Charles VA

Star Wars (RQ6) (Available from holders of the PDF) - Would be appreciative of anyone who might have this PDF and would be willing to take the time to share.

7 hours ago, simonh said:

I played a shaman extensively in RQ3. It's a lot of fun, but time consuming. A important issue is that searching for spirits and managing your bound spirits often took GM time which meant taking away play time from the rest of the group. I don't think involving the rest of the group in these activities e.g. By introducing mechanisms for the group to go with the shaman on the sprit plane helps because now they're just shaman sidekicks, and the extra nteraction means it will take even more time. This is one of the issues RQ4 shamanism needs to address.

Simon Hibbs

I always managed to have the rest of the group doing something while the shaman danced. Either guarding said shaman or participating in rites outside of the shamanic circle or even something as crude as social interactions. I tend to use the "split screen" action to keep all the players involved in something. Works fairly well if you're prepared to deal with the changing perspective and if you have players who are capable of separating player/character knowledge. Makes for an excellent story that eliminates the world vacuum feel of single player activity.

The gaining of a fetch makes for a great adventure. As the shaman-to-be travels deeper into his inner power, overcoming the obstacles to awakening the fetch grows with the apprentice gaining powers and awareness. Each such awakening should be different and inherent to the apprentice as that is where the fetch takes shape and becomes an individual being tied to the shaman. It's also possible the seeker will lose himself among the labyrinth of his own inner being and lose the connection to the spiritual and physical planes forever consumed from within. I love the esoteric of the essences that make up a shamanic tradition and you should take advantage of those any chance you get to give the player a better chance to examine the character. YGMV

Ok, then perhaps we can get some of the information that was contained through others. "Based on" is not copyright infringement. Just a thought. 

I wouldn't think that Tadashi would be that difficult to convince with regards to reprints of the articles themselves if not the actual magazines.

You said Chaosium, I didn't realize you were referring to this site.

Downloads section of this site. It's a BRP sheet however, not Superworld. It's a fillable form though.

All of those powers extend to the equipment carried by an individual unless the Missing Effect, or similar, limitation is being used. That is in regards to personal powers, those that affect the individual user only. The characters in your campaign are over paying.

7 hours ago, soltakss said:

Frog Woman has a Magic road HeroQuest where her cultists can jump to another place, they disappear and end of at the destination a day later, there is no reason why her cultists cannot jump to the same place, effectively disappearing and reappearing a day later.

Frog Woman and River Horse can both do this. It stands to reason that any travel/movement based spirits/cults would have something similar, if not the one day leap.whether it be Sunset Leap, Ride River Horse or Leap. If performed at the right place,time or circumstances I don't see why you couldn't use this to traverse the veil and enter the Otherside. There's even some indication that Ride River Horse and Sunset Leap (specifically) can be attuned to the Otherside equivalents of mundane locations.

YGWV

31 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Oh, I see. My past experience doesn't count, but your does. 

I'm feeling hostility. You must not have had your shots today. Anyway, stop the attack. That's not what this is about.

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Sure it did. I can't think of one RQ2 game I was in that had any Heroquesting or similar stuff. There just wasn't enough out there to explain what it was like, or what the results could be. 

Not to be blunt, but you can stop trying to think of one yours. I can assure you of several of ours. From 1983 through 1990 we ran no less than two dozen HeroQuests of various potencies, including the elusive "GodQuest". We read the bibliography. 

5 hours ago, Baron said:

I get it, the style of play among the vocal Gloranthan gamers (especially online) has shifted over the years. But read the Okamoto logs of Sandy Petersen's house RQ campaign. It's the old school, rollicking adventuring style. That's the way we played RQ back in the day. That's the way plenty of people rpg, Glorantha or otherwise. Anyone who'd gone on about deep mythology and immersed themselves in their character's culture wouldve been laughed out of the room. So, play however you like, but the currently popular style is not 'IT.'

And that sums it up.

8 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Because how quickly do the PCs advanced in non-magical power in RQ was left to chance. So why would you single out magical power?

I dislike the method used in MRQ where advancement rolls are doled out as some sort of reward system by the GM. That's too D&D ish for me. 

 

 

 

I used a measure of both. Players would be rewarded for their contribution to the enjoyment of the scenario as a whole with "Non-Specific Experience Checks". Meaning, basically, XPs, Hero Pts. or whatever you want to call them to be spent on skills or other they wished. I had developed a basic cost chart for these N.S.E.C.s for various uses. This could also be used to help skills that weren't used in that session if that was the desire of the player.

1 minute ago, threedeesix said:

Got ya. Lost track of the conversation.

We need more like this. These are the things that made RQ and Glorantha so distinctive and enduring.

Just now, threedeesix said:

Not really.

It was called Dungeons and Dragons even in 1974. They had character classes, level based advancement, standard races, adventures, etc. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons just expanded on it. 1977 essentially saw the next edition of D&D.

Rod

Yes, but the idea was in discussion over social constructs. The original didn't have as much development in that area. I don't remember if there was any mention of a "guild" structure or not but the original three books did not have the same emphasis outside of combat/looting.

2 hours ago, Baron said:

Shannara = 1977.

D&D = 1974.

The original white box was 1974. Basically chainmail with smaller, one man, units. What was to become D&D/AD&D came out 1977. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons

5 hours ago, Jeff said:

Thanatari heads work the same way as always. They can continue to cast Rune spells until they run out of Rune points (making effectively each spell one use), as they cannot replenish Rune Points.

 

As the Thanatari has "incorporated" a part of the original person, raped the world of it's life/power, then I could see the Thanatari's rune power supplying the strength to continue to use the spells of Major Heads at least. Essentially the spells of Create Head fashion from the living person a still living Powered Crystal from which the Thanatari can drain/draw knowledge and power.

After all, wasn't that the basis of Thanatar.

7 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

Oh, and another thing: there should be a cap to the amount of POW that a PC of a certain level (lay/initiate/runeleve/priest) can sacrifice for RPs.

If you have a character who is preparing for a major quest or activity, allowing for huge sacrifices seems right to me. I've had PCs prepare for months of game time for just a single event and good for them they did.

This Rune Magic system seems like an expanded, formulaic if you will, Divine Intervention system. Will Divine Intervention, as a spell or an action, continue to exist?

Borderlands and Beyond pg 43 under Morokanth. Alter Creature allows for the circumvention of the Covenant. RQ2.

12 minutes ago, kpmcdona said:

Defense, on the other hand, was more of a nuisance. It falls into the general category of skill penalties though. If you don't have a problem subtracting penalties from target numbers due to circumstances then I don't see why Defense is a problem. If you are like me and hate stopping to figure out a new target number in the middle of combat then searching for an alternative solution like the one used in CoC7 makes sense.

This is where preparation comes into play. If you have the GM screen, it's all there in print. If not, making a few notes on how the numbers are affected makes things proceed with a glance. Similar to making notes on characters and NPCs that include the effects of certain spells utilized by those characters.

I used the variant of 1/2 armor for specials and bypass armor for criticals. True (weapon) becomes much more valuable as do many hero abilities that allow further exploitation of the armor issue.

7 hours ago, Harshax said:

You are certainly correct that I have misrepresented the actual chance of gaining a roll. A character with a POW of 13 who gains a POW characteristic roll has, from memory, a 21 (or characteristic max for your species) -13 (current POW) * 5 percentile chance to gain 1d3-1 POW. This equates to a 1 in 4 to gain 1 pt of POW or a bit less than 1 in 6 to gain 2 pts of POW for the character in your example.

 

Your memory is all of RQ3 (Avalon Hill) not Classic RQ (Chaosium RQ2). While I have culled information from the Avalon Hill publications, it's been the Chaosium version I've used since picking up RuneQuest and what you describe is seriously not possible under that rules system. Yes POW gain is Species Max minus Current times 5 with a second roll, if successful, of a d100 with 01-10 +3 pts., 11-40 +2 pts. and 41-00 +1 pt.

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

The mechanic isn't "broken". It works. It might not match up well with the setting or with the cult based advancment that was supposed to be Glorantha, but it is a functional game mechanic. 

 

I take it that you mean to emulate the game setting.  That is a very good point and one which puts the whole new RQ project into a bad light. For the last two decades or so we've been told how the RQ rules didn't really fit Glorantha, and how HeroQuest was much closer to the way Glorantha was supposed to be. Okay. In that case why are they doing a retread of RQ Glorantha? If the rules aren't a good fit for the setting then they should either use different rules or a different setting. But doing an updated RQ Glantha seems to contradict what Greg and the rest having been saying about how bad a fit RQ is for Glorantha. 

And personally Classic RuneQuest fits the version of Glorantha that I've come to love. Where a constant stream of HeroQuests seems like it could be fun, it's not bread and butter living in the least. I guess you can say that I'm enamored with the Zero-to-Hero type of gaming. If I wanted a storyteller system, I'd use White Wolf's or the Masterbook system for my gaming.

1 hour ago, Harshax said:

@SDLeary

I pointed out a legitimate use of the rules that shows how they have been exploited among many, many gaming circles as can be attested by conversations I've had at cons and on the old RuneQuest/Glorantha List Servers. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that a 1pt use of a Spirit Magic Spell had a 66% chance to net at least 1 pt of POW and a 33% chance of netting 2 pts when used against an opponent who at least had a chance to resist your magic.

 

Ok. In the rules system I read in 1982 and forward, it's required that the POW efforted must have netted a successful attack and not just an exercise. Then, with an average POW, for a PC of roughly 13, that equates to a 40% chance of a gain AFTER the scenario, which could take numerous sessions, has been completed and then, then, you get an increase. Following this, you have to be in good standing with your priest or with A priest to be allowed to sacrifice for the magic. Which, by the way, could fail anyway due to your god being less than pleased with you. Funny, this all sounds like roleplaying without the rules structure to force it, but this is how it's presented. To avoid an argument, I'll defer to your rather non-sensical claims. Besides, I'd love to see a full presentation of that power-gaming you've described. In more than 30 years, I've never seen this happen outside of D&D.

13 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

You mean an abstract currency that is really not part of the character or their connection to the world or the gods they worship? Hero Points already exist as a game mechanic in many BRP games, to allow for re-rolls of dice, and to mitigate death of characters when it doesn't serve the story line. Entrenching it deeper into the game for in-scenario character benefits as you describe certainly doesn't seem to be in keeping with RQ. But as you have said, YRQWV.

SDLeary

I used the Fate Pt. concept where Temp. POW (Magic Points or however you'd care to term them) could be expended for a variety of quick effects. Essentially an integral rudimentary magic all living beings can tap. With the inclusion of Runic pairs to the character design, this will allow for an interesting variety of effects, based on character runes, that will more than make up for the lack of "Feats" or whatever other special effects are needed by the more modernist crowd.

We always managed a good cooperative narrative without special rules to force it. YRQWV 

On 2/16/2016 at 2:16 PM, ReignDragonSMH said:

Maps in their own book and NPCs in the main book.

I fully support this idea.