GianniVacca

Ditto. Now I won't be reading anything else for weeks

But my piece of advice was for Hound of Tindalos, not for 'all gamers'.

I've run my first game for kids using the plastic miniatures from Heroscape and the props (terrain, trees, columns, weapon cards...) from the D&D boardgame. It was a great success. The kids had great fun.

I think the same map is also in the Wyrms Footprints.

Did you buy it in Bacharach? You should've skimmed through its pages first, like I did.... The result was that I didn't buy it. One day when I have time (retirement?) I'll write the ultimate BRP supplement for mediaeval Hungary

I would say that this was the biggest difference between RQ2 and later incarnations. There was no Dodge skill, as the Defence skill (which was 'always on') was supposed to reflect the character's trying to evade incoming attacks. Personally, I do prefer this rule -- call me a snobbish grognard.

I must agree with frogspawner here. My group has been playing RQ2 for 8 years or so. Only the GM is an 'original' player of RQ2 from back when it was in print. Myself and all the other players bought our RQ2 book on eBay. And that was still cheaper than buying a new fantasy rolegame (how much does D&D 3E cost???) Once you've bought the RQ2 book, you can buy the Moon Design reprints. And you have years of gaming. Frankly, this is all you need for quality gaming. And not too expensive.

Great reading... It's a good idea to start the introduction as if it were a novel. I don't want to sound as if I'm criticising :innocent: (I really love the concept, the art and the writing) but I see quite a few spelling errors/typos in there. If you want a proofreader, I'm a volunteer

Actually Paolo I wish you did to Stupor Mundi what you're doing to Glorantha Third Age, i.e., make it compatible with both MRQ and BRP. Plus it would inspire me to do the same with my Chinese rolegame (yes, I'm too lazy to do this myself )

Funny... One of my pbem players is with the French troops in Afghanistan. I don't exactly know where he's stationed though.

Sounds really interesting... Too bad it's not set in the RW (where conspiracy settings are more fun to play because you feel for the victims...)

Actually I think the border between skirmish games and role-playing games is blurred. There is no clearcut distinction, as shown by the fate of OD&D itself (originally but a supplement for Chainmail). For me, a role-playing game is one where you can RE-USE the same character from a previous game session. Heck, you could even role play your squad leaders with Avalon Hill's Squad Leader! :focus: Maybe one thing that can be 'learnt' from skirmish games is that clear combat rules are a plus, and that the possibility of laying out clearly combat on a grid- or hex-based map is a plus, as role-playing games DO tend to include lots of combats, and you don't want those to slow your game down.

Well, yes, so do I. I am dissatisfied with the rules for theist magic as they stand now, so I plan to use whatever we come up with in the d100 yahoo group for my 2nd Age campaign!

ENORMOUS fun. Too bad I couldn't stay for the whole duration of the con!

An additional thought re 'flash'. In a historical campaign setting, characters with good etiquette or dancing or arts skills can be more useful than good fighters or good magicians!

I'm not sure I've understood your quandary. Is your problem 'how can I prevent my players from all choosing a spell casting character?'? Well.... What can I say? This is a hard one. And there are many ways to tackle the problem, depending on personal taste/campaig background/rules fiddling. 1/ You could go the D&D way. Magic-users are not allowed to learn swordfighting. Period. Obviously a party will need fighters as well as magic-users. 2/ You could say that only characters from a certain caste/from a very wealthy family are allowed/can afford to learn magic. 3/ You could say that magical studies are so long that all starting spell-casting characters are 50 years old. This may have some disadvantages in terms of physical skills. 4/ Any characters could be allowed to have magic and fighting skills. The line between 'fighters' and 'magic-users' would be completely blurred (like in all RQ2 games I've played). But in the end buying magic skills is expensive, and a lot of players want to be able to have more than just one group of skills over 50%. I am running a MRQ GodLearner campaign and although all PCs had access to magic, not all players decided to invest heavily in magic skills.

Yes... that's a very good reason -- all those legacy bestiaries.

salut Alban et bienvenue

See you there. I will be there on 10th only.

Hey, anybody going to Tentacles?

Hear, hear!

ROTFL (and I haven't used 'ROTFL' in a forum for a very long time!)

Well, Martial Arts are covered in my Chinese rolegame. Contrary to what most games seem to have done (a further skill that gives you bonuses if you roll both under the combat skill AND the martial arts skill), the way I've managed it is that some special skills are taught only if you're part of a martial arts school -- not much unlike the original RuneQuest cults after all. There are a few more subtelties, but in a nutshell that's how I've managed it.

Funny.. I did something similar (in French) a few years ago: BaSIC Donjons et Dragons

I have spent some time with a Chinese family, and yes they love games (we had a mah-jongg night once a week). In terms of fantasy games, young Chinese are extremely fond of MMORPGs. They mostly play Chinese or Korean MMORPGs, and their users number in the 100,000s. I explained the basic mechanics of my Chinese rolegame to my Chinese friends but apparently they thought it weird to have to meet at a given place to play when you can have so many friends online.