From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #68 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, 6 February 1995 Volume 01 : Number 068 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 Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox. RQR: Dex rather than SRs Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox. RQR: What I would love Generic RQ to cover Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox. RQR: RQ2vsRQ3 David Cake RQR: What I would love Generic RQ to cover Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox. RQR: What I would love Generic RQ to cover Gregory C. Walsh RQR: rq-rules@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Bryan J. Maloney RQR: The two-book approach for RQ Bryan J. Maloney RQR: RQ Computer games GAWINTER@aol.com RQR: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #61 Bryan J. Maloney RQR: Editions JARDINE@RMCS.CRANFIELD.AC.UK RQR: Combat skill is a stat?!? SPerrin@aol.com RQR: Combat skill as stat. boris RQR: Editions ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 00:45:11 PST Subject: RQR: Dex rather than SRs For me the ideal situation would be the RQ4 method of two actions per melee round, explained so referee can improvise any combination of 2 action (such as sprinting (moving twice), attacking and defending, charging, advancing defensively, etc ...), with a Dex timing system. Strike Ranks could be involved within this timing as they are an excellent shorthand for weapon length and speed. As each RQ supplement has these values it would be a shame not to use them. Using Dex would bring in the advantage that RQ would be closer to the Basic Role Playing products and hence stand a chance of bringing in CoC or Eternal Champion people as well as the existing RQ customer base. For, in my opinion, RQ4 stood an excellent chance of becoming the best implementation of BRP out yet. As if D&D is DOS then BRP must surely be Unix! Regards -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 01:57:28 PST Subject: RQR: What I would love Generic RQ to cover As Generic RQ & Adventures in Gloranthan could be a possibility I would like to suggest what could be covered that in the Generic that has not been covered in previous editions of RQ I have seen. Runes. How these ambigious religious concepts seem to form a structure to which even gods conform and around which a rune-laden culture structures it's view of magic. How these structures can both limit and focus magical within such a culture. Cults. How a cult grows and declines through the grow or decline of the amount of worship a cult receives and how these cults contribute to the apotheosis of cults members through the statuses of runelord, accolyte and priest to the status of hero or god. Shamanism. The raw uncultivated nature of the spirit plane and how a single contact between a spirit and a shaman can start a cult. How spirits interact with shamans and other mortals. Humanism. How mortals can learn and develop magic without gods, either by fabricating cults or by developing (or continuing the exiting traditions of) sorcery. For surely anything the gods can do must be possible and therefore possibly achievable by mortals by some route. Alternate exploitation of worship. As mortal worship is a valuable commodity, not to mention Pow sacrifices, how cultures might utilise this in different ways. Exploitation of Dream Time. As the dream time of RuneQuest is changable and exploitable by heroes this strategic resource could be hinted at as the source of much mythology and a source of inertia as well as change. Puralism. How societies could combine a mixture of magical, and hence cultural, approaches. Why societies might want to keep their cultures as pure as possible. The Mundane. How such a fantasy society is affected by the magic within it in the areas not traditionally associated with adventuring. Regards -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 02:55:47 PST Subject: RQR: Re: RQ2vsRQ3 In the UK the distribution of RQ3 was royally fouled up it was sold in a sealed box at almost a record price. But from my experience whether someone has RQ2 or RQ3 depends on when they encountered RuneQuest. Most copies of RQ3 I seen are gathering dust on the shelves of active gamers according to my experiences and no Gloranthan colection appears to be complete without some of the RQ2 books and material. However there is a fair amount of product recognition for the RQ name and active & retired gamers can often be provoked to wax lyrical about the concepts behind RuneQuest. Regards -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 19:28:16 +0800 Subject: Re: RQR: What I would love Generic RQ to cover >As Generic RQ & Adventures in Gloranthan could be a possibility I would >like to suggest what could be covered that in the Generic that has not >been covered in previous editions of RQ I have seen. > [large number of suggestions deleted] Unfortunately, despite a great desire to see all these things that Guy mentions myself, I feel that most of Guys suggestions are best summarised by saying that Guy wants HeroQuest. In other words, most of these suggestions are great, and I would really like to see them, and I feel that they are outside the scope of any RQ4 project. Some small scaps of some of them might leak in (ie we should allow PC shamans to contact worshippable spirits, and start a spirit cult - some fairly rough rules for this are already in GoG), but by and large most of the big magical questions should remain unanswered for RQ purposes. >The Mundane. How such a fantasy society is affected by the magic >within it in the areas not traditionally associated with adventuring. > Except this one. It would be nice to have more about how RQ magic is used in day to day life. Mostly GM colour though, not an essential. Cheers Dave >Regards > > -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 06:02:00 PST Subject: Re: RQR: What I would love Generic RQ to cover David Cake wrote: >Unfortunately, despite a great desire to see all these things that >Guy mentions myself, I feel that most of Guys suggestions are best >summarised by saying that Guy wants HeroQuest. In other words, most of >these suggestions are great, and I would really like to see them, and I >feel that they are outside the scope of any RQ4 project. That these things could be outside the scope is a valid comment. But if there is to be a generic RQ I think what prehaps needs to be looked at is the social implications of the generic HeroQuest in what I would guess would become the dream time. For a GM does not need to know how his players can venture into, and interact with, that dream time but he does need to know what can be done with such dream questing - to be able to set up a mythology & world for which he can buy either Gloranthan or Generic RQ material for. That increased compatability will hopefully aid sales for both the Generic and the Gloranthan versions of RQ4. >Some small scaps >of some of them might leak in (ie we should allow PC shamans to contact >worshippable spirits, and start a spirit cult - some fairly rough rules for >this are already in GoG), but by and large most of the big magical >questions should remain unanswered for RQ purposes. I don't mind scraps. I certainly can not expect all the big unanswered questions to be answered, especially not in a way that is abolutely true for Glorantha, but if there is both sufficient scraps and sufficient consistency then I can deduce the rest. Maybe this will be one time when possible answers to the some of the unanswered questions can be provided as the Adventures in Glorantha book could even explicitly dismiss such generic theories. This is untill Greg writes HeroQuest, of course ... >>The Mundane. How such a fantasy society is affected by the magic >>within it in the areas not traditionally associated with adventuring. > >Except this one. It would be nice to have more about how RQ magic is used >in day to day life. Mostly GM colour though, not an essential. I remember the discussions about using Bladesharp to plough a field that we had when we were playtesting RQ4. The more colour the GM has to paint his world with the better chance he has of running a richer world. Regards -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ From: "Gregory C. Walsh" Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 12:30:40 -0500 Subject: RQR: rq-rules@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: Re: RQR: Why going first doesn't matter Orlanthi sword master with 2 hander, blade 4, strength bonus, true sword (2d8+4+1d4 I think) faces a Berzerk ZZ death lord who just DI'ed and has his true flail up, bludgeon 4, and so on. So we are talking 4d6+6+1d6, or something like that. Even if you could take hits like that, the blows would send the participants flying according the knock back rules. So who ever hit first will be playing golf with the other. Some fights it doens't matter who hits first. But who remembers those? Greg ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 95 14:33:02 -0500 Subject: RQR: The two-book approach for RQ Hm... If the two-book approach means that each book can be larger and have more stuff than would a one-book approach, it sounds good to me. More optional rules. More space for clarifications. More detail for rules. I've got one option to present: Present a "standard" Damage Bonus and then a few options for it. I've adopted an idea kicked around on the old RQ-playtest list for my campaign. Basically, I've gone back to RQ3 AVERAGE weapon damage. I also use RQ3 armor values. I did this because I found the RQ:AiG values to make magic too important in combat. BUT, I didn't adopt the weapon and DB values wholesale. Instead, I did a whole bunch of tedious calculations involving moment arms, mass vs. height, etc. (all of it probably wrong), and then came up with the following discovery: If you make a STR+SIZ of 23-24 be a damage bonus of zero and then add 2.5 to that at every 12 steps, you get something that fits nicely into a curve multiplying mass by height AND something congruous with current RQ DB schemes. The way I implemented this was to split this 2.5 into 0.5 increments and divide those evenly along the scale (as evenly as I could). Then I add the new "proto-DB" to the AVERAGE damage for an RQ3 weapon to get a new AVERAGE damage for the weapon for that user. Then I decide on dice with the following rules of thumb: 1 die is better than two. Two dice are better than three. Etc. It is better to have a negative modifier than a positive to any damage roll. You see, I wanted to preserve the chance of a grazing blow and I also wanted to have a fairly dramatic flavor to combat. Admittedly, a realistic flavor to damage would have me use as many dice as possible for a weapon to get distribution as close to gaussian as possible, but I'd rather have the Yelm-ite wielding his Spatha doing 1d12 than 3d4-1, just for dramatic flair, that's a personal decision. If there is a leftover 0.5 using the above algorithm, round up if STR is greater than SIZ or down if STR is lower than SIZ. You end up with approximately the same average damages, but less dice to roll when you do damage. Not perfect, probably could be improved, but I'm just playtesting it right now. ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 95 14:37:16 -0500 Subject: RQR: RQ Computer games How would one do a non-Glorantha RQ game? Would you use the Unlimited Adventures paradigm, in which you have a semi-open platform to allow people to design their own adventures? ------------------------------ From: GAWINTER@aol.com Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 14:45:01 -0500 Subject: RQR: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #61 >Thus for RQ I propose a combat skill (hard if you are a RQ4ite) and weapon >skills which cannot exceed this. I think that a generic combat skill is usefull and might be used by those who wish to cultivate skills in many weapons, but that weapon skills would be the easier path to mastery of a single weapon. >There is no need for Unarmed since this is >at the comabt skill! This is a fairly good representation of an okinawan fighter, but fails to describe just about every other warrior tradition in the universe. Unarmed fighting, as a combat skill, is really very innefective vis a vie weapon fighting (speaking as a 14yr student of Karate). Unless you are proposing Unarmed as a fairly wimpy attack (d2 or d3). ------------------------------ From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 95 14:56:09 -0500 Subject: RQR: Editions I've never played RQ2. I bought RQ3 in 1985. ------------------------------ From: JARDINE@RMCS.CRANFIELD.AC.UK Date: Mon, 6 Feb 95 17:37 BST Subject: RQR: Combat skill is a stat?!? David was a little unhappy with my off-the-cuff comment about combat skill being a stat? Firstly I'm sorry I have not replied earlier, but my email is at work and I prefer to spend my weekends with my wife and small son. WRT the above: 1) By stat I intend an amalgumation of several other stats (STR,DEX & INT).2) I would allow combat to be trainable (without resorting to individually training STR or DEX. 3) This means that it initially has a highish value (approx 11 - 12) but is quite hard to raise. This seems to reflect reality moderately well. 4) In usage weapon skills are averaged with combat * 5%. I suspect that this clears up quite a few of you worries (but I doubt if it solves the lot). Cheers Lewis (I am going home now). ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Mon, 6 Feb 1995 16:09:38 -0500 Subject: Re: RQR: Combat skill as stat. JARDINE writes >WRT the above : >1) By stat I intend an amalgumation of several other stats (STR,DEX >& INT). >2) I would allow combat to be trainable (without resorting to >individually training STR or DEX. >3) This means that it initially has a highish value (approx 11 - 12) >but is quite hard to raise. This seems to reflect reality moderately >well. >4) In usage weapon skills are averaged with combat * 5%. >I suspect that this clears up quite a few of you worries (but I doubt if >it solves the lot). An interesting solution, but I don't think RQ needs another stat, as such. Combat should be treated as a Skill, like the other skills. The question is whether is should essentially be the only real combat skill in that it is what gets trained and gains experience, even though (to retain the proper RQ flavor) individual weapons have their own percentages based on the basic combat skill. I must admit I think the concept more and more unwieldly every time I think about it. Perhaps some other approach... Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: mabeyke@batman.b11.ingr.com (boris) Date: Mon, 6 Feb 95 15:33:12 CST Subject: RQR: Editions I actually bought the RQ2 boxed set, new. It languished on my shelf for years; I didn't buy any of the other 2ed stuff until years later (paying collectors prices, ouch). I first played RQ with 3ed, with a bunch of people who had started with 2ed, but made the switch. I started getting into Glorantha at this time, and they very kindly let me copy a lot of out of print stuff. I eventually started running it myself, and have hooked a "new generation" on the game, some of whom (and one of the ones who hook me) went with me to RQConI. All of these know only RQ3, though they see me referencing ancient, arcane tomes from time to time. (Meaningless aside: I have played exactly one and a half sessions of RQ2. I knew it would be bad when, during character creation, everybody else [who knew the GM; I didn't] were rolling up mistress race trolls and warrior dragonewts. We still all died the first session, from a bunch of scorpion men. Everybody but the gm's wife [who was playing an H. Beam Piper fuzzy shaman who rode a smilodon], who sicked spirits on them and then resurrected us. The second session [yes, I went back, I was stupid] he had a giant show up over a hill to attack us. One of the party was a humakti, and sucessfully cast Sever Spirit on it. Then another giant came over the hill. Finally showing a measure of sanity, I left. If I had just known the guy who ran it ahead of time, I would have known better. He once told me once about his favorite old character, a Yelmalion Light Son who was also a Kigor Lytor initiate.) - -- Boris Mikey, aka |"Here the ways of men part: if you wish to Maurice Beyke | strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then mabeyke@batman.b11.ingr.com| believe; if you wish to be a devotee of Intergraph doesn't want | truth, then inquire." my opinions. Nietzsche ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #68 ****************************** This is the bottom of the RuneQuest Rules Digest. 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