From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #242 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, 2 June 1995 Volume 01 : Number 242 TABLE OF CONTENTS Loren Miller Shamans Jonas Schiott Fatigue mr happy RQ Rules Digest: V1 #236 NARF! shamans NARF! Re shamanic powers NARF! Fatigue Loren Miller Shamans healing Sandy Petersen cop outs Bryan Maloney cop outs BrosGrinn@aol.com POW sacrifice RULES OF THE ROAD 1. Do not include large sections of a message in your reply. Especially not to add "Yeah, I agree" or "No, I disagree." Or be excoriated. If someone writes something good and you want to say "good show" please do. But don't include the whole message you praise. 2. Use an appropriate Subject line. 3. Learn the art of paraphrasing: Don't just quote and comment on a point-by-point basis. When paraphrasing you demonstrate exactly how well you understand the point someone was trying to make. 4. There is no number 4. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: loren@hops.wharton.upenn.edu (Loren Miller) Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 00:54:04 -0400 Subject: Re: Shamans David Cake: > Certainly people seem to believe that not everyone has a fetch as >described in RQ3, and some of the other suggestions made by people I still >feel are better covered by allied spirits or simply companion spirits. Certainly some South American shamans do not have fetches. They have servant spirits that appear as stones and arrowheads and other gross stuff (bees, spiders, etc) that they swallow in order to control and/or manifest the magic of these spirits. And no one claims they are not shamans. Dave Dunham also correctly points out that immunity to fire and the ability to generate intense heat are not rare shamanic abilities (as they would be if they were only obtained through heroquests), but are as common among shamans as the ability to see into or travel into the otherworld. I would postulate that the two kinds of abilities should be connected in shamans: perhaps one is a side-effect of the other. Perhaps fire resistance or heat generation (which can easily be perceived as the same ability with different magnitudes of effect) are a side-effect of whatever method shamans use to see into, travel into, or summon spirits from, the otherworld? That would certainly put a different spin on things, would it not? Ooooh. I like this idea. Check it out. Even more interesting, the fire effect might be a result of the extremely common deification of the sun on earth. In campaign worlds where other elemental gods are pantheon rulers perhaps the shamans could have different elemental side-effects for spirit commerce? Air shamans might be able to reduce their weight or increase it, even to levitate and fly. Earth shamans might be able to harden their skin to nigh invulnerability (like the Tick). Darkness shamans might be able to resist cold and generate a field of intense cold and/or darkness. Water shamans might be able to moderate extreme temperatures or breathe water or spit water like a firehose. Shamans of death might be immune to mortal wounds and generate a field of sickness around themselves. And so on. - -- whoah! +++++++++++++++++++++++23 Loren Miller ------------------------------ From: jonas.schiott@vinga.hum.gu.se (Jonas Schiott) Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 14:53:57 +0100 Subject: Re: Fatigue David Cake wonders about fatigue in general, and in particular: >Did anyone playtest the RQ4/RQAIG ones (where the penalties add to >your roll rather than subtract from skill)? Did anyone like them? No. And we didn't even try it, either. >Has anyone got suggestions for >adapting them to remove the offending mechanic? You're in luck! Note that my rules have only been very slightly playtested. Basically, roll for fatigue the same way you do in AiG, but more often (every fifth instead of tenth combat round, etcetera - some intervals are left as they are for simplicity's sake). Each failure gives you a point of fatigue. Keep separate track of long-term fatigue (call it something else, like "exhaustion"). Both kinds negatively modify DEX, STR and skill rolls. Exhaustion also affects CON rolls. Now, I use a d20, so I can just apply the point value directly. For RQ, you would have to multiply by 5. I think this is a rather clean and simple mechanic. It definitely gives high-CON types an edge in combat, even if they're wearing armor (remember, encumbrance just means extra rolls, not automatic fatigue - perhaps this should be changed to armor adversely affecting the fatigue roll itself?). Now we can argue whether that is a good thing or not... ((( Jonas Schiott ))) ((( Institutionen for Ide- och lardomshistoria ))) ((( Goteborgs Universitet ))) ------------------------------ From: mr happy Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 14:28:02 +0100 (BST) Subject: Re: RQ Rules Digest: V1 #236 > > "Folk Magic" is learned from wise teachers and/or sorcerors. This > is usually the magic learned by peasants and hedge magicians in > civilized societies. Folk Magic is cast at a percentage equal to > the character's "low magic" skill%. An easy skill with a base > chance of 30%. (In line with Jubilation T.'s request I will try to avoid using the G******a word.) I think that early modern England counts as a civilized culture for RQ purposes. Contemporary Medicine and Alchemy were both skilled activities and arguably fall within what RQ calls sorcery. However that did n't mean that the magic of the peasantry was a skilled activity. On the contrary everybody used charms. > Shamanic (or Ecstatic to give it a broader term) High Magic focuses on the > acquisition of a fetch, tutelary and/or guardian spirit. A system of > bargaining for pacts, not unlike the old RQ2 idea of donating POW, should > be put in place to allow shamans a wide range of unusual powers and > special abilities. Which sounds to me mighty like what witches were described as doing at their trials. They had guardian spirits (familiars) who did things (such as killing their neighbours) for them. Cunning men and Wise Women, the people from whom country folk got their magical aid were often helped by "the fairies" (or should that be fetches). Don't draw hard and fast rules about the prevalence (or not) of different types of magic in different cultures. People still use ouija boards today for example. > Ritual Magic: I'm happy using the RQ3 rules as they stand. It would be more evocative to throw the Ritual skills as they stand out completely and replace them with cultuarally appropriate ones such as (off the top of my head) Orlanthi Sartar: Ceremony=Dance, Summon=Poetry (praising the spirit), Enchant= Craft Silver. Restoration England: Ceremony=Read/Write Latin (as in the Catholic Mass), Summon=Mathematics (for drawing geometrical symbols on the floor), Enchant=Chemistry or something similar.... - ---- Andrew Behan e-mail:ajbehan.alf2.tcd.ie ------------------------------ From: "NARF!" Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 08:37:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: shamans Ability to withstand apparent piercing and cutting without injury seems to be universal to shamans--it's one way they show that they are in a trance state. Thus, the trance state might confer some kind of resistance to physical damage in general, or at the very least, pain. I've never known this to have been documented for a shaman not in a trance, though. Then you have levels of mass enchantment that are just not covered for non-Sorcerers in the RQ3 rules. What about the Ghost Shirts? They were enchanted to deflect bullets, and it was hundreds of shirts so enchanted. The fact that they were ineffective doesn't mean that the enchantment didn't work, the soldiers just had better magic in their bullets, that's all. (Kind of like a mass Protection 3 running into a whole regiment of Truespear. Theism is good for SOMETHING, you know.) - -- Do you have the power to hire me, fire me, or greatly alter my take-home pay? I didn't think so... ------------------------------ From: "NARF!" Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 08:37:41 -0400 (EDT) Subject: RE: Re shamanic powers > 2) Curtis Shenton's idea about shaman's being able to take other's along > on their journeys is essential if you want to run spirit-world adventures True, but if and only if you want to do that. Shamans in my campaign do all their spirit stuff on downtime. Furthermore, what about INCARNATIVE shamans, they don't have to take anybody along, they bring the spirit world to you! As an aside, I greatly dislike the term "possessive", it just doesn't fit what these kinds of shamans do. They are INCARNATIVE, not "possessive". They incarnate spiritual beings, up to, and including, full-fledged deities (although this is only in highly placed shamans who are part of an established religion of a sedentary society.) I've got an outline for a work on shamanism for gaming that I was going to write--I'll post it here. It summarizes a lot of stuff that people just don't seem to know aout shamanism and shamanic religions. > and avoid severe net-runner syndrome. If you take the spirit world to > also be the land of dreams, then when the party is asleep the shaman can IF, remember, IF. However, it's a cop-out to rule by fiat that it must be the "land of dreams" just to permit multi-player net sessions. The "spirit world" needs to be tailored for each locality. In my campaign, one part of the world is only separate from the spirit world by less than a hair's breadth. Travel is the same, and locations are the same, from mundane to spirit world. The unquiet dead are greatly feared in this region, for good reason--they are always able to reach through, being so close. In another part of the world, the spirit region is so blank as to virtually not exist. God is far away, and spirits have no place being close to the world. Any rules have to take these, and other alternatives, into account. > I also agree that spells like Gift POW are basically cop-outs. Bargains > with spirits are best role-played out. There are an innumerable variety Definitely. Gift POW and Gift Spell are horrible. Might as well require all the player characters to take quantitative "traits" to define their personalities and let the dice dictate what they do... - -- Do you have the power to hire me, fire me, or greatly alter my take-home pay? I didn't think so... ------------------------------ From: "NARF!" Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 08:38:04 -0400 (EDT) Subject: RE: Fatigue In message Fri, 2 Jun 1995 11:24:20 +0800, davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) writes: > like. Did anyone playtest the RQ4/RQAIG ones (where the penalties Yes, I playtested EVERY rule in RQ:AiG, regardless of whether or not I liked it. I should say, my group playtested every rule. Our consensus was that, like all fatigue systems, it was a pain in the ass, but less of a pain than what was in RQ3. > add to your roll rather than subtract from skill)? Did anyone like them? We liked this part, liked it a lot--then again, half the players have been in high-fatigue situations, where our chances of really screwing up get to be pretty damned high. - -- Do you have the power to hire me, fire me, or greatly alter my take-home pay? I didn't think so... ------------------------------ From: "Loren Miller" Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 10:47:03 EST Subject: Re: Shamans healing David Dunham writes: > Given that it's a ritual, and that it heals diseases (something no > spirit magic spell does), I'd say it's not just a special effect of > a Heal spell. Let me rephrase the power: Shamans can cure disease. This reinforces one of Bryan's points, which might be phrased obnoxiously but it correct. The RQ rules are warped to fit Glorantha. Because Malia is a primal goddess in Glorantha disease is completely different from other health problems and requires a wholly different set of skills and magics to cure than do other health problems. That's why the physician skill does not include treat disease, and why you can't use first aid to treat a minor cold. If this weren't built into the skill system in runequest then it would be very easy to give shamans the ability to cure disease. I discovered this when I proposed to the gang of four that treat disease be folded into physician and was told that it couldn't be done because GS said "No, it doesn't work that way in Glorantha." This is just one egregious example of the glorantha-specific rules that we need to root out of runequest's core rules. Later, in the glorantha rules we can put them back, but they shouldn't be core rules in a universally useful runequest. - -- +++++++++++++++++++++++23 Loren Miller LOREN@marketing.wharton.upenn.edu Life at the water's edge is the real life for men and women ------------------------------ From: Sandy Petersen Date: Fri, 2 Jun 95 10:42:07 -0500 Subject: Re: cop outs Snead >spells like Gift POW are basically cop-outs. Bargains with spirits >are best role-played out. Slavishly following a rule when it's more fun to do it another way is indeed a cop-out. So is forcing players to go on long rambling side-shows when their main focus and interest is on something else. Movie editors cut out parts that slow down the action or distract from the main thrust of the show. There's no reason that rule structures can't be used for the same type of effect. Sometimes the players just want to buy a sword without having to haggle with your carefully-forged blacksmith personality, rife with foibles and secrets. If your shaman keeps shades as weapons, he may not wish to perform a long and tedious bargaining session with the Master of Night each time he binds one into his hoodoo wand. Gift POW & co. gives the player and gamemaster a fall-back option to use when they don't really care about the details of the bargaining process and just want to get the hell on with kidnapping the ogre queen's daughter or whatever. ------------------------------ From: bjm10@cornell.edu (Bryan Maloney) Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 13:29:40 -0400 Subject: Re: cop outs >Night each time he binds one into his hoodoo wand. Gift POW & co. >gives the player and gamemaster a fall-back option to use when they >don't really care about the details of the bargaining process and >just want to get the hell on with kidnapping the ogre queen's >daughter or whatever. But when Gift POW et cie. are all that is provided, then you've got a great gaping hole. There are many acts of virtue, but three are the greatest: To engender love where there is hate. To bring understanding where there is ignorance. To really slam some clueless git in grand style. ------------------------------ From: BrosGrinn@aol.com Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 15:04:12 -0400 Subject: POW sacrifice Hello all. Something David Cake mentioned in one of his recent posts caught my eye and I just wanted to make a quick comment: "...spells like Gift POW give you a starting point for the roleplaying. I don't think that POW should be tradable like currency without a spell, after all this is your life force here, you shouldn't be able to just pull a bit of it off and hand it over." Part of the problem with the Gift POW spell is that, being a divine spell, merely acquiring it has paradoxically _already_ entailed handing over a bit of your life force, leading one to ask why the spell is necessary at all; i.e., if a character already possesses the apparently innate ability to sacrifice POW to gods and spirits (and crystals, in some cases), then why create a specific spell to handle the transaction between that character and his or her ancestors? Gift Spell, at least, makes sense in that it's not something that can ordinarily be done in RQ3 rules with its dependance on spell-spirits (which, as an aside, I agree should be junked; in RQ2, when battle magic was just a learned process with foci, Gift Spell wouldn't really be necessary either). The RQ rules are somewhat vague, to say the least, about the mechanics of sacrificing POW and, for that matter, magic points, whether in the cult context or otherwise. In my own current state of game-think, I've associated sacrificing POW and mps with both a successful ceremony/ritual roll and an actual object as the "conveyer" of the points. Mp sacrifice would be accompanied by a votive object of some kind -- statuary, ceramics, coins, combat trophies, lockets of hair, dependant on the cult/god/spirit involved - -- while POW sacrifice would have to be "piggy-backed" on either a blood or holocaust sacrifice, once again depending on the specific deity involved. Just a thought. Mark Smylie ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V1 #242 ******************************* 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. WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html