From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V2 #59 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Tuesday, 5 September 1995 Volume 02 : Number 059 TABLE OF CONTENTS owner-rq-rules@hops.wharton. [none] Graydon SAN rolls Brian Tickler Thinking... Phil Johnson Thinking... RULES OF THE ROAD 1. Do not include large sections of a message in your reply. Especially not to add "Yeah, I agree" or "No, I disagree." Or be excoriated. If someone writes something good and you want to say "good show" please do. But don't include the whole message you praise. 2. Use an appropriate Subject line. 3. Learn the art of paraphrasing: Don't just quote and comment on a point-by-point basis. When paraphrasing you demonstrate exactly how well you understand the point someone was trying to make. 4. There is no number 4. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: owner-rq-rules@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 15:47:11 -0400 Subject: [none] ------------------------------ From: Graydon Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 16:15:53 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: SAN rolls I'm not at all sure Gloranthan Chaos drives you mad; it seems to be much more prone to making you ill. (the Red Goddess, now *she* drives you mad, but that's more of an Illumination side effect than a chaos power.) I'd model 'this is really gross chaos, look, there are worms living in the eight foot long pendulous drooling tongue of that broo' effect as physical weakness, myself - the horrors' 'Horror Factor' attacks FAT + some stat to reflect courage; 'stomach', hereafter. Courage is hard to model; certain cults that are _for_ facing chaos will give bonuses, the Stormbull 'Face Chaos' spell clearly greatly increases Stomach, and so forth, but it should'nt be that big a number (in the interest of keeping horror factors fairly low). I'd sugguest that the basic courage factor is POW (primary) + CON (secondary); the strength of your grip on reality plus the general toughness of your metabolism. Stormbulls and other specialized chaos killer cults give the innitiates a bonus to this value (+10 or so), and that Courage can increase with experience - not getting the queases for a whole scenario worth of chaos horrors granting a 1 point increase. Similarly, if you run (not 'get grossed out'; the horror has to win enough, or scare you enough, that you run away from it) you lose a point of courage. Stomach is your rested combat load fatigue (not marching packs, just armor and weapons) plus your courage. So, the thing has a species HF plus D10 per chaos feature; unique chaos horrors get unique Horror Factors assigned to them. When the characters first set out they make a stomach roll - D100 on the resistance table; the ref carefully notes this down, and if the character meets an overly horrible horror (HF higher than their stomach would allow themn to face), they lose FAT much faster - +1/MR per points or fraction thereof of Horror Factor the resistance roll is under. So all the bookkeeping can be shifted to the slack time at the start and end of things, and ignored by the players during combat beyond being told by the ref that they're getting tired faster. saundrsg@qlink.queensu.ca | Monete me si non anglice loquobar. ------------------------------ From: tickler@netcom.com (Brian Tickler) Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 16:58:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Thinking... >Could you please, O mighty one, enlighten your humble servants about THE Way >of running THE perfect RuneQuest campaign :-) I assume this comment is due to the lack of a sufficiently polite "IMHO" on the front of all my sentences: I don't use them much, because (IMHO) I think they are redundant. But anything I post is *merely* my opinion; I do not claim to be stating fact, but I also don't feel a great need to couch my opinions in a cloud of apologetic fluff meant to pre-excuse any possible offense anyone may take. All-encompassing disclaimer: I am not attacking anyone when I post, just throwing my 2 cents in. If you (or anyone) are reading malice into my posts, then please just add an imaginary IMHO to the front of my posts, and a :-) at the end (just to be safe). Back to Runequest: >No really, it is hard to come out each week with a great scenario, and ensure >that your players go home happy at the end of the game. If anyone of you has a >magic way of doing it, please let me know, after 13 years, I am still >searching. >Fred OK, let's start a new thread here: what are everyone's favorite/most useful GM tricks of the trade? I'm talking about anything that you, as a GM, do to make your RQ game more enjoyable/smoother running, like: House Rules Combat Magic Skills/Training Rolling dice Declaring actions "Traditions" Pre-game preparation Post-game wrap-up Breaks Foodstuffs Scenario Design Creating new concepts Writing background material Creating "hooks" Balancing party/scenario strength Designing/generating NPCs Handling local politics Determining appropriate rewards Running the session Ad-libbing Handling covert character actions/single player interactions Handling problematic tendencies of players Handling "out-of-control" situations Handling GM/player favoritism Handling differing PC power/experience levels Handling players from "other" campaigns Physcial gaming aspects Figures Mats Maps Screens Props Layout of the gaming area Lighting/environment External factors Handling geographic diversity in playing group Handling non-players who try to stop/disrupt gaming sessions Scheduling problems In other words, anything that even remotely influences your playing of RQ in any way... - -- Brian T. Tickler E-Mail: tickler@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: "Phil Johnson" Date: Wed, 6 Sep 1995 11:11:17 GMT+800 Subject: Re: Thinking... > Could you please, O mighty one, enlighten your humble servants about THE Way > of running THE perfect RuneQuest campaign :-) > No really, it is hard to come out each week with a great scenario, and ensure > that your players go home happy at the end of the game. If anyone of you has a > magic way of doing it, please let me know, after 13 years, I am still > searching. > Fred > Have all your players make new characters from the same family and make them all Orlanthi. Let the most responsible player be a CA healer ( and make the character a women ) or play the CA yourself as a semi NPC. Rember that the CA is actually in charge and the PC's must defer to her judgement as they are in her service, but when it comes to combat they maybe in charge most of the time her safety is upmost and you must keep reminding them of that. Start off with some small delivery / escorting adventures between local towns and villages as adventures with a few subplots or just plain meet subplot NPC's ie Lunar merchant, disgruntled petty official that just doesn't like them... In short, break the Smash and Grap routine...have them ambushed by another familys young warriors with whom they know and instead of having a brawl try to encourage that the PC's talk to the warriors and help their family as they must be poor and need help if they must resort to petty violence ( Violence is always an option, but not the only option ) an interesting subplot is to make one of the PC's romantically involved with one of the ambusher's family. Have the PC's all make up a specific Trait that the characters have...I had have a player who likes everything to be a dice roll and he even rolls for his players gender and once he rolled a 100 after saying that if he rolled a 100 his character would be GAY he then rolld again and got 67 which indicated to him that his chracter was a female. The end result was an STR 15, CON 13, APP 15 butch lesbian ( NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT - SEINFELD ) Humakti whom later became an initiate of Babaster Gor. The character whom was always "one of the boys" usually ended up being the reason for all the bar fights which always kept their finances low and eager to try any half brained scheme to keep the next round of drinks happening. Another Player's PC liked to collect knives (as he does in real life) and I had the PC's arrested and hanged as he killed a rather nasty Lunar official but the autopsy revealed a rather interesting blade cut to kill the victem instantly as the Weapon he used was known to be in his possesion otherwise he would have been alright once he had fled the city Hopr this sheds some light on the subject... - ----------------------------------------------------------- Phil. Anything Organized is to conservative for me...!!! That's why I like the Internet. ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V2 #59 ****************************** This is the bottom of the RuneQuest Rules Digest. RuneQuest is a trademark of Avalon Hill, and Glorantha is a trademark of Chaosium. 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