From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V3 #22 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, 9 August 1996 Volume 03 : Number 022 TABLE OF CONTENTS Peter Maranci Differing characteristics Glenn Glazer Attributes\skills and Occupation Glenn Glazer (Whispered) Psionics, anyone? Glenn Glazer Runic sorcery offer Glenn Glazer Casting Spells & Statistic Increase Glenn Glazer Magic resistance roll/Character Generation Glenn Glazer Burly Smiths Glenn Glazer Attributes and occupations; enchantments Martin Declan Kelly Differing characteristics 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: Peter Maranci Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 21:59:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Differing characteristics I've spent more time pondering the issue of characteristic increase, and have come up with several more points that give me pause. Someone (sorry, I'm not sure who) commented that when a PC trains a characteristic they are assumed to spend 50 hours a week working on it, and that this wasn't realistic. That's certainly true for STR -- a character who train their strength for 50 hours a week would end up crippled or dead, not stronger. I'm not a physical trainer, but it seems reasonable that the maximum time that a person could spend on strength training would be three or four hours a day. I'm told that it's necessary to take alternating days off from weight training to allow the tissue to rebuild (I work on alternating muscle groups instead). That would mean that the most time a character could spend in a week on STR training would be twenty hours *maximum* -- and that would really be pushing it. It took me twenty hours to increase the weight I could lift by 50%, but that time was spread over three months. Is there a simple way to reflect this reality in the rules? Another point: According to RQ rules there's only a *chance* of an increase after training. That's not at all accurate; cause and effect are quite directly related in this area. If you do the training, you're going to increase your strength. I imagine that diminishing returns might set in for extremely well-developed individuals, but those would be exceptional cases. On a different tack, I have to wonder if all characteristics increase in the same way. I suspect that most of them don't. CON training may be most like STR in some ways. In a way I've been training my CON by spending 45 minutes on a treadmill six times a week. The result isn't as directly measurable as strength, but the amount of calories I burn off in a session has doubled in three months, from 300 to 620. This must be the equivalent of *some* point increase. My endurance is certainly way up. Whether or not the improvement applies to CON as a whole, I couldn't say -- I haven't been sick since I started this, but I don't get sick very often anyway. Does anyone have any suggestions for other ways in which CON could be trained? In any case the result has been generated from approximately 40 total hours of work -- again, RQ requires far more time than the real world does. I'd argue that SIZ can increase by at least a point as a result of increased muscle size and improved posture. Some might argue that INT is trainable -- memory-improving courses come to mind. I suspect that INT increases with age, at least for a while. In some long-term RQ games, I allow PCs to get a one-point increase in INT per decade (representing general life experience and wisdom), with an unrelated risk of INT decrease due to aging rolls (i.e. senesence). This seems to work pretty well. DEXterity. This is where I choke. *Is* DEX trainable? I've heard that ballet, Tai Chi, juggling, etc. can improve dexterity -- but does an improvement in Tai Chi skill translate into a *overall* improvement in the characteristic itself? This seems questionable. If anyone has practical experience with this point, I'd very much like to hear about it (I could use DEX training myself, rather badly :-) ). Just a gut feeling, but I suspect that if it's possible at all DEX training would be considerably more time-consuming than training STR. Ten times longer, at a guess. On a side note, why doesn't an improvement in weapon attack skill allow faster attack? Skill should at least *influence* strike ranks. It makes no sense that a guy with a 20% sword attack skill and DEX + SIZ of 30 would *always* have a chance to strike before a 90% master with DEX + SIZ of 25. In the real world I'd expect it to be the other way around. If APP represents natural looks alone, then I don't see how it could be improved at all without the RQ equivalent of plastic surgery. If it represents grooming, use of makeup, proper nutrition to improve skin tone, etc. then it seems that APP could be improved almost immediately by a good cosmetologist -- as "make-over" episodes of various talk shows frequently demonstrate. Perhaps a fat PC could spend considerable time improving their appearance by losing weight, but that would mean that you'd have to be fat to permanently improve your APP. Just a bunch of thoughts...thanks for letting me air them here. Comments are welcome (though I'll be offline for a week and therefore unable to follow up immediately). -->Pete - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Maranci pmaranci@tiac.net / maranci@tiac.net Malden, MA Editor, Interregnum RPG/Science Fiction APA/magazine -- email for info. Interregnum WWW home page: http://www.tiac.net/users/maranci/index.html ------------------------------ From: Glenn Glazer Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 19:50:00 -0700 Subject: Re: Attributes\skills and Occupation At 17:10 08/09/96 +0000, David Boatwright wrote: >How about dividing the hours spent in an Occupation over a time >period and dividing it by say 10 and applying that to an applicable >skill or characteristic. Too automatic and too easy for the PC's. Getting skill increases as a by-product (with no additional cost) of getting more skills seems out of game balance, IMHO. Best, Glenn \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ To a mathematician it is intuitively obvious that the shortest distance between two points is {f(x,y):x=ny} for some x,y subsets of R and n a single element of Z. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ ------------------------------ From: Glenn Glazer Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 19:49:34 -0700 Subject: Re: (Whispered) Psionics, anyone? At 22:01 08/08/96 -0400, you wrote: >I recently completed the latest draft of my psionics-for-RuneQuest system. >If anyone would like a copy, shout. I'm going to be sending it to the >Chaosium Digest, as it has a certain degree of portability to other >BRP-based systems as well. (My campaign uses Sanity, for instance, and a >couple of the psionic abilities affect it). > > Sure, why not? I don't have nearly enough stuff to read. :) Best, Glenn \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ To a mathematician it is intuitively obvious that the shortest distance between two points is {f(x,y):x=ny} for some x,y subsets of R and n a single element of Z. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ ------------------------------ From: Glenn Glazer Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 19:49:36 -0700 Subject: Re: Runic sorcery offer At 22:38 08/08/96 -0400, you wrote: > Some time ago I wrote up an unusual system of Rune-based sorcery >for RQ. It was posted to the Glorantha Digest's predecessor at least four >or five years ago. Recently I offered it to the readers of the Digest, >but had it called to my attention that it might be more appropriately >offered here. I don't know what the level of duplication is between the >two lists; no annoyance is intended for subscribers to both. > > If anyone would like an ASCII copy of the system, please drop me a >line. Alternatively I'm willing to post it to the list, but at over 600 >lines (10 pages) it's very long. I don't know if it would be appropriate. Please send me a copy directly at the above address. Best, Glenn \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ To a mathematician it is intuitively obvious that the shortest distance between two points is {f(x,y):x=ny} for some x,y subsets of R and n a single element of Z. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ ------------------------------ From: Glenn Glazer Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 19:49:52 -0700 Subject: Re: Casting Spells & Statistic Increase At 11:54 08/09/96 -0700, you wrote: >> From: Glenn Glazer >> This happened in Glorantha. As I remember, they were mass manufacturing cheap magic swords until ecology caught up with them. >> >> Glenn > >Yes but this does not mean that the people of the Clanking Ruins did >not have to use magic like mindlink to allow the transfer of POW. > I'm not disputing that, merely saying that it was possible, happened and that the reason it failed (in the end) had nothing to do with the impossibility of the process, since it clearly wasn't. Again, I believe in POW conservation, but I am not sure that under most circumstances I care where the POW comes from. Admittedly, if you are sacrificing to Orlanth, getting a Broo's POW (however unlikely _that_ might be) would probably not be accepted, but you know what I am getting at (I hope!). Best, Glenn \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ To a mathematician it is intuitively obvious that the shortest distance between two points is {f(x,y):x=ny} for some x,y subsets of R and n a single element of Z. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ ------------------------------ From: Glenn Glazer Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 19:49:27 -0700 Subject: Re: Magic resistance roll/Character Generation At 20:13 08/08/96 -0400, you wrote: >In our campaign, we do not have a roll to cast the spell, only rolls to >overcome POW, otherwise it complicates things too much. Still, each to his >own. > >By the way, I did not get the mail regarding this - something is happening to >this list - things sometimes don't turn up or turn up out of sequence - I >have been reading replies before the questions on this session, very >disconcerting. > Ditto. I have noticed the same problems and now this spam from Gateway! > >Kevin Rose mentions Aftermath! - I played this once, spent two days (I kid >you not) rolling up a character, another day working out the rules system and >half a day realising that a system which makes it very difficult to actually >shoot someone may be very realistic but is an awful roleplaying system. Give >me RQ any time. Actually the character gen system I love to hate is Traveller, in which the character can _die_ during the generation process! What a @%^& waste of time! :) Best, Glenn \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ To a mathematician it is intuitively obvious that the shortest distance between two points is {f(x,y):x=ny} for some x,y subsets of R and n a single element of Z. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ ------------------------------ From: Glenn Glazer Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 19:50:04 -0700 Subject: Re: Burly Smiths At 14:43 08/09/96 PST, you wrote: >[Jim Bickmeyer wrote about getting an attribute advancement check for >doing something demanding for a week. The example he gave was a smith >becoming stronger due to the nature of his work.] > >I first thought that what constitutes "difficult work" has to be tied >to the level of the skill being used. For example, it would take a >truly exceptional project to give a master smith a strength check. > >Then I realised that one of the effects of higher skill is that it >obviates some of the need for high characteristics. ("Work smarter, >not harder.") A beginning smith will try to smash the metal into >shape. A master smith doesn't need to exhaust himself on a daily >basis. A godlike smith might be like a diamond cutter - one tap in >*just* the right place... > >When I was taking fencing, our coach was always telling the class we >needed to be as lazy as possible. Don't overreact. Do as little as >possible. Conserve energy for when it counts. > >-- Tim > THAT is the best answer I have heard on the entire subject. Excellent thought, Tim. Best, Glenn \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ To a mathematician it is intuitively obvious that the shortest distance between two points is {f(x,y):x=ny} for some x,y subsets of R and n a single element of Z. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ ------------------------------ From: Glenn Glazer Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 19:49:23 -0700 Subject: Re: Attributes and occupations; enchantments At 00:42 08/09/96 +0100, you wrote: >Attributes and occupations >========================== >Peter Maranci raises two interesting points: the time taken to train up a >stat, and the effect of previous occupations on those stats. > >On the time taken to train up, I'd agree, roughly: I started going to the >gym at Christmas, and by May had more than doubled all the weights I was >using. Not to such heroic numbers as Peter, but say STR2 to STR4. That was >one hour every Sunday (well, _most_ Sundays...:)). When our PCs train STR in >games, they seem to spend seven hours a day, every day, until they get >there. I don't believe this would work: comments, anyone? Would a maximum of >one hour a day be more reasonable? And how many hours _should_ it take to >increase a stat? Unfortunately, to be realistic, this would take an expoential curve to do properly. That is, it may take very little time to go from STR2 to STR4, but it is going to take far, far longer to go from STR17 to STR18. Most people do not want to deal with the complexity here. After all, as your comment about most Sundays indicates, there could be training relapses as well as advancements, etc. The question becomes, how fine a point do you want to put on it? How much is good detail and how much is unnecessary complexity? The answers, I would think, would be matters of personal taste. (snip) >Enchantments >============ >The general consensus seems to be that the enchanter should use their own >POW except in very special circumstances. I'd agree with this: but then have >fun making up those special circumstances to fit the bit of the plot you >wanted the facility for in the first place! > >IMG (after long discussions with Mike Cule on how to get the effect I >wanted), the Vingans can get specially enchanted weapons like this: they >provide the POW, the priestess does the ceremony. The enchantment is then >useable _only_ by the owner, and doesn't even class as magical for most >purposes so doesn't give unusual advantages v. (e.g.) undead. Payment, as >minimum, is a season's work for the temple, plus the cost of the weapon to >be enchanted *3. A year's work would be more normal. What does it do? Well, >this gets us back to stats, actually. It reduces the minimum STR requirement >for that weapon by up to 3 points (depends on the Ceremony roll). If, like >me, you use the female stats for female PCs (most woman _are_ weaker than >men, believe it or not), this is wildly useful for Vingans and very little >use to anyone else. Even then, you only get one weapon done like this, and >for the enchantment to be any use to you the weapon was of a type you're not >strong enough to use. Any previous practise was either at a disadvantage or >with Strength spells up. > >I think I'd allow one specialist enchantment like this per cult, though I >haven't worked out any others yet. Just make sure they're the Right Thing to >Do for that religion without actually being too useful. Okay, as the minority dissenting opinion, here's my feeling. When POW is sacrificed to a deity, it is like coin paid for service, in this case a small investiture of the god's power. As long as everyone involved is a member in good standing, I can't see why the god would care who the POW was coming from, any more than the sword merchant cares whether you are buying the blade yourself, or if other people pitched in to help you buy it. The key word here is conservation, in the sense of energy or mass conservation. POW is likewise conserved by the receipient sacrificing his POW (remember, they are losing their own _permanent_ POW for this!) or the enchanter self-sacrificing. If you wanted to, you could make the enchanter have to dump in a single point of POW to open the channel or whatever, and have the buyer dump in the rest. From a game balance perspective, I have no qualms about relieving the PC's of any excess POW they might have :) and frankly, I would rather not force single characters out of the game for up to a year - it doesn't seem fair to the player. Best, Glenn \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ To a mathematician it is intuitively obvious that the shortest distance between two points is {f(x,y):x=ny} for some x,y subsets of R and n a single element of Z. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ ------------------------------ From: Martin Declan Kelly Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 20:25:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: Differing characteristics > DEXterity. This is where I choke. *Is* DEX trainable? I've heard >that ballet, Tai Chi, juggling, etc. can improve dexterity -- but does an >improvement in Tai Chi skill translate into a *overall* improvement in the >characteristic itself? This seems questionable. If anyone has practical >experience with this point, I'd very much like to hear about it (I could >use DEX training myself, rather badly :-) ). > > Just a gut feeling, but I suspect that if it's possible at all DEX >training would be considerably more time-consuming than training STR. Ten >times longer, at a guess. Damn straight dex is trainable, both in terms of grace and agility, and hand-eye co-ordination... 15 years of playing video games taught me that... I can catch houseflies and never lose at slaps... and while most things like this would perhaps be reflected in RQ skills, my balance has increased, as have my reflexes, as a result of years of swordfighting... and the argument *against* skills is that the increase shows in unrelated areas. ;) Declan - -- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars... - Oscar Wilde o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o Martin Declan Kelly Teleport Internet Services Senior Tech Support My view and opinions are my own; go get your own http://www.teleport.com/~declan/ o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V3 #22 ****************************** 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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