From: owner-rq-rules-digest To: rq-rules-digest@hops.wharton.upenn.edu Subject: RQ Rules Digest: V3 #93 Reply-To: rq-rules Errors-To: owner-rq-rules-digest Precedence: bulk Content-Return: Prohibited Return-Path: owner-rq-rules-digest RQ Rules Digest: Monday, 21 October 1996 Volume 03 : Number 093 TABLE OF CONTENTS Mmohrfield@aol.com Impulse system Nicholas Marcelja A most inventive use of lightwall Alain RAMEAU Web Page David Weihe A most inventive use of lightwall David davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au Fanaticism 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: Mmohrfield@aol.com Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 15:56:33 -0400 Subject: Impulse system >Has anyone ever tried using an IMPULSE system for combat? I've never owned a copy of it myself, but Chaosium's Ringworld rpg was supposed to use an impulse system. According to a review by Steve Peterson in Space Gamer #71 "The impulse system could be adapted without much trouble to Call of Cthulhu or RuneQuest." It also says "Each impulse is one second long. All explorers (characters) have an Action Ranking based on their Dexterity; the Action Rank is usually a number between 3 and 6. Minor actions (like firing a ranged weapon or falling) take one impulse, while major actions (like drawing or aiming a weapon) take the explorer's Action Rank in impulses to preform. The GM starts the impulse count at 1 when the first character starts to do something, and then just marks off impulses until combat finishes." Mark Mohrfield ------------------------------ From: nam@grendal.rain.com (Nicholas Marcelja) Date: Sat, 19 Oct 96 20:03:38 PST Subject: A most inventive use of lightwall Greetings, a player shaman in our game was attacking an elf grove with trolls. when he realized that the humans could not see in the dark, he cast a lightwall 1 inch tall and as long as it could track lighting in the floor. gack. very inventive. Any opions on how this affected the trolls, or humans. Nicholas Marcelja pacifier.com!grendal!nam nam@grendal.rain.com Genie : N.Marcelja marcelja@sharpwa.com Compuserve : 76056,753 ------------------------------ From: Alain_RAMEAU@total.fr (Alain RAMEAU) Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 07:58:06 +0200 Subject: Web Page My web homepage is now available (very small at the present time, but I hope to develop it in the near future). You can take a look at it at the following address: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ARameau Alain. ------------------------------ From: David Weihe Date: Mon, 21 Oct 96 11:31:30 EDT Subject: Re: A most inventive use of lightwall > a player shaman in our game was attacking an elf grove with trolls. > when he realized that the humans could not see in the dark, he cast > a lightwall 1 inch tall and as long as it could > > track lighting in the floor. > > gack. very inventive. Any opions on how this affected the > trolls, or humans. Is that "attacking an elf grove occupied by trolls" or "attacking an elf grove with a mixed force of trolls and humans"? The humans might have problems with the odd light angle (below rather than above), and refections from their cheekbones into their eyes causing glare, unless the troops were expecting it and put on appropriate makeup/warpaint, as do football players or Navy Seals. If the trolls were occupying the grove, one or more of them would try to dispell the spell ASAP, and everyone would be expecting an attack. If the trolls were on the shaman's side, they were probably annoyed, as a night attack is their best tactic, and it was just ruined. ------------------------------ From: David Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 10:58:27 +0800 Subject: Re: Fanaticism >Jeff Johnson would like to enforce a clear separation between magically >induced >emotions and "natural" emotions. I disagree. >This might be the correct mindset >for sorcerors, but it isn't correct for most gloranthans. To most gloranthans >there is no boundary between magical and natural. We have thrashed this one out before - and I still strongly believe that for most Gloranthans, there is a boundary between the natural and the magical. It may not be that they consider the magical 'unnatural', but they certainly realise that there are magic things and non-magic things. For non-sorcerers, it is even clearer - because for non-sorcerers, the gaining of magic of necessity requires contact with otherworldly spirits or divine beings. >Natural encompasses magical >because the whole world is part of the flow of magical energies. There is no >dividing line. The very act of casting a spell is a dividing line between the magical and the non-magical. Some beings may be able to create magical effects without explicit spell casting - but they are magical beings, from Jelmre to shamans or heroes, rather than average Gloranthans. The RQ rules are quite explicit about what is magical and what is not for the most part - and as long as the rules are what we are using, I think attempts to muddy the waters lead at best to ad hoc fudging and fiddling, and at worst to complete confusion. Now, maybe some system of rules that rewrites the whole area might change this, adding the equivalent of personality traits and so on and thus enabling us to quantify emotions enough to integrate them into the magic system. Hopefully the Glorantha: the Game project will incorporate these ideas. And if you want to do this for yourself, by all means do it. But it is inappropriate to try and half heartedly impose such rules on a rules system that it not designed for it. >All emotions have some magic in them. Most or all magics require >some emotional input. If there is any division then it is a very fuzzy >line at >best. Sure. But as emotion (other than magically induced emotion) is nowhere quantised within the RQ rules system (unless you're a Jelmre), then it is most practical to assume that it all evens out - that everyone affected by Fanaticism goes into the same state, that everyone not affected by magic is in a state that grants no great bonuses or penalties. At least other than when the GM really wants to make a point. Cheers David ------------------------------ End of RQ Rules Digest: V3 #93 ****************************** 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