From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V2 #3 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Wednesday, 5 July 1995 Volume 02 : Number 003 TABLE OF CONTENTS Aden Steinke Horse Archery Training Frederic J Moulin Missile shots and Hemorragy ryan_moore@wiltel.com ...no subject... rstaats@mail.lmi.org Missile shots at moving targets 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: "Aden Steinke" Date: 5 Jul 1995 14:24:11 +1000 Subject: Horse Archery Training Hi All, Kevin Rose quoth >Shooter movement: My understanding is that firing a bow from a moving >horse is much harder than shooting it standing. The only group that I >know of that even tried to TEACH horse archery were the Samurai. Everyone >else who used mounted archery lived in the saddle and used the bow as >part of their way of life. As people can do this, I would say it is a >skill separate from the weapon skill alone. To which I must comment that the Byzantines and Mamlukes both trained troops in horse archery, and the Byzantines in particular (like the Mongols) were not adverse to dismounting to shoot (the Mamlukes were notorious for not wanting to get off their horses, a class thing), while other nations in the region used stationary mounted archery, so having the chance based on both riding (which can vary depending on the riding being done - ranging from static to shooting from behind the horse as seen in westerns to shooting back as riding away) and normal archery (with difficulty based on range etc) would seem appropriate. Aden Just rambling along ------------------------------ From: "Frederic J Moulin" Date: Wed, 5 Jul 1995 11:13:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Missile shots and Hemorragy Dear cedric, The speed with wich a person will die of hemorragy depend entirely on the type of vessel being cut. I do a lot of surgery in my job, and I can tell you that if you cut a "good" artery like the abdominal portion of the aorta, one of the carotid arteries and or one of the big arteries irrigating the legs or arms (a. subclavia and iliac for the anatomy freaks), the blood from an average size dog will hit your ceiling and the animal will die in 5 to 10 heartbeats! In human, the blood has been known to reach as far as 6m away. Of course, you hardly ever find reports of such things outside of a surgery room, because the wounded is long dead before anybody can do anything! However, and fortunately for us, the vessels are rarely cut, more often crushed, like for exemple in the train story you are telling us. In that case, the large vessels can actually be sealed and the hemorragy observed is not a pulsing squirt, but rather a slow but regular leaking, as it comes from the veins. Hunting arrows with their triangular razor-sharp blades are specially designed in that purpose: making a clean cut through the vessels in order to reduce as much as possible the natural occlusion of them. It is definitely much more likely that someone could survive the section of a major vein than an artery, and middle-age swords were certainely not as sharp as our scalpels, but really if you cut at the right place, and not even that deep, your victim could die in 20-30 seconds. bye, Frederic ------------------------------ From: ryan_moore@wiltel.com Date: Wed, 5 Jul 95 10:29:13 CDT Subject: ...no subject... Hello All, I just joined the list and have few questions about combining Rune Magic, Sorcery, and Spirit Magic. In the description of the Thanatar Broo in Dorastor (I forgot the name of the Broo.) it says that he uses both shield and protection. I always thought that theses two spells were not cumulative and only the higher one actually took effect. Any idea's? On a related note: Can you cast bladesharp and truesword on the same weapon? Can you cast bludgeon and crush on the same weapon? Can you cast protection and damage resitance on the same person? On the subject of aiming missile weapons, our house rule has always been that for every extra strike rank you spend "aiming" You can modify what you rolled on the hit location table by one. In other words, if you could normally fire on strike rank 6 but you aimed till 12 then you could modify your die roll on the hit location table up or down by six. Not scientific at all but works pretty well. Ryan Moore "I am the terror that flaps in the night" - DW ------------------------------ From: rstaats@mail.lmi.org Date: Wed, 05 Jul 95 08:53:49 EST Subject: Re: Missile shots at moving targets Greetings! Just a quick pence or two. If we make it nearly impossible to hit a moving target in RQ then I think we're missing the mark. (Pun intentional.) ;-) People do shoot moving targets with missile weapons in the real world all the time. I grew up in one of the northern states in the US, Wisconsin. We had a large deer population there, and bow hunting was very popular. The typical way a hunt worked was that a small group would go into the woods and thrash about, trying to drive the lone buck out of his cover, while one or two hunters sat at the edge of the woods, down wind, waiting to shoot the deer. The deer were moving at quite a high speed when they emerged from the underbrush. Granted this *is* different than someone ducking, dodging and taking advantage of cover. Two nice attributes of RQ combat which would be good to preserve in RQ IV are: numbers count and missile attacks are deadly. Other major gaming systems seem to gloss over these two areas. For example in both the Palladium RPG and AD&D, a high level character can basically become a pin cushion without slowing down. Likewise, a high level character in Earthdawn can essentially trash a legion of lesser foes. It is more fun to play a character who is able to hit the target. This means that the NPCs can hit targets as well, but missile fire *is* a devastating form of attack. The PCs need to make some sort of provision to avoid being peppered with sling bullets, arrows, etc. Most players can handle having their PCs shot or harmed in a way that seems reasonable by an NPC, but it is very frustrating for the players to be told that their well laid plan fails because arrows don't really work against moving targets. Invoking the Petersen Principle, it is much more fun to play in a world where arrows are deadly. We should avoid making the system too complex. Windage, type of bow, mass of the missile, actions by the target, the type and consistency of the cover, etc. are all important, but it would be an unwieldy combat system indeed to include all those factors. Hope this helps, Rich Staats ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V2 #3 ***************************** 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