From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V2 #177 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, 5 February 1996 Volume 02 : Number 177 TABLE OF CONTENTS David Cake Vampire Familiars David Dunham Pavis Syndrome; PenDragon Pass Scott Ellsworth "High-level" RQ Scott Ellsworth Pavis Syndrome; PenDragon Pass WillTwist@aol.com DundraCon XX Nigel Smith One weapon, and Criticals Nigel Smith Sky-High Percentages Nigel Smith Vampire Familiars ANDOVER@delphi.com Vampire familiars David Dunham Experience; Firerock martin 102541.3423@compuserv Rapid Advancement 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: David Cake Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 12:53:17 +0800 Subject: Re: Vampire Familiars The vampire familiar tactic looks to me to be rules valid and with rich enough roleplaying possibilities that it is a good thing to allow. As to how often it will come into play, though - remember, most Gloranthan vampires are voluntary Vivamort cultists. And the vampire ritual requires killing the subject. So I don't think that there are many vampires that fell into that situation by accident. >My thoughts now are that the vampire familiar would no longer class as a >the same person as before the transformation. Think of it as such... As a >vampire, the person looses thier soul (POW). As a familiar, they gain some of >the sorcerers soul (POW) and becomes the living tool of the Sorc. They borrow the sorcerers soul - but I am sure they keep their personality, within some limits (much as they retain most of their personality when they become a vampire, just they know have to deal with cravings for consuming others, etc.). I personally wouldn't read too much into the familar bond - its more fun to have the familiars retain distinct personalities, and the familiar rules certainly don't say that familiars are under the complete control of the sorcerer. But its up to you. Note that the vampire doesn't gain anything in the long term, as well. It is still soulless as soon as the sorcerer dies and the familar ritual wears off. But it is convenient in the short term, if a vampire wants to trade some loss of freedom for freedom from needing mps. Maybe there are vampires in Lunar society under this bond. Cheers David Computing Officer |"Our machines are disturbingly lively, Arts Faculty UWA |and we ourselves frighteningly inert." davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au | -Donna Haraway >Microsoft, meanwhile, denies that the problem exists. ------------------------------ From: dunham@pensee.com (David Dunham) Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 23:03:50 -0800 Subject: Re: Pavis Syndrome; PenDragon Pass Martin Laurie wrote >In my campaign I allow the players to roll for experience after every major >combat if they have a day off or so to recuperate, basically after a period of >action is over. Wow, the rules say you need a week to recuperate, so your advancement must be really speedy! You must really like the Pavis Syndrome (adventure one day, recuperate in town the next day, adventure the next day, etc.) which I've tried to fight in my PenDragon Pass variant. >if the system functioned well enough to give >powerful characters the motivations and roleplaying cues that would facilitate >the play, then there wouldn't have to be this fear of tough characters. It has nothing to do with the game system, it has to do with realism. I don't think a year of real time is enough time to become a combat god. You give over 140 chances/Gloranthan year to increase, so in no time at all, raw recruits become Rune Lords. If you want to run a Rune Lord campaign (and there's nothing wrong with that), I think you should figure out another way to do that, such as starting people out at 60-75% (like RQ4 had rules for). Andrew Behan wrote [on the Glorantha list, but it's a rules question] > In his TOTRM article on PDP David Dunham said that he had difficulty >keeping to timetable using epic-scale. > > I've been running a PDP variant most weeks for almost two months and >I've only gotten to the second year. The players are wondering when >there will be a Winter Phase and to be honest so am I! Can anyone help me >out? At some point, the GM just has to say, "time passes." If you're using PenDragon Pass merely as a simplified rule system, you could have experience rolls a month after an adventure. (If you haven't checked the Web page in the last month, I've added a couple articles, including one with this suggestion.) I try to keep a lot of stuff more abstract than I would with other game systems. Yes, this ignores the chance to roleplay out stuff like marriage negotiations between clans, but it also means the game can progress and we can have other roleplaying incidents. ------------------------------ From: fuz@deltanet.com (Scott Ellsworth) Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 23:14:56 -0800 Subject: Re: "High-level" RQ In our current game, running for just opver a year, the highest skill level is a 136% Fast Talk. All of the characters have one skill between 120 and 136, with a second skill somewhere above a hundred, but below 110. Only one of them has more than five skills at or above 90%, but the others are very close, and have a large number of skills in the 80's. They started with the primary skills around 60%. How did this occur? We tend to run short adventures so the characters will have a check run roughly once every two sessions. Also, they have had considerable (six or seven game years) amounts of off-screen training time purchased with adventuring loot. This explains the skills at 80-110%. Characters in such an environment will advance fairly quickly. The 130%s all came from the three minor heroquests that the characters have been on. Each had an opportunity to be the primary beneficiary of a heroquest, during which they had thier special chance trained from ~20% to ~25%. This boosted real world skill by up to 25%, and cost them a fair amount of POW. In the process, they have lost several people - heroquests are dangerous, and characters with skills effectively in the 20s have to be very, very careful, since they will not win any combats or contests save by player cleverness. I am willing to accept this level of power in my game, since I am playing an end of the age game, in which they will be interacting with pro tour heroquesters. So far, it looks like the interaction will be on the order of "Yes, Argrath, I will do as you say," but there is always the chance they will advance to the point where Argrath will notice them. (I figure that takes a 40% special/200% real skill, which they will need significant preperation to survive, and probably the support of a large congregation. Individuals just do not have the POW needed to handle such gains on the Hero plane. The attempted POW needed to bring such a gift into the mundane world would destroy them at thier present level, and I suspect they know that.) The game has only two more plot elements to resolve - Pavis in the new Hero wars and the Caverns from Shadows on the Borderland thread. Each will probably take a good three or four more scenarios to accomplish, so I do not think they would have enough time to amass enough resources to do the requisite Hero plane visits before the end, but we shall see. They may well surprise me. Scott - ------- scott@deltanet.com "You die, she dies, EVERYbody dies" - Heavy Metal "When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment results" - Calvin Coolidge, attrib. by Stanley Walker, City Editor, p. 131 (1934) ------------------------------ From: fuz@deltanet.com (Scott Ellsworth) Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 23:47:47 -0800 Subject: Re: Pavis Syndrome; PenDragon Pass >Martin Laurie wrote > >>In my campaign I allow the players to roll for experience after every major >>combat if they have a day off or so to recuperate, basically after a period of >>action is over. > >Wow, the rules say you need a week to recuperate, so your advancement must >be really speedy! You must really like the Pavis Syndrome (adventure one >day, recuperate in town the next day, adventure the next day, etc.) which >I've tried to fight in my PenDragon Pass variant. I can sympathize with that. I demanded rest between scenarios as a general rule, which usually means falling back to a city and recuperating. Three times, I have allowed the players to roll checks while in the adventure. Each was a time when they were in a position to consider thier wrongs and thier fates. Twice when they were captured by a thanatari priest, and due to be sacrificed, and once when they spent a day going mad in the temple of Arkat. So far, my game has included something like 75-80 play sessions, and roughly 50 experience gain opportunities. The adventurers have been adventuring fairly constantly during that, and roughly six years of active adventuring have passed, plus three years or so of downtime where they bought training, lounged, and essentially did not improve, or improved by training only. The greatest gains that did not involve heroquests, and thus POW-loss mechanics, were skills that went from 60% to 110%. The rolls were honest, but the players were reasonably lucky, If the game ran a bit longer, I could see 150%-160% characters running about. The average gain for some of these people in high skills should be .35 percent per skill run, and some of them are much luckier than they likely should be, making the averge more like .7-.8% per skill run. Give them another 40-50 check runs, and another five or six years of game time, and they would be in the range. Scott - ------- scott@deltanet.com "You die, she dies, EVERYbody dies" - Heavy Metal "When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment results" - Calvin Coolidge, attrib. by Stanley Walker, City Editor, p. 131 (1934) ------------------------------ From: WillTwist@aol.com Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 03:36:47 -0500 Subject: Re: DundraCon XX Nicholas Marcelja asks: >>So where is DunDraCon at??? West Coast somewhere??<< Sorry, DundraCon is going to be at the San Ramon Marriott from Feb 16-19. San Ramon is a small town southeast of San Francisco, just north of Livermore. It is one of Northern California's largest cons and encourages all gaming systems. Will Johnson ------------------------------ From: ns10005@cam.ac.uk (Nigel Smith) Date: Mon, 5 Feb 96 09:10 GMT Subject: One weapon, and Criticals Thomas wrote: > Another thing I've considered for highly skilled characters is this: >Suppose you have over 100% with both Broadsword Parry and Broadsword >Attack. Normally you can only attack OR parry with a one handed weapon, Perhaps you haven't seen the RQ3 errata. It replaces the last 2 sentences of the first paragraph of 'How to Parry' (p48 of the Player's Book) with: "In either case, no character may attack and parry with the same weapon on a single strike rank." But I do like the idea of treating weapon and wielder as two seperate targets. Perhaps, rather than doing damage to the weapon, you could chose to knock it away and thus add rolled damage to your next attack chance? Just a thought. David Dunham: >I've always played that a critical doesn't get stuck; I think that's in the >rules. Sorry, can't find it. Is it another erratum, or was it an RQ4 thing (you lucky playtester, you). Nigel ------------------------------ From: ns10005@cam.ac.uk (Nigel Smith) Date: Mon, 5 Feb 96 12:51 GMT Subject: Re: Sky-High Percentages In defence of those using 'high level combat': 150%+ skills aren't impossible to achieve, nor are 200% skills. Nor do they require a D&D or Monty Haul style of play. I've been GM-ing or group through Balazar for 3 real years, and about 5 years of game time. That's around 120 evenings of play - quite a lot of ticks, pain and death. Some of these characters were transplants from another game (came into mine at 50-60% levels), a couple of the newer ones are Yelmalions of which one has 'Spear Attack and Parry' gift. 5 characters have survived long enough to build up primary weapon skills in the 100-120% range. If they go into combat then a 120% weapon user could have Bladesharp 4 up, be attacking from up-hill while under the influence of Fanaticism that's an attack chance of (120+20+10)x1.5 = 225% That sort of chance isn't well catered for in the present rules, especially in a one-on-one situation, so I have been reading the proposed ammendments with interest. When I get a chance, I'll try some. Looking forward to more great ideas, Nigel ------------------------------ From: ns10005@cam.ac.uk (Nigel Smith) Date: Mon, 5 Feb 96 12:51 GMT Subject: Re: Vampire Familiars WRT POWless vampires which have their POW replaced: I would take a long hard look at what the vampire gains in becoming POWless in the first place, then work out what special abilities the vampire would loose when the sorceror gifts it POW under the create familiar ritual. OK, so it may no longer need to suck blood, but why should it still be able to turn to smoke, or possess higher stats than the average human. Surely it is the fact that the vampire is an incomplete creature which gives it many of its special abilities? And for those who use Vivamort-style vampires, not drinking blood would probably be a breach of cult strictures, meaning visits from cult spirits, etc. And can you see the conversations at the Greydog Inn? "OK, I'll grant you my servant has the strength of a vampire, can turn to smoke or a wolf, dislikes light, has a pale complexion and long canines, but honest, he's a vegetarian..." Nigel ------------------------------ From: ANDOVER@delphi.com Date: Mon, 05 Feb 1996 10:45:37 -0500 (EST) Subject: Vampire familiars In role-playing, not power-gaming terms, the idea of making your lover into a vampire famliar is extremely strange. S/he sacrifices her immortal soul, and dies when you do, while your soul is not affected, except by the evil act you have performed! And, whatever a familiar's personality may be,it is certainly changed from that which it naturally is! Some love! All this for a small advantage in power-gaming terms. I certainly would not allow it as a GM, exept between 2 player characters, and it is hard to see whatkind of PCs would do it. The good ones would not do it because it was evil; and the evil ones would not do it because it was stupid! Jim Chapin ------------------------------ From: dunham@pensee.com (David Dunham) Date: Mon, 5 Feb 1996 11:40:13 -0800 Subject: Re: Experience; Firerock Steve Lieb wrote >>I favor a system where a player can, rather than roll to see how >>>much of a gain he gets (which can, in some cases, result in a reduction), can >>>just take a 1% increase and not bother with the rolls. >> >>Isn't that how RQ3 works? Or do you mean, rather than rolling to see if you >>go up at all, take the 1%? >> > >Nope - in RQIII you still have to ROLL to see if you get a gain. You can >decide to take 3% in lieu of rolling d6-1 for the gain amount - that's >prob'ly what you were remembering. Yup, and 3% is a lot better than 1%. >>> Speaking of which, one of my favourite tricks is to get a bunch of >>>characters who know Firearrow to cast it on as many pebbles as possible, >>>CAREFULLY placing each one into a loose bag, and firing the lot out of a >>>seige engine (or just dumping it off the battlements onto the beseiging >>>forces). Cluster bomblet munitions for RQ! >> >>Very clever (and perfectly legal) though it feels wrong. > >IMO, no. If you have that many guys with Firearrow during a siege, who >aren't too busy to cast it, and are willing to spare the MP for it, why not? I tend to be more worried about ambushes set up by the PCs. Sure, they were clever the first time, but I'd hate for them to have the "certain death" weapon every time they set up an ambush. >if they are just DROPPED off onto a seige tower or ladder - why not just use >pitch or something? Takes no magic points. And probably doesn't do 3d6. David Dunham Pensee Corporation dunham@pensee.com Voice/Fax: 206 783 7404 http://www.pensee.com/dunham/ "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: martin <102541.3423@compuserve.com> Date: 05 Feb 96 13:11:13 EST Subject: Rapid Advancement I wrote: >>In my campaign I allow the players to roll for experience after every major >>combat if they have a day off or so to recuperate, basically after a period of >>action is over. David Dunham Wrote: >Wow, the rules say you need a week to recuperate, so your advancement must >be really speedy! You must really like the Pavis Syndrome (adventure one >day, recuperate in town the next day, adventure the next day, etc.) which >I've tried to fight in my PenDragon Pass variant. As I said, I find the week recuperation thing to be a bit of a rules construct and therefore too obviously unrealistic. If the PCs are under high pressure in game terms for a short period then they should still be allowed to progress. I frequently run games where the players have little or no sleep or time for weeks, even seasons and it seems unfair of me to deny them experience simply because they haven't had a week off. In the RW, I haven't had a week off in nearly a year but it doesn't mean I'm not constantly getting better at my job! Obviously, the players aren't active all year round, they take week breaks and that slows their advancement down but yes they do advance quickly and they started at around 60-70% anyway, hence half the group are Rune Level now. Amusingly, they have found it rather hard to get initiated as a Rune Level, they have the requirements but never the time and anyone who could organise it for them is often way too busy. >>if the system functioned well enough to give >>powerful characters the motivations and roleplaying cues that would facilitate >>the play, then there wouldn't have to be this fear of tough characters. >It has nothing to do with the game system, it has to do with realism. I >don't think a year of real time is enough time to become a combat god. You >give over 140 chances/Gloranthan year to increase, so in no time at all, >raw recruits become Rune Lords. If you want to run a Rune Lord campaign >(and there's nothing wrong with that), I think you should figure out >another way to do that, such as starting people out at 60-75% (like RQ4 had >rules for). I do that too. However, you say there is nothing wrong with the game system at higher levels, so why do so many people complain that it doesn't work when you hit 150% plus? Personally I think there are a couple of reasons for this. (1). The maths gets complex, you have to figure out multiple attack and defend options quickly in your head as a GM or else the game slows right down (Dull dull dull). This is often hard. (2). A GM often finds it hard to simulate the flexibility a single player can show in combat with his character. If you're running 12 NPCs and the players are running their one PC, who has the easiest job and can think of clever strategies easily? This problem getsmuch worse as the players hit higher percentiles and aquire even greater flexibility via Rune Magic. As a GM its difficult to do a NPC Rune Lord justice in these situations. Martin Laurie ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V2 #177 ******************************* 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. WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html