From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #83 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Monday, 13 February 1995 Volume 01 : Number 083 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: Support for expo... David Dunham via RadioMail RQR: compatibility David Cake RQR: Support for expo... Steven E Barnes RQR: Support for expo... Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox. RQR: RQ3 Problems Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox. RQR: Checks, point-less R... Nils Weinander RQR: Attack and parry BRIAN ADRIAN JACKSON RQR: Test Troll RQR: Attack and parry Troll RQR: Support for expo... Loren Miller RQR: Support for expo... Bruce Lionel Mason RQR: Sorcery Brandon Brylawski RQR: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #82 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Loren Miller Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 00:59:04 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: RQR: Re: Support for expo... Steve Perrin writes: > I avoided trig in high school and college, so I have little idea of what > this discussion is talking about. It's simple. We're just finding points on an exponential curve (Y=C^X). Locate the X point you want (POW) and find the corresponding Y point (MP). This would be easy to write up in a table or give in a formula. > However, I am much more willing to believe in a Bat with 112 POW and 2000+ > MP, so if this could work, it would be a good addition. > Then again, I've been suggesting the abolishment of MP altogether... What > would this do to the argument? It could work fine with the abolishment of MP, and would indeed be quite a bit more elegant. The replacement method would have to use the resistance table or some mathematically similar mechanism (such as the thresh-hold thing you suggested for damage) to keep the behavior of POW exponential. - -- +++++++++++++++++++++++23 Loren Miller "I don't have to practice what I preach 'cause I'm not the kind of person I'm preaching to!" The Book of The Subgenius ------------------------------ From: David Dunham (via RadioMail) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 1995 22:13:29 -0800 Subject: RQR: Re: compatibility >From: "Peter Donald" >I may the the lone list heretic, but I'd >really find it hard to care less whether or not RQ4 is compatible with RQ3 ... >if I need stats for 'em in Completely Revised Totally Different Lemon-Scented >RQ4 I can whip up stats in a few minutes But let's imagine you've never played RQ before, and you've just bought RQ4. You decided to buy Sun County as well. So you read RQ4, it's got pretty good rules. Then you decide to try out the Garhound Contest scenario from Sun County, and you have to find the stat conversion appendix in RQ4 and convert everything before you can use it. Do you still feel good about your purchase? 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: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 14:31:05 +0800 Subject: Re: RQR: Re: Support for expo... The removal of a 1-1 correspondence between MPs and POW is definately the most elegant compromise to the problem (though not settling the issue for STR and SIZ). I am not sure that a compromise is what we need, though. Certainly, I think that if POW and MPs do not have a 1-1 correspondence, that is a very big change in game balance for higher powered magicians. It has interesting game balance effects on the the sorcery ideas that people like Paul Reilly and I have been bandying about on the list. We want to keep the very long duration sorcery of RQ3, but instead of making the limiting factor on how much you can keep maintained at a time something like skill or INT, we want it to be MPs, partly on the grounds that it avoids the nasty exponential sorcery of RQ3. But if MPs are exponential, that changes everything! Cheers Dave ------------------------------ From: akuma@netcom.com (Steven E Barnes) Date: Sun, 12 Feb 1995 23:11:03 -0800 Subject: Re: RQR: Re: Support for expo... >> However, I am much more willing to believe in a Bat with 112 POW and 2000+ >> MP, so if this could work, it would be a good addition. >> Then again, I've been suggesting the abolishment of MP altogether... What >> would this do to the argument? > >It could work fine with the abolishment of MP, and would indeed be >quite a bit more elegant. The replacement method would have to use >the resistance table or some mathematically similar mechanism (such as >the thresh-hold thing you suggested for damage) to keep the behavior >of POW exponential. If MPs are abolished, how is spirit combat handled? As a rules-lawyer, I'm always interested in seeing new ideas. I doubt the abolishment of MP from RQ is good for the future of the game, however. - -steve ------------------------------ From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 01:10:38 PST Subject: RQR: RQ3 Problems Steve Perrin wrote: >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? The addition of sorcerers without any explaination of how they fitted into the existing setting was a real shock. Why was RuneQuest being lead away from the ancient world into a more D&D type fantasy period? The rules where too complex and voluminous. RQ2 had managed to provide a core of rules but RQ3 provided everything at a huge great price tag that daunted a fair few people. When I saw the coverage given to Boating as a skill it took me literally years to look at RQ3 again. It was inspiration that was lacking in RQ3. RQ2 was a good attempt to show an interesting world (that resembled the Literalist Glorantha) that certainly inspired me. In RQ3 there were watered down comments abot divine archetypes, delivered whole like Dieties and Demigods rather than ambigious magical and cultural forces like Cults of Prax or those other thought provoking source books. A symptom of this change was that the Runes had disappeared like many benefits that RuneLords and Priests enjoyed. The social nature of the RQ game where you had to integrate to develop in magical and secular power had wained. In its place the social issolation of other games had crept in somehow. So it was not the lack of Glorantha or the Runes per se but the retro-active wrecking of the concepts people had enjoyed and on which the balance of power their campiagns had been established. I with the benefit of hindsight I feel that RQ3 was an attempt to write what GURPS has become. There was nothing to get people up and running just material that contradicted RQ2 and provided no alternatives. The economic way to examine this would be to compare the market share of RQ2 and RQ3. I would postulate the market share of RQ3 dropped like a bomb in comparison to that of RQ2. Regards -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 01:20:05 PST Subject: Re: RQR: Checks, point-less R... Steve Perrin wrote: >The plan is to make everything very compatibile to previous iterations. Guy >Robinson's "tick" system was a great simplification to my original stated >rules, and I hope he'll test them as stated at some point. Rest assured this will be done. Esp. as your comment below clarify things a bit ... >To address an >uncopied element of your letter, the original plan is to retain hit points >and hit points per location, it's just that these are now thresholds to >compare damage against, rather than points to subtract. I believe Guy was >using "ticks" for the trollkin because they have only 1 or two hit points in >a location, but I hope he'll try it again with studlier opponents. I was using ticks as I though you were try to abolish hip points per location as well. The tick were being used as the Trollkin could not deliver mutliples of the players thresholds to their locations as the common armour was 3 and their highest damage was 1d6-1. Now I know. For my next feat of playtesting I plan have to have a battle between sturdier opponents where these issues can be better examined. I have a cunning plan but as my player might have joined this group I can not explain too much of the plot ... Regards -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ From: niwe@ppvku.ericsson.se (Nils Weinander) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 95 11:59:51 +0100 Subject: RQR: Attack and parry Steve Perrin: >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? In my opinion active defense is absolutely necessary. Without parry/dodge it would be impossible to play a lightly armoured character in a combat situation, they just wouldn't survive. The Pendragon combat system works perfectly in its setting, where the characters are heavily armoured knights. In Glorantha it wouldn't work as well, because most characters would suffer a major wound and be out of commission the first time they are hit. The outcome of combat would be too random that way. /Nils W ------------------------------ From: BRIAN ADRIAN JACKSON Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 11:22:00 +0000 (GMT) Subject: RQR: Test This is a test. My last three messages didn't get through. Brian Jackson My language is my own, and any resemblance to other languages is a mere coincidence. ------------------------------ From: Troll Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 13:37:02 GMT Subject: Re: RQR: Attack and parry (In reply to your message dated Monday 13, February 1995) I am of the opinion that attack and parry being necessary in combat in RQ. I also like the fact that as skills they devlop separately, altho I guess that there should be a rule that says parry cannot be 25% more or less than attack and vice versa. The Elric! approach in having just one skill would make life easy. - -- Troll N'Uz Krang ------------------------------ From: Troll Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 13:30:28 GMT Subject: Re: Re: RQR: Re: Support for expo... In your message dated Sunday 12, February 1995 you wrote : > If MPs are abolished, how is spirit combat handled? As a rules-lawyer, > I'm always interested in seeing new ideas. I doubt the abolishment of > MP from RQ is good for the future of the game, however. Excuse me but are magic points in any way broken? - -- Troll N'Uz Krang ------------------------------ From: Loren Miller Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 09:40:57 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: RQR: Re: Support for expo... presumably if MP were abolished then spirit combat would be changed to be more analogous to physical combat. no more need for MP that way. - -- +++++++++++++++++++++++23 Loren Miller "I don't have to practice what I preach 'cause I'm not the kind of person I'm preaching to!" The Book of The Subgenius ------------------------------ From: Bruce Lionel Mason Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 11:22:04 -0330 Subject: Re: RQR: Re: Sorcery On Sun, 12 Feb 1995, David Cake wrote: > > > > >I'd also like to comment on the fellow who said (sorry for my rotten memory for > >names. I should keep better notes) that there are very few verbs among the > >Gloranthan Runes. Well, many more than the ones you mention can be used as > >verbs > >(Movement, Harmony, Death/Seperation, Disorder, Fertility, Stasis, even Truth) > >but on the other hand I agree that Mastery, Magic and Law are the most useful > >ones. Why do you think Malkioni sorcerers have them plastered all over their > >robes? > > > It was me. I agree that Power runes can also usually be used as verbs. If > you do so, however, most spells make perfect sense with only one Runic > connection (unless you add Mastery to everything). This is fine by me, but > for some reason poeple seem to think if would be better if most spells had > more than one Runic association. The runes equalling verbs and nouns is one of these intuitive ideas and personally I reckon it's one whose time has come. I've used it myself then tried an Ars Magica style bodge, but the main problem has always been implimenting it due to the game system. Any RQ system that requires dealing with several skills simultaneously tends to look awful and play terribly. I've in the past allowed certain runes (primarily mastery, magic and chaos) to act as either verbs or nouns. Eg I use R as a verb to refer to inter-planar summonings or as a noun to refer to Magic. Eg Stasis+Magic allows the casting of Spell Resistance. Stasis+Fire on the other hand would allow Spell+resistance vs fire-based magic as well as damage resistance vs fire-elementals and so on. The phrase Magic+Fire+Spirit would allow the summoning of fire elementals. > > >And on the third tentacle, why do we need a verb/noun structure at all? > > > We don't. But if you are going to have more than one correspondence > for each spell, verb-noun seems to be the most organised way to do it. It > is also the way Ars Magica works. It seemed to be the way most Runic > sorcery systems work. Personally, I think it works very badly with > Gloranthan runes. I disagree with this. IMHO using runes as the language of magic forces you to rethink Glorantha, which is not neccessarily a bad thing. In one campaign I used ``rune magic'' as a hidden form of magic which the PCs discovered that underlaid the sorcery spells they used. Knowledege of the system had been supressed by Zzabur who had become alarmed by the misuse of the sorcery he gave away, consequently all that was left was a few fragmentary spells (ie the RQ3 sorcery spell list.) I do agree that an Ars Magica style of magic doesn't seem to fit Glorantha---the spells are just too powerful. C/f the limits of Rune Magic in the Old Cults of Prax. Personally I'm a Gloranthan relativist, I don't think there is a one true magic system in Glorantha, however for a generic RQ product someone kind of meta-system is probably necessary. Using runes as a magical language gives the game a good reason to call itself RuneQuest. I would also like to see Runes bought into skills more generally. Perhaps in a similar way to the Lands of Ninja ki skills. It gives power-gamers a reason to play, but also it would add some atmosphere to what can be a very sterile system. > I want sorcery to still be able to do all the things it could > before, but I am happy if it uses completely different mechanics (except it > should remain skill based). The essence of backwards comptability is not to change the numbers and the terms but to change what they mean. Eg SRs could stay the same but are no longer a unit of time as they became in RQ3 but just a measure of who goes first. The big failing of RQ:AiG (IMHO) was that it changed the numbers and the meanings but used the same terms. Technically it was a better system than RQ3, but it wasn't enough of an improvement to make the pain of conversion worth it. > > >Oh, and I used RQ3 from the moment I could afford to buy a copy. I know some > >people who have stuck to RQ2 but regard them as ecccentrics. > > > Me too. > Cheers > Dave Cake > >-- > >Mike Cule Add me to the list. Bought it in 84 for a ludicrous sum. Wrote glowing reviews, ran it non-stop and watched AH/Chaosium destroy my faith in it. Ho hum, we live and learn I guess. - ---Bruce ------------------------------ From: brandon@caldonia.nlm.nih.gov (Brandon Brylawski) Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 10:32:32 -0500 Subject: RQR: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #82 Regarding attacks and parries: My players want to parry, and no two ways about it. I avoid the endless combat problem in BrandonQuest by ignoring parry AP and instead stating that a normal defense (parry or dodge) decreases the opponent's attack by one level (e.g. normal to miss, special to normal, crit to special), a special by two levels, and a critical nullifies any attack. In my opinion, the players appreciate rolling for their defenses even more than their attacks; in my campaign, spells that have to overcome resistance are rolled by the _defender_, not the spellcaster; that way, the players never just hear "you're demoralized", which is no fun, and also they don't know whether that trollkin that resisted has a high POW or just got lucky. Brandon ` ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #83 ****************************** 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. 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