From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #21 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Friday, 18 November 1994 Volume 01 : Number 021 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: Skills and Damage Re: RQR: Re: Spirit Combat ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Graeme A Lindsell Date: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 11:08:39 +1100 (EST) Subject: RQR: Skills and Damage Liam McCauley: >I play Millennium's End, which has a % based >system which combines macro & micro skills together in quite a >reasonable way (IMHO). But this starts to become an entirely different system. I also have played other systems with different skill systems than RQ which I consider superior. I was suggesting two relatively small modifications to the current system which don't alter the mechanics of using the skills. There was another possibility which I should have remembered: to make the ease of learning the skill dependent on how wide an area of knowledge it covers, using something like the Easy/Medium/Hard skills. Personally, I would prefer cutting down the skill list, as it makes it that much easier to design PC's and NPC's. If I was planning on building a different system to play RQ I might go for an additive macro/micro system. If not, I'd prefer to fiddle with numbers and areas of skills. >Does anyone with experience, or knowledge, in this area want to discuss >the subject? I like the way that in Ars Magica, wounds can give you >permanent Decrepitude Points, which increases your chance of dying when >Winter comes around Pendragon uses a similar idea (and I think may have originated it): when a character takes a Major Wound s/he must make an immediate aging roll, and permanently lose characteristic points. Pendragon is a simplified version of the Chaosium system, and the Aging table and characteristics are similar to RQ's. - -- Graeme Lindsell a.k.a Graeme.Lindsell@anu.edu.au Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University ------------------------------ From: Keith Ivey Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 23:13:08 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: RQR: Re: Spirit Combat On Thu, 17 Nov 1994, Antoon Pardon wrote: > > Do you really think that a combat between opponents > > with 3 and 13 MP should be (as far as the attack probabilities are > > concerned) the same as one between opponents with 43 and 53 MP > > (or 993 and 1003 MP)? Surely it's better to have a 5-against-10 > > fight be similar to a 12-against-24 or 50-against-100 fight. > > That's because you view the numbers as a linear scale. If you > view the number on a logarithmic scale the current rule is > more consistent tham yours. I didn't propose the rule here (though I have used it in the dim and distant past). Daniel Tartaglia was the one who introduced it on the list. I have doubts about whether the complexity problem can be overcome, but the current resistance table remains flawed. Your idea that magic points and characteristics are logarithmic is an interesting justification for the current table, but it doesn't stand up to closer examination. The values are linear, or at least not logarithmic. If they were logarithmic, the scale would extend past zero into negative numbers. For example, the relationship between 15 MP and 5 MP would be the same as that between 5 MP and -5 MP. This is clearly not the case. - --Keith Ivey Washington, DC ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #21 ****************************** 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.