though. After all, is a Tungus S^aman identical in powers to a Voudoun Houngan? Is a Voudoun Houngan identical to a Charismatic Minister? All three are "shamans" of a sort, but none of them have identical abilities, concepts, nor cultural milieus. Why are shamans to be denied any sort of basic diversity to approach? On a related tack: The brain-death of RuneQuest and the real death of one of my players impelled me to make a complete, clean break with what I had been doing. I am now adapting the ideas and mechanics in RQ to a world of my own design. The magic is quite different from Glorantha, as is the setting. I'll post examples of stuff I do as I go along. Is this better, Unca Loren? ;-) ------------------------------ From: "Loren Miller" Date: Tue, 8 Nov 1994 13:37:07 EDT Subject: Re: RQR: The plural of shaman Bryan writes: >Is this clear enough? Yes it's clear. Now let me make my point clear, if it isn't already. Stop telling us! Get off your hobby horse, and onto another topic which might be useful and vaguely interesting. - -- +++++++++++++++++++++++23 Loren Miller LOREN@marketing.wharton.upenn.edu I can tell by your shoes that you are a lover of liberty ------------------------------ From: KEMREN@aol.com Date: Tue, 8 Nov 1994 13:43:33 -0500 Subject: Re: RQR: *shamen???? Loren: Very good point. War Eagle Keith E. Smith Address: 545 Country Manor Lane Shepherdsville, KY 40165 Phone: (502)-543-8243 ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #4 ***************************** This is the bottom of the RuneQuest Rules Digest. RuneQuest is a trademark of Avalon Hill, and Glorantha is a trademark of Chaosium. 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