From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #78 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Saturday, 11 February 1995 Volume 01 : Number 078 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 Loren Miller RQR: Okay, YOU change Greg Stafford's mind Loren Miller RQR: The name of the game Bryan J. Maloney RQR: The problem with runes SPerrin@aol.com RQR: Battle magic Skill SPerrin@aol.com RQR: Attacks and Parries SPerrin@aol.com RQR: Runes are now not pa... SPerrin@aol.com RQR: Runes SPerrin@aol.com RQR: RQ Rules Digest:... Bryan J. Maloney RQR: "Runes" Mike Cule RQR: Please define Grognard Steven E Barnes RQR: Attacks and Parries Bryan J. Maloney RQR: Grognards SPerrin@aol.com RQR: "Magic Levels" ANDOVER@delphi.com RQR: Fantasy Europe; Grognards ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Loren Miller" Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 16:33:09 EST Subject: Re: RQR: Okay, YOU change Greg Stafford's mind! Bryan replies to ? >>I think we all agree that Glorantha is very important to the future >>of RQ, but this looks like another plan to repeat the "Fantasy >>Europe" fiasco of RQ3... > >Separating RQ and Glorantha was a compromise that would still >permit RQ to have ANY connection to Glorantha at all. Bryan is right. Further, I do not think that Fantasy Europe was a fiasco _from_the_beginning_. The reason it became a fiasco was that Chaosium and Avalon Hill orphaned it. They never released ANY products for Fantasy Europe or the Alternate Earth line other than Vikings and Ninja. The gloranthan releases that came out were pretty good to excellent, both alternate earth releases were excellent. It's the RQ/Gateway releases that sucked (because they used incompletely conceived settings). Why wasn't Eldarad re-written to be placed in Tunis or someplace like that? And a sensible history used instead of the ludicrous one in the book. Imagine sourcebooks for: Pirates of the Sargasso Sea The Thule Campaign The Atlantis Campaign Rome Byzantium Baghdad The Source of the Nile The Troglodytes of the Alps The Huns The Indus Valley Voyage to Agartha The Towers of Far Cathay Fantasy Europe was a fiasco because AH never followed-up on it. NOT because Fantasy Europe was a bad idea. - -- +++++++++++++++++++++++23 Loren Miller LOREN@marketing.wharton.upenn.edu Life at the water's edge is the real life for men and women ------------------------------ From: "Loren Miller" Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 16:47:21 EST Subject: Re: RQR: The name of the game Bryan writes: >Like it or not, the name "RuneQuest" is an artifact of Gloranthan >association. Like it or not, the name "RuneQuest" is the property of Avalon Hill. Avalon Hill would have to be idiots (admittedly not a long stretch of the imagination) to not put "Runes" and "Quests" in their game. >If you insist that "Runes" be in the game, even AFTER Glorantha >becomes a separate product, then I insist that there be no less than >ten-thousand Runes. That way, you'll be able to develop settings and >systems for RQ without having to completely rewrite the magic system >from the bottom up. I disagree. I think you should have exactly as many Runes as your setting needs. Frinstance if you're writing a christian setting then you need runes for every magical order, and for different branches of the church (fish vs cross vs manger vs ???). >The problem with picking any small, limited set of "Rune" concepts >is that you'll have to rewrite it from the bottom up whenever you >actually have a setting designed for RuneQuest, and you can't use >the Gloranthan set, since that's pretty darn distinctive. Glorantha already includes the gloranthan set of runes. There are no other settings written with runes for runequest. What's the problem again? - -- +++++++++++++++++++++++23 Loren Miller LOREN@marketing.wharton.upenn.edu Life at the water's edge is the real life for men and women ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 95 17:33:01 -0500 Subject: RQR: The problem with runes Glorantha already includes the gloranthan set of runes. There are no other settings written with runes for runequest. What's the problem again? The problem is with putting any limited set of runes into the core RuneQuest rules. If the idea were to produce a system for handling the iconography of magic and religion IN GENERAL, I'd be all for it, but all talk so far has been in terms of "runes". "Runes" are just one form of iconography, after all. ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 17:36:24 -0500 Subject: Re: RQR: Battle magic Skill Graeme Lindsell (sp?) writes: >>I feel that we have to distinuish between the _ability_ to cast a spell and the chance you have to cast it. RQ3 clearly gives origins for spirit and divine magic - spirits and gods respectively. Humans (and other PC races) apparently can't create this kind of magic themselves, and have to steal or buy it off other magical powers that can. I don't see that acquiring a spell from one of these powers should necessarily give you an automatic chance to cast it, in the same way that buying a sword doesn't get you 100% sword attack. RQ2, as Steve mentioned, has Battle Magic being learned more like skills, but I feel that this makes the argument for automatic casting weaker, for the reasons I've outlined above. As for the skill itself, I think a base chance of 30-40% + magic bonus is adequate if we remove the IMO absurd effect of encumberance on casting chance. I don't see any need to give an increased chance to cast heal, characters with base level skills tend to be pretty weak at everything else. I'd worry more about 25% Parry than 40% Heal..<< Some very good points here. I think this concept should be combined with the previous discussion of taking extra time for Battle Magic to make it easier. If we assume that Battle Magic does not have a POWx5 roll, but is instead strictly a skill, then we have a chance in one melee round based on the basic magic skill (which can increase with experience only, unlike Sorcery Skill[s] ), and an increased chance per melee round taken which can be either (1) a 5-1 0% increase per melee round, (2) a 1d6% addition per melee round [which might be too much dice rolling], or (3) a multiple of the basic magic skill. 96-100% would still be failure, of course. The 5-10% addition to the chance is probably the simplest to deal with, but in most cases this will not be taking place when any other major hassles are happening. The temporary penalty to POW/MP if a failure/fumble is still an optional add-on. Comments? Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 17:37:13 -0500 Subject: RQR: Re: Attacks and Parries As long as I'm suggesting altering major facets of the RQ rules... One complaint about the RQ system is constant dice rolling of attacks and parries. Many consider the parries (and defense in RQ3) too much hassle. What's everyone's opinions on this? Aside from problems of backward compatibility (which is a major consideration), what are your opinions of the esthetics? Does having the responsibility for successful defense in the hands of the defender a major attraction or liability? Has this system turned off people you have tried to introduce to the rules? Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 17:42:10 -0500 Subject: Re: RQR: Runes are now not pa... Kirsten Jacobus writes: >>Sorry to disillusion the grognards, but the terms of the current agreement pretty much say to me that ANY "runic" system will not appear in the RuneQuest main rules book. The "runes" of RuneQuest are, and have always been purely Gloranthan constructs (and they're just Godlearner things, anyway). Thus, there will be no "runic" sorcery, since the "runic" system of "RuneQuest" is purely Gloranthan.<< I have problems with the term grognard in the context of this discussion, but perhaps I misunderstand the meaning of the word. In any case, a game called RuneQuest _has_ to have something to do with Runes. Just which runes are involved is being discussed. We may end up saying that the Gloranthan rules are actually universal, or maybe some of them are. Or we may have to come up with new runes. The other term I am unfamiliar with is "rune sorcery." Is this some part of the RQ3 magic system that I blanked on? Hey, I just wrote the game system... Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 17:42:43 -0500 Subject: Re: RQR: Runes Oh, that's what runic sorcery is... Subj: Re: RQR: Runes are now not part of RuneQuest Date: 95-02-10 04:24:14 EST From: RQ-Rules@hops.wharton.upenn.edu To: RQ-Rules@hops.wharton.upenn.edu CC: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Sender: owner-rq-rules@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Reply-to: RQ-Rules@hops.wharton.upenn.edu To: RQ-Rules@hops.wharton.upenn.edu CC: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Guy Robinson wrote: :This subject is probably just a piece of RQ3 Literallist alarmism but I thought as might as well explore this subject. : Loren writes: :>Bryan [according to the tagline, this was Kirsten] writes: :>>Sorry to disillusion the grognards, but the terms of the current :>>agreement pretty much say to me that ANY "runic" system will not appear in the RuneQuest main rules book. :>There's ample precedent for inventing new schemes of runes in the :>introduction of the RQ3 books, and naturally in the NAME of the :>system. So why not include a "Runic" sorcery system that basically :>gives each school its own (probably unique) "rune"? In Glorantha each :>school would have a (probably unique) combination of Runes instead, :>but that's just a special case. :>There's no reason that the scheme for differentiating "runes" in the :>generic RQ rules has to match the Gloranthan one(s), especially if :>Chaosium are going to be ninnies about it. Call the runes Cleft and :>Wild and Rush and Standing and Four-Directions instead, or any :>arbitrary set of meaningful or meaningless names. You don't even have :>to use 4 or 5 or 6 elements. :I am in complete accord with Loren. For although the Literal :interpretation of 'there could be Runes in Generic RuneQuest' is :'there will be Gloranthan Runes in Generic RuneQuest' I think that :this does not need to be the case. - --snip--. :Consider the cross and the fish in Christianity. Consider the power :of Odin, often expressed by the craving of Runes. Consider the :fetishes and imagery hoarded by the Native American 'Medicine :men'. The thing to keep in mind is that many of the runes Greg devised are just analogs (or direct copies) of similar symbols from many cultures of our own world. There are lots of "runes" out there, the problem is in tying them into non-Glorantha magic and into something to "quest" for. I have to say that when I invented the name for the game it was based on the runes inscribed on the original playing pieces for the _White Bear and Red Moon_ game. - --snip-- :Too many people I know bought RQ3 and never played it. But why, Guy? Were they satisfied with RQ2? Did the setting turn them off? Did the lack of Glorantha turn them off? Was it a lack of runes? Why? Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 17:38:12 -0500 Subject: Re: RQR: Re: RQ Rules Digest:... Nils W wrote: >>I always thought that a great strength of RQ is that it is so easy to add your own house rules. I think it would be great if the RQ4 rules presents a 'basic' rules set and advanced rules as _examples_ of how you may add complexity if you wish more detail in a certain area.<< Sounds good to me. Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 95 18:05:12 -0500 Subject: RQR: "Runes" I have no objection for a system to handle the iconography of magic and religion in general. I object to pigeonholing that grand tapestry into a dozen or so arbitrarily chosen "runes". Let there be designed a meta-system into which the Gloranthan concepts can be worked. Let not some halfway measure be taken, please. One possible benefit of separating RQ and AiG is that RQ is now free to step back and take the space to present things in a more meta-system format. This would improve the game immensely. A game with the detail level of RQ but actual insights into the meta-workings behind it would be much better than just piling on more and more detail until it creaks and groans from the weight of more and more unsubstantiated and un-derivable rules. This is one reason I no longer run GURPS. There is a lot of detail, yes, but there is no apparent grounding for that detail. Don't make RQ into another GURPS, make it something better. ------------------------------ From: Mike Cule Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 21:54:31 GMT Subject: RQR: Please define Grognard ..for a newbie to the list. Oh, and something I ommitted from the list of things I liked about RQ4 the special for bashing weapons. Explains why trolls love maces and mauls. - -- Mike Cule ------------------------------ From: akuma@netcom.com (Steven E Barnes) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 15:25:56 -0800 Subject: Re: RQR: Re: Attacks and Parries >One complaint about the RQ system is constant dice rolling of attacks and >parries. Many consider the parries (and defense in RQ3) too much hassle. > >What's everyone's opinions on this? Aside from problems of backward >compatibility (which is a major consideration), what are your opinions of the >esthetics? Does having the responsibility for successful defense in the hands >of the defender a major attraction or liability? Has this system turned off >people you have tried to introduce to the rules? I consider defense rolls to be beneficial. When playing Champions, there is often the feeling that the defender isn't doing anything, just standing around. The defense roll gives you a sense that you are doing something active. One thing that always bugged me about RQ was the difficulty in defending against multiple opponents, however. Something like the Elric parry rules would be good. - -steve ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Date: Fri, 10 Feb 95 19:08:33 -0500 Subject: RQR: Grognards Grognards: "Old boots", the old guard. Old soldiers who can't shut up about how great things were "back then". Originally a title applied to certain types of wargamers ("originally" within the gaming community--has an older usage). People who refuse to admit that change can be good and admit that the old ways aren't always best. ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 19:18:03 -0500 Subject: Re: RQR: "Magic Levels" Check Mabakeye's recent contrib: I've stuck this into my files for further consideration, but it seems like adding another number to keep track of (and how does one do that on the character sheet) isn't adding anything to simplicity or playability. I'm going to look at it some more, though. Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: ANDOVER@delphi.com Date: Fri, 10 Feb 1995 20:46:13 -0500 (EST) Subject: RQR: Fantasy Europe; Grognards I agree entirely with Loren's comments reFantasy Europe. It was a FINE idea: just never pursued. I have always liked BOTH Runequest and Glorantha, and hope they stay associated; but that doesn't mean they have to be EXCLUSIVELY associated: they can be in an "open marriage!" As to Grognards: a term of insult applied to people who disagree with whatever your latest nutty idea for rules changes are. Also: people who have actually brought RQ products and thus people whose opinions about what should be done with the game should be ignored in the name of the imaginary millions who would buy the game if only your nutty rules change was adopted! Jim Chapin ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #78 ****************************** This is the bottom of the RuneQuest Rules Digest. 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