From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #24 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, 21 November 1994 Volume 01 : Number 024 RULES OF THE ROAD 1. Do not include large sections of a message in your reply. Especially not to say "Yeah, I agree." Those who do will be lynched. 2. Use an appropriate Subject line. RQR: will be prepended to it. 3. Do not engage in a point-by-point analysis or rebuttal of another person's message. It is too confusing for others to follow, qualifies as nit-picking, and it usually leads to flame wars. 4. There is no number 4. TABLE OF CONTENTS RQR: A mounted campaign is ... RQR: Re: TAP Spells RQR: Enchantment conditions Re: RQR: Re: TAP Spells ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Gregory C. Walsh" Date: Sun, 20 Nov 1994 12:52:21 -0500 Subject: RQR: A mounted campaign is ... Yesterday's poster asked what I meant by a mounted campaign. I will explain via some personal history. I have run Non-Gloranthan campaigns for years and years, well, ok, about 8 years. So in the litoral regions (farmers and such) much of the adventuring happens on foot, (people might ride horses to get places, but they dismount once they are there and do their thang. Sometimes there is mounted combat but not all that often.) That is what Ihave run for the most part. Except now I have just moved accross the country (from California to Maryland) and I have decided to develop a completely new region. The steppe. So it is something like Pent, or Prax I suppose. I have a bunch of brand new players (all D&Der's). I first did a little reading on nomad societies of earth. Wonderful stuff (Barfield, "The perilous frontier", Barth, "The nomads of south persia", and so on (Eliade on Shamanism, on Cosmos and history, etc). What I found out was that pretty much *everything* is done mounted, nearly everything at least. Children are started, before they can walk, by placing them on sheep's backs. I kid you not, ;-). At least since horse mounted lifestyle appear around 800 BC, with the Cimmerians. (Yes, as in Conan. Don't ask me why he used that name.) Anyhow, there are lots of things which are different than I expected. But all adventuring is done on horseback. All fights, negotiations, keeping watch, sleeping, and eating on the trial. Sure, they get off to sit around, but if a mounted nomad has to move more than 10 meters, he or she will jump onto the nearest horse to do it. So there are little matters which crop up, mechanically. Rules situations -> for example, Scythians (of course there not called that in my world) don't have the stirrup. Can they use the horse's Damage Bonus in a charge. Historically, no. And how about getting knocked off your horse in a charge? It seems pretty easy to do if you aren't bracing, and do you get to use the horse's STR to brace if you are skillful, or have the right kind of saddle? How about shooting from a moving horse ... (-10%, sure ... but). Scythians kept their bows in holsters for their bows on their left hips. Can you keep a strung bow in it (I don't think so, but pictures from ancient greek vases seem to suggest this was so.) And can yo string a bow while riding (right now, only on a stopped horse). Can you grab the bridle of a horse (with a rider, without a rider) if say, you are mounted, not mounted ... ? I have little c.c. rules (complete crap) for these situations. I had a non-moving mounted fight (one guy was trapped against a stream) and combatant A) got his horse speared, but critted his jump - there was an empty horse next to him so I rule he jumped to the back of other horse. Complete crap ... ? By the way, it is hard to get close to anyone except when it is dark, for obvious reasons (there isn't much cover). So how about riding at night. I use to ride bit, and riding at night at high speed seems suicidal. Anyhow, the list of questions I need to work out PDQ is extremely long. I can fake it for a while, and in fact I have made ad-hock rules for all of these situations. But perhaps someone has devoted more thought than I have to it. Sorry for such a long post, Greg Walsh ------------------------------ From: PAUL POFANDT Date: Mon, 21 Nov 94 09:30:33 +1100 Subject: RQR: Re: TAP Spells >>What I meant by overpowered is that for the cost of a few MPs, players >>permernantly loose characteristic points. I was talking from the point of view >>of the recipient-end of the spell, rather than that of the caster. > I guess that this is a reasonable criticism, though I never really >saw it as a spell of offense (its touch range is a big problem) Did you ever read of the Staff used by the sorcerer the citadel of Ockless on Griffen Is. (Forgot his name). A very fine example of what can be done with creative use of enchanted spell matricies and attack conditions. When struck with the staff, besides normal quaterstaff damage, 1d6 of every characteristic is drained from the target. A rather gross weapon but to my mind a very good example of the use of conditions on an enchantment and of the powers of the TAP spell. >>It offends my sensibilities that a sorcerer might >>permenantly cripple one of my players just for the temporary gain of a few >>MPs, lasting possibly only a few minuites. > I think the spell is intended to offend your sensibilities, and >everyone elses as well. It is a gratuitously wasteful destroyer of >attributes. Good point. >>I would think that if the MPs gained exist only >>for a few minutes > Well actually they exist until used, which could be anything from >seconds to months, as I understand it. As long as the MPs dont go over your normal maximum (POW). Otherwise they disapear when the spell expires. > I can live with your version - but I think that there has to be >some permanent loss to retain the evil impact of Tap Sounds right. If there was no permenant loss, there's no morale down-side to the spell; and no real reason for players to fear it. Paul. ------------------------------ From: PAUL POFANDT Date: Mon, 21 Nov 94 09:30:32 +1100 Subject: RQR: Enchantment conditions G'day Has anyone looked into developing the range of conditions avaliable for use with triggering enchantments. As I see it, the only trigger outlined is the ATTACK condition which causes the spell to be automatically cast if someone TOUCHES the enchantment. Who this effects can be narrowed down by use of the TARGET condition which specifies who can be affected by the spell or USAGE conditions, which specify who can use an enchantment. The target and usage conditions are very lose to my mind. I've seen variations from 'No one can use this item except me' to 'only usable by adepts or better who utter the word 'wgrfitzblmonak' while standing on one leg' Has anyone had any thoughts on the matter? If not, I'll outline my own ideas in the next couple of digests. Paul. ------------------------------ From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 1994 11:07:04 +0800 Subject: Re: RQR: Re: TAP Spells >>>I would think that if the MPs gained exist only >>>for a few minutes >> Well actually they exist until used, which could be anything from >>seconds to months, as I understand it. > >As long as the MPs dont go over your normal maximum (POW). Otherwise >they disapear when the spell expires. > Under RQAIG this is true. As far as I am aware under RQ3 (where the spell only added magic points, no matter what attribute was drained) this was not necessarily true - MPs over POW simply remained until used > >Paul. Cheers David C. ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #24 ****************************** 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.