From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #99 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, 17 February 1995 Volume 01 : Number 099 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 PAUL POFANDT Rendering landscapes into graphic images ANDOVER@delphi.com Territorial markings? SPerrin@aol.com "Will"power SPerrin@aol.com RQR: Use of a divine pool Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox. RQ3 Critique and Examination SPerrin@aol.com Fwd: More RQ ideas from Ray SPerrin@aol.com Not a Total Grognard... Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox. Power ideas Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox. Compatibility & reality ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: PAUL POFANDT Date: Fri, 17 Feb 95 16:53:10 +1100 Subject: Rendering landscapes into graphic images G'day Has anyone had any sucess using a product like Vista-Pro to produce graphical renderings of local landscapes. What I'd like to do is use Vista-Pro to produce something for my players and say, "This is what you see". I'd also like to produce a few more scenes from common Glorantha areas. I seem to recall that about a year ago, someone uploaded a series of images to the Berkley FTP site. Can anyone give me some assistance? Thanks. Paul. ------------------------------ From: ANDOVER@delphi.com Date: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 01:26:32 -0500 (EST) Subject: Territorial markings? I want to go back to David Dunham's point: the worst part of what happened to RQAIG was that the creative people naturally want to mark the boundaries of their "achievements" meaning that they "fixed" things that weren't broke, while not always repairing what was. Seems that a lot of the discussion on this line is going in that direction. Runepower "solves" a non-existent problem. Divine magic is not particularly broken. The coomplaint seems to be that players (gasp!) actually have to make choices, gee, let's sole the problem by giving them anything they want: those poor divine magic users are so weak anyway! I would prefer more discussion about the tings that really are broken, like sorcery. Else we will end up again with long lists of minor changes (like the weapon weights) whose main purpose is to say "Kilroy was here." I have about as much interest in such changes as I do in the work of graffiti artists. Jim Chapin ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 03:33:19 -0500 Subject: Re: "Will"power I'm going to study this later. I do object to a new characteristic. I'd rather derive "will" from extant stats if it is needed, or POW can't do just as well. I see POW and Hero's Ego as being very similar, actually. Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 03:33:51 -0500 Subject: Re: RQR: Use of a divine pool Troll opined... >>As a referee one should have a good idea of what is appropriate for the god and the PC. In the rulebook you should have a page that explains the nature of DI and the limitations. It could be lifted from one of a dozen such mails/articles that have been written already. It would not be rules, but it would avoid a mechanistic and rules based approach to what should be an imaginitive and interpreted event.<< A good point. Let us hope that we can persuade Mike McG and Ollie of the necessity... Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Date: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 00:52:52 PST Subject: RQ3 Critique and Examination David Cake, an antipodean RQ fan, wrote: >I contend that the rulesbook as a whole can only be seen as really >great for its time - if you think that RQ2 would be considered >inspiring as a whole if released now, you are lost in nostalgia. I would agree that a rulebook should be considered by the time that it is released in. But if RQ3 was a product of its time then this was a lean time for role-playing indeed. I will attempt to qualify this statement in my reply to other parts of your letter. >I think trying to copy the style of the rulesbook [RQ2] as a whole is >not a worthwhile endeavour. But trying to copy the style of the best >bits is a good idea (even if we have to do most of it in the AIG book >instead of in the rules). The RQ4 style, I can not remember whether a copy travelled to Australia for you to playtest, was an embodiment of a modern rendering of something like RQ2, bearing in mind that the playtest version was a draft, albeit a very elegent draft at that. As someone who is concerned about the nature of Glorantha which goes into print, as seperate as from how it is used in a game, I am keen for the Generic RQ Rules to be as inspiring as possible so fans of the RQ concepts are not tied to Greg's approvals for support material. Seeing the RQ4 project being canned for the first time was unpleasant and I hope that through Steve and Ray some of Olivers and Mikes work sees the light of day and is enjoyed by gamers who do not have the benefit of either having been included in the RQ4 playtest or the use of the net & e-mail to explore and share our thoughts about RQ rules and background. It is these gamers that I would hope Generic RQ Rules would support as not everyone has archives of Gloranthan material or is confident about playing with fragments of the information they feel they need. >What I mean is that much of the background stuff in RQ2 was >fragmentary and incomplete. People are mentioned with no explanation >of who they are, mythical figures are mentioned without the myth, etc. >The effect is to give an impression of there being a lot more to >Glorantha than what is given there, which is of course true. Well said. RQ2 gave me a vantage point from which I could glimpse and imagine Glorantha. This gained in depth when I played RQ and people recounted to me their RQ games. To see RQ3 and its descent from those heights was quite a blow. To see what Glorantha had become was a further blow. For me Glorantha remains within the accounts from people who have enjoyed and improvised with that setting. >The point is I bought RQ3 because I was a big RQ2 fan. All the >people who wrote RQ3 were big RQ2 fans. They wanted to improve the game. I am not sure of this point. When RQ4 was being playtested and after RQ4 collapsed we talked a fair bit about RQ3. Apparently RQ3 was the direction in which Greg Stafford wanted RQ to go. I must admit that I am unsure of who the other authors of RQ3 were. >RQ3 appealed to many RQ2 fans. I feel that the problem with RQ3 was not >alienating RQ2 fans, but failing to pick up anyone else. This is exactly the question that Steve Perrin was seeking an answer to. To be quite frank I would not give my stepson a copy of the RQ2 rules and expect him to be able to use them in a game. Neither would I give him a copy of RQ3 to use. This is the goal I seek, to be able to give my stepson a set of rules that work, that he can understand and that will inspire him. RQ4 would have done that and I mourn its passing. >Several years later, the amount of Gloranthan material available >for RQ3, and its high quality, makes it the better option for Gloranthan >roleplay, but this results from the many excellent supplements rather >than the rules books. The question is do you need to have collected Gloranthan supplements for several year to be able to play within Glorantha, to understand the Western continent, to feel you have enough information to start playing within this guarded world? Anyway this has been an enjoyable note to write and I hope that you find reading it an as pleasurable. Regards -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 04:53:25 -0500 Subject: Fwd: More RQ ideas from Ray To the assembled multitude, Ray Turney speaks again. I shipped him some of your initial comments, this is his reply. I'm going to be offline through Monday the 20th--I have a convention to run the dealer room for, DunDraCon 19. If anyone on this list is attending (which seems unlikely, but who knows?) drop by and say hello. Steve Perrin - --------------------- Forwarded message: From: rturney@netcom.com (Raymond D Turney) To: SPerrin@aol.com Date: 95-02-16 00:54:08 EST If you don't restructure spirit magic so that spirits are fundamental to it, rename it {personal magic or whatever} and further develop shamanism so that it is not the primary reliance of shamanism. By the way, the main thrust of my proposal was not to reduce battle magic spellcasting, but to reduce the casting of offensive battle magic to avoid offensive battle magic dominating offensive rune magic because of its superior reusability. But you're right, because my proposal would also weaken Dispell Magic, one of the few counters to the domination of magic over skills as it stands. The proposal to subtract from 80 in hard skills and 120 in easy ones was a proposal to replace the fixed value of 100 in skill increase {i.e. skill increase is a roll less than 120-current skill for easy skills, less than 100 - minus normal skill for normal skills, and less than 80 - normal skill for hard ones. In each case, a roll of less than the skill category bonus {Agility, Knowledge or whatever}. The idea may or may not be good, but this rephrasing should hopefully make it clearer what I meant. Channeling is an ICE/Middle Earth FRP inspiration ... the skill of getting into communion with your god, It is definitely different from Ceremony, which is the performance of extended magical rituals. It is proposed partly to deal with the criticism that it is inappropriate for the gods to always answer, and partly to limit the effectiveness added to Divine Magic by the Runepower system. If you don't go for Runepower don't go for channeling either. Another option is instead of skill, simply assume the god's probability of answering is less than 100%, and varies with cult rank {40% for initiates, 60% for priests and acolytes, 75% for RL's}. This would deal with the criticism of the gods always answering without adding yet another skill to the system. This would also compensate to some degree for the massive increase in the relative power of divine magic resulting from letting initiates have it resuably. Consider giving out POW checks when a critical success is rolled. Agreed that an elan based D.I. system would be good, but it would also be very hard to write without referring to particular cultures and deities ... think that should be part of the Glorantha pack. If we're going that route, let's also borrow Glory from Pendragon and the institutional influence type rules from Hero System ... actually Glory would be a useful criterion in qualifying as an RL in most cultures and instituional influence {i.e. can I get my lord to lend me a crystal or teach me a spell} would definitely be important in lunar society. The point here is that indices of character behaivior are useful for purposes other than granting D.I., and if RQ is going to start using them thought should be given to how and for what. In particular, RQ is deficient in lacking anything like knighthood in Pendragon ... a secular goal to strive for. Note that if Battle Magic is really a people's sorcery, there's no obvious reason to associate it with classical shamanisn or spirits ... and it should definitely be weaker than it is {arguably it dominates real sorcery in most of the implementations I've seen, particularly from a cost effectiveness standpoint}. Detail suggestions: Add BaneBlade - a specialized version of Truesword that works only against enemies of the god or cult to the spell inventory ... thus Orlanth could and probably would have a version of this that worked on specific weapons {Chaos Banesword, etc} but only when they were used against enemies of the cult; Upgrade Dismiss Magic to Dispell up to 4 points of enemy Battle Magic or two points of Rune Magic; Create Analyze Cult Magic ... this spell works like Analyze Magic on items sacred to the cult of the caster and otherwise tells if an item is neutral or hostile to the god or cult of the caster. The reason for BaneBlade is that many cults are partially death or war oriented and need a combat enhancing spell like Truesword for fighting their enemies but not a generalized weapon enhancing spell. I propose upgrading Dismiss Magic to bring it into line with Shield and because nobody carries it at the moment. Analyze Cult Magic is proposed because it is ridiculous for a Humakhti or Yelmalion to have to go a Lankhor Mhy to establish that an item is holy to his own god. I can see Yelmalio knowing nothing about an Orlanthi or Lunar item, but if it was made by a Yelmalio priest, used by the Yelmalion rune lord he made it for, and then lost to the enemy, maybe Yelmalio would know something about it? Consider upgrading Truesword and my proposed BaneBlade so that they ignore magical but not physical protection, and are incompatible with other spells. Reasoning: right now Truesword et al is a relatively weak spell in high level combat, and combat between weaponmasters takes a long time if both have good magical protection. By creating a means of bypassing Shield 7 or whatever you much reduce the {currently excessive IMNSHO value of massive magical protection, in such a way as not to result in characters with high magical attack spells slaughtering the poorly protected. This also upgrades a currently weak spell. Consider adding a status comparable to knighthood {thane?} with defined benefits to basic RQ. Maybe you should even just call it knight {and rename rune lords Templars, since they're basically a special case of knight?}. What I'm thinking of here is skill requirements comparable to RL, and a quest or Glory > x, to qualify. The benefits would be support by your culture thru your lord, the title, a warhorse or other mount, and say five points of enchantments. Also, x amount of cash or equivalent per year. My reasoning here is that there has to be something comparable to rune lord for fighters to aspire to, if the fighter is not into religion. Or the culture is not polytheistic, or whatever. Note that if you keep RQ III divine magic matrices, they can give even non-religious characters divine powers... If you agree with me in not liking the situation that Befuddle frequently dominated physical combat, and don't like Sandy's version that penalizes high INT, consider simply ruling that offensive spells have a maximum 50% chance of succeeding {i.e. an edge helps the defender but not the attacker}. Merge the roll to overcome with the roll to cast ... it's easier that way and this is a better way to limit offensive spirit spells than requiring two rolls {two rolls is clumsier and increases the relative importance of high POW}. This also strengthens both low POW characters {who at least don't have to make two rolls of 40 or 35 or less, and also cannot be blown away by POW 17 spirit spell casters} and sorcery relatively {presuming that sorcerors can go over this limit}. This also means that spirit combat can be of relatively reasonable effectiveness as a means of attack {there is currently a problem in writing shaman rules that spirit combat and attack by shamans should be substantially more powerful than ordinary spirit magic attack, but not totally outclass physical combat ... but if any POW 16 80%er, facing his approximate equal is much better off with Befuddle or Demoralize, shamanistic modes of attack must be either not obviously preferable to normal spirit magic attack or gross as all hell}. Good luck, Ray Turney ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 04:54:15 -0500 Subject: Re: Not a Total Grognard... Nigel Smith suggested: >>Possibility: Pre-sacrificed spells go off faster/more reliably since 'god has already granted permission'. Runepower requests are slower/less reliable since 'god's attention must be gained'.<< And a use for those ceremony and ritual skills for getting the god's attention. Something to think about, and a possibility for the Glorantha version of Divine Magic... Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Date: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 01:27:19 PST Subject: Re: Power ideas The suprisingly named Steve Barnes wrote: >I'm still trying to figure out DI... But my current viewpoint >is that all divine and spiritual manefestations are caused by >the concious or unconcious thoughts of mortals. Gods and spirits >do not actually exist. Most cultures do not realize this, of >course. Obviously, this is not how the majority of gamers view >Glorantha... I tend to go for a more Morcock and collective subconcious style of dieties in my worlds. The concious or unconcious thoughts of mortals may create gods but once created such gods might seek to control and shape the very beings that created them. This can still mean that before mortals gods, or things that later translated themslves into gods, could exist before mortals. >>This is an interesting idea, that reminds me of the worship of other >>people concepts that we all discussed on the original RQ4 list. >If anyone can summarize those discussions, I would appreciate it. I believe that you were on this liast at the same time as this was discussed, Steve. But if you can not recall or did, not read, this train of thought I will attempt to recall it in more detail and post a summary here. >This was based off of the relationship between a Sorceror and >apprentice, but I am also trying to incorporate a broader >concept of leaders getting power from their followers, even ones >that do not sacrifice POW. >The other idea was that every memory, personal relationship, or >possession has part of your Power invested in it. Most of such >things are not significant enough to represent investment of an >actual point of POW. The idea is that by sacrificing, or renouncing >these things, the magician can gain a temporary boost in Power. >Likewise, an enemy can exploit these relationships against you. >Again, it is my viewpoint that the individual is completely in control. >Points are only lost "permanently", because most people do not >truely understand themselves. Of course if you are Illuminated... Sounds a bit like Existentialist Humanism to me. Have at look at 'Humanism and Existentalism' by Jean-Paul Sartre. Myself I tend to extend myself the luxury of gods within my role-playing. However the ideas are interesting and the exploitation of these concepts by enemies is good as well. >By the way, if anyone can recommend any good books about real-world >magical systems, which describe terms such as Contagion in >a straight foreward manner, I would be grateful. I can dig out the names, authors, ISBNs and publishers of some books on the subject if you want. I can not guarantee that these will cover Contagion but they might give you some leads. Regards -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Date: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 01:43:14 PST Subject: Re: Compatibility & reality Steve Perrin wrote: >Just a cautionary note: >Ray and I are strictly kibbitzers in this version of the RuneQuest rules. >The primary filters are Mike McGloin and Oliver Jovanivic(sp?). They are >trying to get their rules printed, based on what the previous playtests came >up with. I'm going to pass along this stuff, and everyone else is welcome to >do the same (welcome as far as I am concerned--I can't speak for Ollie and >Mike, who seemed to have been scarred by their previous contact with this >Distinguished Gathering. Play nice, people.). This does explain some things. I attempted to explain the nature of things to a friend while down a pub yesterday and managed to outline a very complex situation indeed. This does not however mean that the real situation is not even more complex than I anticipated ... >What we are discussing could end up being RuneQuest 5... Scary thought, >huh? Look on the bright side, once RQ4 as produced by Oliver and Mike and the other members of that writing team, is released and people have had the chance to buy, evaluate and read there stands a better chance of there being more unity within the RQ community and marketplace. Regards -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #99 ****************************** 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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