smjn

But the decision to make difficult to be half chance is as arbitrary and nonelegant as any other way. It is not necessarily arbitrary. To say it is would require intimate knowledge on the process that lead to this design decision. Perhaps the original designers tested different values and decided 30 was the best value considering game balance. Or perhaps not. In the end all rules can be said to be arbitrary. No argument there, but like I said, I like the way this particular rule has been implemented and it has been rigorously tested for decades. The fact that no better solution has yet been presented for consideration is—at least for me—proof enough that this particular thing doesn't need fixing.

How is that any less arbitrary or more elegant? I happen to think the RAW is an elegantly simple solution to the problem, that has been used by groups for decades so that it is thoroughly playtested for balance. And it works. No point in fixing something that is not broken, no?

I suppose the problem was that in RQ3 you couldn't defend agaist multiple attacks unless you had a skill over 100, and then only against two, divided evenly. Stormbringer was probably intended for more heroic/cinematic play where experienced fighters could take on multitudes of foes. And the SB rule ended in the BGB.

I agree with filbanto and threedeesix. There isn't really a contradiction, just two rules, one general, one in for a more specific case.

Having now read through the core rules of HQ1 I can understand your view. The whole Advantage Point bidding process seems needlessly convoluted, although the well written example helps to clear it quite a bit and even make it seem usable and quite interesting. Mythic Russia seems to be out of print, at least a quick web search didn't reveal where one might be able to obtain it. The weird bit is that reading HQ1 has caused me to—gasp—like it to the point where I might actually almost be tempted to consider contemplating running Glorantha with it. Heresy! Must be some sort of evil Chaos/Arkati/Nysalorian/God Learner sorcery at work! We all know what happens if we stray from the age old true wisdom of the Old Ways... Still, I might even have to read HQ2 to compare the two.

Link doesn't work.

Oh yes and HQ1 sure has a lot of sufficiently detailed examples, which is a good thing. I think the only significant deficiency in RQ6 was the small number of examples. I'm not saying that the HQ1 examples are perfect, e.g. I'm not sure I care for the way the players struggle with the rules, but even mediocre examples are often better than no examples at all. And in general the examples in both games are good, there just aren't enough in RQ.

Reading more HQ I have to agree that the resolution mechanism is very elegant, but I would not go so far as to say its far more elegant than RQ. This reminded me of something that I forgot in my RQ6 review: the resistance mechanism and Brawn, Endurance and Willpower as skills is a beautiful idea and Loz and Pete had a stroke of genius—just one of many—when they decided to do it this way. It really gives out a similar sense of elegance as the HQ core mechanism. It may even be that HQ has been an influence behind this design decision, which, if it indeed is the case, does not diminish the shining brilliance of The Design Mechanism guys. After all, human progress is created by people standing on the shoulders of giants, and the giants go all the way down. :-)

One important thing that I meant but forgot to mention in my review was that I really liked the way resisting stuff like poison and magic works. The fact that Brawn, Endurance and Willpower are skills and the original combat, magic or whatever roll is used as the resisting factor is a simple, elegant, beautiful even and brilliant idea. This is the way it should always have worked, never was too fond of the resistance table.

My own thoughts are quite similar, except for the bit about not having ducks. You know, I just realized that I have only played or GMd the very low level stuff in Glorantha: The Money Tree, Apple Lane, Munchrooms. I guess that is related to the issue of how I have historically viewed RuneQuest's applicability to high level adventures such as heroquests. Been a bit scared, I guess, also of the overwhelming amount of material and myths. Yeah, YGWV, I know, but I think I'm having trouble putting a coherent world together in my head without being intimately familiar with all that backgound. So yes, the "Start Small" imperative has always been and still is a very good rule of thumb. I'm not so sure. People like soltakss have been playing Mythic Glorantha for decades when HQ was the Duke Nukem Forever of its time and seem to have had great success with RuneQuest. So RuneQuest can fit the mythic level games too, although the style of play will naturally be very different from HQ. Same here!

This is just the kind of stuff I am interested in learning more about, so if you can give us any specific examples that would be wonderful. From what I have read some people seem to think that the possibility for infinite augments in HQ1 can lead to long periods of hunting stuff on your character sheet and attempts at far fetched reasons that may or may not fit the situation at hand. Those people will then prefer the simplified but also more limited approach of HQ2 because for them it makes the game run much smoother. Obviously your experience differs, so I would love to learn more and also hear of other things you (and others) thinki HQ1 does better than HQ2, and vice versa. For example the extended contests rules have been changed (simplified?) significantly; good or bad?

Doesn't that mean that RQ gives you a much better opportunity to actually roleplay that situation instead of just reducing it to a mechanical business of choosing the right augments and rolling the d20? Ok, I know it doesn't because in HQ you are supposed to roleplay the situation to, among others, justify your augments. Also in HQ2 your augments are more limited. RQ6 has passions which may help here, but may not be a complete solution but of course there is no point in trying to make RQ resemble HQ: There's are reason why those two completely different systems exist! And that's the way we like it. Anyway, I think your example highlights the fact that we need to think how and why we roleplay: what we want from it and therefore what games we choose to play. Just because this kind of situation can not be solved in any similar fashion in two different systems is not a show of weakness in either one, just a case in point that they focus on different things.

While impatiently waiting for the Guide to Glorantha to be finished, I need to go through all my accumulated material to satiate my hunger for more knowledge about the setting. I have decided to start reading HeroQuest – Roleplaying in Glorantha, that is HQ 1st edition (or Hero Wars 2nd ed. depending how you want to frame the issue.) HQ1 rather than HQ2 because the older edition is closely tied to the world of Glorantha and contains a lot of information about it. But I am also interested to learn more details about the system. The rather freeform narrativism does not really appeal to me overmuch; I'm much more into more crunchy, simulationist roleplaying games such as RuneQuest and HârnMaster, (Well, you can argue that HQ is simulationist, it just attempts to simulate literary and visual fiction rather that the cold cruel facts of Real Life™) although it is always good to keep an open mind and try to expand one's horizons. Still, I am mostly interested in questions such as what games like HeroQuest can teach and have taught to GMs and designers of different games like RuneQuest, etc. I posted this in the Glorantha forum because I'm mostly interested applying said teachings for roleplaying in that particular fantasy world, but more general discussion is also appreciated. I should point out that I have not played HeroQuest or any other game in the "Narrativist" school of roleplaying. It is not that I am against it, just haven't had an opportunity (don't go to conventions etc.) I have read quite extensively about the differences between the editions but am also interested in hearing what people think is good and what is not. I prefer the idea that a fantasy roleplaying setting is a living world that goes on whether or not the player characters make anything significant of themselves. That is why I'm not a big fan of the central theme of HQ that the player heroes are the focus of everything, which is, I believe, shown very well e.g. in the pass-fail-cycle mechanism of HQ2. Sure, the PCs are always the focus of an adventures and campaigns, but changing the level of challenges to fit them seems a bit like D&D with levels and such, which leads to all kinds of questions about setting ecology and so on. But I do understand why many people might like something like that. To each his own. One more thing: A question that intrigues me is why would a "freeform" (if that is the right expression) game be better for Glorantha than a more old school approach like RuneQuest. I mean, most of the societies in Glorantha are quite restrictive about how their members must behave and what they can do, so the "You can be anything you want!" -philosophy of HQ doesn't seem a perfect fit. I'm guessing it has something to do with the concept of Heroism: the Heroes of Glorantha are considered to be kind of like cosmic level comic book superheroes who can rise above the limitations of the mortal worlds. I on the other hand prefer the kind of view that heroes are people and as such have their weaknesses and limitations that they must, willingly or not, overcome to become and achieve all they can. So I think I will always find a system geared more towards a human level than a cosmic level preferable. Hope that wasn't too rambling and people will find some points to comment upon and share their ideas and experiences.

It's only bloat if it is unnecessary. I think that RQ6 needs more examples. In its current form it is not as friendly and easy to approach for newcomers as it could and should be.

Indeed. And you know, setting books are rule books too: E.g. hasn't Loz said that the magic systems need to be modified to fit Glorantha?

Finished my first read-through a couple of days ago (so no actual play experience yet) and my general impression is that RuneQuest 6 is a very good system for what it sets out to be. The general vibe is that RQ6 is a fantasy roleplaying toolkit, since it doesn't contain a default setting, but is otherwise a complete game as advertised. I come from a RQ3 backrground with a little Stormbringer thrown in and when I started reading the 6th edition at first I was not impressed. But when I got further and started to see the big picture it began to grow on me. When I got to the chapters about magic I was very much sold. The reason I didn't like it at first was that I felt it was a bit dry read and the examples were not very interesting and evocative. Also there was—and I still think this is true—not enough of them. Somehow RQ3 always seemed to feed my imagination much more, but this may be because I got it in my preteens more than twenty years ago and things were very different back then. The sample setting of Meeros also seemed a bit uninspiring and the lack of a real setting with existing and/or promised support a bit annoying. But then it hit me that the RQ6 core rules alone are really intended for GMs interested in setting building and the Meeros examples are actually very good in showing how to do that. Also the lack of a deeper setting integration was the right decision in this context. Many people on this forum and elsewhere seem to really highlight the magic rules as something brilliant and I wholeheartedly agree. They are very well written and the best part is that every kind of magic is very different both mechanically and storywise. So its not just page after page of supposedly different types of magic that essentially do the same thing but instead the rules really set a person's imagination to motion with a lot of great ideas. Some minor points are that I wasn't much impressed by the art. Most of it was pretty 'meh', but a few bits were very good. The cover of course is beautiful and the obvious reference to RQ2 a very nice touch. One point, almost (but not quite :-)) not worth mentioning is that I didn't much care for the "funny" (for lack of a better word) names of monsters' combat styles such as "Ferocious Fracas" instead of something dull and undescriptive like "Giant Baboon". But that is just the kind of person I am. The relative lack of examples still bothers me somewhat. It would be very good if The Design Mechanism would produce a short (free) electronic document containing for example the usual detailed one or two page example of combat to help bring the combat system alive and make us understand it better. Longer examples of other kind of situations would also be highly appreciated, especially if based on real life actual play. All in all I would choose RQ6 for fantasy over the BGB any day and when more stuff comes out for it, probably even over RQ3. But I'm not the kind of guy who enjoys creating his own original worlds, so I'm absolutely anxious about having to wait for the upcoming Adventures in Glorantha. But I also want to see the Kickstarter campaing start so I can get my vanity hardcover version of the core rules.

Release book first, EPUB later when you have time. And as for the monetary cost, well, just set the stretch high enough in the Kickstarter.

PDF is really designed for printing and not reading on a (small) screen. I have this little E-book reader gadget, that sadly—due to manufacturer neglect—has not received the much needed soft-/firmware upgrades that would allow it to reflow the text in PDF-documents to make them more easily readable on the device. Therefore I would very much like to see River of Heaven—and all other RPG books—released in a format more suitable for such devices, such as EPUB. A Kickstarter stretch goal would in my opinion be an excellent means to secure the funds needed for such a format conversion. Publishers should not really bother with Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) since such schemes have the tendency to inconvenience the customers while doing very little if anything the prevent copyright infringement from taking place. Infringers can usually find the file with the DRM removed on the Internet while paying customers will often run into all kinds of technical problems while moving the file between devices. tl;dr: Make an EPUB version, no DRM. Also—as requested by others—adventures, sandboxes etc. would be great; don't care much for T-shirts.

Yet you keep mentioning it... XDLOL. This is absolutely great!

I read your "Hey, robot, forget about that ATV" story in the Gaming Stories thread. It was funny. Any more such stories would be greatly appreciated.

This thread (my first post in this forum ever, BTW) degenerated into something completely different sooner than I had anticipated. Oh well, I suppose that is the nature of things. It's not that I disapprove of the discussion about GM sadism, only that I feel such a discussion deserves its own thread to better preserve it for posterity. So here you go!

In a thread I posted on the RuneQuest subforum today, there has been a discussion about the sadism/bastardy of Pete Nash as a GM. I would like to extend this discussion to find out about other sadist GMs. Are you one or have you encountered some in your roleplaying? Tell us more, preferebly with graphic and detailed examples of how this sadism manifested.

Ok, not you then, unless you try really hard to be somebody else for a while. Although seeing you being a bastard might be educational in its on right, it might not necessarily the best possible promotion for RuneQuest.

P.S.: I originally intended to post this in The Design Mechasism forum but their login gave me a blank page. But since Loz & Pete follow this forum as well, I posted it here instead.

After seeing the two episodes of Tabletop, where Dragon Age pen and paper RPG creator Chris Pramas ran a game for Wil Wheaton and friends, I immediately thought it would've been so much cooler had it been one of The Design Mechanism people running a game of RuneQuest. The videos can be watched on Youtube: and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He4xdGizuww. Tabletop might not be willing to do an episode on another RPG, since because of the confines of the format the result would look pretty similar despite the differences in the game system, the adventure and the GM. I think, however, that a video like this, if done well, would be excellent promotion for a less known roleplaying game such as RuneQuest. Now I understand that The Desing Mechanism being essentially a two man shop with a lot of work in their hands might not be able to divert the resources for a professional quality video like this, useful though it might be. But since they will eventually be running games at conventions it would be great to have perhaps some of their fans to record and edit a session of Loz or Pete running e.g. the RQ GM Pack adventures. Of course a professionally produced video like the ones at Tabletop would be so much better, so if there is any chance of that kind of thing happening I would love to see it.