From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #105 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Tuesday, 21 February 1995 Volume 01 : Number 105 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 ANDOVER@delphi.com RQ market Mark Gagnon RQ for Thickies Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox. Re-examining the Turing Test Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox. Who's Buying? Mystic Musk Ox RQ Buying Antoon Pardon Non-linear HP vs. non-linear magic points Marc Philips RQ's audience Chris Cooke RQ's audience NDROBINS@NDROBINS.FIN.GOV.BC The strengths of "generic" RQ3 "Mauricio L. Rivera" Count me among the people too busy to write up a campaign and GM it, too. In 14 years of playing, almost all campaigns I have run have been published scenarios. B> People become role playing gamers (or just about anything else for that matter) in their early teen age years. A game that wants to expand its base must appeal to young people. However, a view of young people that has them guided by just sex and violence is contempuous and worse, inaccurate. Consoder the popularity of chess among smart young teenagers. Jim Chapin ------------------------------ From: Mark Gagnon Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 23:50:12 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: RQ for Thickies On 20 Feb 1995, Hugh Foster wrote: > Sorry but no. If you produce "RQ for Thickies" then I won't > buy it, any more than I buy WH. This high sales crap is > what's made TSR what it is today - unpopular! "...Well spotted, Bruce!..." I'm afraid I must agree. RQ enjoys something rather phenomenial in the rpg market, a loyal following. I'd like to think that I enjoy playing RQ because it explores mature subject matter, like Death (not DnD death, just change your characters batteries and away you go...), transformation and growth. Mark Gagnon KOOKY-WOOKY is an ancient voodoo bad mojo juju fruity Yog Sothoth-summoning necro-mantra of the Nyuknyuk peoples of the swamps of Jersey. These fools have unwittingly (no surprise) doomed themselves to a zany, goopy death. WOW! Kinda IRONIC, hun Ren? -D. Lawton ------------------------------ From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 00:44:13 PST Subject: Re-examining the Turing Test David Dunham writes: >Which is it? Do they pass the Turing Test (and are thus indistinguishable >from humans) or are they non-anthropomorphic? Actually, I think >Gloranthan-style gods would _not_ pass the Turing Test; by questioning >them, you'd be able to tell they don't think like humans. This got the grey cells turning over a fair bit. I would say an initiate, unable to question the gods, but able to experience his god's denials and glimpse aspects of his presence, or the representations of the mythologies that define the deity, in the religious ceremonies that he particpates in would be more inclined to feel that a gods where like men. The distinguishing difference between a god and man would be the trend toward timelessness, either due to the gods origins from dreamtime or the ascent into godhood that diety has undergone, into the realms where the dreamtime still lingers. If a priest was to talk to his god then prehaps the gods would appear correct within his culture as, due to RQ, his local worshippers have been sacrificing their Power to him. Again gods are strange, with senses and perceptions different to men, but they could still should enough signs of humanity for their worshippers to associate with them. The real issue would be what happens when a priest travels to a distant culture with values different to his own and finds his god worshipped there. These situations would test the anthropomorphic behaviour of the gods to their full as the initiate or priest could find as much variation as evident in the Christian god and Allah or as between Odin and Zeus. The question is what conclusions would the priest draw? As he could draw enough different conclusions to retain the level of ambiguity I think fantasy religions deserves then I would be satisfied. In other words given the nature of medium over which the Turing test would have to be conducted I think a RQ god would pass but despite this there could still be rich opportunities for failure within a RQ world. The problem would be that if someone attempted to apply a rigourous philosphical or scientific methods on the gods the gods themselves might notice and take steps of some kind ... Regards -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 01:00:56 PST Subject: Re: Who's Buying? Previously I said: >I think that a valuable market for RQ4 would be those gamers who are >seeking a rite of passage from the low-brow games [...] From peoples' comments I feel that I should qualify this statement. Making a higher quality game accessable does not mean that it needs to be made more stupid or reduce it to the level of the low-brow games from which an audience can be gained. Concession worlds might need to be created (during the RQ4 playtest my 16 year old step-son, player of Warhammer 40K and AD&D2, generated a priest who possessed lots of necromantic Divine Magic) but these worlds should introduce the gamer to more imaginative ideas. To reduce RQ to the low-brow level would risk loosing any distinctions that might exist between them. Instead the low-brow gamer should find RQ books that he or she can read and understand and enable them to do what people have done before them in the 70s and 80s. Regards -- Guy Robinson -- ------------------------------ From: mab@sdc1.bnsc.rl.ac.uk (Mystic Musk Ox) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 09:17:16 GMT Subject: RQ Buying >Is it ? Everyone I know designs their own campaign; I can't >think of anyone running in a bought-pack world, in _any_ >game system. Votes, any one ? How many RQ3 >write-it-yourselfers are there out there ? Yep, count this a a vote for scratch campaign design. All my campaigns have used RQ or RQ variants since about 1982, none of them have actually used Glorantha. Mark Buckley. ------------------------------ From: apardon@vub.ac.be (Antoon Pardon) Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 10:28:48 +0100 (MET) Subject: Re: Non-linear HP vs. non-linear magic points > > The thing about making Hit Points non-"linear" (actually non-first-order > polynomial) is that you would then have to completely redesign the damage > for all RQ weapons. Right now, the weapons have a rough correspondance to > an exponential relationship to angular momentum. Thus, they and hit points > "go up" at the same rate. How did you come to thei conclusion? > > If you alter hit points, you would have to rewrite all weapons so that they > have a more linear correspondance in damage to momentum. > Well but changing MP to a non linear scale and keeping HP linear changes magical healing. As POW gets to some minimal value the MP available will make it possible to do substantial more healing than before. Especially some of the elven folks. - -- ======================================================================== Antoon Pardon Brussels Free University Computing Centre 02/650.37.16 ======================================================================== ------------------------------ From: Marc Philips Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 10:30:56 MET Subject: Re: RQ's audience > From my experience, the following holds true for new RQ players (and I've > introduced no less than a dozen people to the game): > > 2: They are not new roleplayers. Sometimes they are, RQ2 was my first roleplaying game (in 1982). There was a group playing AD&D at my University that I couldn't join because of other activities at the time they were playing. I decided to start my own group but to pick a different game. There were only 6-8 RPGs available in Europe at the time and a recent review in "Jeux et Strategie", a now deceased magazine, listed RQ as outstanding. I bought it, read the rules and took six friends to Apple Lane. None of them had played any RPG before but all were very enthousiast. > 1: They are dissatisfied with AD&D. Not always, I also gamemaster AD&D games from time to time. All RPGs have qualities and defaults. One of the major quality of RQ is to allow players to do what they want with their character, no classes, appart from a very few exceptions they can learn any skill or spell. It's one problem in my view is that, precisely because all players can do anything, managing larger group of players is not easy. The day I was approached by 14 friends willing to give RPGs a try, I looked for an alternative to RQ... and found AD&D. Side question : what's the largest RQ gaming group you've played with (not including the gamemaster)? My personnal record is 8 players. > 3: They are looking for something that feels more "real" without a boatload > of extra numbers. True. Cheers, Marc - -- Marc PHILIPS Eurocontrol - Central Flow Management Unit marc@cfmu.eurocontrol.be Rue de la Fusee 96 Tel: +32 2 729 96 92 B-1130 BRUXELLES Fax: +32 2 729 90 22 Belgium ------------------------------ From: Chris Cooke Date: Tue, 21 Feb 95 9:14:13 EST Subject: Re: RQ's audience : Side question : what's the largest RQ gaming group you've played with (not : including the gamemaster)? I was once GM for a game of 14 players(about 1/2 new). Talk about havoc! I much prefer 4-6 experienced players... - -- /> Chris Cooke // cookec@io.com (//////[O]>====================================- - OR - \\ cookec@mml.mmc.com \> Too much of a good thing is WONDERFUL! ------------------------------ From: NDROBINS@NDROBINS.FIN.GOV.BC.CA Date: Tue, 21 Feb 95 10:16:36 PST Subject: RE: The strengths of "generic" RQ3 Neil Robinson here. Joerg mentioned how he started on RQ3 generic, and migrated to Glorantha. Personally, I did the same thing. I played some RQ II back in high school, but lost touch with that crowd as we all moved to different countries (or Quebec - the same thing). I found running a game in Glorantha too daunting, so I took the excellent Vikings suppliment, tweaked it a tiny bit to put it in my world, and ran that. It has been only recently that I have been willing to run a Gloranthan game. Oh, and I also met more RQers. As for the new blood. I have found that all the new games in my area are coming from two groups, the dissatified AD&Ders, and adults new to gaming. The latter have had their preconcieved opinions of what gaming is, but once they discovered the depth of culture in the game, seemed to enjoy it. Oh and these new adult gamers include a large number of women too. I guess it helps that we play a low-combat style. To me, RQ is a niche game, but could stand increasing its potential market. However, it is important not to disillusion the current players or no one will play the game. Neil _______________________________________________________________ Neil Robinson NDROBINS@NDROBINS.FIN.GOV.BC.CA ------------------------------ From: "Mauricio L. Rivera" Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 14:25:27 +0000 Subject: Options during character gen Hello Everyone! Mau here.... I=D5d like to contribute some ideas on how to further =D2personalize=D3=20 characters during character generation. My players like being unique=20 (don=D5t we all?) and I wanted a system wherein players could choose=20 additional options (for the lack of a better word) in exchange for=20 counteroptions---you shouldn=D5t be able to get something for nothing, I=20 always say. In response, I developed an informal system wherein characters can choose= =20 get additional =D2goodies=D3 in exchange for a proportional amount of=20 =D2baddies=D3. Since some players are greedy, they get a lot of =D2goodies= =D3 and=20 end up having an exciting adventure due to all their =D2baddies=D3--like=20 demons chasing after them, having APP3, following strict codes of=20 behavior and/or have no magic casting capability (wha-a-a-t??). The=20 players have free rein in choosing their respective =D2goodies=D3 and=20 =D2baddies=D3, so they later can=D5t come up to me and request for a change= . I,=20 of course, help regulate their choices to ensure that game balance is=20 maintained.=20 By the way, if player characters have access to these options--why=20 shouldn=D5t non-player characters also have access to them?=20 The players have the choice of determining what options (aka goodies)=20 their characters would get and what counter-options (aka =D2baddies=D3) the= y=20 would have to offset the advantages they received. Of course, a player=20 may choose not to get any additional options after rolling his character;= =20 and therefore not get any =D2disadvantages=D3 in return. Options: 1. Inheritance=D0=D0Magic Item or any other object 2. Special Background=D0=D0Character Statistics (High Stat Rolls) 3. Special Background=D0=D0Spell Knowledge 4. Special Background=D0=D0New Abilities (Psionics, Ki Skills, Magic=20 Resistance, etc.) 5. Special Background=D0=D0Character History/Race, Connections (Nobility,= =20 Patron God, etc.) 6. Skills=D0=D0New Skills (any ideas or powers are welcome for suggestion) 7. Skills=D0=D0High Levels of Proficiency (100%+) --like Cooking 150% 8. Skills=D0=D0Additional years of training (early beginner) 9. Skills=D0=D0Eclectic Training (choose which skills) Counter Options: 1. Encumberances=D0=D0Hunted, Quested by God/Leader/Group 2. Encumberances=D0=D0Follows code, bound to serve, less training 3. Encumberances=D0=D0Restricted (See Gods of Glorantha) 4. Disadvantageous Stats=D0=D0Physical and/or Mental Disability, Low Stats 5. Disadvantageous Stats=D0=D0Cannot cast Magic/Totally No Magic 6. Disadvantageous Background=D0=D0Cursed (See curses in Gods of Glorantha) 7. Disadvantageous Background=D0=D0Ill repute, Bloodfeud, HON (Famous or=20 Infamous) I am usually quite fair in determining the counter-option level...so if=20 they (the players) get a very powerful option...you can bet that their=20 character will get a very big pain in the neck in return. I would like to= =20 state (before i get any comments stating so..) that there is a lot of=20 room here for messing up the game balance, so the referee=D5s discretion is= =20 very important. Another reason why I like this system is that it=20 introduces a lot of variables in gameplay...like if Demon x is looking=20 for character y, an entire campaign could revolve around that story. Mix=20 into that Demon Z is looking for character x, who=D5s the half brother of= =20 the sister of the uncle of character y and both are in the same=20 party....then we have quite a volatile situation at hand. I had some sort of method of determining the =D2level=D3 of the choice, so= =20 that an equivalent counter-option can be arrived at. I, however, do not=20 have this list on hand right now...so if you guys want a copy of it,=20 please send me some mail here telling me to look for the rules. By the way, if you have any nice comments, please feel free to send them=20 to me using this list or to my e-mail address: rivers@aliens.phfreenet.org. That=D5s all for now, folks. Until next time... Mau Rivera Oh yeah, my internet access is quite erratic due to time constraints, so=20 if any of you should have any questions, please be patient--i will try to= =20 answer your questions as soon as possible. Thanx. //Mauricio Rivera rivers@aliens.phfreenet.org//= =20 ------------------------------ From: Hugh Foster <100326.446@compuserve.com> Date: 21 Feb 95 14:18:49 EST Subject: RQ for Thickies >>ooze and chaos? Slight exaggeration here, but it seems to me that a newcomer would get the impression that Glorantha is all about Storm Bullying through hordes of screaming chaos mutants.... Doesn't this seem a little (dare I say it) Warhammerish? So maybe RQ is already on the right track, << So, if Shakespeare were selling badly, should we intersperse the prose with the word "fuck" occasionally just to attract a more "yoof" audience ? God help us all. ------------------------------ From: SPerrin@aol.com Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 15:06:44 -0500 Subject: Re: RQ Cover Art So, do people like the RQ3 cover art? Do they prefer the combat-oriented RQ2 art to the exploration-oriented RQ3 art? Is anyone out there an RQ3 (only or initially) player attracted by that cover? My feeling is that RQ needs to attract the people tired of D&D. I would like to attract people to the game as initial players, but it's not going to have the distribution to pull that off. Thus, the cover needs to pull in people originally attracted to D&D who are looking for a slightly more mature equivalent. I thought the rmored-woman-fighting-the- dragon cover for RQs 1&2 and the armored couple exploring the ruins cover for RQ3 both fulfilled that need. Anyone have other ideas? Steve Perrin ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #105 ******************************* 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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