From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V2 #32 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, 10 August 1995 Volume 02 : Number 032 TABLE OF CONTENTS Frederic J Moulin 200% skills... Graydon 200% skills... David Dunham HQ (and URL-o-rama) Brian Tickler 200% skills... MSmylie@aol.com More HQ/aspected POW. Neil Robinson Heroquesting - Cultural and not Personal Graydon More HQ/aspected POW. 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: "Frederic J Moulin" Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 11:56:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: 200% skills... Dear Brian I was not talking about PC's but NPC that are created and published into "officials" RQ supplements. If you read for exemple the Dorastor campaign, you will see that a non-negligeable number of NPC are in the 200%-300% range. I think this is an insult to PC that have taken 10 years of real time to reach a 100% (I play RQ3, increase is 1D6 or 3%). Are my adventures deadly? Well, I do not give the PC autorization to make an experience check unless they do risk a little bit... I don't think that a 90% RL player gain some new major inside into how to use his sword each time he uses it. But since every battle can potentially kill you in RQ, there is risk involved in every fight. I do not lose a PC every 2 adventures, mostly because some will heal the others, but I quite frankly do not fell bad about sending one or two into the realms of 1HP or 0HP every adventure. After all, Divine intervention, heal wound and heal body are here to be used. My principle is no risk, no reward. I was very tired of the D&D monsters walking around carrying or protecting holy swords and relics that they could never use because they were evil and the objects were good (like the PCs)! In my world, if you cannot use an object, but it is of potential interest for your ennemies, then you destroy it. After all, the PCs taught me that a long time ago. But I must confess that I have killed a few PCs before, and my players still come to play... It just makes the game very boring if you know in advance that whatever you do, the GM will save you because he wants you to play again. Gee, if they all die one day, I will either start another campaign, or take a break and play Cyberpunk! Have a good day, Fred ------------------------------ From: Graydon Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 12:23:15 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: 200% skills... On Thu, 10 Aug 1995, Frederic J Moulin wrote: > I was not talking about PC's but NPC that are created and published into > "officials" RQ supplements. If you read for exemple the Dorastor campaign, you > will see that a non-negligeable number of NPC are in the 200%-300% range. I > think this is an insult to PC that have taken 10 years of real time to reach a > 100% (I play RQ3, increase is 1D6 or 3%). Dorrastor is *not* supposed to represent the norm; Dorastor is an unspeakably awful place. I can't recall any other supplement that listed a bunch of people in those ranges; I can't actually recall *anyone* in those ranges. It takes less than 60 checks to go from 90% to 100% on average; that's not so bad, and not so uncommon. (Couple years game time or so.) saundrsg@qlink.queensu.ca | Monete me si non anglice loquobar. ------------------------------ From: dunham@hamachi.pensee.com (David Dunham) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 10:13:55 -0700 Subject: Re: HQ (and URL-o-rama) Since this mailing list tends to be very esoteric, I just want to publicize the brief description of RuneQuest that Loren Miller wrote, at . This is a good place to steer people who don't know about the game. Graydon wrote >shamanic initiation is quite arguably the commonest HQ going The way I play it, adulthood initiation is the commonest heroquest. So common that in almost all games, it's simply assumed to have happened. (I ran Jonas Schiott's initiation quest; the results are at .) >I don't use quantified personality traits in the game I run; can't see >the point. (I do feel free to tell players that their character is >proposing to do something implausible, at which I am balking, but >quantifying character is a lot like quantifying how good a problem solver >the character is - why bother with numbers, the _player_ is the control) It's a good way of quantifying how the character actually behaves. For example, there may indeed be heroquest paths that only a Merciful character can succeed on. Naturally, the player knowing this is going to make his character behave kindly. However, if the character has previously tortured and slaughtered helpless foes and earned lots of Cruel checks, this gives the GM a way of saying, "um, you're behaving out of character," and possibly requiring a Merciful roll. I award checks for behavior a lot more than I force players to roll. See also . ------------------------------ From: tickler@netcom.com (Brian Tickler) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 10:55:15 -0700 (PDT) Subject: 200% skills... Robert: Actually, the character I'm referring to is 200% *before* enhancements; he's pumped up to a "Run for your lives!" 420% with Berserk & Bladesharp 4 (of course, I lose my parry and half my defense...and then there's that annoying problem of coming out of the Berserk later...just pray the Chalana Arroy has a high Charisma...). "Monty Haul" is a term used to describe campaigns (primarily D&D) where the GM gives their players everything they want, and more than they want in many cases. It came from a game show ("Let's make a Deal") where the host, Monty Hall, would offer contestants prizes for dressing in silly costumes and carrying eggs and rubber bands in a shopping bag. The prizes were always behind big "doors", and Monty would invariably say: "Do you want what's behind Door Number 1, Door Number 2, or Door Number 3?". The "Hall" was changed to "Haul" to describe the boatloads of magic items characters playing is such campaigns would carry around. There was a song that went with the term, that started out: Monty Haul, Monty Haul, running through the glade; Monty Haul, Monty Haul, with his Vorpal Blade... Unfortunately, I don't remember any more of it (other than something about "he will kill us all; better use a Fireball!"). These campaigns were quite "fantastic" in nature. Some examples of extreme excess (all of which are true, not just anecdotal...): 1) A 134th level Ranger, with Titan Strength, who has a silo (yes, a SILO) that he "rolls" around the countryside with with massive strength. He needs the silo, you see, to hold his magic items and gems/jewelry (who has room for coinage?). This Ranger has a small force of men-at-arms (10,000 25th level Fighters) who he can summon from his country-sized castle by throwing a magic capsule to the floor; after all, he doesn't want his men getting underfoot when he's travelling "incognito"...with his silo). 2) A campaign where an NPC "Paladin" (I use the term loosely based on the NPC's conduct) challenges a PC Paladin to a duel to the death simply because the PC's player made an offhand comment about a +2 Vorpal Blade being far superior to a +5 Holy Sword. After the NPC's head flies off ("hmmm...I'm beginning to see your point..."), the PC Paladin and his party are surrounded by an army ("gee...that was quick...") and are brought before the NPC's patron, the King. The King also challenges the PC to a duel to the death, and promptly loses. The palace guards inform the party that, by right, they may claim the entire treasury, which is sitting below THAT trapdoor under your feet. The treasury's contents? 89 million platinum pieces and 2 of every magic item in the Greyhawk book... 3) A campaign where a PC fumbled, fell down, banged his head on the wall, and 50,000 gold pieces fell out of it. There are more, but I can't think of them right now. For those of you about to flame me for posting D&D anecdotes; I am only answering a question and pointing out some examples. It's *purely* coincidence that all these examples are from D&D... :) - -- Brian T. Tickler E-Mail: tickler@netcom.com ------------------------------ From: MSmylie@aol.com Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 14:54:54 -0400 Subject: More HQ/aspected POW. Hello, all. First off, thanks to Robert McArthur for both private and public messages about the HeroQuest material at his web site. I downloaded Steven Maurer's Heroquest rules and glanced over them briefly; they almost immediately reminded me of why I'm nervous about expressing heroquesting as a question of skills or anything that smacks of percentages (the multiplication involved seemed nightmarish), though perhaps a closer reading will alleviate some of my anxiety. I liked a lot of his general comments, though, and in many ways I think that his idea of Will was similar to my own thoughts about how the Condition Runes could be used, which brings me to a couple of recent comments by Graydon & David Cake (who seem to be the most vocal commentators on this thread -- perhaps we should switch to private email to free up the dig.?): Graydon: >I find it quite suspicious that Arachne Solara is the source of the >Magic, Infinity, and Mastery runes; I suspect that the three of them >are the runes that explain how everything else is put >together/interacts. I really can't see requiring the Infinity rune for >personal immortality, but I thought it might well related to the >endlessness of the seasons - spring will come again sort of thing. >[and later:] >The Magic rune is the rune of connection; Mastery is the Rune of >self-knowledge, and I can make a case for either being used to >connect things. (If you want them to *stay* connected in 'unnatural' >ways, that's where the Infinity Rune comes in.) I think Mastery >makes more sense as a defensive facilitator than Magic. While I agree with David's comments that using the Mastery Rune as a "control" rune is potentially mechanistic, I think that I'm with Graydon here. In addition to the RQ2 comments on the Condition Runes, my own thoughts on them had begun with the fact that they are the Runes "owned" by Arachne Solara; it had struck me that heroquesting was, in a way, an exploration of the nature of the Compromise and the Web of Time. Heroes, as "modern-day" Gloranthans (or generics, whatever) understand them, did not exist before the Compromise, IMO (I'm trying to distinguish, I guess, between mythic "actors" and mythic "reenactors", i.e., gods and heroquesters). POW in Arachne Solara's Condition Runes, then, had struck me as a good way of distinguishing between those fully on the path to becoming a Hero, and those who have access to aspected or runic POW as a result of cult ties or nifty items with aspected POW reservoirs. A Hero, after all, is supposedly moving towards independence from cult ties, so the Condition Runes seemed a good way of "measuring" their potential freedom of action. On the other hand, it is a specifically Gloranthan way of looking at things, and might make applying an aspected POW system difficult to other worlds, unless you simply decided that the Condition Runes or something like them were omnipresent in all fantasy environments (something I'm not sure I'm willing to do; there may be no other choice though). I'm also unsure if I like the idea of somehow matching Mastery Rune POW on a resistance table when heroes clash; Steven Maurer appears to have a similar idea with the contest of Wills thing. I suppose if it's a result of a specific manifestation of runic power it might be okay (similar to the way that a regular spell-casting occasionally calls for overcoming personal POWs), but otherwise David Cake's criticisms of the "twenty-five-words-or-less" free-form spell descriptions comes to mind. Graydon: >It also means that shamans are immune to small heroquesters. >(Not sure that's a bad idea; shamanic initiation is quite arguably the >commonest HQ going.) I'm dubious on the general grounds that HQ >powers are of a different order than plain magic; your defense >should also be different. Hm. I had actually thought for a little while that a shaman's fetch might actually _be_ their Magic-aspected POW, though I stopped that line of thought when it started to give me a headache. In essence, I supposed that the shaman's initiation was a heroquest to a) gain Magic runePOW (by sacrificing and ritually dedicating it) and b) learn a way of using it, i.e., "awakening" it into a fetch, with all their assorted powers. (Note that this is primarily an RQ3 way of looking at it, I guess; RQ2 fetches are more like allied spirits.) It had also occured to me that the shamanic rune-affinities in Mike & Ollie's RQ4 draft would be a good way of allowing shamans access to aspected POW outside fo joining a cult. As I'm unsure of how sorcerors are connected to the Law Rune, I had also thought that the athanor rules for alchemy in _Nephillim_ might be adaptable to an aspected POW system (I've never been happy with the way that RQ seems to reduce alchemy to potion-brewing, being a fan of Jung's psychological take on alchemy). The athanor or vas hermeticum might be an aspected POW reservoir, allowing the alchemist/sorceror to use or produce the various alchemical elixirs; perhaps the white elixir could represent Mastery-aspected POW, the red elixir Magic-aspected POW, and the philosopher's stone Infinity-aspected POW. The alchemist could use the aspected POW in the elixirs to transmute material objects or his own POW; though this requires a lot more thinking through (sigh). Anyway, I'm not sure I like the idea that HQ powers should somehow be really different from regular magic; IMO, HQ powers are just more highly refined. I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that divine spells are simply the first (highly controlled) introductions to manipulating aspected POW, and that heroquesting is teaching you secret and rare ways of using that POW. My stray thoughts on shamans and Magic-aspected POW had led me again to the question of what happens when you sacrifice POW for divine spells, and once again to the idea that you're "dedicating" a portion of your personal, spirit POW to a particular Rune/aspect, and learning a way of using it. Which, unfortunately, once again suggested incorporating divine spells into an aspected POW system from the beginning (probably what gave me the headache). Ah well. Mark ------------------------------ From: nrobinso@Direct.CA (Neil Robinson) Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 12:13:10 -0700 Subject: Heroquesting - Cultural and not Personal Neil Robinson decloaking for a moment... I'm of the opinion that most heroquests are to explain or keep things going the way they should, from blessing the fields, to keeping the river pure, to a rebirth of spring quest. It isn't what happens when the person succeeds that matters, but what happens if they fail. And many quests shouldn't kill the quester. Knowing they let down the village will be tough enough on them. If the crops will no longer yield as much grain then they damned well get better at hunting or do some trading pdq. If Borq the mighty did a very difficult HQ and managed to steal some darkness spirits from Subere, then recreating his actions should be equally as tough. Higher difficulty = higher rewards (or penalties). So what type of 'things' should successful questers get? Higher social and cult status I would expect. Elan from Stormbringer or Glory from Pendragon may be appropriate, with certain 'levels' (yeech, foul taste in my mouth) allowing additional benefits. Maybe Humakti can only take a gift for every X points of Glory. Now, if the village was being attack by broo and Borq performed the quest to get the Sword of Chaos-Purging Fire then he would gain personally as well as saving the village. Yes, personal heroquests provide personal powers, but they are far more deadly, and only certain cults would support such soloists. I still haven't found a way of matching up the runes with this, but I do think that the more a character acts like Humakt, and the more Humakti quests she undertakes, the harder it gets for them to NOT act like Humakt. Has anyone gotten some method of matching personality traits and the runes? Neil Oh, I really liked one of the sample heroquests that gave different results based on the way the characters approached the problems. ------------------------------ From: Graydon Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 15:33:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: More HQ/aspected POW. On Thu, 10 Aug 1995 MSmylie@aol.com wrote: > thread -- perhaps we should switch to private email to free up the dig.?): It's not off topic, and I don't think we're sufferng from reiteration yet. Maybe we could all post a monster in pennance? :] > [conditions runes] > On the other hand, it is a specifically Gloranthan way of looking at things, > and might make applying an aspected POW system difficult to other worlds, > unless you simply decided that the Condition Runes or something like them > were omnipresent in all fantasy environments (something I'm not sure I'm > willing to do; there may be no other choice though). I don't see what's wrong with making 'understanding', 'connection', and 'permance' universals; those are the consequences of the ennactment of myth pretty much anywhere. (the fourth one is 'change', but change is a function of personality.) > I'm also unsure if I like the idea of somehow matching Mastery Rune POW on a > resistance table when heroes clash; Steven Maurer appears to have a similar > idea with the contest of Wills thing. I suppose if it's a result of a > specific manifestation of runic power it might be okay (similar to the way > that a regular spell-casting occasionally calls for overcoming personal > POWs), but otherwise David Cake's criticisms of the > "twenty-five-words-or-less" free-form spell descriptions comes to mind. I'm *not* proposing baning mastery connection magnitudes together. (Resistant to the idea that this is POW? damn betcha. :) What I *am* proposing is that if you want to oppose someone else's HQ power, you have two options. One is to oppose it by your connection to the same root - so two Humakti trying to kill each other are competing to see who has the greater connection to Death, say - and the other is to oppose it with something else; a Humakti trying to kill an Uz attempts to apply Death to the Uz, and the Uz (who isn't a death cultist) can't oppose that directly, but they can (say) use as much Darkness as they really understand to make it hard to find them with Death. (Which is a good idea, becuase trying to freeze the Humakti back won't work quickly enough; a 3 point magnitude connection to Death is a Sever Spirit!). To keep things from becoming ridiculous, I'm arguing that you can use as much magnitude of connection to other Runes/archtypes/Powers/etc. _outside_ their own sphere as you've got magnitude of connection to the Mastery Rune. (or generic 'understanding aspected POW'). Note that this *still* leaves Heroquesters quite vulnerable to each other, which is the way it ought to be - they prefer to fight indirectly in most of the published stories, and I think there is good reason for that. The (extremely straightforward) way to incorporate divine spells into an aspected POW/magnitude of connection system is to hash out a list of which aspects/runes the spells represent. If you know three instances of Sever Spirit, you have 9 points worth of connection to the Death Rune. If you know 2 instances of Oath, you've got 8 points worth of connection (1 use spells count double) to the Death-Truth pair. I like this, because it is both straightforward, and because it gives first-time questers a chance to have significant connections before they enter the Hero Plane, which is probably good for them. saundrsg@qlink.queensu.ca | Monete me si non anglice loquobar. ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V2 #32 ****************************** 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