Date: Fri, 12 Mar 93 12:40:56 +0100 From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Digest Subscriptions) To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest) Subject: The RuneQuest Daily, Fri, 12 Mar 1993 [This issue is dedicated to Greg and Suzanne. Best wishes to you both. -HL] This is an semi-automated digest, sent out once per day (if any messages are pending). Replies will be included in the next issue automatically. Selected articles may also appear in a regular Digest. If you want to submit articles to the Digest only, contact the editor at RuneQuest-Digest-Editor@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM. -- Send Submissions to: Enquiries to: The RuneQuest Daily is a spin-off of the RuneQuest Digest and deals with the subjects of Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha. Maintainer: Henk.Langeveld@Sun.COM --------------------- From: staats@MIT.EDU (Richard C. Staats) Subject: RuneQuest Campaigns Message-ID: <9303112108.AA25203@MIT.EDU> Date: 11 Mar 93 11:20:57 GMT Just some curiosity questions for this august body. I have been playing RQ since 1980, and when the RQ III rules came out, I was in the midst of GMing a campaign in Stuttgart, Germany. I converted to RQ III, but I did it selectively. The result was a mixture of RQ II and III. I hardly ever use the fatigue rules, but I do let initiates make power gain rolls for attending special worship services. I use the old POW gain table for gaining POW from adventuring. And, I always thought the spell potions, crystals, etc. from RQ II were really well done; so, naturally, I hung on to those. I think the sorcery rules were a little complex and tended to impede atmosphere in a combat situation; so, I used some of ICE's Spell Law for would be sorcerers. I allow items to be enchanted, but depending on what the item is, I might require that some spirit(s) be bound into it to allow it to operate/fuel its MP requirements, etc. I also didn't allow folks who did not achieve "Rune Status" to progress beyond 100% skill level. Etc. How many other folks did the same types of things in their own campaigns? From what I have seen discussed in the Digest and read on the "net", RQ IV sounds like it swings back more toward the "simplier" rules of RQ II. Is my perception of RQ IV correct? If RQ IV shifts back more toward RQ II on the complexity scale then it won't be much different from what I do now. In service, Rich --------------------- From: carlf@Panix.Com (Carl Fink) Subject: Odd groups, and spell spirits Message-ID: <199303120314.AA16125@sun.Panix.Com> Date: 11 Mar 93 17:14:20 GMT rog@insignia.co.uk (Roger_Nolan 336) writes: >>Whilst we are on the subject of Lunar characters, does anyone >>have a strange mix of races/religions in ther group? Well, during the last dart war in Bikhy, our semibicoastal game (crossing Oliver Jovanovic's here in New York with Steve Maurer's in California) I played in a group with a Danfive Xaron Rune Lord, a Humakti Sword, a Donandar cultist, a Kralori Exarch (well, at least the son of a Kingdom of Ignorance Exarch), and a disciple of the Black Reader of Nochet. ...but our *current* party is *really* weird. peterw@computer-science.manchester.ac.uk (Peter Wake) writes: (">>" is me, ">" is Peter) >>snip snip >> Well, under the current rules the Humakti will have a very >>hard time defeating the spell spirit (average POW 28). >This seems like a mistake: Spell Spirits have a 3d6 POW roll and >a limitation that POW must equal or exceed the points in the >spell. There are no POW 28 spell spirits in the current rules >(or is there something in the errata?) As a consequence 18 is >the biggest spell that anyone can have, but it seems to be the >only limit (apart from the INT to fit it in). In _Gods of Glorantha_, a cult spell spirit is defined as having POW of 1d3 per point of the spell. Carl --------------------- From: jjm@zycor.lgc.com (johnjmedway) Subject: a force for Good? Message-ID: <9303120329.AA25707@hp3.zycor.lgc.com> Date: 12 Mar 93 03:29:02 GMT re: >> One of my old player's comments on the recent "Argrath" book: "I knew >> we should have killed him when we had the chance. I had a perfect shot lined >> up..." >> - Paul Reilly You should have! We did. I'm trying to figure out how to follow up that campaign, as we mucked up a few other things as well. (How about a troll, who finds out, after drifting from religion to religion, that one of his ancestors was Arkat. Who then is turned by some of Arkat's magic into a human, and later goes on to become a pretender-Pharoah? Never mind. I won't tell you the rest..... ) Daka Fal, Arkat & Trickster, three great tastes which go great together... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - ---john j medway----------- - - - - -- - - - - - - ---jmedway@zycor.lgc.com--- - - - - - - - -- --- - - - - - - ---landmark/zycor---------- - - - - - - - --- ---- - - ---512/292-2325------------ - - - ---- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------- From: gal502@cscgpo.anu.edu.au (Graeme A Lindsell) Subject: Re: The RuneQuest Daily, Thu, 11 Mar 1993 Message-ID: <9303120546.AA14846@cscgpo.anu.edu.au> Date: 12 Mar 93 20:51:25 GMT > From: peterw@computer-science.manchester.ac.uk (Peter Wake) > This seems like a mistake: Spell Spirits have a 3d6 POW roll and a > limitation that POW must equal or exceed the points in the spell. > There are no POW 28 spell spirits in the current rules (or is there > something in the errata?) As a consequence 18 is the biggest spell > that anyone can have, but it seems to be the only limit (apart from > the INT to fit it in). No, according to Gods of Glorantha the strength of a spell sprirt is equal to 1d3 x the points in the spell it teaches i.e for a 4 point spell spirit, average POW is 8, for a 14 point spirit, average is 28. This is changed from the values given in the basic set. This, IMHO is something I would like to see in RQIV: inclusion of the rules in the supplements. Fortunately, this problem isn't as bad as many other games where each new supplement presents new rules. After a while you don't know whether you are playing by the same rules as everyone else. Anyone out there ever a "Star Fleet Battles" player? For RQ, I don't know of much outside of the GoG rules for spell training and acolytes that need to be included. Can anyone else think of any? > It is easy to defeat spell spirits, pay the priest to cast Spirit > Block on you. It's on the common divine magic list, available to most > cults. Smacks of Jrusteli practice to me though. The spirit might > refuse to enter combat under such conditions. On the other hand the > purpose of the whole ritual is to teach the spell, and in the case of > divine magic it's a cult spirit doing the teaching, it expects to be > beaten. It's all a matter of taste (IMHO). There was a long thread about this in rec.games.frp.misc a couple of months ago, which has been archived on soda.berkeley.edu for your edification, if you have that great spiritual uplifter, ftp. > > Re: RQ4 (do we want it?) > > The changes of RQ3 almost killed RQ. Now we have a RQ4 on the > horizon. Will the game muatate wildly again? Why can't we have a > smooth continuum of small changes like CoC. Why does AH (and Ken Actually, a lot of people (including yours truly) think that what nearly killed RQ was lack of support. One supplement per year put a lot of people off RQ more than poor but easily modifiable rules. If you look at the racks at games stores you'll see that many of the most successful games have crap rules but plenty of supplements, modules, campaign packs etc. AD&D and Shadowrun spring to my mind as examples. Call of Cthulhu, which has a simplified RQ system with more than a few holes, is more successful than RQIII IMHO due to the much greater volume of modules and supplements produced for that game. > I think that a few small fixes and hole fillers are required, that > clarification of some rules would be useful but I don't want any big > changes, especially to combat! Combat is mostly fixed now, RQ2 combat > was badly bug ridden. I'd like some clarification on how magic > effects Special/Critical/Fumble chances and that's about it. In the What clarificatios do you need? Are you talking about Bladesharp affecting to-hit chances etc? > magic section I'd like to see a few changes to the Shaman rules, > preferably in the direction of RQ2. The RQ3 Shaman rules are > terrible. Shamans outgross sorcerors anyday. Anyone want me to > explain why? Don't tempt me. I don't want to see sorcery dissappear, > I like it much as it is. OK. I'll tempt you. I agree that a shaman with a powerful fetch is immune to direct magical attack, but so is a Tapping sorcerer, and the POW used to build up the fetch is better used on binding and strengthening enchantments. I think that the RQII shaman rules seem to be fairly unbalanced as well (especially the ability to heal yourself after death), and someone posted recently (Loren Miller? Tim Leask?) that Chaosium admitted that the shaman rules had NEVER been playtested, in any edition of RQ. The sorcery rules are broken IMO: your final ability is restricted by INT, an unchangeable characteristic, and a sorcerer who spends his time enhancing the stats, damage and protection on the rest of his party will have gross effects on party effectiveness. Sorry, I just deleted your signature: I don't know who I'm replying to here. I posted this to rec.games.frp.misc, but I thought I'd put it here for those who don't or can't read news: I can't find the cost of characteristic training in my edition (the GW hardback books) of RQIII, nor can I find it in the Errata, nor can my GM find it in the AH deluxe boxed set. The training times for characteristics and skills are given, but only the cost for training skills is included. Can anyone point me to where we are told the value? My GM has ruled that the cost per week is equal to that of a skill 5 x the value of the characteristic, but we would like to know the official RQIII cost; we can't use the RQII rules because the training rules seem to have been completely rewritten. Graeme Lindsell a.k.a gal502@huxley.anu.edu.au --------------------- From: pvanheus@cs.uct.ac.za (Peter van Heusden) Subject: Killing with a dagger Message-ID: Date: 12 Mar 93 11:17:12 GMT An interesting problem came up in a discussion here a couple of days ago. Can you kill someone with a dagger in RQ? We all agreed, if he is wearing any substantial armour, the answer is no, but the problem arises in close in combat where your opponent is unarmoured, and possibly unarmed. (Eg. a bar fight, a knife in the back.) It should be possible to kill the person with one dagger thrust to the gut. (And if you twist around a bit, you have a near certain kill.) So, should we have a 'assasination rule' to cover this situation? On a related strand: I was reading the rules for the Skyrealms of Jorune roleplaying game. Jorune is skill based, so is similar to RQ in a way. They have 3 ranges of melee combat: polearm, sword and dagger, and you move between them. At dagger range, eg. a sword is useless. This sounds like a good idea, especially since you can use this system to hold off a wild animal. (A wolf at polearm range - I'd call a long spear a polearm for this case - is not going to do much damage) Peter PS. RQ4: It looks too complex, too many new rules. I want a fix for Sorcery, and a fix for the other RQ3 problems (fatigue, character development), not a new system (anyway, I won't be able to buy it because it probably will cost too much - RPGs in South Africa costs STACKS). At present I am working out a fix myself - and am nearly there. So why should I want a new system?