From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #113 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Friday, 24 February 1995 Volume 01 : Number 113 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 SPerrin@aol.com Advantage/disadvantage ch... David Dunham via RadioMail Nigel's comments Loren Miller Differing Magic Systems Hugh Foster Encumberance, TSR, RQ Earth Loren Miller Banish piddly little differences! Steven E Barnes Mor befuddle ANDOVER@delphi.com Befuddle (sigh!) ANDOVER@delphi.com Befuddle ps "Mauricio L. Rivera" >I don't believe anyone is proposing a system of character disadvantages (to use the Hero terminology). They are talking about a meta-system for magic, possibly using power modifiers like Hero. I think a fairly simple one can be constructed, simplier than Hero. After all, we are only simulating spells, not everything Hero does...<< Well, no, actually, we are talking about both. The character disads would be to "pay" for extra experience--essentially being used to build a background for the character. Most would be to balance addons, such as becoming an elf friend and taking the disad of troll enemy to balance the situation. In some w ays it would be an extension of the gifts and geases system of some cults, but nowhere near as drastic. The magic modifiers, on the other hand, would involve manipulations of such things as Range, Duration, Area of Effect, and Intensity, much like the Sorcery system now in place, but nowhere near as klutzy. Steve Perrin ------------------------------ From: David Dunham (via RadioMail) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 12:27:08 -0800 Subject: Re: Nigel's comments Nigel Smith suggests > Make Battle Magic quick, dirty and weak - (100%-enc)+Magic Bonus as >chance to cast, spells with duration cut to 10MR, max of 4 points in a >variable spell unless you are a shaman I like the chance to cast (doesn't penalize low POW but does penalize ENC), but I don't see why you need arbitrary limits. >If a >Befuddled person is attacked they get a 1/2 chance to dodge or parry, no >return attack, then act normally the next round I always give them a full chance to defend; I figure a Befuddled person is very curious about the person who walks up to them with a weapon, and gives them his full attention. >Still on the subject, why was 'battle magic' increased from 10MR to 50MR in >duration? ... >More choices and more book-keeping. Does anyone else think the trade >worthwhile? Bookkeeping is almost never worth it. It may be fine for players but it doesn't scale well for GMs. ------------------------------ From: Loren Miller Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 16:30:02 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Differing Magic Systems Responding to Guy ">" and Nigel ">>": >> Make Battle Magic quick, dirty and weak - (100%-enc)+Magic Bonus as No problem with the idea of dividing between common magic and specialist magic rather than spirit and divine, but please get rid of these piddly little subtractions in play (keeping them in character creation is better, though not perfect). IMHO if a modifier used in actual play is less than 10% I don't even want to hear about it. More on piddly crap in another post. > If spirit and battle magic remain unified the prehaps Ray's suggestion > about about RRs for battle magic not permitting a greater than 50% chance > of success be used along with prehaps a proviso that an an appropriate > shamantic skill (as they exist in RQ4) might change this situation. That would be a terrible idea. Only a 50% chance that your slay rat spell (aka disrupt) works against that rat?! > Channelling is too new age for my tastes. I agree. Channeling sounds like (a) Seth Speaks, and (b) Rolemaster. Yech! What an awful combination! > A kind of pay in advance system for miracles that > you to reconcile the use of after these powers have been exercised. That's the traditional divine magic system. If RunePower is used instead, then philosophically divine magic would be the process of sacrificing Power to incrementally develop a divine self (an avatar or incarnation) which can use powers and which is constrained by limits similar to but less absolute than those of the incarnated god. >> Sorcery - simple spells, simply cast by ordinary folk *OR* powerful >> spells cast by powerful folk, the difference being the skill of the caster Actually, the difference being the spells that you have been taught. You could know awesome, flexible, powerful spells but still have a pitiful chance of casting them. If you have joined an official sorcerous organization you have access to the powerful spells, otherwise you only get hedge magic (hedge magic is shorthand for magic the peasantry would use, as opposed to the sophisticated spells used by the gentry and upper classes). I suggest the difference between hedge magic (or common magic) and high magic (or wizardry) be that common spells are tightly constrained and inefficient in their use of POW or MP, while high spells are very flexible and much more efficient. This enforces two things that I think are good for MGF: (1) no piddly differences in game systems; (2) links character power level to social involvement. And it provides great scenario hooks when the rogue sorceror comes onto the scene and starts recruiting lowlife students and teaching them nasty spells without consulting the local magistery, provoking the local authorities to hire ruffians (PCs) to harrass the foreign sorceror until she runs away (or dies). >> (what is so wrong with the present sorcery system? Apart from low beginning >> casting chances and the inability to cast any decent spells without a fist >> full of matrices?). That isn't enough? How about Free INT? Stupefy? - -- +++++++++++++++++++++++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 ------------------------------ From: Hugh Foster <100326.446@compuserve.com> Date: 24 Feb 95 17:30:40 EST Subject: Encumberance, TSR, RQ Earth >>All the equipment in RQ4 should have price *and* weight listed. << Does anyone have a handy list of equipment ENC values they could post ? One person's forethought could save a lot of aggro for a lot of GMs (like me, heh heh). >> In part because I supporting the net TSR boycott. << Eh ?? What boycott ? >>Fantasy Earth should be revived. It was an excellent start and was only still-born because the agreement under which it first was started did not permit Avalon Hill to produce Fantasy Earth products on their own--they had to go through Chaosium for everything. <..various wonderful product suggestions..> << I could hug this dude! If anything will increase RQ's market share it will be a second, more "familiar" environment. Glorantha's great, but it's just too "strange" for beginning RQ GMs. ------------------------------ From: "Loren Miller" Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 17:37:40 EST Subject: Banish piddly little differences! One thing that Sandy Petersen brought up on the Glorantha Digest in the midst of a seemingly endless thread on rules for pregnancy and maternal fatalities struck a nerve with me. I include the entire pertinent portion of Sandy's commentary. Alex, apologies for including your proposal as a stereotypical bad example. Please feel free to use me likewise in the future. HOWEVER, your suggested rule has the grievous problem that it violates one of the top Three Official Game Design Rules, namely: "Thou Shalt Not Institute Any Piddly Differences". As a professional Game Designer this offends my nobler senses. You see, Alex's ill-thought-out rule turns a potentially interesting large difference into a puny "why roll for it" difference. A woman with CON 18 has only a 15% higher chance than a woman with a CON 3. Snooze. If you use my superior system, then a woman with a CON 3 will take game-significant actions -- seek special magic to aid her pregnancy, avoid pregnancy entirely, sublimate her interest in sex into something else, because she's too "delicate" for such things, etc. But if it's only 15%, while she might be worried about death in pregnancy, a normal-CON woman will be very nearly as worried as her. We don't get the interesting roleplaying opportunities. Nor do we get strapping peasant women with wide hips who can drop kids continually without fear of even temporary incapacitation, much less death. The difference between the rules was this. Sandy: Chance of safe delivery is CONx10 percent, rolled at delivery. -- vs -- Alex: Chance of maternal fatality is 20-CON percent, rolled at delivery. Piddly Differences like this (that require game-time calculation for no or little difference) infest the RQ rules like maggots in roadkill. RQ3's fatigue rules are only the most infamous and unplayable example. Free INT is another. Using POW as a skill modifier (forcing recalculation of most modifiers and skills when POW changes) is yet another. Heck! All the skill modifiers exemplify this problem![1] Why are there different modifiers for manipulation and attack if the numbers and formulas are identical? If the difference between two modifiers is only a few percent why even bother? Where's the MGF in having the average PC's default sneak chance drop from 5% to 2%? My rule of thumb is that any modifier less than 10% is too small to worry about. If you want a modifier, first make sure that you really need one, then make sure it's at least 10%. If it isn't at least 10% then you don't need it. Using this guideline most of the combat modifiers would go away, leaving us with only the most significant ones, the modifiers that affect *strategy* and *roleplay*. Nobody changes their strategy or roleplaying to get around a piddly little 3% difference. I assert that since it doesn't significantly change anybody's strategy or roleplay it should not be covered in the rules. I expect that someone will pipe up with an objection, offering anecdotal evidence that those small modifiers have made a difference, that they have allowed characters to survive when they would not have. This works the other way too, remember. Your GM has criticalled characters to death who would not have died if there wasn't a 2% bonus on that troll's attack. But my argument is not that the piddly differences don't change the statistics of things, obviously they do, but that they do not affect the decisions that roleplayers make, that they take up time you could be roleplaying with, and that getting rid of them does not disproportionally favor any type of character. Summing up, I want the writers of RQ4 to go through the rules and look for every spot where modifiers less than 10% are generated, or where modifiers get recalculated each round, and either (1) strike the modifiers, or (2) increase the modifiers to significant values. Finally in any situation where modifiers are recalculated round by round use the resistance table or some other current game mechanic to banish recalculation. ENDNOTES [1] I'll get to my "piddly little difference banishing" proposal for beginning skills in another post. Bug me about it next week. - -- +++++++++++++++++++++++23 Loren Miller LOREN@marketing.wharton.upenn.edu Life at the water's edge is the real life for men and women ------------------------------ From: akuma@netcom.com (Steven E Barnes) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 14:48:50 -0800 Subject: Mor befuddle Since Nigel mentioned the change in spirit magic duration from 10MR to 50MR, I realized this may be part of the reason our group doesn't see Befuddle as a problem. Being RQ2 grognards, Befuddle only lasts 10 rounds in our games... (That, and a tendancy to have characters learn Dispell Magic) - -steve ------------------------------ From: ANDOVER@delphi.com Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 17:53:56 -0500 (EST) Subject: Befuddle (sigh!) Having started this line, I think it is probably going on too long. My (I promise) final comments on the subject: Befuddle is NOT an emotion affecting spell like Demoralize! It is an INTelligence affecting spell. I am tempted to be humorous and say that as such all Storm Bulls should be immune to it, on the grounds that in combat situations, Storm Bulls have no effective INT! It interferes with MGF because the affected player has nothing to do except to stand around rolling his INT, or whatever. A demoralized player still has actions to perform. And what is the "real (Gloranthan) world description of where this spell comes from? Why would so many Gods have the power to "cloud men's minds?" Only a few, it seems to me, should have this power: Uleria and Eurmal are naturals, for example, but not some of the Gods that have it now. A couple of chaos Gods also make sense on the same grounds. If you give full defense (parry, dodge, whatever) to the poor befuddled nerds that improves things; that wasn't clear from my reading of the rules. Jim Chapin ------------------------------ From: ANDOVER@delphi.com Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 18:08:47 -0500 (EST) Subject: Befuddle ps Forgot to put in my post that befuddle also means that a lone character is probably dead if befuddled. Jim Chapin ------------------------------ From: "Mauricio L. Rivera" Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 12:53:00 +0000 Subject: Re: Re: Options for char gen In a previous post, Steve Perrin said: "Mau's suggestions are, of course, very similar to those in the Hero and GURPS systems and, to a lesser extent, the Storyteller system. Does anyone have theories on how this would fit the RQ system." I'd like to say that I made these general rules to help inject some individuality in my campaign and assist my players in their characterization and roleplaying. By providing my players with their character's history-ancestry-defects-assets, I was able to provide my milieu with a richer feel and this has led to more interesting adventures. I, however, do not recommend a cut-and-dried appproach to PC histories, assets, whatever, through charts listing "01-05 scared of bats, 06-10 scared of cats, 11-15 scared of hats...", since this hinders greatly referee and player interaction in "the fleshing out" of the character. I think general guidelines should be provided and let the referees and players start from there and make their own . In my campaign, one player opted that his character with APP18 have it lowered to APP3, have his right hand damaged (-10% to some manipulation and wpn skills) and be extremely unpopular with some petty warlord in exchange for a very good relationship with a guild and some obscure skills. This player-referee interaction sets the flavor for a character by providing the player with the context for his roleplaying. I was also able to flesh out details like how he started his relationship with the guild, how his hand got damaged, how he got his skills ....etc.; which made things more real for the player and gave me ideas for adventures. I noticed that since I introduced this system, players were more into roleplaying and had a better bond with their characters. If you think this may be useful for RQ4, I will not mind working on the rules for general playtesting. Determining all of this added info takes quite some time, though, so I don't really recommend it for people who just want to roll up a character and get started immediately. I think this will cater to the more mature players in the system. By the way, I have not read or played any of the Hero, GURPS, or StoryTeller (?) games. Am I missing anything? Mau //Mauricio Rivera rivers@aliens.phfreenet.org// ------------------------------ From: akuma@netcom.com (Steven E Barnes) Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 17:26:11 -0800 Subject: Re: Befuddle (sigh!) >Having started this line, I think it is probably going on too long. >My (I promise) final comments on the subject: Befuddle is NOT an >emotion affecting spell like Demoralize! It is an INTelligence affecting >spell. Confusion isn't an emotion? >It interferes with MGF because the affected player has nothing to do >except to stand around rolling his INT, or whatever. A demoralized player Sever Spirit interferes with my MGF, because my PC is dead. >still has actions to perform. And what is the "real (Gloranthan) world >description of where this spell comes from? Why would so many Gods have >the power to "cloud men's minds?" Only a few, it seems to me, should have >this power: Uleria and Eurmal are naturals, for example, but not some of the >Gods that have it now. A couple of chaos Gods also make sense on the same >grounds. If you give full defense (parry, dodge, whatever) to the poor >befuddled nerds that improves things; that wasn't clear from my reading >of the rules. Jim Chapin Like I said, use the RQ:AiG style cult restrictions. Limit Befuddle to Disorder/Illusion gods, and maybe give a different version of the spell to Harmony gods like Chalana Arroy. It also makes sense for Moon gods to have it. Maybe that's why everyone hates the Lunars >Forgot to put in my post that befuddle also means that a lone character >is probably dead if befuddled. Jim Chapin Why? If they try and attack him, he will no longer be befuddled. Hmm, just read the RQ3 description of the spell. You can try and shake off the spell; during this time, you cannot parry or dodge. As a RQ2 die-hard, I never bothered to learn this. All I remembered was the inverse INT roll to shake off the spell. What a lame idea... Please change that, whatever you do. - -steve ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #113 ******************************* 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.