rust

...they are far more substantive issues to debate...

Just go ahead and start the discussion.

Whenever someone tells me that Glorantha is too deep, I point them at Forgotten Realms and laugh.

You should try the German DSA roleplaying game, there it seems that each pebble

along the road has a name and an (implausible) history ...

Please, please, please do! Crime-fighting NASCAR drivers and crusading space knights everywhere will sing your praises.

Seconded, thirded and ... ah ... fourthed ?

But they do have to deal with the consequences and effects of that math and pysics that you know and incoprorate into the campaign.

Yes, of course. I would change neither the setting nor the rules of the game, I

only help them to deal with the setting and the rules where it is necessary.

But I think we should end this here, we are really off topic.

1) Do you game with her?

Yes, I did, for a couple of years, until we moved in 2007.

2) Do they throw out all the math in Germany to accommodate her?

Yes, they did. Where she finished school it was possible to choose the subjects

for the final exam, and she did of course not choose mathematics or physics.

Or did they print the text books with scambled lettering to accommodate her dyslexia?

This would not have made reading any easier for her.

Or did she work hard and rise above her limitations?

She did not improve her mathematical skill and hardly improve her reading skill,

but meanwhile her problem is recognized as a medical problem (it is now on the

World Health Organization's list as diagnosis F83.1), so the people around her

accept that she cannot overcome this, no matter how hard she would try.

Rust, you run a lot of hard Sci-Fi campaigns. Such setting require you do some math and physics. Such is unavoidable if you want to set up a realistic planet. You don't just throw it all out and ignore it because you don't like or want to do the math. You deal with it because it goes with the territory.

Right, but at the same time I am well aware that there are people who cannot

follow the mathematics and physics, and that asking them to do this is like as-

king a blind person to paint in colours - it just is not possible for them. The only

remaining choice is whether I want to play with such persons, and if there are

no other problems, I do.

Of course, then I would have to decide whether to go with the Haunted Lands as they appear in the original rulebook map, or the later Shadow Plateau ...

Forgotten Realms, Sembia. The authors had left this nation undescribed as a kind

of playground for the referee and had promised that they would never publish any

description of Sembia. Young and stupid as I was, I spent months to design "my"

Sembia. Just when I had completed it and wanted to introduce it into the cam-

paign, a player came to me with the latest edition of the Forgotten Realms - with

a detailed description of Sembia, of course.

... and the idea of a finite, closed and ultimately knowable game is very appealing ...

Yes, indeed, no more unnerving new supplements with sudden implausible chan-

ges which ruin the setting ...

What?! I know this has been said before and elsewhere, but I don't see the letters from all your books suddenly evaporating or one's imagination imploding because of this decoupling. I'm pretty sure most of the published books are not intended to be one-use-only.

I also do not understand it, but nevertheless I hear it all the time whenever a

game gets out of print. In my view it is a silly idea, for the reasons you mentio-

ned, but I have given up to try to fight this windmill.

Fans will still like the game.

But this is exactly the problem I see, because I am aware of many Glorantha fans

here, but not of many (ex-)MRQ II fans. For example, using the Search of my ho-

me forum, I find a number of posts where Glorantha has been mentioned, but on-

ly one post where MRQII has been mentioned, the Burg Stahleck program of this

year.

I really do not want to be a spoilsport, and I really wish Legend all the best, but

if what I hear is anywhere close to representative (which may or may not be the

case), Legend is very far from being a guaranteed success. Over here, that is.

And, as far as 'not exactly applauded' is concerned, well, that's wrong too. There's been quite a lot of praise for divorcing MRQII from Glorantha (do check out the threads regarding this on RPGnet and The RPGsite is you want some proof).

Sorry, I forgot to add the usual "over here".

Here Runequest with the Glorantha setting was still a rather well known brand,

which now disappears from the shelves and is replaced by Legend, which is un-

known and for most roleplayers just another generic fantasy system in a market

where there are already dozens of that kind, most of which come and go rather

quickly. For those who liked the Glorantha setting, the game is now dead, and

for those looking for a generic fantasy system it is just one of already too many

options, and it will be very difficult to convince them that it is good enough to

spend money on an English language game when there are so many in German.

From my point of view, and from what I hear over here, divorcing the system

from the well known setting and changing its well known name into an unknown

one eliminated the one real advantage, brand recognition, it had over other sys-

tems available over here. Add to this the fact that Mongoose has a very bad re-

putation over here, whether deserved or not, and the start for Legend will be a

very difficult one.

Is there that much bile for MRQII among BRP fans?

No, not really, in fact MRQII has been welcomed and treated very friendly by

most - but the publisher, Mongoose, is considered as having a rather tarnished

reputation, and his decision to basically kill MRQII by removing all Glorantha con-

nections and turning it into a generic fantasy system was not exactly applauded.

Imagine how intimidating it would be to have trouble with simple math and live in a society where most people think only an idiot can't multiply by 5.

Yes, indeed. Many years ago I worked as a teacher's assistant at a school for

children with learning problems, most of them mentally handicapped. Our "night-

mare case" was a girl with both dyslexia and dyscalculia - and an IQ of 170+.

She was a psychological wreck, because until then her teachers up to the 7th

grade had treated her as either simply too lazy to learn or plain stupid, and the

latter was the reason why she was sent to us, a psychologist had used an IQ

test which was based upon reading and numbering skills, and came to the result

that her IQ was below 60 - mentally handicapped. Since she understandably

took quite a while to open up, it took us months to realize that she was a lot

more intelligent than that psychologist, and to hand her over to the right school

for her, ironically one for highly talented children. She is the one who is now the

scientist I mentioned above.

Oops, sorry for a long off topic tale ...

Oh, and the statement that the publisher fell off their radar is horse poo of the finest quality ...

Apart from that, not keeping an eye on what the third party publishers are doing

with the license ("our property") would seem rather ... unwise.

You trolling rite?

I dont know a single person that can't do a x5...

I know several people with Dyscalculia, small wonder since they make up approxi-

mately 5 % of the population, 1 in 20. They usually try to hide this and succeed,

because it is easier than with illiteracy. One of those I know is a scientist, an ex-

pert on Germanic languages ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia

Guess who is the only one of the four mentioned above who actually did pull a license and left me with stock in the warehouse?

And put the blame on you, see Planet Mongoose, 24/05/11:

On this note, we were accused on one forum of deliberately stuffing over 3rd

party publishers who have warehouses stacked full of RQ-branded books. This is

absolutely not the case. The issue here is that said publishers dropped comple-

tely off our radar and, as far as we knew, they were not publishing anything - it

is fundamentally _not_ our job to chase after said 3rd party publishers. It is their

duty to keep us in the loop. If they had, like the chaps working on Clockwork &

Chivalry always have, they too would have been informed before we made the

announcement. It is not our intention to stuff anyone over, but we also expect

anyone operating a business using our property to take responsibility for their

own work. If you just tell us what you are doing and when, you'll find we are

quite helpful!

I liked the system of opposed traits from Pendragon for situations like this.

Yes, a very nice system, I borrowed it for various settings, including science fic-

tion. I would still like to use it, but the players insist that they can roleplay their

characters with fewer bookkeeping (e.g. only a note "cowardly, fears elephants"

on the character sheet), and I have to admit that these players really can do it.

Legend? Maybe it's short for "Legend in his own mind".

Hmmm ... "Matthew Sprange - I am Legend" could be a good line for Mongoose's

marketing ...

I like it alright! Stop dissing my favourite system

I hope you are not really trying to tell me that you like that crappy, shoddy, un-

imaginative, bug-ridden and ... oh, wait a moment, this is the BRP forum ...

Good grief that's hideous. Why would anyone agree to that licence?

It could still be acceptable for someone who publishes by print on demand.

Otherwise modern armies and police would simply take some powerder out and put more lead in to thier bullets.

Or they would discuss to replace the light, fast 5.56x45mm NATO (4 g, 940 m/s)

with the heavier, slower 6.8mm Remington SPC (7.45 g, 785 m/s), as they actu-

ally do, and many special forces units already did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6.8_SPC

- no good vehicle rules

- no vehicle creation rules

- no starships

I really would like to have these, but it is not difficult at all to use the vehicle and starship rules of other games with BRP.

- the shield rules seem to be odd and always rise questions

At least for my preferred historical settings they do not make much sense.

- weapons. These different Base Skill values annoy me

- damage. Unless someone comes up with a good weapon damage creation system, what is the difference between 1d8 and 1d8+1 ?! How to judge this? Why not simply make broader categories with the same damage roll?

I have no problem with this, but combat is rare anyway in my campaigns.

- non lethal damage is missing

Not completely, see Stunning as a temporary non-lethal damage.

- SIZ is not consistent and

Yes, indeed, and I really wish there were different values for mass and volume.

- ENC is a muddy mess

- Fatigue rules are missing (?)

Yes, a good system for Fatigue would be nice.

All in all, in my view BRP does quite well as a generic system which is aimed more

at fantasy and historical settings than at science fiction, at least as well as the

competing generic systems. And, again in my view, it has the advantage that it

is quite easy to modify the rules, add house rules, or use elements of other ga-

mes with BRP. It is a toolbox, there are some less than functional tools, and some

tools are missing, but I have not yet seen a toolbox which would be better for my

purposes.

But, another poster sagely pointed out that in situations like that (a foot solider facing tons of charging horseflesh), the "fear" shouldn't have to be engineered by rules, but should be generated by the players being aware of how much trouble they're in.

The problem I see with this approach is that the players actually are in no trouble

at all, they can just shrug and pretend that their characters are never afraid or

shocked, no matter what they have to face. Think of Beowulf. When he and his

chosen warriors faced the dragon, all but Wiglaf ran and left their king to his fa-

te. If these chosen warriors had been player characters in a system without any

fear mechanism, this part of the story would have to be rewritten, our fearless

heroes would have fought bravely for their king.

Devil's Advocate question: if the truth was that the books you might be buying will become worthless, what would they say?

They would of course say so and offer an immediate and full refund ...

Not much of a sacrifice to trade your shield for his weapon!

The early Germanic tales quite often mention a kind of opposite approach, a

somewhat cowardly method to kill an especially dangerous or feared enemy.

The attacker(s) threw so many spears or throwing axes at his shield that the

weight finally forced him to drop the shield, and then killed him with spears or

arrows without ever having to get close enough to him to be within his wea-

pon's reach.

@ PhilHibbs:

Yes, I think this is where the idea originally came from, early Germanic thro-

wing spears are often very close copies of a pilum, just a bit more heavy, but

also with the soft, bending part close to the tip.

Axes have generally been shown to do more damage to shields than swords with a blade hit. As the Viking shield that could "catch" blades seem to have been un-rimmed and un-surfaced (that is bare wood planks and a boss: modern reconstructions at least), I don't think it would stand up to axe hits very well with a rim hit.

Yes, indeed. What I had in mind was a maneuver where the shield was "sacrifi-

ced" by being discarded when the opponent's axe "got stuck" in the shield after

a defensive maneuver aimed at making this happen. The opponent would then

either need a moment to "free" his axe from the shield or have to discard his

axe, too - both resulting in a free attack option for the defender.

However, this is more or less pure speculation based upon a small number of des-

criptions of fights.