From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #85 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 085 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 Hugh Foster RQR: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #83 Hugh Foster RQR: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #83 SPerrin@aol.com RQR: Fwd: More RQ IV ideas SPerrin@aol.com RQR: Attack and parry Loren Miller RQR: Support for expo... Loren Miller RQR: Experience checks and stars sstair@cs.utep.edu RQR: To parry or not to parry Loren Miller RQR: More Turney ideas on magic Charlie Domino RQR: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #83 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Hugh Foster <100326.446@compuserve.com> Date: 13 Feb 95 17:19:10 EST Subject: RQR: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #83 >>I would postulate the market share of RQ3 dropped like a bomb in comparison to that of RQ2.<< I understood that the market share of RQ2 had _already_ plunged, which was the reason for the rewrite. ------------------------------ From: Hugh Foster <100326.446@compuserve.com> Date: 13 Feb 95 17:19:15 EST Subject: RQR: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #83 >>Without parry/dodge it would be impossible to play a lightly armoured character in a combat situation, they just wouldn't survive<< Yeah, try and spot a D&D character in a low-magic game who doesn't wear the best armour they can get... Or try and keep a 1st Ed Monk alive more than 5 minutes. That's one thing I've always liked about RQ. ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 17:35:15 -0500 Subject: RQR: Fwd: More RQ IV ideas And now some detailed thoughts on magic from Ray Turney, the original RQ magic guru. Enjoy! Steve Perrin - --------------------- Forwarded message: From: rturney@netcom.com (Raymond D Turney) To: SPerrin@aol.com Date: 95-02-13 02:02:15 EST A few random thoughts on RQ IV, which may well have been independently invented elsewhere: Sorcery should be skill based, divine magic magic thru something like the runepower system, but with a channeling like skill, and spirit magic should work indirectly by attacking the enemy with spell spirits. Sorcery range should go from the current system in meters to something like: 1. touch - free 2. near - {aproximately javelin reach} 3. far - {aproximately normal as opposed to max comp bow range} 4. very far - {visual sighting range} 5. Indirect - {targeting thru vision spells, contagion, etc}. Each increase in range should cause a step or more loss in casting precentage chance. The primary intent of this is to increase fantasy feel by reducing computation in modern units, and the secondary purpose is to simplify computation. Duration should be more or less than length of the situation intended to be affected by the spell, with the proviso that combat and combat support magic can only be cast when there is a possible enemy in sight, or at considerable increase in difficulty when fighting is expected in a day or so. The reasoning here is that keeping combat and combat support magic up for long periods is like remaining on guard continuously - it cannot be done though many adventurers would love to do it. Also, magic is a matter of symbolism and intent, and it is easier to focus on "help me against that troll over there", than on "help me against I'm not sure what but I think this cave is dangerous", which is in turn easier than "help me against I know not what but someday somebody or something is going to attact me". Again, the motive for pushing a switch from timed duration to duration for the length of the situation the spell is intended to affect is to maintain fantasy feel by reducing use of modern units, and secondarily to simplify bookkeeping. Divine magic should work by some variant of the Runepower system, where points are sacrificed but not for specific spells. I also favor a channeling like skill to invoke divine magic, and initiates to be able to regain divine magic, but only with a ceremony performed by a priest or acolyte {and if the ceremony is fumbled they lose the points they were trying to regain}. Being a priest is a title or office, depending on the cult, not an aspiration of anyone who wants to use divine magic. Normally, when a priesthood is created the worshippers who wish to create the title or office sacrifice to the god to provide the priest with access to magic he would not otherwise have ... and these points must be regained by other members of the group who gave the priest these points. In effect a priest is an expert in ceremony skill, who may have been given a separate pool of sacrificed points by his congregation. Note that a character may be consecrated a priest ... but unless he has a regular group of supporters backing him all he gets for this is the right to lead ceremonies and any one use POW sacrifice they may have given him when he became a priest. My reasoning in pushing for these changes is to increase the flexibility of divine magic and make exotic rarely useful spells useful additions to the god's armory, instead of having everyone take Shield. I push for initiates to get reusable divine magic because one use rune magic has not proven to be a useful concept ... everyone hoards it to become a priest. As it stands, everyone wants to become a priest, but I want initiate to be the valuable status, and priest usually more of a social and political status not something everyone pushes for in the normal line of their character's development. I want skill based invocation in the interests of stylistic consistency {Divine magic is the only area where skills are not currently fundamental to RQ}, to meet the widespread criticism that in RQ the gods always answer and this is inappropriate, and to make characters in divine magic using cultures to be forced to make the same tradeoffs of normal skills vs. arcane ones that characters in sorcery and shamanistic cultures do. Rune Lords should have the following advantages: a) the skills their favors should become easy, but ones their god dislikes or merely wasn't good at should become hard - in effect they walk in the path of their god and this similarity mystically affects the learning process by making them more like their deity; b) rune lords should have access to a power pool sacrificed by others at the time of their creation {just like priests}, but addable to and regainable by, any other initiate. In effect, the RL is the sword of hos cult and this allows stay at home initiates to support him; c) rune lords are customarily well equipped at the their cult's expense, with the understanding that well equipped may mean iron armor in the Lunar Empire and a couple of shamanistic enchantments for a storm khan. RL's no longer get special DI, since this power has made divine intervention far too common. Also, this power is no longer needed. I propose that hard skills be subtracted from 80, and easy ones from 120, as this is a more elegant means of implementing the variable skills idea. ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 17:37:16 -0500 Subject: Re: RQR: Attack and parry Nils W says >>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.<< This has been the opinion (in one way or another) of most of those responding, and it's given me an appreciation for my original game system. Most people have said that it is more involving and fun to be able to parry and dodge. I tend to agree, though the GM has a lot harder time of it controlling the rolls of a lot more characters. However, just to put in one observation on Nils' comments; combat results can be_very_ random. That's why armored people tend to survive hand-to-hand encounters better than unarmored. But the parries make for a more interesting game... Steve Perrin PS Some later comments have made me think about the system of normal/special/critical and the AP rules for them vs Parries. Might it be easier to deal with if the various hits just did multiples of damage (this might work well with the no-HP system I've proposed) and special versions of Parry just multiply the damage deflected. Thus, a really good crit might punch some points through a critical parry. Defense could act in some similar fashion, perhaps by negating an attack's damage on the same level or better, cutting it in half if one down (say normal defense roll vs special attack), or cutting the damage to 10% if two down (normal vs critical). Thoughts? Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: "Loren Miller" Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 18:55:11 EST Subject: Re: RQR: Re: Support for expo... Steve Perrin asks: >And I'm still confused. As far as I can tell, using my original >concepts, a CBat with a 112 POW who blew a spell would lose >temporary use of 1 or 1d6+1 (to use one possibility) points of POW, >depending on whether it failed or fumbled. This is fairly >meaningless to the CBat, but a big hassle to a POW 15 character. Right so far. >Are you saying there would be an exponential sliding scale (amazing >how the buzzwords flow from my fingers) expressed by a graph in the >rules so that the loss of 1 point from the normal would be the >equivalent of 15 or so (dragging numbers from behind my left >earlobe) from the CBat? Not really. What I'm saying is that having the CBat lose the temporary use of 1 of this exponentially scaled POW is mathematically equivalent to having it lose lots and lots of that exponential MP (by my calcs which you can see below it loses the equivalent of 170MP !! when it goes from 72 to 71 POW). I would further argue that getting rid of MP would be just as effective at keeping exponential behavior as the earlier proposal to base MPs exponentially on POW (the earlier proposal is what would require that exponential MP table I was blathering about and included below). That's because the resistance table already behaves exponentially. In other words you only need to do one. Since dumping MPs is more elegant that would be my preference. If dumping MPs the only place you'd need the conversion table would be in the rules for converting old-style monsters with huge POW. That table would look something like this. I used the formula: MP = 2^(2+(POW/8)) to generate this table. I believe that's the closest pure formula to Bryan's proposal. POW MP 1 4 2 5 3 5 4 6 5 6 6 7 7 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 10 12 11 13 12 14 13 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 19 19 21 20 23 21 25 22 27 23 29 24 32 25 35 26 38 27 41 28 45 29 49 30 54 31 59 32 64 33 70 34 76 35 83 36 91 37 99 38 108 39 117 40 128 41 140 42 152 43 166 44 181 45 197 46 215 47 235 48 256 49 279 50 304 51 332 52 362 53 395 54 431 55 470 56 512 57 558 58 609 59 664 60 724 61 790 62 861 63 939 64 1,024 65 1,117 66 1,218 67 1,328 68 1,448 69 1,579 70 1,722 71 1,878 72 2,048 73 2,233 74 2,435 75 2,656 76 2,896 77 3,158 78 3,444 79 3,756 80 4,096 81 4,467 82 4,871 83 5,312 84 5,793 85 6,317 86 6,889 87 7,512 88 8,192 89 8,933 90 9,742 91 10,624 92 11,585 93 12,634 94 13,777 95 15,024 96 16,384 97 17,867 98 19,484 99 21,247 100 23,170 101 25,268 102 27,554 103 30,048 104 32,768 105 35,734 106 38,968 107 42,495 108 46,341 109 50,535 110 55,109 111 60,097 112 65,536 113 71,468 114 77,936 115 84,990 116 92,682 117 101,070 118 110,218 119 120,194 120 131,072 - -- +++++++++++++++++++++++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: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 19:10:51 EST Subject: RQR: Experience checks and stars Steve Perrin passes on Ray Turney's thoughts on experience: >I suggest changing the experience system, so that in addition to >checks there are also stars - when a character tries a skill and fails >the player can star it. To go up in a starred skill, the player >must roll less than both current skill percentage {to prevent rapid >learning of weak skills thru failure} and the character's INT * 3 >{to prevent nearly automatic increased of starred high level skills >in the rare event of failure}. At the end of an adventure, the >player may roll up to five checked or starred skills. I have a simpler idea than Ray's idea. Every time you use a skill, whether you succeed or fail, you check it. This also works with diceless play of RQ. When you have 24 hours (3 full 8-hour days of practice) to learn from your experience you roll above your skill to advance. I don't see any reason to stop characters from learning weak skills by giving them a different kind of roll, I'd rather limit them by putting a constraint which is real in the gameworld on it (the X hours of practice thing). I'm not a big fan of the 5 check limit either. Once again I'd rather stick with the X hours of practice thing. I'm used to scheduling "adventures" for once every season. That already limits them to about 5 experience checks between adventures. In my experience the 5 check limit just changes the nature of experience roll abuse. Instead of playing check-quest the powergamers play training-quest. No net gain, and it annoys players who *should* get lots of checks because their characters did really well, not because they abused the rules with weapon-caddies and the like. - -- +++++++++++++++++++++++23 Loren Miller LOREN@marketing.wharton.upenn.edu Life at the water's edge is the real life for men and women ------------------------------ From: sstair@cs.utep.edu Date: Mon, 13 Feb 95 17:30:12 MST Subject: RQR: To parry or not to parry Steve Perrin asked >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? Add me to the column of pro-parry (potpourri?) I think it makes the players feel more in control of their character's destiny. Didn't RQ2 have you subtract your defense from your opponent's hit percentage? - -- Steve Stair ------------------------------ From: "Loren Miller" Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 19:39:14 EST Subject: RQR: More Turney ideas on magic Steve passes on more of Ray Turney's ideas: > A few random thoughts on RQ IV, which may well have been >independently invented elsewhere: Many of these were thrown around in slightly different form on the old playtest list. >Sorcery should be skill based Right. >divine magic magic thru something like the runepower system, but >with a channeling like skill Fine. How about using "Ceremony" as the channeling skill? It's already supposed to be the way to arrange cult rituals. It would make the darn skill useful at least, as I think it should be. >and spirit magic should work indirectly by attacking the enemy with >spell spirits. I'm not sure about that. That sounds like shamans loosing their spirits on people. Not all spirit magic users are full shamans. You need to have some method of using personal magic that ordinary folks can use to give their plow a little more oomph, or to kill that pesky rat that's in the corn. Also, I got chills of horror when I thought how complex that proposal would make it for GMs running a group of spirit-magic-using enemies. >Sorcery range should go from the current system in meters to >something like: > >1. touch - free >2. near - {aproximately javelin reach} >3. far - {aproximately normal as opposed to max comp bow range} >4. very far - {visual sighting range} >5. Indirect - {targeting thru vision spells, contagion, etc}. Agreed! We can fiddle with the ranges but that's the same sort of thing I proposed in the playtest a few times. Same idea with duration (instant, scene, day, season, year, permanent). >Again, the motive for pushing a switch from timed duration to >duration for the length of the situation the spell is intended to >affect is to maintain fantasy feel by reducing use of modern units, >and secondarily to simplify bookkeeping. Right on! >Rune Lords should have the following advantages: >a) the skills their favors should become easy, but ones their god >dislikes or merely wasn't good at should become hard Good. >b) rune lords should have access to a power pool sacrificed by >others at the time of their creation They should have access to the temple spirit, aka The Wyter! I think the Wyter is a gloranthan term though. In generic RQ we could call this the "Cult Spirit" or the "Rune Spirit" or the "Loa" or "Guardian Angel" or "Genius" and as Ray suggested let the rune levels use it. >c) rune lords are customarily well equipped at the their cult's >expense, with Of course. > RL's no longer get special DI, since this power has made divine >intervention far too common. Also, this power is no longer needed. Fine by me. If they have re-usable rune magic (as they should) that's sufficient replacement. >I propose that hard skills be subtracted from 80, and easy ones >from 120, as this is a more elegant means of implementing the variable skills >idea. That's a whole nother ball of wax. Hard skills are used at -20 and Easy skills are used at +20? Sounds good to me. I hope that's what Ray meant. - -- +++++++++++++++++++++++23 Loren Miller LOREN@marketing.wharton.upenn.edu Life at the water's edge is the real life for men and women ------------------------------ From: Charlie Domino Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 20:58:54 -0600 (CST) Subject: RQR: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #83 Ok, the MP discussions caused one of my brain cells to go hyper on me (the other remained asleep) and no doubt re-invent the wheel. It seems to me that the biggest problem with spirit combat is that it's BLAND. "ok, I made the RR, I got a 1, he's down to 5 MP, your turn (Yawn)." Instead of a simple pair of die rolls (one for each attacking party in the spirit combat, what of a set of spirit combat options? The average yokel probably would not have many or a high skill, whereas a shaman/shaman's apprentice would have a variety of options availible, some more "powerful" others "practical". Don't ask me just what yet; the only analouge I can think of should get me shot (it's from another game invented by a person whose name starts with a G, a much more popular one). Charlie ===================================================================== "What are we going to do tonight, Brain?" "The same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try and take over the world" =========================cdomino@icsi.net=========================== ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #85 ****************************** 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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