From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #106 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Wednesday, 22 February 1995 Volume 01 : Number 106 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 SPerrin@aol.com Largest RQ playing Group SPerrin@aol.com Who's Buying? Steven E Barnes RQ for Thickies David Dunham via RadioMail Designing your own; Turing Test Kirsten Jacobus Bonewits and RQ Kirsten Jacobus When the gods are different Kirsten Jacobus The weapon scale Kirsten Jacobus The RQ3 cover art. Charlie Domino Gamemaster Demographics Scotty2405@aol.com Aha! Scotty2405@aol.com "RQ for Thickies" David Cake Aha! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 15:08:54 -0500 Subject: Re: Largest RQ playing Group At one time, a few months after Griffin Mountain came out, the Chaosium attempted to combine about three playing groups into one big quest for the Wind Sword. We got hit at the dividing river (forget its name and I just sold my only GM) by a troll ambush with giant insects. (Greg and Sandy were two of the GMs). The party split on theological grounds (Orlanthi over here, Yelmalio and Storm Bull[!] over there) and gave up the quest, the local tribesmen [my campaign group] got disgusted and went back to hunting. It was quite a debacle. On another occasion, while we were testing RQ2 (or shortly thereafter) Warren James and I hosted (he lived with me and Luise) a weekend-long clean-out-the-blind-king's-palace run. People came in and out throughout the weekend and it actually worked fairly well. Must have had over a dozen players at various times... For Hero System games, I have GMed for as many as 14, though these are not my most fondly remembered games. Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 15:06:59 -0500 Subject: Re: Who's Buying? Both Trent Smith and Jim Chapin have some very good points about what needs to be done to expand the RQ player base. To get down to the bottom line, I want a new game called RuneQuest out there because Chaosium gets paid a royalty for every game called RuneQuest that is sold and I get a percentage from that. Throwing out the game as it is (and thus losing the current player base) is no way to double the current player base. The reason I have been tossing rules revisions out is to hope that some people will be interested in testing them both for playablity AND for compatibility with current rules, especially in how they make character sheets look and villain writeups. Ideally, a new set of rules using my suggestions will produce supplements that can be used by grognards (using the old rules) and newbies (using the new rules) alike. But the important thing is, in fact, not what changes are made, but how those changes will make new players come into the game. I talked to a lot of people at DunDraCon this past weekend and most of them, many veteran gamers with lots of RQ time from the 1st edition on, are also playing games with no hit points, no magic points/mana/etc., and so forth. These are people who buy lots of different games and play all of them--part of RQ's potential audience. Many have left RQ because of its concentration on Glorantha. This is a phenomenon that was around back when we were doing RQ3--one reason we went to Fantasy Europe. These new concepts are part of the current wave in gaming. New players looking for new systems are looking for variations on these familiar items. Inspired by some of these systems, I am trying to create a variation on RQ which embraces these ideas but still "looks" like RuneQuest. Old time players should be able to buy future supplements without getting lost or needing the new rules if the new rules authors do their jobs right (though I, of course, would rather everyone bought the new rules--I don't get royalties from supplements). New rules players should be able to use the old supplements (though the results may come out different; I don't know. That's why I want people to playtest these ideas.) with a minimum of adjustments. Thank you, Guy Robinson and Kirsten Jacobus, for actually volunteering to playtest the rules I've put on this list. I look forward to your input. Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: akuma@netcom.com (Steven E Barnes) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 12:16:29 -0800 Subject: Re: RQ for Thickies >>>ooze and chaos? Slight exaggeration here, but it seems to >me that a newcomer would get the impression that Glorantha >is all about Storm Bullying through hordes of screaming >chaos mutants.... Doesn't this seem a little (dare I say >it) Warhammerish? So maybe RQ is already on the right track, << > >So, if Shakespeare were selling badly, should we >intersperse the prose with the word "fuck" occasionally >just to attract a more "yoof" audience ? God help us all. There has always been a big element of chaos slaying in RQ products. It is only recently that the big push has been made towards culture intensive roleplaying in RQ. The recent release of Dorastor and Cults of Doom (or whatever it is called) may give the impression of a sudden emphasis on chaos. If anything, Warhammer borrowed the concept of chaos from RQ (well, OK perhaps Moorcock did it first). - -steve ------------------------------ From: David Dunham (via RadioMail) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 12:38:49 -0800 Subject: Re: Designing your own; Turing Test Hugh Foster questioned the statement >>> The hard truth is that not that many people want to >design their campaigns from nothing. << > >Is it ? Everyone I know designs their own campaign; I can't >think of anyone running in a bought-pack world, in _any_ >game system. Votes, any one ? While I ran a non-Gloranthan campaign, I used QuestWorld as geography. (The continent of Kanos appeared to have very reasonable climatic zones, at least as good as I could have done.) I currently run a Gloranthan campaign. To do so, I use many "bought-packs." I've even run scenarios exactly as written in the book (not often). There are always tweakers. Some people are rules tweakers. Some people are world tweakers. But it's a mistake to think everyone is a tweaker. Some of us don't want construction kits, we want working models to expand upon. Guy Robinson says >In other words given the nature of medium over which the Turing test >would have to be conducted I think a RQ god would pass Guy, I humbly submit you don't have any idea what you're talking about. The Turing Test is performed over a teletype (or more modern equivalent). Being able to write questions and receive written answers from the gods is a given, otherwise you can't perform the test. The Turing Test is about whether we could tell from the answers that the entity on the other and of the teletype is a human (the basic version is actually to distinguish men from women, but the computer/human distinction is how it's usually taken today, and I believe a god/human distinction is the obvious extrapolation here). The entity passes if it can fool the questioner into thinking it's human. And you yourself show how you could trip up the gods: >The distinguishing difference between a god and man would be the trend >toward timelessness ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Kirsten Jacobus) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 95 17:41:19 -0500 Subject: Bonewits and RQ Chaosium used to publish a product called "Authentic Thaumaturgy", it was a game rules version of Real Magic. I only know it through a third-hand rendering (references to parts of Authentic Thaumaturgy in the original Chivalry and Sorcery Sourcebook). Thus, there is probably a lot of Bonewits's thinking in Chaosium games. ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Kirsten Jacobus) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 95 17:47:29 -0500 Subject: When the gods are different Okay, this is a Glorantha-specific ferinstance, but it has been canonically stated that, if a priest of a deity travels to a land where that deity is worshipped but in an extremely different way, with extremely different granted powers, the priest is still able to get and regain Divine magic as if the deity in question were exactly the same one at home. How this translates to the way the deity appears to the worshipper has not been stated, but the mechanics don't change for that priest. ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Kirsten Jacobus) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 95 17:51:20 -0500 Subject: The weapon scale I came to the conclusion regarding the shape of the weapon scale by doing a rough rule-of-thumb calculation of angular momentum for several examples of weapons from a few Museum Replicas catalogues and from some historical sources and then plotting those against the average damage of a few RQIII weapons. The plot bore a rough resemblance to a logarithmic relationship. When I saw that, I decided that the RQ weapons didn't need redesign from the top down to fit into the logarithmic scales of SIZ and STR (for damage bonus) and the implied logarithmic scale of HP (derived linearly from SIZ). ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Kirsten Jacobus) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 95 17:58:50 -0500 Subject: The RQ3 cover art. The RQ3 cover art has to be one of the best game covers I've ever seen. My wife (then not my wife) came to the immediate conclusion that RQ was something worth playing simply from the cover art--it had a woman on it who was fully clothed! ------------------------------ From: Charlie Domino Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 19:05:10 -0600 (CST) Subject: Gamemaster Demographics Several times in the last few digests, I've seen the argument of bought vs. created worlds brought up, now with a request for a self-survey. Before we accept such a survey as authoritative, I'd like to make one point. We are NOT representative of the bell curve of GMs. Far from it; I suspect that the average lurker here is an above average GM (in terms of commitment, at least) compared to the mass it would take to make RQ successful. Why? First is that fact that they ARE here. Keeping up with this volume of mail (even trying to) is something that the mythological "Average GM" isn't going to do. Commenting on it as many do (creating even) is just NOT what the bulk of the players/GMs will be doing, even if they do happen to own a computer, a modem, and have net access. Which is hardly universal, popular though it is. Ever hear the story of Hoover's re-election? It's not as famous as "Dewey Defeats Truman" ,but to explain it to the unaware (and non-American), during the worst of the Great Depression, one of the first voter surveys ran predicted that Hoover would be re-elected by a landslide over that demagogue from the Democrats, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Only on election day the exact opposite happend. Why? Because the survey was done by PHONE. And if you still had one in the depths of the depression (when they weren't as common as today anyway) you were probably a well-to-do Republican and surviving the depression fairly well. Ok, it's not RQ. I apologize and return you to your regularly scheduled broadcast. Charlie PS: oh yeah, I worked from bought worlds until late in my college years, then began converting worlds from favorite books and stealing inspiration blind from combinations of others. ===================================================================== "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=========================== ------------------------------ From: Scotty2405@aol.com Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 23:02:47 -0500 Subject: Aha! Jonas Schiott points out "Has anyone else noticed that everything published for RQ since, well 1990 or so, has been filled to the brim with chaos, chaos, slime, blood, guts, ooze and chaos? Slight exaggeration here, but it seems to me that a newcomer would get the impression that Glorantha is all about Storm Bullying through hordes of screaming chaos mutants.... Doesn't this seem a little (dare I say it) Warhammerish?" Would it come as any surprise to you that the architect of the RQ renaissance, Ken Rolston, is a former Games Workshop staffer and current holder of Warhammer FRPG USA publication rights? With this in mind, the Dorastor pack, in particular, comes in to its own ugly light. Joe Scott ------------------------------ From: Scotty2405@aol.com Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 23:09:12 -0500 Subject: RE: "RQ for Thickies" Hugh Foster -- "Sorry but no. If you produce "RQ for Thickies" then I won't buy it, any more than I buy WH. This high sales crap is what's made TSR what it is today - unpopular! " No, TSR is profitable, and unpopular with RQ players. It's quite popular with the bulk of the game buying audience, that being males between the ages of 13-19. I have before and will again call for a new look to RQ, a new slickness in graphics and presentations, which play to the lowest common denominator. If you can get them to buy it on looks and tone, then they'll either learn to play it or use GURPS rules and use the background, just like they do with Vampire and the whole World of Darkness thing. I urge caution -- big changes in style, not big changes in substance, are what I recommend. Joe Scott ------------------------------ From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 12:24:15 +0800 Subject: Re: Aha! > >Would it come as any surprise to you that the architect of the RQ >renaissance, Ken Rolston, is a former Games Workshop staffer and current >holder of Warhammer FRPG USA publication rights? With this in mind, the >Dorastor pack, in particular, comes in to its own ugly light. > Actually, Ken is only mildly responsible. Blame him for Shadows on the Borderlands, especially for his own scenario, Dyskund caverns, which I have just been running people through, and which is quite hideous. But there had been Dorastor mutterings for years (since Cults of Terror, I think). RQ has always suffered from an oversupply of adventures involving going down holes in the ground and fighting chaos. It is a running joke in my game ('what shall we do? Howabout we go down a hole in the ground and fight Chaos? Nah, did that yesterday.'). GDHITGAFC adventures, to coin a torturous acronym, include Snake Pipe Hollow, the Devils Playground from Big Rubble, and Muriahs Revenge from Borderlands, all from Chaosium based scenarios, plus the Hellpits of Nightfang from someone else. In Griffon Mountain you got to fight them above ground, but there were at least two distinct chaos fighting scenarios. Big Rubble has an outrageous number of broo gangs. Nah, the chaos has always been there. Cheers Dave >Joe Scott ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #106 ******************************* 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.