From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #74 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Thursday, 9 February 1995 Volume 01 : Number 074 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 Graeme A Lindsell RQR: Encumbrance and spellcasting Nigel Smith RQR: BattleMagic & Skills Nigel Smith RQR: LONG post on Horse Combat Rules David Cake RQR: Combat Skill Reduction David Cake RQR: Ars-Magica-ish Sorcery Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox. RQR: Playtest of HP-less combat Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox. RQR: Activating the University of Hertford Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox. RQR: Pick your rules-level Majordomo RQR: SR and the Crimson Bat (fwd) Loren Miller RQR: FTP access, other access to archives ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Graeme A Lindsell Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 17:36:27 +1100 (EST) Subject: Re: RQR: Encumbrance and spellcasting Replying to Joerg B.: > Another point I feel neglected is the casting time. Emergency castings > of spells should be a lot harder than carefully prepared spells, so rather > than give a bonus for use of Ceremony skill I'd prefer a malus for quickly > cast spells. > What about this as an alternative for casting spirit magic: you can either cast spirit magic slowly, taking one full melee round per point of spell, which is automatic except for 96-00 rolls; or you can try to cast it quickly, taking 1 SR per point of spell, but needing a roll against Cast Battle/Spirit Magic to succeed. This would give young PC's an ability to cast spells, albeit slowly, and also explain why not everyone over (say) 35 has Cast Spirit Magic 100%: most people who don't go into combat or need quick spell castings like CA heal spells never need to cast spells quickly, and thus never develop the skill. > A skill like Focussing which can be helped with the use of the often > neglected spell focus could do the trick. Foci of varying bonus would > give nifty small change "treasure", too... Focussing might be a better name than Cast Spirit/Battle Magic, come to think of it. - -- Graeme Lindsell a.k.a Graeme.Lindsell@anu.edu.au Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University ------------------------------ From: ns10005@hermes.cam.ac.uk (Nigel Smith) Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 09:03:52 +0000 Subject: Re: RQR: BattleMagic & Skills Matt Thale wrote (greatly snipped): >>I've been playing with BattleMagic as a skill rather than a POW x 5 roll. and Steve Perrin replied: >Sounds like a reasonable system, but it essentially says that Battle Magic is >actually just a subset of Sorcery. >This is not necessarily bad, in fact >it mirrors the original authors' concept of Battle Magic, but it muddies the >distinctions between sorcery and spirit magic and essentially means that >there are two magic styles, divine and personal. > Comments? I assume that you would still learn BM as points, while sorcery you learn as a spell and then you manipulate. I have always seen that as the main distinction between sorcery and the others - the sorceror is in charge. Perhaps there _are_ only two styles of magic - that which you are granted (BM & Divine) and that which *you* create... Nigel ------------------------------ From: ns10005@hermes.cam.ac.uk (Nigel Smith) Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 09:03:56 +0000 Subject: Re: RQR: LONG post on Horse Combat Rules Haven't read these yet, will compare with some I vaguely remember from White Dwarf magazine.. BUT - a question. We seem to have: on the one hand - complaints of overly complex systems eg. SR and sorcery skills. on the other hand - requests for more complex systems eg. riding rules. I, for one, do not wish to play Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert, Immortal, (etc., ad nauseum) RQ4 but we do seem to be heading towards a 'pick your rules-level' game system. Any comments? Nigel ------------------------------ From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 17:25:25 +0800 Subject: Re: RQR: Re: Combat Skill Reduction >> A long perceived problem with the RQ rules has been that they encourage >> players to use every weapon, "just to get a check mark," even though >> there is no good reason to do so. > >Sorry, Steve, but you're making a mountain out of a molehill. This problem >cropped up in my campaign and ended when the judge said, "No one in their >right mind would really do that, knock it off!" > Just going through my old mail, which explains why an old message resurfaces. In a local game we had a player who is mildly notorious for powergamer tendencies. Well, powergaming is not quite right, but certainly roleplaying challenged. He managed to check six weapon skill checks in a single combat once, and managed to somewhat justify them, as everyone else looked on amazed. Bow, thrown weapon, spear - stuck in with an impale, 2h weapon, dropped due to injured arm, 1h weapon, lost, etc. But even for the craziest it is not a really big problem. Justifying swapping weapons is usually pretty difficult. Cheers David > Andrew Joelson ------------------------------ From: davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 17:41:01 +0800 Subject: Re: RQR: Ars-Magica-ish Sorcery >Brian, > >Let's see if I have this proposal right. You're suggesting a system where a >Sorcerer has one Sorcery skill, and to get any effect he wants, he just has >to make the skill roll with a reduction based on the magnitude of his spell. > Or does he still have to learn a basic spell, as I specified before, with >the Sorcery skill used to magnify the spell as I suggested before? Thus, as >long as he knows the basic spell, he can magnify it any way he wants as long >as he has enough Sorcery skill. > One could then have "schools" of magic (such as Fire, or Summoning, or >Life, etc.) that would either have a basic spell list withing the school, or >the School itself would be the basic "spell." With this latter system, a >Sorcerer of the Life School could do anything (grow plants, heal, summon >insects to act as armor) the GM thought appropriate as long as he made the >needed Sorcery skill. I had at one time a sort of compromise system. The system was to have the existing sorcery spells as easy or medium skills (I favour easy, sorcerers have it hard enough already). Then the 'super spells' (like 'Fire magic') are hard skills. Each of these skills allows several spells effects, and also anything else the GM allows. For example a sorcerer could have 'Darkness magic', which allows Form/Set darkness, Invoke Darkness, Invoke cold, and invoke shadow. In conjunction with Summoning skill it might also allowing summoning and dominating shades. In conjunction with Enchanting you might be able to make Darkness magic items, including eventually unique ones. The same sorcerer might also know some individual spells as well. The reasoning behind this hybrid system was - For some backwards compatibility. RQ3 sorcerers still are perfectly valid sorcerers under this system, if a little dull (the broad skills are more fun to play, as they allow quite a bit of creativity). To allow simple limited sorcery for the peasantry to learn, while still allowing sorcerers to do some fancy stuff (ie the broader skills are High Magic). Some RQ3 spells do not fit into any neat category. Rather than force them (the downfall of Runic sorcery systems, IMHO), allow them to work much the way they used to. If there is a real chance that something like this might be considered for RQ4, I will happily beat it into shape. Cheers David > Just a thought. > >Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 01:20:30 PST Subject: RQR: Playtest of HP-less combat Here is my playtest report from last night copied to one of the players who has an e-mail address for his inspection. Last night we had playtested of Steve Perrin's RQ combat without Hit Point system. There was a combat between 4 trollkin, 2 adventurers and a troll-seeking dog that could sense trolls due to the magical work of the Foundchild cult. They where directed to these lone trollkin that had been hidden in some woods by a groups of trolls attempting to travel through Sartar by a Lankhor Mhy Divination as the troll had hidden with them DarkScript slabs from the time time of the Great Darkness. Anyway that was the setting to the evenings events. The rules were abbreviated RQ4 rules (10% of skill for a critcial) with the trollkin fairly well armed and motivated, for troll kin, vs. 2 skilled (a RQ4 term meaning roughly 50-65 skill) adventures in good armour wielding a bastard sword and a sword stick. Two of the trollkin had a single piece of leather armour each. The fight was messy and even though the trollkin were outclassed they put up a fairly determined fight, knowing that they as mainly value trollkin they would lose a fair amount if they fled the field of battle, not to mention their envitable consumption. As the maxium damage a trollkin could do was 1d6-1 I improvised and worked on a tick basis. Everytime someone was wounded to a given location I game them more one or more ticks. The number of ticks was dependent on the damage that got past armour considered against the locational threshold of the creature. If the damage was less then the threshold I aplied 1 tick. If it was >= threshold but < 2xthreshold I applied 2 ticks. If it was >= 2xthreshold but < 3x threshold I applied 3 ticks and so on. As Steve suggested 1 tick was wounded but OK, 2 ticks was location stunned for 1 round afterwards in for a skill reduction to all appropraite skills, 3 ticks was out of use and 4 ticks was maimed. The adventurers and the trollkin fought for a while before the 1st blows came through: a kick from an adventurer (1 tick to the abdomen of a trollkin) and a swordstick to the chest (2 ticks to the chest that I ruled caused a collapse with a recovery after 1d10 rounds). The first trollkin to die took a solid blow to the head, after a less serious blow to the right arm (1 tick) and the kick I mentioned earlier, to the time of 3 ticks to the head. As it was a critical blow I pronounced that it had been beheaded. The second trollkin had a shield and a spear and the adventurer with the sword stick decided to attack twice in an attempt to over whelm it. At this point spontaneous appreciation for the RQ4 two action method welled up from the player. Without any defense the defensive minded trollkin managed to strike 2 blows to the adventurers right arm and head (1 tick each) before he was whipped up himself into an all out attack. The tollkin was wounded twice before attrition (a 2nd tick) caused his right arm to become stunned and his spear dropped to the ground. He survived for the next round, parrying with his shield untill he retrieved his spear and had a bleated attack. This was to be his last as a blow to the abdomen (2 ticks) caused his collapse and eventual death as he bleed to death, ignored by all. For the trollkin who was knocked out by the chest wound had revived and threw a spear in a on opportunist effort to reduce the odds. he had recoved after 6 rounds of attacks and parries. A blow to the head by the adventurer with the swordstick took the fight out of him, (1 tick but the blow was a critical) and he was subjected to a faltering interrogation by an adventurer with a Speak DarkTounge skill of 29. In the background a trollkin had been fighting with the magical troll-seeking dog and in ensuing struggle they the dog managed to kill the trollkin by attacking at his adomen repreatively for a total of three ticks, causing him to die for shock and bloodloss. The dog recieved 2 blows in return from the prone trollkin. Overall the combat went fairly smoothy and I think the players liked the more subjective system where it was not the cold, hard ammount of damage that mattered but the attrition that made the difference. Note that the way I played it someone could have killed someone by repeatedly kicking someone in the abdomen but is this necessarily unrealistic? I massaged the results of the 10% of skills criticals but I would have done the same for the trollkin if they had rolled any. I ignored the reduction in skills but played out the stunning of a location as this appeared more workable for me. For a first playtest it looks like Steve's suggestion could be workable indeed, expecially for an improvisation referee like myself as you start to look at the severity of a wound and the state of a location rather than the number of HPs left. In the aftermath we tried out Steve's Battle Magic idea (no definite MP or temporary POW loss excepting for failures) with a mixed result that provoked a discussion about Stormbringer. This system worked OK, even with the single failure causing the sorcerer to drop to 1 MP, and in some cases losing 1 Pow as well, but the skill levels where lower. The result was that we came to the conclusion that this kind of treatment was best left to skills that were lower than the 70% chance that the character who cast the spells had otherwise the character could cast low intensity spells all day. Regards -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 01:42:36 PST Subject: RQR: Activating the University of Hertfordshire As the University of Herts is fairly close to me and has an active gaming club thought I might move the playtest of Steve's ideas to there. If so any interested parties who live close are welcome to join such efforts if I get things moving. Probably I will see if anyone is interested in testing things with RQ3 in addition to our efforst or just see if they will give us some table space to play. I will write them a letter this lunch time and see if they are interested in getting involved. I'll even offer them a talk on RQ4 if they are that kind of society and if this comes off I will post the date on this group so people can turn up if they want. As this is about the UK I would like to say that I am quite guilty of posting the English spelling of manoeuvre on this list but also quite unrepentant! It actually quite easily to spell if you have an English distionary on your desk ... :-) Regards -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 01:50:54 PST Subject: RQR: Pick your rules-level Nigel, >BUT - a question. >We seem to have: > on the one hand - complaints of overly complex systems eg. SR and >sorcery skills. > on the other hand - requests for more complex systems eg. riding rules. >I, for one, do not wish to play Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert, >Immortal, (etc., ad nauseum) RQ4 but we do seem to be heading towards a >'pick your rules-level' game system. >Any comments? Don't confuse the taste-testers for the chefs. Even though play-testers might have a wide range of views the writers and the editors still have the final say in any publication. Besides any given set of rules can played in any number of ways. The established market for RQ, due it's patchy history, is very varied and the variety of posts refelects this. Regards -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ From: Majordomo Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 13:18:33 -0500 (EST) Subject: RQR: SR and the Crimson Bat (fwd) Forwarded message: From postmaster@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Thu Feb 9 02:34:58 1995 Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 23:37:30 -0800 Message-Id: <199502090737.XAA08147@radiomail.net> To: owner-rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu From: David Dunham (via RadioMail) Subject: SR and the Crimson Bat >David Dunham said: >>Therefore, who goes first doesn't matter much. It certainly doesn't matter >>enough that we need a time-consuming and complicated game mechanic to worry >>about it. > >"Your DEX is..?", player looks at sheet and answers. >"Your strike rank is...?", player looks at the weapons section of the >sheet, where BSR has already been added to the weapon SR, and answers. > >OK, so it is a much longer sentence, but neither a complicated nor >time-consuming action. No, my quote is: "" since I propose that all first actions be resolved as if simultaneous. This takes a lot less time. You assume one way of using the character sheet. It's not always done that way -- and it's a lot harder to explain to people how to calculate DEX SR, Melee SR, and add Weapon SR. No one rule is ever complex. But they all add up, especially when the GM is running lots of different characters all with different SRs. Remember, no player ever finds the rules too much, they have 5/6 of the melee round to do any bookkeeping and calculations needed. Steve Barnes replied >>I think POW and other stats >>are exponential rather than linear. Mr. Barnes stands with the loyal >>opposition on that debate and he disagrees. > >When they stop making monsters like the Bat, with STR and POW measured >in the 1000s, I'll agree with you. But the Bat is easily 1000 exponential POW! It eats towns for breakfast! This is a feature, not a bug. ------------------------------ From: Loren Miller Date: Thu, 9 Feb 1995 14:09:43 -0500 (EST) Subject: RQR: FTP access, other access to archives FTP ACCESS TO ARCHIVES ====================== I will eventually put the archives up for ftp access. I need to do some background reading on it before I do it though. And it isn't top priority. It is very low priority. See the bottom for why this is. It's also quite possible that they will be available for FTP access from ftp.csua.berkeley.edu before they are available via FTP from here. In the meantime how can you get back issues? EMAIL. This option has been around as long as the list. Send email to majordomo@hops.wharton.upenn.edu with "index glorantha-digest" in the body of the message. Then use the command "get glorantha-digest v01.n001" to get volume 1 number 1. Replace "glorantha" with "rq-rules" or "world-design" depending on which mailing list you specifically are interested in. Etc. Use the command "help" for more complete instructions. WWW. use your WWW client to go to the ***NEW*** and ***PERMANENT*** URL. This is where everything else will be added later. http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~major FTP. nope. GOPHER. nope. DON'T HAVE WWW? =============== If you are using a unix or a mac or a pc platform (almost everyone out there except for atari and amiga fans) then there are WWW readers which you can ftp for free over the net, so if you can use ftp over the internet then you can grab and install Netscape (the best one, at ftp.mcom.com) or Mosaic (ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu). - -- +++++++++++++++++++++++23 Loren Miller "I don't have to practice what I preach 'cause I'm not the kind of person I'm preaching to!" The Book of The Subgenius ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #74 ****************************** 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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