From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V3 #19 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, 8 August 1996 Volume 03 : Number 019 TABLE OF CONTENTS Glenn Glazer enchantments Glenn Glazer Fumbles Martin Declan Kelly Fumbles Alain RAMEAU Magic resistance roll Kevin Rose Attributes and occupations ian i. gorlick attributes and occupations Jane Williams Attributes and occupations; enchantments SimonPhipp@aol.com Magic resistance roll/Character Generation Jim Bickmeyer Burly Smiths Jim Bickmeyer Fatigue 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: Glenn Glazer Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 20:47:43 -0700 Subject: Re: enchantments At 19:41 08/07/96 -0400, you wrote: >I believe that only the person performing the enchantment can put POW into it. >There may be very rare and unusual exceptions to this, but in almost any case >where the players are involved this will be so. > >This is one thing that makes enchantments rare and precious. They need skill at >enchanting and POW both in one individual. If every Tom, Dick, and Harry can >provide the POW for the enchantment, then the skilled enchanter will just work >steadily, churning out magic items on a daily basis using the excess POW of the >peasant classes. Industrial magic item manufacturing! If you assume this, then >enchanted objects are going to be pretty damn common. This happened in Glorantha. As I remember, they were mass manufacturing cheap magic swords until ecology caught up with them. Best, Glenn \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ To a mathematician it is intuitively obvious that the shortest distance between two points is {f(x,y):x=ny} for some x,y finite subsets of R and n a single element of Z. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ ------------------------------ From: Glenn Glazer Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 20:47:38 -0700 Subject: Re: Fumbles At 19:14 08/07/96 -0400, you wrote: >Jim Bickmeyer was worrying about unbelievable fumbles: > >Experience says that the most incredible, ridiculous, and unbelievable things DO >HAPPEN, just not very often. The Fumble table doesn't produce those results very >often. If you really can't imagine how someone could critical himself in the >head with 5 metre long pike, then feel free to roll it again. You are correct to >reject any rules result if it doesn't make sense to you and your gamers. > >(In the case of the pike, I'd say, "You obviously can't stick the point into >yourself, so it is a knockback or a subduing blow delivered by the shaft.") > >Making a new fumble table that never gives an unbelievable result will either be >really complicated (anyone ever played Role-master, also known as Roll-master or >Chart-master?) or it will simply not contain a lot of the really extreme results >that are perfectly believable with some weapons (no-one would ever question your >ability to take your own head off with a flail). > >Good luck, but I think you are worrying needlessly. If you wish to pursue it, >then remember 'the fewer rules, the better'. > Actually, the worst fumble/crit tables in existence (IMHO) are the ones in, heaven help us, _Arduin Grimoire_. You can, by the way stick yourself with your pike. You set it against the oncoming horse who's impact bends and then breaks the pike, the near half going right for you. A fencer died in a similar situation. Then there is the simple answer for the reason for all fumbles: mud. Best, Glenn \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ To a mathematician it is intuitively obvious that the shortest distance between two points is {f(x,y):x=ny} for some x,y finite subsets of R and n a single element of Z. /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ ------------------------------ From: Martin Declan Kelly Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 23:10:02 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: Fumbles >Making a new fumble table that never gives an unbelievable result will either be >really complicated (anyone ever played Role-master, also known as Roll-master or >Chart-master?) Hmm, you don't fine "You trip over an unseen, imaginary, deceased turtle: you are very confused" unbelievable? Hmmm.. wanna buy some Florida Real Estate? On a more serious note, having several years of swordfighting under my belt, both in formal situations, group melee's and massed battles of 3000 people plus (no, it wasn't re-enactment) I can tell you.. you wouldn't *beleiev* some of the things that can happen...especially when there are trees nearby :) Compared to RL the RQ fumbles are pretty staid. Declan :) - -- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars... - Oscar Wilde o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o Martin Declan Kelly Teleport Internet Services Senior Tech Support My view and opinions are my own; go get your own http://www.teleport.com/~declan/ o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o~o ------------------------------ From: Alain_RAMEAU@total.fr (Alain RAMEAU) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 12:36:05 +0200 Subject: Magic resistance roll Two weeks ago, I was wondering about the need of the magic resistance roll, in addition to the casting one. I was waiting for long discussions or raging answers, but nothing happened ! Nobody think this idea is good or completely heretic ? I rewrite my former meesage and let you look at it during the next week, as I will be on vacations. >II/Brian Kondalski wondered about magic casting. I agree that having >one roll for casting and one roll for overcoming the target is >fastidious. And I was always minded by the fact that this second roll >was always the same (i.e unaffected by the strength of the spell or >the skill of the caster, any ceremony, ...). >Would it be possible to have only one roll ? For example, the roll to >be made is the casting skill (as modified by bonus, enc, ceremony, >...) minus 5% for each point the POW of the target is higher to the >caster's POWER (if the caster POW is higher, no bonus, as it should >not be easier to cast an offensive spell to a weak target than to >cast an non offensive spell with no overcoming roll). Example: A caster (14 POW, 60% skill) trying to cast a spell to and overcome a 18 POW target will have 60%-((18-14)*5%)=40% chance. A ceremony (D6s increase as per the standard RQ3 rules) can raise a little bit his skill. >Any other ideas or comments ? > > >Alain ------------------------------ From: Kevin Rose Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 11:07:41 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Attributes and occupations > My character has been a smith for about ten years. Smithing > involves a lot of heavy muscular work, by all accounts; I've never heard > of a smith who wasn't notably burly and strong. > > Why, then, is that not reflected in experience or previous > experience? Because the character generation rules in RQ3 are pretty lame. Actually, it's more than that. Character generation using the sort of generic rules that are provided in most systems will result in fairly generic characters. It's either that or 70 page - 12 hours/character systems. I think it's easier to have the charaters be produced by the GM and the player, making the character the way they want it to work. The player knows what he wants to run and the GM knows what sort of power level the game he intends to run will be. [Chop] > > Taking these points into account might complicate previous > experience considerably. Still, in terms of realism they seem to make > sense to me. Comments? > Trying to put in that kind of detail for each sort of occupation would end up with a morass of lookup tables and special cases. This results in games like "Aftermath", a game that required a multi-page flow-chart to do almost anything. As long as what the player wants is not too far out of line, or he is willing to accept some significant problems in exchange, why not provide a character that they like? Just put in skills, spells and stats that feel right. Given all that, the current RQ3 character generation system is remarkably lame. The 15 year old horse nomad who cannot gallop a horse is one of the most obvious artifacts. Kevin (Not a big fan of random character design systems) > -->Pete ------------------------------ From: "ian (i.) gorlick" Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 16:43:00 -0400 Subject: attributes and occupations peter maranci points out that careers should have some influence on stats and bonuses. I tend to agree, but coming up with a good mechanism may be tricky. I remember that Bushido used to have something like this. As skills went up, there was a feedback process that would give increases on the value of certain attributes. If anyone has a copy maybe they could look it over and see if it might be adaptable to RQ. One way of rationalizing the existing system could be to just assume that life in Glorantha is hard enough that most people are in good shape. So their STR, etc. is at the best level that it is likely to get without truly remarkable efforts. Thus Joe Smith does not get much stronger over the years, he's always been about that strong. Maybe we should have a rule for atrophying the STR of Bob Scribe, but I think that might be unnecessarily upsetting to some players. ------------------------------ From: jane@williams.nildram.co.uk (Jane Williams) Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 00:42:00 +0100 Subject: Attributes and occupations; enchantments Attributes and occupations ========================== Peter Maranci raises two interesting points: the time taken to train up a stat, and the effect of previous occupations on those stats. On the time taken to train up, I'd agree, roughly: I started going to the gym at Christmas, and by May had more than doubled all the weights I was using. Not to such heroic numbers as Peter, but say STR2 to STR4. That was one hour every Sunday (well, _most_ Sundays...:)). When our PCs train STR in games, they seem to spend seven hours a day, every day, until they get there. I don't believe this would work: comments, anyone? Would a maximum of one hour a day be more reasonable? And how many hours _should_ it take to increase a stat? Previous occupations: I'd been giving this one some vague thought, as well. Conclusion 1 was that you need to know about previous occupation from the age of 5, not 15 (drop the Cultural Weapons and disallow "warrior" as a profession for kids, and this works quite nicely for skills). Conclusion 2 was that I needed to set up a table of the minimum STR/CON/DEX required for various long-term activities, and then make the stats of the characters tend towards those required values when they spend considerable time (seasons rather than weeks) doing those tasks. Just walking all day, every day, like adventurers do, will act as CON training for a scribe who sits at a desk all day: try it sometime! Similarly if a warrior gets a desk job for a year, he'll be out of condition by the end of it unless he keeps in training. What I've never done is actually sit down and work out this table and its uses. I know I want people like Kost the Tracker to have incredible CON as a result of it, I know the apprentice scribe turned PC will be a lot fitter by the time he gets to Pavis, but numbers??? Yes, I know this sounds complicated. But for something you only work out once per season or so (at most, once per week), I think it could be lived with. Enchantments ============ The general consensus seems to be that the enchanter should use their own POW except in very special circumstances. I'd agree with this: but then have fun making up those special circumstances to fit the bit of the plot you wanted the facility for in the first place! IMG (after long discussions with Mike Cule on how to get the effect I wanted), the Vingans can get specially enchanted weapons like this: they provide the POW, the priestess does the ceremony. The enchantment is then useable _only_ by the owner, and doesn't even class as magical for most purposes so doesn't give unusual advantages v. (e.g.) undead. Payment, as minimum, is a season's work for the temple, plus the cost of the weapon to be enchanted *3. A year's work would be more normal. What does it do? Well, this gets us back to stats, actually. It reduces the minimum STR requirement for that weapon by up to 3 points (depends on the Ceremony roll). If, like me, you use the female stats for female PCs (most woman _are_ weaker than men, believe it or not), this is wildly useful for Vingans and very little use to anyone else. Even then, you only get one weapon done like this, and for the enchantment to be any use to you the weapon was of a type you're not strong enough to use. Any previous practise was either at a disadvantage or with Strength spells up. I think I'd allow one specialist enchantment like this per cult, though I haven't worked out any others yet. Just make sure they're the Right Thing to Do for that religion without actually being too useful. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jane Williams: jane@williams.nildram.co.uk Start of a Web site at: homepages.nildram.co.uk/~janewill/janehome.htm ------------------------------ From: SimonPhipp@aol.com Date: Thu, 8 Aug 1996 20:13:44 -0400 Subject: Magic resistance roll/Character Generation In our campaign, we do not have a roll to cast the spell, only rolls to overcome POW, otherwise it complicates things too much. Still, each to his own. By the way, I did not get the mail regarding this - something is happening to this list - things sometimes don't turn up or turn up out of sequence - I have been reading replies before the questions on this session, very disconcerting. ===== Kevin Rose mentions Aftermath! - I played this once, spent two days (I kid you not) rolling up a character, another day working out the rules system and half a day realising that a system which makes it very difficult to actually shoot someone may be very realistic but is an awful roleplaying system. Give me RQ any time. On character generation, I would tend to use the basic system as a guideline, but allow the player to customise the character somewhat. I personally like to start off with characters with NO previous experience and work them all the way up to Rune Level and beyond. Starting off with experienced characters seems a bit of a cheat, somehow. I saw a points based system in RQ4 (?) which would probably work better than the current RQ3 system, but I'm not sure how it would work in practice. ------------------------------ From: "Jim Bickmeyer" Date: Fri, 9 Aug 96 01:57:11 UT Subject: Burly Smiths Peter Maranci was concerned that his smith was not getting stronger from the physically demanding work that he performed. I agree with Peter in that he sould get increases in his strength. IMG I deal with this type of thing like in the same way that a character can increase in Ride by traveling on horese back. The rules state that a charactor can gain an EXPERIENCE roll for completing a mostly mounted journey of at least a week through difficult terrain. Now translate that to Smithing. The charactor would have to do difficult work for a week to get an experience roll in strength. (For most of us, just working as a smith would be difficult work.) I would say that there would be a strength check about once a season. Maybe two or three a season for the first couple of seasons. However, this would depend on how difficult the work is. In this way a smith would gain strength and become stronger as they work at the physcaly demanding job. Jim 0- ------------------------------ From: "Jim Bickmeyer" Date: Fri, 9 Aug 96 01:57:05 UT Subject: Fatigue Brian J. Kondalski asked for other systems system to deal with fatigue and encumbrance. Well Brian I use the fatague rules for combat. However, outside of combat I get a little free with the liner fatigue loss. If my players are on a long trip sleeping in outside, under the stars they make a CONX5 roll or lose 10 FG or 5 FG if they make the roll. This fatigue will not be recovered just by sitting still for a few rounds. They have to rest a week in good conditions to recover the FG fully. If they rest in a camp they I allow 1/2 the FG to be recovered. The more stressfull and longer the exsertion the lower the chance to make a CON roll. ie CONX4, CONX3... These are desisions that I make base on the cituration. If they traveled fast then I lower the chance to make a CON roll. If they travil slow with wagons and good provisions then the CON rolls are fewer and not sever. The result is that after a long trip the players are low on fatigue when they finaly reach the temple they plained on raiding. Other reasons to make CON roll to not lose fatigue would be any physicaly exterting task. I can you tell that digging a ditch in the summer heat cost me a good 20 FG that took a good day of rest and a full nights sleep to recover. But remember GM's NPC's and opponent should also face the same lowered fatigue if they have traveled or have done long term excertion. ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V3 #19 ****************************** 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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