svensson

I know. I wanted to put together a Lunar thief just to do something different. The idea was that he'd be the team skill-monkey, lock-picker, and all round Doer of Very Bad Things. Had a hell of a time with it. I didn't like the idea of just filing off the name of Eurmal, couldn't find an appropriate Lunar cult, and was trying to stay away from Sorcery until some further guidance was available.

I haven't seen much in the Chaosium blog about upcoming RQG material. I realize that the company has to support a whole menu of games, but is there any word on upcoming RQG releases? From a player standpoint, we could really use some scenarios to work with. For all of us who've been playing in the 1620 ST timeframe, the Dragonrise and liberation of Sartar has created some great conflict, but it's a bit tough to get a handle on scenario-wise.

Hey, if your cult and associated cults can't get you Disrupt, you're in the wrong cult, bruh.

Last thing on this, swear to Orlanth This is one reason why we might all be better off waiting for a Malkioni or Sorcery book to come out. It might save us all the speculation and rules contortions.

Which brings up another interesting question. In RQ3, when a cult specifies that Initiate and greater may not know sorcery, it speciifically says they must forget any sorcery known. This is one major reason why the God the Middle Air [and by extention Weather] doesn't have many sailors as worshippers, since sailors almost have to have Open Seas sorcery spell. But does RQG require sorcery learned as a Lay member to be forgotten as an Inititate? I don't recall seeing anything specific to that, but I might have missed it.

Another very handy spell for the atheist soceror is Disruption. Sure it can be a cheap *ping* spell, but a POW gain roll is a POW gain roll no matter where it comes from.

Bill, my impression of you says 'most likely'

Gads. What a pain in the ass.

WHOO-HOO! I did not see anything in the announcement about pre-orders. Are they available or will they just get mobbed on street date? @MOB? @Jeff Richard?

See, and that's a couple of the things I'm dissatisfied about with Magic World See, I like the hit location tables a lot. To my mind it gives players the idea that combat is far, far deadlier than DnD and similar systems. Yes, it's an extra layer of detail and you don't always want that, but one of the important differences between RQ/BRP/d100 and other FRPG mechanics is the very deadliness I'm describing. There is no such thing as 'a warm up fight' in RQ. Even if you're being attacked by band of trollkin [Glorantha's answer to DnD's goblins], characters can't just trivialize it. Every time you pull your blade out in RQ, it's a matter of life and death and a desperate trollkin with a spear can kill you faster than than the time it takes to talk about it.

With the new Runes and Passions augments, it might be possible to defeat spells. Certainly you'd want a couple extra magic points behind them to defeat magical detection. There's logic on both sides of the 'stackable or not' argument.

I'm of two minds about both of them. I'm trying to 'convert' some DnD fans I know to BRP/RQ/d100 systems and I haven't found BRP or OpenQuest or Magic World to be just right for what I'm trying to do. If I had to pick between the two you mention, I think I'd go with Magic World because almost everything you need is in one spot. There's even a bestiary in the book so you don't have to get too RuneQuest or CoC with your monster selections.

Fair enough. Your role as the GM is to play to your audience.

That should be '80%+ Passions, not Runes, Sty.

OK, the Passions rules are pretty clear on that. The mechanical downside of having a Passion [and I realize my typo there, I'll correct it] of 80%+ is that your Passions may overtake your good sense. You may [not 'must'] have your emotions take control of your actions at an appropriate and dramatic moment if the GM rules it necessary. Earth myth and heroic fiction in several genres are rife with such personal turmoil. Consider this scene from the movie 'Tombstone'... the Earp Brothers are walking down the street when a drunken Johnny Ringo loses his temper and begins insulting them, despite the fact that he is drunk [major negative modifier to Agility and Manipulation skills] and seriously outnumbered. Though Wyatt shows that he's unarmed, both his brothers are armed and Doc Holliday is also present and looking for an excuse to kill him, but shooting down an unarmed man would have major Reputation consequences, though you could legitimately counter that Ringo's Rep is so bad that he can't damage it that much anymore. This is an example of Passions leading to unwise actions and almost fatal consequences. [link to video below]

I agree with that. I don't keep multiples copies of 90% of the games I own. Very few of us have shelf space for that. But you're right about my current copy being a memento. My purpose in buying the slipcover edition is to get the additional materials [Bestiary and GM Pack] and have a cover to protect the memento copy. That and supporting both Chaosium and my FLGS, of course.

It's always seemed to me that if you need a page full of house rules, you're using the wrong rules. Of course, that all depends on the rules you're using. When DnD 3.0 came out, there were some things that had not been dealt with in playtesting [grapple attacks, for one famous example], and almost everybody house ruled something that vexed them. Since then, rules have become more refined and playtesting actively looks for unusual situations to attend to. And remember folks, our whole hobby is based on 10 or pages of supplementary rules in the back of Chainmail. It can be fairly argued that everything since then has been one big house rule

It comes in pints? --Perequack Took -'Lord of the Bills Book One, Fellowship of the Beak'

DUCKS WILL BE A PLAYABLE RACE IN THE VANILLA GAME! ANYTHING LESS WOULD BE UN-GLORANTHA-LIKE! [Okay, I admit it. I'm not much of a Duck fan either, but if we can have pygmies on ostriches....]

OK, boys and girls, get a grip shall we? The edition is on your continent. It is being transported as we speak to your distributor of choice, be it Chaosium or your FLGS. You will have it in your grubby little covetous fingers within a month. So breathe. Even if you hold your breath until you turn blue, they won't get there any faster. Don't get me wrong here... I wantz da Preciouseses too, at least as much as you do. My only physical copy of the RQG rules has Greg Stafford's autograph and I'm terrified of it getting buggered up.

No, they can only augment a skill roll once or twice as session. The whole point here is to keep players from circumventing actually training their skills... they shouldn't rely on 'to Hell with it, I'll just make Dark Rune roll' instead of actually spending money training Sneak skill... I don't like mechanics taking the place of thought, planning, and effort. And as a referee, I don't put PCs in positions where mechanics have to save them.

In most of my games, I clearly point out to players when their character concepts are in danger of being overturned by power-gaming. Point buy games with advantages and disadvantages are great for that. Nothing spurs a player into action like finding out that his Dark Secret is going to be revealed [with all the in-game consequences thereof] but that you'll also be subtracting all the points he spent on that Dark Secret in character generation from his future character improvement points if he doesn't act within the strictures of his self-imposed build. [GURPS, L5R, Champions, etc.] In a more open build game like BRP or RQ, the referee can't be so heavy handed, but there still ought to be consequences for not living up to their own build. Yanioth not taking the opportunity to smite the Lunar Empire after she's invested so much effort in her character concept and build in Revenge Daddy [character background story] and Hate Empire [actual percentile number on C-sheet] would be ridiculous. I can't remember where I got this this phrase, but I've taken to calling your own character concept and build coming back to bite you in the ass as 'The Plot Harpoon'. As in, "That meaty *thwack* sound you just heard was the Plot Harpoon sinking in, 'Bob'..."

Rules exist to provide framework to player actions. It is the method by which games confirm that gravity most often pulls downwards and fireballs do xDy damage. I myself prefer some fairly firm rules to limit the amount 'uberGawdliness' that player characters can get up to. Others are more freeform with it. At the end of the day, RQ has ONE hard and fast rule: Maximum Game Fun. Stick with that one and you'll probably be alright. As to the specific question in the top post, I would work a trade-off with players. If they will use Runes to augment one roll a session, the GM can only use their 80%+ Passions to direct character actions once per session at an appropriately dramatic time. That seems reasonable to me. [note: @PhilHibbs showed me a typo that considerably changed my point here. Sorry 'bout that.]

Fortunately I'm lucky enough to have a second option if my local store doesn't want to be part of B&M. It's farther away, and through some traffic [but then, it's I-5... EVERYTHING is through traffic], but at least it's an option. In any event, I'll cold damned if I'll buy through Amazon. I like shopping a game store and there's just not that many of them left.

Well, it'll be a video game. Somebody is gonna bitch about something I mean, look at all the fans of WH40K who still find something to gripe about with every game release. I don't know of one fanbase that is 100% with a game release.