From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #9 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Thursday, 10 November 1994 Volume 01 : Number 009 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 Re: RQR: Alternative systems for POW gain RQR: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #7 RQR: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #7 RQR: RQ4 Shamen Re: RQR: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #7 RQR: Some things about shamans RQR: Formats and stuff ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mark Gagnon Date: Thu, 10 Nov 1994 11:18:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: RQR: Alternative systems for POW gain On Thu, 10 Nov 1994, Graeme A Lindsell wrote: > I'd like to start a thread on the topic of POW gain. I'm not very > happy with the current method of getting a POW tick, which IMO > rewards power gaming too much: the player gets a valuable reward for > throwing attack spells even when there is no great need. I have noticed that players who power-game in RQ3 spend their gained POW almost immediately on Divine Magic, or enchantments; this makes the problem self-correcting (to a degree). Players who spend POW on magic also tend to use it more. > In my most recent campaign (which was based on Pendragon-Pass style > mechanics, but used the RQ skill list), I told the players that the > requirement to get the skill tick was successful use of magic within a > stressful situation - more like a skill tick than the current rules. I like this! We have (very) recently started playing Pendragon, and have adopted a similar system of "ticks"; during the winter phase, everyone spends their "ticks" as they see fit. > I also required that those with a high POW would need to use magic > more often in a given scenario to get a tick : you needed a total of > POW/5 successful castings of spells in stressful situations). > While this system was adequate, I wasn't entirely happy with it, as > it made it seem rather arbitrary to the players. Has anyone else tried > to replace the current POW gain rules? Once upon a time, I toyed with the idea of returning to the very old Steve Jackson game "The Fantasy Trip" system of point based magic; there are many similarities between spending STR and spending POW. The guy who ran TFT for us modified the original system so much that it ended up playing more like RQ than anything else, with MANA (a derived stat based on the original TFT stats) powering spells and enchantments. Point-based magic systems are open to a lot of abuse, but can be lots of fun! Cheers, Mark Mark Gagnon (mgagnon@julian.uwo.ca)=-=Ignus aurum probat, miseria fortes viros Graduate School of Library and=-=-=-=-=-=Fire tests gold; adversity strong men Information Science (gSLIS), University of Western Ontario, London ON, CANADA ------------------------------ From: brandon@caldonia.nlm.nih.gov (Brandon Brylawski) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 94 11:33:02 EST Subject: RQR: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #7 Jonas Schiott writes : [a fast person moving 36m/round] is kind of a lot under combat conditions, isn't it? Of course, it all depends on your paradigm for movement. I tend to think of combat movement as dodging between other combatants in a cramped room. Perhaps you think of it as running across an open field to engage (or get away from) an enemy? Hmm; most of my combats have taken place in the open. I have no problem with decreasing standard movement as long as sprinting is realistic. In RQ III, you could move 3m/SR, I recall; that's 30m per ten-SR round, or 60m if sprinting : not so different from the above! RQ AIG movement was way too slow for realism. I'm out of shape and can sprint 60m in ten seconds easily; a fast runner can sprint 90-100m. >The following take two actions : [...] > - Casting a spell requiring over 4 mps = No limit? This isn't a criticism, I'm just curious. I do impose a limit, 8 mps to be precise. This is indeed simplifying, but it doesn't make a whole lot of difference in practice. >Attack skill in excess of 90% = >reduces the opponent's parry, and parry skill over 90% reduces attack. I like this, it's an old-fashioned sort of rule. :-) But it would be interesting to hear the reasoning behind choosing 90% instead of 100%. The reason that I chose 90% as the breakpoint for reducing the opponent's skills rather than 100% is that I wanted 91-99% to be meaningful. A rule that decreased opponent skills once over 100% with some bridge rule to accomodate in-betweeneres would work fine for me. And I do give specials up to 20% for skills over 100. >SHIELD COVERAGE[...] I assume this applies in melee as well? Otherwise you've reduced the utility of shields too much. Even _with_ this rule, I have a hard time seeing any reason for using 1H Weapon + Shield instead of a 2H Weapon. Actually, there are three good reasons to have a shield besides this rule. 1 - Shield parry is an _easy_ skill, meaning that most people will have a much higher shield parry than their weapon parry. Since skills over 90% cut the opponent's attack, this is crucial. 2 - Medium and Large Shields get a bonus to parry skill, as per the weapon table. 3 - Shields are much better against missiles; if you don't have a shield to parry that javelin, you have to dodge - a _hard_ skill. >a priest or rune lord >recovers one point per week [...] >it makes divine magic, even at rune level, >just a little more precious. Hmm, well if you like the change of tone this gives your campaign, fine. Personally, I can't see myself going with such a change. With regards to decreased levels of recovering Rune Magic, I agree that this is completely up to the GM and how his world works. In mine, all magics are somewhat less common than in original RQ. [demoralize spell] >Target may roll INT x1 >to realize he is demoralized. And how does this knowledge help him? :-) I assume you mean he recovers from the effect... No, the effect still works; however, he can cast dispel magic, or shout to his friends, "Help! They got me with a spell!" or the like. Normally, someone who has been successfully demoralized or befuddled does not realize that they have been enspelled, except in retrospect after the spell wears off. Brandon  Brandon ------------------------------ From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu (Paul Reilly) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 94 12:14:42 EST Subject: RQR: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #7 Paul here. Loren writes about POW and asks: >Has anyone else tried to replace the current POW gain rules? Our interpretation is that several things get lumped into POW: your personal strength of spirit, which is you 'born' POW. This should be hard to raise, through meditation, trial, personal growth, etc. It may take many lifetimes to grow into a strong spirit. Worship from others - their worship gives you magical strength; this is the same principle that gives gods power to act in the world. In RQ3 this is crudely modelled in several ways: 1. The regular POW gain - when you overcome an enemy you gain worship from it. And from people who hear about it and thus believe in you as an accomplished magician. 2. Public positions, especially as leader of worship - people tend to identify the priest with the god. This is the priest POW gain roll. Malkioni priests should get this too. - ------------- There should be other ways as well - king, governors, etc. get worship Heroes too. It should work something like Glory in Pendragon or Renown in Werewolf. Could be 'flavored' - we think worship affects the nature of the being worshipped. I tried using Pendragon Glory with 1000 Glory = 1 Rune Point gain, usually Magic Rune/POW (in our Fronela campaign which used Runic sorcery and Runic affinities.) Worked OK but needs refinement. - paul ------------------------------ From: rollin@EQL12.Caltech.Edu Date: Thu, 10 Nov 94 10:27:25 PST Subject: RQR: RQ4 Shamen > I think that it was just a case of someone having what they thought >was a really good idea, and rushing out in a burst of inspiration. > The main criticism of RQ4 2.0 was of spirit combat, and RQ:AIG was >probably not much better. > > My main problem with shamans in RQ3 was simply lack of information >- I found very little about them that I thought was a problem with NPC >shamans, but there was a very real problem with PC ones. > > To summarise my opinions on all things shamany: > I like the idea of shamans being able to increase their spirit >combat abilities without increasing POW, and Spirit Combat skill didn't >seem too bad, and the Spirit Sword type spells and other special shaman >magics were pretty good. > However, I really disliked everyone having Spirit Combat (as in RQ4 >2.0), and I find that the whole spirit combat system is even more broken >than before. One notable problem is that the 'parry and spirit combat' >routine used if being attacked by a spirit in melee does not work adequatly >in RQ:AIG, so spirit attacks in melee are real killers (even more than >being ganged up on by two physical opponents). At that point, would prefer to go back to the RQ3 MP vs. MP combat? At that point everyone would still have the capability to combat spirits (they all have MP), but would not have to actually strive to develop their Spirit Combat skill to survive. > The Spirit Travel skill is a good idea, probably. Same with Spirit >Scan. They do fulfill a useful purpose in the game, though they I can see >people not wanting to bother with them. Spirit dance (from RQAIG) is not as >useful, and seems to be mostly there to follow the general trend of making >spirit combat work the same as physical combat, which I dislike even more >than boring old RQ3 spirit combat. I suspect that "boring" was one of the reasons it was changed, figuring that since much of the dangerous spirit combat would occur during melee actions (although not all), they might just as well extend it up into the spirit plane as well... A solution might be (depending on what bothers you about the RQ4 spirit combat) is to have spirit combat only apply if both entities are on the spirit plane. If the activity is cross-planar, perhaps the subtle nuances of spirit combat are useless, and its back to the old headbashing school of spirit combat: mana a mana, as it were. (:)) At that point, I'd reduce the number of skills that a shamen has to develop to survive in the spirit plane, (incorporating Spirit Dance into Spirit Combat, etc.) > I am very cautious about allowing the fetch separate actions in >melee, as RQ4 2.0 does. Most importantly, it makes the shaman much more >powerful. Mind you, it only puts them on a part with allied spirits or >familiars. Comment on this particular question is encouraged. Fetches are nasty opponents, although so, certainly are allieds and familiars. Anything that can cast magic into combat is nasty. Fetches that can both spirit combat and do that are worse. I, personally, believe that the Shamans are the weakest of the three major magic types (Divine Mages, then Sorcerors, then Shamans, although someone clever with a Sorceror can probably be nastiest of all, although it isn't quite as straightforward a path to power as is divine magic.) One of the things Shamans caused us to do was to re-institute stacking limits on spirit//battle magic. (i.e., Bladesharp 4 was the best you got.), unless you were a Shaman. At that point, the Shaman couldn't teach everybody the real nasty spells he found, and things were fairly balanced: The Divine Mage had Rune Spells and D.I. The Sorceror had his versatility, especially when you got into the (noncanonical, I guess) skills of Quicken, Ease, etc. THe Shaman had the best Spirit magic around (no big surprise), as well as captured spirits, etc. > I really like Spirit Lore, and the whole ideas of warding and >appeasing that go with it. Definately in my games. > There needs to be more about the Spirit Plane, and navigating it. >This is the biggest lack in RQ3. Also, information about what spirits might >be encountered, what are the consequences of being defeated by one, etc. > I would like any future shaman write up to mention things like >ancestor worship, spirit cults, and other common shaman uses of divine >magic. I assume that a Shaman has to join one of the spirit cults to get the divine magic, correct? > In reply to David Dunham, I have not found PC shaman a problem in >the past (using RQ3). I make it difficult for them to capture powerful >spell spirits (ie only very low power variable spells - I don't mind the >players having a variety of spells, I only mind large unbalancing spells), >and I don't find that they significantly drag attention away from other >players. Pretty much the same here. We use RQ4.2 rules (modified), and most of the tedious spirit stalking is handeled in a seperate session between player and GM. As the shaman gets better, we just let him get spirits from the frontier pretty automatically, since, by that point, nobody really feels very threaten- ed by them. \Rollin. ------------------------------ From: akuma@netcom.com (Steven E Barnes) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 1994 12:17:52 -0800 Subject: Re: RQR: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #7 Regarding MP vs MP rolls in magical and spirit combat... This rule kind of works for human level characters. When dealing with huge spirits / gods, it becomes silly (A 10,010 POW spirit is virtually guaranteed to beat a 10,000 POW spirit, even though the difference in POW is .1%). This is the extreme example, but I think the system has problems even with characters in the high end of the mortal POW spectrum (shamans, heroes, and certain non-human races). One obvious solution is to lower your POW on the RR table by 1 for every 10% of MPs expended. Thus a 1000 POW spirit would have a 999 POW on the RR table, if it had used 100 MPs. Likewise, the amount of MP damage dealt in spirit combat would be based on your POW (kind of like RQ4, although I'm not too familiar with it). Here's another method I used once; the penalty applies to all skills, and to RR rolls. The break points are a bit ugly, however. MPs used Penalty - ------------------------ 50% -5% 75% -10% 90% -20% 95+% -50% - -steve ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 94 15:23:53 -0500 Subject: RQR: Some things about shamans >I suspect that "boring" was one of the reasons it was changed, figuring that >since much of the dangerous spirit combat would occur during melee actions >(although not all), they might just as well extend it up into the spirit >plane as well... It's interesting to compare this with my first reaction to seeing spirit combat. When I found out that it was ten times as fast as melee combat in the old RQ rules, I immediately thought--AHA! It's just like psionic combat from D&D. The funny thing is that's what a couple of other people have told me, too. I think that the idea of spirit combat happening so quickly just may have been a holdover from D&D, just like a shortsword doing 1d6 and a broadsword doing 1d8. >Fetches are nasty opponents, although so, certainly are allieds and >familiars. Anything that can cast magic into combat is nasty. Fetches >that can both spirit combat and do that are worse. I, personally, believe Well, that depends on exactly what a "Fetch" is, doesn't it? Is a fetch an independent entity? Is a fetch a doppelganger for the shaman? Is the fetch an arm into the spirit world? Is the fetch a general extension of the shaman's physical body into the spirit world? RQ has never bothered to answer any of these questions. Going to real world sources won't give you a difinitive answer to what a "fetch" is, either. Some shamanic traditions have fetch-like entities, some do not. Those that have these things do not treat them all in the same way. One of RQIII's greatest weaknesses was in taking an adaptation of one kind of Gloranthan "shaman" (circa Greg's RQ2-vintage thinking) and call that a "shaman" without qualification and actually stating that this was all there was to being a shaman. >that the Shamans are the weakest of the three major magic types (Divine Mages, >then Sorcerors, then Shamans, although someone clever with a Sorceror can >probably be nastiest of all, although it isn't quite as straightforward a >path to power as is divine magic.) Well, this is if and only if you consider the "magic types" as given in RQIII to be valid in and of themselves. We've already heard from the Great Bird of Glorantha that they aren't really valid ways of dividing Gloranthan magic, just Godlearner simplifications. When we move away from Glorantha, then they become even less valid. For example, I've got two PCs in my new campaign who are a "kitchen witch" and a monk of Yesod (a patron of ecstatic experience, mystery, and "light"). As I have worked out the two magical paths, neither really fits into one of the "big three". The kitchen witch (Granny Grizzie) has the innate ability of Second Sight. She cannot leave her body, nor does she incarnate spirits. She knows how to summon, banish, and command various types of spirits and faeries. She is also able to make "charms" that can house spirits and hold a few types of protective and healing magics. Simulating her abilities was rather easy to do using the various RQ rules at my disposal (RQIII, RQ4v2.0, RQ:AiG), but she didn't end up as any of the three "major magic types". I'll post details of village witches in a day or two. In my campaign, Granny Grizzie's "type" of magic is VERY major. It may be the most common type of magic to be found in Jautland, but it doesn't quite fit into one of the "big three" as RQ presents them. (Stress for the brain-dead: AS RQ PRESENTS THEM). Brother Mikailis, the ecstatic monk, is prone to visions, trances, talking to animals and plants, and he can call down curses and blessings but has little control over their precise effects. This is the path of Yesod. He has also learned a little "formal magic" as one of the Humanities studied by Churchmen. This is close to what RQ:AiG presents as "sorcery" but much more constrained. Again, I'll post the specifics of his abilities within a few days. I have one other "mage" in the group, but she doesn't really know it. What she is is a "fey friend". She "knows a little rhyme that calls faeries". That's all she can do, and she doesn't know that the mechanic of it is a "summon low faerie spell". What the faeries do after that is up to them, of course. I have used the mechanics of RQ's various versions of magic, but I have taken each "package deal" and cut it into component parts to re-assemble as suits MY world, not vivisected my world to fit the RQ prepackaged magical ensembles. I suggest that everybody look into this. >One of the things Shamans caused us to do was to re-institute stacking limits >on spirit//battle magic. (i.e., Bladesharp 4 was the best you got.), unless >you were a Shaman. At that point, the Shaman couldn't teach everybody the >real nasty spells he found, and things were fairly balanced: Uh, you need to re-read all the RQ rules you have on hand. Shamans in any published or playtested version of RQ from RQIII onwards CANNOT teach the spells they know. Spirit magic spells under RQIII and onwards are not forms of knowledge. They're these undefined thingies that do stuff for you, and you either have one or you don't You can't copy it to give to somebody else. ------------------------------ From: Scotty2405@aol.com Date: Thu, 10 Nov 1994 16:08:18 -0500 Subject: RQR: Formats and stuff "Omni-book" is the kind of thing I think of late at night. I guess there are a couple of things that would make a good format -- 1. Everything in one book 2. Reasonable price 3. Good graphics 4. Good rules The first two are easy -- they've already proven (with the RQIII soft cover book) that they can do it. The third is hard. I talked to many people about artwork, and while many people agreed that it had been poor, they were too hung up on the Glorantha-ness of the artwork to get past the fact that it sucked. When I tried to talk to (insert name of favorite freelancer here) about doing new, exciting artwork, they all shied away. And the management at AH is not knowledgeable -- so if you want great graphics, you'll need to pester (insert name of favorite freelancer here) in order to get it. If they can get their nerve up to do so. The fourth issue, good rules, is not as hard as you might think. RQIII had rough spots, as do all games. My answer when I left AH was to scrap RQ:AiG/RQ4 and do RQ3.1 instead. Pull out the character generation system, the shamanism, the fatigue, and the sorcery from RQIV and put it into RQIII. Put variant systems for character generation and shamans and sorcerors in indexes in the back. Make the product non-Gloranthan, because Greg told us if it had Glorantha in it, it would have to be a feeble presentation (which is within his rights, and I don't blame him). Of course, I wanted to stick in my own new fantasy world and hire a bunch of new writers to do stuff for it. Get a clean break from all the ugliness of the past. But, for better or worse, I got the hell out of there before I went Post Office and started killing them. At any rate, my reccomendation still stands. Replace the most onerous parts of RQIII with RQIV. Leave the rest alone. Hell, publish the net addresses of people on this list in the book -- if they want alternate systems, they can pay 10 bucks a month to AOL and get reams of it. But, I suspect this is kind of a moot point. WHile I don't know anything, I sincerely doubt that there's been any real motion on the part of AH, Chaosium, or Mike & Ollie. Carl's little boilerplate messages to the gang out here reek of falsehood. Or, let's just say, it's the same routine I was always told to use. Joe Scott ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #9 ***************************** This is the bottom of the RuneQuest Rules Digest. RuneQuest is a trademark of Avalon Hill, and Glorantha is a trademark of Chaosium. With the exception of previously copyrighted material, unless specified otherwise all text in this digest is copyright by the author or authors, with rights granted to copy for personal use, to excerpt in reviews and replies, and to archive unchanged for electronic retrieval. Send electronic mail to Majordomo@hops.wharton.upenn.edu with "help" in the body of the message for subscription information on this and other mailing lists.