From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V3 #51 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, 30 August 1996 Volume 03 : Number 051 TABLE OF CONTENTS Andrew Joelson Aegytp Andrew O. Mellinger RQ Rules Digest: V3 #50 David Dunham RQ rights; enchanting David Weihe RQ Rules Digest: V3 #50 David Weihe Sanity Sandy Petersen MAGIC ECONOMICS Sandy Petersen weapon damage Sandy Petersen POW Sacrifice 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: joelsona@cpdmfg.cig.mot.com (Andrew Joelson) Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 14:49:48 -0500 Subject: Aegytp > Other than that, how much does anyone know? The Egyptians were going strong at this point. Menes first combined Upper and Lower Egypt and proclaimed himself the first Pharoah at about 3400 BC. At a guess, 2000 BC is about 14th Dynasty, or Middle Kingdom. You'll find plenty of material at any good library. Andrew Joelson PS Orlanth-Cola, official sponsor of Glorantha Con IV! Rosemont, Illinois Jan 24-26, 1997 Orlanth-Cola, a real Windy City drink! ------------------------------ From: andrew@criticalpath.com (Andrew O. Mellinger) Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 12:53:50 -0700 Subject: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V3 #50 >> My point exactly! Does anyone have any idea what natural law that would >>exist to do this? What gloranthan phenomenon makes the rules prohibit >>(or at leat make it exceedingly difficult) for Vicarious POW enchantments >>to happen? > >I have already given what I think is a perfectly good reason, but since >you ask again I'll try to be more clear and concise: > >I'll ask a counter question : What gloranthan phenomenon prevents the >sharing of any other attributes? Why are there no spells for swapping CON >or DEX or INT between characters? If you don't accept any arguments >against accessing other character's POW, presumably you will hennceforth >allow the exchange of other attributes between characters? Perhaps a >sorcerer creating a familiar could sacrifice other characters attributes >to create the familiar? Just mug a few dozen peasants and raid them for 10 >INT each to create a super-familiar with 200 INT. Why is this not >mentioned in the spell description? Isn'tt it important enough? Valid arguments against an invalid premise. The premise behind multi-user ritual is that someone else besides the enchanter *sacrifices* POW for the enchantment. The enchanter still creates the enchantment and seals the sacrificed life-force (POW) into the item. So, there is no 'drawing', 'mugging', 'stealing', or any other sort of nonsense. We are talking about willful, cooperative, multi-user ritual. >Anyway, why should those of us arguing against POW sacking carry the >burden of proof? It clearly is not allowed by the current rules (show me a >page/para refference of a rule or example where this can even be infered), >so what gloranthan myth or philosophical argument would you use to argue >for it? What examples can you cite that demonstrate anything like this >happening before? Once again you misunderstand. I am not trying to say it exists, I am trying to find some rational way to explain why it won't. I'm not requiring a solution from, I am asking if anyone has a good solution why it doesn't. If people don't have any good reason besides 'It doesn't fit in the rules" then I guess I'll have to live with it. If you read my posts they are clairifications to the question, not support of why it should happen. I want a nice clear argument of why I couldn't walk into a ritual and put POW into a prepared item that an enchanter was enchanting. If *you* don't have and answer, let somebody else answer. - -Andrew ------------------------------ From: David Dunham Date: Fri, 30 Aug 1996 13:06:55 -0700 Subject: Re: RQ rights; enchanting Nick Marcelja wrote > Much better Idea is to get the rights to RQ back from Avalon Hill Not possible. Colin Watson wrote > It takes "only" about 3 months to learn Enchant up to around 50% > (assuming a positive magic modifier and a little help from ceremony). > If our master enchanter can afford a year's wages per person he could > pay the training/living costs for an army of peasants to learn Enchant > for 3 months. Then they can all cast the enchantment spells themselves > using their own POW (and a handy matrix for the spell(s)). Half the > time their POW will be used productively and half of the time they'll > fail. But it's a lot harder to force someone to do this. The vicarious POW for enchantments had the problem of "donate POW or die," and while you can still round up an army of slave enchanters, you probably don't want to kill them if their Enchant skill fails. > Anybody who > wants to Get Rich Quick simply has to borrow the capital so they can > learn Enchant and then gaily sacrifice their soul for hard cash... I assume Enchant is not easily available (and borrowing capital is a very unlikely thing -- supposedly European bankers are still very reluctant to make house loans or loans to entrepreneurs, unlike American bankers). Schemes that require making large loans with no collateral don't worry me. > In some areas/periods it might be > difficult to incorporate RQ magic and still maintain a historical feel True, though the *prevalance* of magic can be adjusted. I've run scenarios set in Aztec and Mongol times, and it seemed to work well (not everyone had magic). The alternate Earth stuff that came out seemed to have little trouble tweaking magic to be more historical. I agree that a Bronze Age Mediterranean setting would be cool. But you would have to adjust the rules so that certain weapons and armor aren't available. Which is really no different than adjusting for magic availability. Eric Johnson-DeBaufre favored us with a bunch of Microsoft crap. Please, if you're forced to use their e-mail software, learn how to turn off sending of style info. (I don't use it so I don't know the details.) David Dunham Glorantha/RQ page: Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein ------------------------------ From: David Weihe Date: Fri, 30 Aug 96 16:49:27 EDT Subject: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V3 #50 > >> Andrew > >> My point exactly! Does anyone have any idea what natural law that would > >>exist to do this? What gloranthan phenomenon makes the rules prohibit > >>(or at leat make it exceedingly difficult) for Vicarious POW enchantments > >>to happen? Since we still don't have an "acceptable" answer from those before, let me try. First, I think that you are looking at POW sacrificed as a rules object, not the measure of a characters mana and/or soul, that is abstracted as POW. You can't just blast POW at things and create magic items, there is a rather intricate bit of work going on, magic-wise rather than toolwise. Having the enchanter use your sacrifice is in some respect like expecting a surgeon to use your hands to do surgery. If you don't have the skills it is very difficult, Ensign Pulver notwithstanding (in the movie, the Ensign is talked through an appendectomy by his ship's surgeon. This ignores that there were several trained nurses assisting, and that the Ensign had been trying to learn medicine on his own, to apply to Med School after the end of WWII). If you do have the skills, another enchanter can supply some of the necessary knowledge, through a MindLink, but not all. Second, why can't a character sacrifice the power to the enchanter, and let him do the work? Most people on Glorantha aren't set up to handle direct sacrifices of others POW. The exceptions appear to be Heroes and up, who can be worshipped, and master sorcerors, who use it only to create a link to their apprentices (a very specialized form of worship, perhaps). Priests can only focus the sacrifices of their worshippers onto the appropriate divinities (occupants of the GodsPlane, even if just recordings of living Heroes). If you are not set up to receive POW, my sacrificing it to you does nothing. Some people were, but they have all been killed off (EWF big-wigs like but not including Delecti, major God Learners, etc.). If you learn how, you'll be killed off after a couple of centuries, as well. Third, it is still the Bronze Age on Glorantha, and no one has figured out how do to it, yet. Or at least no one who can is talking about it. ------------------------------ From: David Weihe Date: Fri, 30 Aug 96 18:20:59 EDT Subject: Re: Sanity Sandy Petersen > David Weihe > >Assuming anything like a historical childhood death rate, no one > >would hit puberty sane, and certainly not get through having a few > >of their children die in infancy > ?? David, do you play that _any_ death costs SAN in Cthulhu? > Do you play Cthulhu? I don't know any Keeper that extorts SAN for > "normal" death, unless unexpected or critical (like sudden news of a > loved one's passing, such as caused Robert E. Howard to commit > suicide). Death-related SAN losses are caused by the sight of > hideously mangled corpses, and only unnatural ones. 1) I don't GM it(I'm not near that good at it), and don't play it much as having my characters die or become NPCs through insanity that often is too draining. It always seems too much like being a battlefield surgeon. Individual sessions could be neat, with a good GM, but that was all that a PC seemed to last through. I have to get more used to characters to play them well, alas. 2) Second, I was assuming a society more like the Iceland of the Saga period, or Ireland of the same time, where the stories (which is what we base play on) had killings occuring often. I assumed that childhood would be like (I think Mark Twain) described growing up in a river town, where killings would happen almost in front of you, and if you didn't know the participants you just tended to ignore it. I meant that seeing your children die, especially from accidents, would be the last straw for those lucky enough to get through childhood. In fact, my GreatGrandmother's first husband was confined to an asylum for that last straw, supposedly. I meant that such insanity would be very much the rule, not the exception. 3) What I really think is that the CoC sanity rules would be way too severe, given the more gritty life that Halgobert of Sartar would expect, compared to the rather sheltered life that HPL seemed to have lived, which (I think) lead to him having his literary characters losing their minds as often as they did. I assume that this lead to the CoC rules having the insanity levels that they did, rather than comparing against the actual levels in combat troops or Belfast neighborhoods. ------------------------------ From: Sandy Petersen Date: Fri, 30 Aug 96 18:38:46 -0500 Subject: Re: MAGIC ECONOMICS Andrew Mellinger asks >My point exactly! Does anyone have any idea what natural law that >would exist to do this? What gloranthan phenomenon makes the rules >prohibit (or at leat make it exceedingly difficult) for Vicarious >POW enchantments to happen? THE THIRD LAW OF MAGIC: POW is subjective. It can only be . Colin W. points out that a gigantic Enchantment can be made under the current rules. This is quite true. However, under the current rules you don't get a bargain by making 1 giant item instead of 100 little ones. In addition, all the participants need to know Enchant. Worst Case: a Rokari sorcerer hires 100 penniless loafers who each have a positive magic bonus. He puts them into a big Hall O' Learning and has a gang of apprentices teach them Enchant. In 3 months, plus a little Ceremony, they're up to 50%. He then has them try their luck. Half of them fail, but he's now got 50 POW in his enchantment. Sounds simple, eh? But there are a number of obstacles in his path. The sorcerer pays the loafers a minimal 2p a day for upkeep (1p a day is so cheap that I can't convince myself the loafers could learn anything, what with eating garbage, shivering in the cold, etc.). It takes 100 days of training with 100 loafers, which costs 20,000 pence total. He loses the services of 10 apprentices as teachers (I figure the apprentices cost 4p a day), another 4,000p. He also has to rent a Hall O' Learning, and sufficient security to watch over his loafers, so they don't steal from him or whatever. I've no idea how much this would cost so chose the convenient amount of 6,000p. The loafers probably want payment for their lost POW. If the sorcerer is an asshole, he'll just scare them into obedience. But by keeping them prisoners, he now needs more guards, bodyguards for his apprentices, prison cells, etc. In either case, he pays for the POW, so he may as well be nice about it. One possibility might be to offer all the loafers who fail the Enchant roll a mere 50p, while giving those who succeed 150p. This is 100p average, and ought to keep them from shirking _or_ giving up. Additional cost = 10,000p. The sorcerer also needs to pay for the materials of the enchanted item. an item cool enough to hold 50 POW is presumably a pricey object. No GM worth his salt would let it be stored in a lump of concrete. I know I'd charge him at _least_ 10,000p for fancy workmanship and materials. The final tally: 20,000 loafer salary + 4,000 apprentice salary + 6,000 Hall o Learning & guards +10,000 payment for POW +10,000 the item to be enchanted TOTAL 50,000 pence This is an average of 1000p per POW spent, the same as the rules suggest. Of course, I've fudged in two places -- the cost for the item to be enchanted and the cost for the hall o' learning, but I don't think I cheated much, and those items may well cost more than the amount I invented. There is another little cheat of mine here -- the above also includes the start-up cost. Once you've got your 50 loafers, you can have them enchant more and more, presumably. EXCEPT you still need to pay them to stick around (2p a day? or more?) and for their POW. Future items would probably cost less. On the other hand, as their POW drains away, they'll get more and more rebellious and you'll have to hire more guards or pay them more per POW point. >Anybody who wants to Get Rich Quick simply has to borrow the capital >so they can learn Enchant and then gaily sacrifice their soul for >hard cash. Yep. Except doesn't he have to pay back the person he borrowed the money from? A normal human has a living standard of 4p a day. Thus, it will cost me 400p to go to school for 100 days (3 months), just for my own upkeep. Even a very cheap teacher no doubt charges sufficiently to maintain a living standard of 4p a day (this would be unusually low, I suspect, for an esoteric skill like Enchant), so we pay another 400p for him. Then learning an Enchant spell costs another 50p, say. It's not unfair to add another 50p for the materials for our enchanted object. Total cost = 900p to the person from whom we borrowed the money. Now at last we've got our skill, and we immediately try to make our item. On the average, it takes us 2 tries. We have to charge enough for our enchantment to pay our donor his 900p, plus to make a profit for ourselves. Otherwise the whole thing was a waste. If all we want is 100p, it costs 1000 for a pt of Enchantment. Of course, later enchantments can be sold more cheaply, because we've paid off the starting costs. But we can't sell them more often than we get POW. Anyway, I bet most peasants can't do this. >perhaps POW should be of more use to the average peasant. It is -- higher POW has four useful functions: 1) you have more MPs to power your average peasant spells with, such as Plowsharp, Kill Rats, Ignite, Heal, etc. 2) you can sacrifice for handy one-use Rune magic. 3) your communication and perception skills improve. Stealth gets worse, but what need has a peasant for Stealth? 4) your luck improves. Sandy ------------------------------ From: Sandy Petersen Date: Fri, 30 Aug 96 18:57:13 -0500 Subject: Re: weapon damage Eric Johnson-DeBeufre >Under the current system of rules, an average character has 4 hit >points in the arm, and +d4 damage bonus. Using a dagger against an >unarmored opponent, a character will incapacitate someone's arm >roughly half of the time, and this is true even of character's who >lack a damage bonus. the scenario sketched above seems slightly >unrealistic. Does it really seem unrealistic? First off, we're talking about a dagger doing 1d4+2 damage, right? That's about the equivalent to a Scottish dirk, American bowie knife, or other large, dangerous knife. It seems me that if I were allowed to hit an unarmored person's arm with a large fighting knife, I could render it useless FAR more than half the time! By my calculations, I have a damage bonus of +1d4, so that helps. But for an alternative example, my wife's SIZ and STR is such that she gets no bonus. But if she finally snapped and went after me with a butcher knife, my guess is that she would stand an excellent chance of severely wounding my arm with a single hit. Have you never seen a person cut badly in a fight? How much damage does a razorblade do in RQ terms? I guess a switchblade's around 1d4. I know a guy who put two men into the hospital by means of a pool cue, which does about 1d6 damage in RQ terms. My acquaintance, judging by SIZ and STR, would NOT have a damage bonus in RQ terms (both of his assailants would have, though). If anything, RQ masks the actual harm done by weapons. ------------------------------ From: Sandy Petersen Date: Fri, 30 Aug 96 19:05:24 -0500 Subject: Re: POW Sacrifice Simon Hibbs >Only gods can act directly on the godplane, so only they can accept >direct POW (soul) sacrifices on a like-for-like basis. Actually, Simon, I don't think that POW sacrificed for initiation or Rune magic or even Divine Intervention goes to the god. My own theory is as follows -- INITIATION POW -- I think this creates a link through the planes, connecting initiate and deity. This enables MPs to be channeled back and forth, which IS actually sent to the deity. DIVINE INTERVENTION POW is used to open a channel large enough and fast through between the planes to enable the god to act directly. I don't think the god gets any of the POW -- rupturing the planes is a very hard thing to do. Presumably it's random because the planes fluctuate. RUNE MAGIC POW -- I believe that this is used to set up a permanent pattern in your soul that makes it resemble some facet of your god. Once the pattern is set up, it can be discharged (casting the spell), and it is gone. Contact with the god (via worship at a holy day, when the veil is thin), can "reset" the pattern, kind of like memory wire. Such contact only works if your soul overall is rather formed like your deity. Therefore, priests can get their spells back more readily than initiates. sandy ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V3 #51 ****************************** 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