From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V3 #101 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, 4 November 1996 Volume 03 : Number 101 TABLE OF CONTENTS Peter Maranci New scenario: "Lost Child" SimonPhipp@aol.com Fanaticism/Gaining POW/DI Jesper Wahrner Fanaticism again tschinke@nord.de [none] Ingo Tschinke The great split? Ingo Tschinke What is to become of this digest? Ingo Tschinke The great split? Ingo Tschinke What is to become of this digest? Tal Meta What is to become of this digest? 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: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 02:55:36 -0500 (EST) Subject: New scenario: "Lost Child" I have a large new RQ/Glorantha scenario available. A full HTML version will be placed on my web site in the next couple of days; it will include the option to download a ZIPped version. As with the previous scenarios I've offered, this one shouldn't be too hard to adapt to non-Gloranthan settings. The adventure is for two or more PCs, and was designed for a party of five initiates with several Orlanthi members. It includes many dreams, strange magic, ancient history, and (of course) a lost child. There is also a color GIF showing an area of interest (though as I've mentioned elsewhere, I'm no artist. Still, it conveys a sense of the locale). I'd be glad to send it by email. Please be aware that the text portion comes to 1300 lines, or about 66,000 bytes. I'm not sure what format would be best for sending the GIF (it will be available for separate download from the web site, though). As always, suggestions and feedback are welcome. My apologies in advance to those who read both the rules and Glorantha lists for the duplication of this announcement. -->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 Pete's RuneQuest Page! is at: http://www.tiac.net/users/maranci/rq.htm ------------------------------ From: SimonPhipp@aol.com Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 23:46:54 -0500 Subject: Fanaticism/Gaining POW/DI Jesper Wahrner writes: > Well, I run Uroxi every now and then but those who use Fanaticism on > themselves tend to not live very long. They can get away with it if they > are both heavily armoured and have a heavy protection spell but the tactic > is still too dependent on sheer luck to make it viable in the long run. In RQ2, one of the few ways of defeating high-level opponents was to cast Fanaticism or Berserker (against Chaos) to up the attack chance and use the anti-parry to reduce parry chance to below 100%. This meant that if you got your attack in first you could probably disable the opponent and prevent their attack form hitting. This would then mean that your second attack would finish him off because he would be unable to parry. Of course, if he blocked or survived the first attack you were left exposed, but that's what Shield and Allied Spirits with Healing are for. In RQ3, with the lack of antiparry, the tactic loses much of its effect. However, increasing skills past 100% allows attacks to be split against multiple opponents which can be effective. I have played a 5-legged centaur with a spider head spell who could go fanatical or berserk and have 4 attacks per round which he could split - a devastating flurry of blows against all bu large, quick targets. I also played a Maidstone Archer for a few sessions who was often sent fanatical by other PCs - imagine a Windmill with clubs and you get the picture. > It is the Fanatics inability to retreat > or surrender when the fight goes against them that makes the tactic > disastrous when it fails, not that they suddenly forget their defensive > weaponskills. Fanatics can attempt to roll INTx5 to come out of fanaticism during combat (I play that they can only do this if not actually engaged with an opponent) - this means that they can disengage if necessary. The spell can also be dispelled or cancelled out with Demoralise, so these are not major objections. Berserker, on the other hand, is a potential deathtrap - one occasion saw a troll going berserk in a Vampire castle and being led down corridors by stategically placed initiates, 15 minutes laterthe spell expired and he was surrounded by vampires who drained him of every last Rune Spell he had (unfortunately for them, he had cast them all bar Spell Teaching - boy were they annoyed). Anyway, Fanatics can still Dodge, albeit at half chance, so that's all right then. Personally, I would be suspicious of an Uroxi who never went Fanatical - totally out of character and smacks of powergaming (the above troll only ever went Berserk again twice to my knowledge, but "did a mean fanaticism"). Personally, if I GMd such a person, I would ensure that he gained a Minotaur-like Battle Rage ability just to teach him a lesson. Someone (I can't remember who and can't be bothered to look back, sorry) asked whether asking a shaman to send pow-power spirits against a fellow PC whose POW had been reduced to 3 is ethical/practical. Well, in our campaign, we regulartly went down to 3 POW or so, being Rune Lords with a high combat element to the game. There were several ways to fix this - 1. Attune low-powered crystals - this is a POW vs POW contest and gives a POW gain roll on success. As crystals normally have low power, htis often worked. However, if you fail you lose 1D3 POW but life's a gamble. 2. Go on a zombie hunt - in RQ2, zombies and skeletons had 1 POW each and were fair game to low POW characters. In fact, the GMs in our game always sent a group of Zombies/Skeletons against low powered characters ("OK, I cast Disrupt - Yes! I overcome POW and get a tick! What, it does damage as well?") 3. Cast spells at everything that moves, on the off chance that you actually overcome something. (RQ2 Multispell was great for this - spray Disrupts everywhere, or even cast a high Fanatacism at multiple opponents). 4. Cast spells at birds - even though they are inoffensive, they could well be familiar spies. A generous GM might allow this. 5. Find something with a Reflect Chaos feature and hit it with Disrupts until you overcome your own POW - this gives a 50% chance of gaining a tick. Other PCs should not kill the chaos greebly until you have had a couple of chances at the spell casting. Personally, if I were attacked each week by sprits, I would find out who was sending them and see that some harm comes to him - this would cause some problems for the other PCs for obvious reasons. Robert Baumgartner asked about Divine Intervention. I used to play that DI could be asked for once per week, but now play that it can be asked for at any time. Each deity can only be asked to do one thing once - if the attempt fails it cannot be asked for again. However, more than one deity can be petitioned if the first attempt failed. Obviously, asking to be resurrected is a different request each time the person is killed. Resurrection: A person who has been dead for seven days is past resurrection as his/her spirit has passed through the Halls of Judgement. A person whose head has been removed/destroyed cannot be resurrected. A person whose spirit is bound cannot be resurrected until the spirit is released, and then only within 7 days of release. A person whose spirit has been destoyed cannot be resurrected. A person whose fatal wound cannot be healed cannot be resurrected as he must be healed to positive hit points in order to survive the resurrection attempt. A person slain by Disease cannot be resurrected unles the diseased stats are increased to 1 or more. Blindness: Erissa provides the spell Restore Vision which specifically cures Blindness and must be stacked with Heal Wound to cure someone whose eyes have been torn out. ------------------------------ From: jewahr@hts.pp.se (Jesper Wahrner) Date: 04 Nov 96 13:46:36 -0100 Subject: Fanaticism again Simon wrote: Si> In RQ2, one of the few ways of defeating high-level opponents was to Si> cast Fanaticism or Berserker (against Chaos) to up the attack chance Si> and use the anti-parry to reduce parry chance to below 100%. This meant Si> that if you got your attack in first you could probably disable the Si> opponent and prevent their attack form hitting. This would then mean Si> that your second attack would finish him off because he would be unable Si> to parry. Of course, if he blocked or survived the first attack you Si> were left exposed, but that's what Shield and Allied Spirits with Si> Healing are for. Si> In RQ3, with the lack of antiparry, the tactic loses much of its Si> effect. However, increasing skills past 100% allows attacks to be split Si> against multiple opponents which can be effective. Yeah, I have always suspected that all the drawbacks that comes with Fanaticism is a leftover from RQ2 to avoid making it too powerful with the antiparry tactic. (Where it takes away both your and most of the opponents ability to parry.) But in RQ3 where only your own defensive ability is harmed this drawback is neither needed or wanted, and makes the spell virtually unusable. And Fanaticism in RQ3 does not increase the skill, only the chance to hit something which is not enough for split attacks. Si> I have played a 5-legged centaur with a spider head spell who could go Si> fanatical or berserk and have 4 attacks per round which he could split Si> - a devastating flurry of blows against all bu large, quick targets. I Si> also played a Maidstone Archer for a few sessions who was often sent Si> fanatical by other PCs - imagine a Windmill with clubs and you get the Si> picture. Sure, certain exceptional characters can use the spell. These are most often usually exceptional enough to don't bother however. > It is the Fanatics inability to retreat > or surrender when the fight goes against them that makes the tactic > disastrous when it fails, not that they suddenly forget their defensive > weaponskills. Si> Fanatics can attempt to roll INTx5 to come out of fanaticism during Si> combat (I play that they can only do this if not actually engaged with Si> an opponent) - this means that they can disengage if necessary. The Si> spell can also be dispelled or cancelled out with Demoralise, so these Si> are not major objections. Berserker, on the other hand, is a potential Si> deathtrap - one occasion saw a troll going berserk in a Vampire castle Si> and being led down corridors by stategically placed initiates, 15 Si> minutes laterthe spell expired and he was surrounded by vampires who Si> drained him of every last Rune Spell he had (unfortunately for them, he Si> had cast them all bar Spell Teaching - boy were they annoyed). Nothing in the RQ3 spell description says anything about any INTx5 roll to shake it off. I certainly would never allow it just like I wouldn't allow an INTx5 roll to come out of a Demoralize spell. And the fanatic can't cast demoralize on himself nor can he cast dispel magic, so he has to rely on having magic support around something which is quite unlikely unless you are a PC-party. (A band of berserkers would just not bring someone along saying: "Hey, can you Demoralize us if the fight starts to go badly".) And Berserk is different because it is seldom used by a whole group, and those who do use it usually have loads of other runespells to back it up with. Berserk also increases the skill allowing split attacks. Si> Anyway, Fanatics can still Dodge, albeit at half chance, so that's all Si> right then. The event that actually got me to rewrite the spell for my campaign was when three Humakti characters, all competent swordsfighters but none of them runelevel, decided to take a shortcut through Basmoli lands in Ralios and were ambushed by a band of bachelor Basmoli. Of course the way they used Fanaticism was a schoolbook example on suicidal spellcasting (The used it with Shimmer, some used Coordination as well, used almost no armour and had their dodge reduced to 35-40%) The Humakti were alerted due to one characters ability to Sense Assassin. and had a few rounds of magic ready. When the 13 basmoli attacked they were slaughtered to the last man, with such ease that they mostly looked comical. Trollkin usually put up a better fight than they did and they know how to retreat if the fight goes against them. Still the Basmoli's behavior was consistent with how their culture works which makes one wonder how it comes that anyone ever wants to hire them as mercenaries. ... Hal 9000: "Dave, put those Windows 95 disks down....Dave... - --- Blue Wave/386 v2.21 .--> | Jesper Wahrner 2:201/293 | internet email: jewahr@hts.pp.se `----> ------------------------------ From: tschinke@nord.de Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 15:17:44 +0100 Subject: [none] ------------------------------ From: Ingo Tschinke Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 16:21:48 +0100 Subject: The great split? Hi, Richard STAATS wrote in Digest # 100: > > Now that AH and Chaosium have undertaken the great split, what > will become of the rq-rules digest? Will it just continue using the > new AH world? > Hey, I missed something? What is about this spilt, I have never heard from such a spilt before. Could anybody tell me the story? Cheers Ingo - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- RuneQuest - Society Ingo Tschinke tschinke@nordwest.de Schevemoorer Landstr. 33 Free INT - RQSociety@aol.com 28325 Bremen/Germany http://members.aol.com/rqsociety/welcome.html RQ Society discussion forum - RQSoc@nochet.demon.co.uk - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ From: Ingo Tschinke Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 16:21:51 +0100 Subject: What is to become of this digest? Hi friends, I don't think that everything will depend on a decision two games designers have meet, to do work together or not. As one of the editors of the german magazine Free INT and our english version Tradetalk we will going on with RQ on Glorantha. Most of our players will do such a fast change of rules as the game companies are doing. I think most of them will go on with playing RQ on Glorantha instead of the upcoming G:tG rule system. I depend on us, what we want to do with RQ and what we won't do. If I will go on playing RQ on Glorantha I will have no shame to discuss some special rules question on this digest, it doesn't matter for me if Chaosium and AH have made a split or not. In Germany a lot of gamers are still using alternate earth if they play RQ because of the lack of german gloranthan material and so there are also a lot of players who play Glorantha with their own rules and so on. So, IMO if somebody want to discuss RQ/Glorantha he should do this on this very digest. This is mostly a digest for fans and nothing else. Cheers Ingo - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- RuneQuest - Society Ingo Tschinke tschinke@nordwest.de Schevemoorer Landstr. 33 Free INT - RQSociety@aol.com 28325 Bremen/Germany http://members.aol.com/rqsociety/welcome.html RQ Society discussion forum - RQSoc@nochet.demon.co.uk - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ From: Ingo Tschinke Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 16:21:48 +0100 Subject: The great split? Hi, Richard STAATS wrote in Digest # 100: > > Now that AH and Chaosium have undertaken the great split, what > will become of the rq-rules digest? Will it just continue using the > new AH world? > Hey, I missed something? What is about this spilt, I have never heard from such a spilt before. Could anybody tell me the story? Cheers Ingo - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- RuneQuest - Society Ingo Tschinke tschinke@nordwest.de Schevemoorer Landstr. 33 Free INT - RQSociety@aol.com 28325 Bremen/Germany http://members.aol.com/rqsociety/welcome.html RQ Society discussion forum - RQSoc@nochet.demon.co.uk - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ From: Ingo Tschinke Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 16:21:51 +0100 Subject: What is to become of this digest? Hi friends, I don't think that everything will depend on a decision two games designers have meet, to do work together or not. As one of the editors of the german magazine Free INT and our english version Tradetalk we will going on with RQ on Glorantha. Most of our players will do such a fast change of rules as the game companies are doing. I think most of them will go on with playing RQ on Glorantha instead of the upcoming G:tG rule system. I depend on us, what we want to do with RQ and what we won't do. If I will go on playing RQ on Glorantha I will have no shame to discuss some special rules question on this digest, it doesn't matter for me if Chaosium and AH have made a split or not. In Germany a lot of gamers are still using alternate earth if they play RQ because of the lack of german gloranthan material and so there are also a lot of players who play Glorantha with their own rules and so on. So, IMO if somebody want to discuss RQ/Glorantha he should do this on this very digest. This is mostly a digest for fans and nothing else. Cheers Ingo - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- RuneQuest - Society Ingo Tschinke tschinke@nordwest.de Schevemoorer Landstr. 33 Free INT - RQSociety@aol.com 28325 Bremen/Germany http://members.aol.com/rqsociety/welcome.html RQ Society discussion forum - RQSoc@nochet.demon.co.uk - ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ From: Tal Meta Date: Mon, 4 Nov 1996 21:13:48 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: What is to become of this digest? On Fri, 1 Nov 1996 owner-rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu wrote: > From: David Weihe > > Maybe we should officially expand the brief of this list to include all > non-Glorantha worlds in which we play using RQ. So far, Steve Perrin > is the only one to describe a non-Gl campaign, here - this list probably > could use more of that. I don't have a full write-up of my gameworld, but it's not Glorantha either. It has quite a few Gloranthan features, but it steals liberally from Brust's Dragaera, Kurtz's Gwynned, Bradley's Darkover, the Sanctuary & Liavek anthologies, Zelazny's Amber, and a dozen-odd more realms at least as much. I don't think I _could_ give it a full writeup without violating a copyright or two. :) > This would also allow more discussion of the problems of 500% characters, > as complaints about their "gross" nature will be unimportant outside of > a Glorantha setting. Perhaps more discussion of converting AD&D magic > spells to RuneQuest stats, or am I the only one here whose local friends > only play that unmentionable game? :-) I actually have a system for this; I never let them memorize spells over 1st level (let 'em try and hold that spellbook in melee!), sock them for magic points at every turn of the screw (you want to cast an 8 die Fireball(tm)? That'll cost 18 MP (3 mp = 3d6, +3mp for each additional 1d6)) and treat them worse in uncivillized lands than even sorcerer's get treated... ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V3 #101 ******************************* 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