Harshax

I could not recall this term for the life of me ... thanks!

Planning on heading to the Games Plus this weekend to pick up some Cakebread & Walton books. Does anyone know if C&W offers free/discounted PDFs with purchases of physical copies? EDIT: clarification

I'm prepping for a campaign and waffling on the system I want to use. My players are use to the class-level paradigm of many other popular role-playing games. I'd like to consider Mythras as a ruleset, but to do so, I feel like I'm going to need to provide illustrative archetypes and power down into tiers of competencies. It's been a while since I've read the book, but what I want to do is something along these lines: Define novice archetypes, with X number of points (300?) divided among skills particularly useful to that archetype. eg: Thief: Stealth 75, streetwise 50, fighting style 50, Lie & Cheat: 50, Skullduggery 75 Ranger: Wildcraft 75, Fighting Style 75, Healing 50, Plant Magic 50, Humanoid Lore 50 These are guidelines. They serve as packages for the player who doesn't want to tweak or guidelines for those that do. The second part I want to include is a step away from the micromanagement of skill improvements. I have a tight campaign in the making and I would like the freedom to just tell the players, "You're all journeyman heroes." so that the increased capabilities of the individual character dramatically coincide with the campaign arc. A journeyman thief adds 25 to stealth, 15 to Fighting Style, and 30 points to optional skills, etc. I'd like there to be approximately five tiers - novice, journeyman, master, grandmaster, epic. At each tier, I'd like to illustrate each archetype's competency. Has anyone done something like this? I feel like this is a riff on the cult/guild status system. I also think it's been done in Classic Fantasy, although that might not be precisely how I want to address things.

Has anyone seen or purchased this? https://www.sardisverlag.de/imperium-romanum-211-ad/ It looks positively stunning!

Is there a summary of rules changes between RQ6 and Mythras available?

Avoid to evade repetition?

There's a typo under Combat Style Traits: There appears to be a double space between "Evade skill to" and "blows in hand to hand" implying a omitted word?

I absolutely love the new character sheet. I'm not a fan, personally, of the scratch areas for tracking MP, Hit Points, etc, but I know that is traditional to BRP layouts. I also very much like that the character generation flows like Magic World.

Interesting approach. I loved King of Dragon Pass. I suspect adding choices and options to family backgrounds will be an area rife for infinite fiddling for house-campaigns looking to add depth to local characters or include truly alien characters (non-Dragon Pass characters) in their game. @smiorgan I think if you just don't do the pregen piece, you'll have a the result you're looking for. I can also see great fun in running with no family background and fill in each step of the pregen after a couple adventures. Players get exposed to the campaign world as it exists right now. Get to experience their character organically, then grow into the past that shapes their current view of the world.

This is a question that has been bubbling under the surface of my awareness for some time in regards to my consumption of digital and in-print RPG products. I use many products in their purely digital format, but every once in a while I decide that I really want a print edition as well. I don't know any publisher that offers this, but is it possible to buy the PDF at the listed price and if I choose later to purchase a print edition, do so at a reduced cost?

Does this mean each spell will indicate multiple runic associations? Are these associations going to be multi-cultural? I believe Shield is available to both Storm and Darkness cults. So will this spell list both runes in its description?

Great name!

I hope to see a Hero Quest in the designer notes, soon. Something that illustrates how everything works together. I still have my copy of RQ2. I would love to have some demo material I could run through with some friends.

What about contest as oppose to conflict? It indicates there can be only one winner, but losers are not implicitly vanquished. I too prefer the term exchange over sequence, because exchange in my mind implies risk, reward and chance. This is befitting a contest whereas a sequence can refer to something as mundane as causality such as, the sequence of events included striking a match and causing it to ignite.

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. Also note that good standing in your cult has almost nothing to do with how you gained that POW. You could argue that a initiate of Chalana Arroy would be in poor standing for casting Disruption on an enemy, but not Befuddle. The crux of my argument is that the currency you use to improve your standing in the cult and build toward higher ranking (the acquisition and expenditure of POW) has nothing to do with cult activities in the rules-as-written. That's bad game design and at cross-purposes to immersive game play. Do you really need to be physically present to see how broken the game mechanic is? The math is yours to see and is clearly illustrated in multiple examples. I can attest that I have used the rule as written and been a referee of games where players used it in order to quickly rise in cult rank. I've talked to people at conventions that complained about it and it was a regular topic on listserv where it was examined in depth and purposely stretched to the logical limits of the RAW. If you're not using the rules to emulate the game you wish to play, why bother writing them in the first place?

@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. This POW was often used to buy Divine Magic no-one was willing to use until they attained Adept or Rune Priest level, when such magic became reusable. The exploit was discovered out of a genuine dissatisfaction with how long it took to achieve rank in cults, because all cults had an X-number of Rune Spells as a prerequisite for achieving a rank higher than Initiate. If you want to argue that running about kiting trollkin with Disruption then impaling them with spears makes you closer to Orlanth, I believe you'll find yourself in the minority on that point. If you want to state that you wouldn't allow that at your table because of reasons, that is also fine, but then you have to accept that you're not talking about playing RQ3. You're playing magic tea party loosely based on RuneQuest. The POW economy was a legitimate problem with RQ2/3 because of how the rules were written, not because refs chose not to penalize clever players for exploiting a mechanic that failed to emulate mythic reality. A Hero Point currency, aka experience points specifically earned by achieving skill competencies important to your cult, performing quests for your temple, participating in rituals and hero quests, or other mythically immersive activities is just an example of what POW was suppose to emulate. Such points could be used to improve Physical characteristics, such as POW or other attributes favored by your cult (Strength for Storm Bull, no?). This could be a valuable benchmark for measuring the power and experience of a character that transcends the mundane. Having 10, 20 or more Hero Points or whatever you want to call them could be a readily identifying measurement of a character's spiritual power. It allows RQ-New to have a mechanism that emulates the mythical economy without the pitfalls of exploiting characteristic POW. This also helps keeps old RQ2 stuff compatible with RQ-new. EDIT: I believe Dorastor and Griffin Island both explain in detail how some of the major NPCs exploited the rules as written to achieve the levels of power details in their write-ups. If that's true then that means some official authors acknowledged the problem as well as exploited it equally.

It's been a long time since I've had to explain the POW economy but for those unfamiliar with this RQ2/3 phenomena: POW was mystic currency that was spent permanently for a variety of reasons: Establish your cult status as an initiate Buy Divine Magic Bind Spirits and Elementals Enchant items You earned POW by defeating an entity in POW vs. POW tests. Such as casting a spell on someone. You only earned a chance to improve POW if your opponent had a chance to resist your spell. This lead to a bunch of gamist activities from the players: Don't let your POW Score get to the point where you couldn't acquire POW improvement checks This stalled your progress toward acquiring enough Rune Magic to qualify for Rune Lord or Rune Priest status. Spend it often, but don't spend so much at one time that you become easily susceptible to enemy attacks Do non-optimal actions in combat to earn the chance to improve POW, like successfully cast Disruption against your enemy, before trying to defeat them. These were the most obvious offenses of the POW economy. It helped explain why the world was flush with petty magical trinkets, but didn't explain why the world would eventually have guarded landfills full of useless level I spirit magic matrixes or why people bothered to worship divine beings constrained by Time. All in all, the rules worked counter to the idea that POW was a measurement of a character's connection to the universe, his religious beliefs, and exposure to the deeper mysteries of hero questing. It debased the core concept behind measuring POW and rule-as-written allowed someone to acquire Rune Priest hoards of divine magic via trivial activities. More advanced abuses involved forming your own cult and initiating all your party members so each of you had your own holy day. You would then engage in ritualistic combat, which gave you an opportunity to earn 1d3-1 POW. You would sacrifice POW to each other on a regular basis and then use the accumulated POW to make epic artifacts that rivaled Stormbringer and then go have a picnic in Dorastor. ... and that's not even scratching the surface of some of the abuses dreamt up on the old Gloranthan listserv. EDIT - If instead of POW there was a similar mystical currency called Hero Points or some such, which was awarded by the Referee after appropriate adventures and hero quests or other milestones, I would be less adverse to seeing rules for investing these points in Divine Magic, Bindings, Enchantments, or Heroic Improvements to a character's base Attributes. I would expect such rules for creating these items to also carry with it the dangers of leaving them lying around because of magical sympathy or connection between the character and the item he created.

I'm not here to tell everyone they're crazy and wrong for liking where RQ is going or to convince you that I know better. With the return of all the great designers to the table, I'm sure this edition will be a great version of RuneQuest. I'm just a little more than sad that what I'm reading so far in the dev notes about backward compatibility and the need to get rid of this or that in the last official RuneQuest is so reminiscent of the fan service Wizards gave ye olde guarde of D&D. Fifth edition promised a return to the game the way it was meant to be played and what they delivered was snake oil. Will Wheaton's video series on his campaign, Titan's Grave, utilizing Fantasy Age and played by professional actors seemed to have no problems navigating combat whilst using a similar mechanic to Special Effects. I think the key to success there was organisation, props for reference and the players agreeing on common results when too much time was spent deliberating over every possible result. I admittedly only recognize three official licencors of the game RuneQuest, since it passed from Chaosium: Avalon Hill, Mongoose via two iterations, and The Design Mechanism. GDW might be considered a fourth, but they essentially distributed AH's version if I understand it correctly. If the examples you give are actual licencors of RuneQuest, then I apologize for not recognizing them for being anything more than a riff on the OGL created by Mongoose. The gold standard for conversational tone for the purpose of explaining rules is Savage Worlds. They do a remarkable job of explaining everything you need to know, but certainly at the expense of being completely tone deaf and devoid of setting. Their generic multi-genre explorer's edition clocks in at 160 pages and that's in a digest sized form factor. How much Glorantha needs to be squeezed into the introductory rule book? Pavis & Big Rubble? Dragon Pass? However much that is, shouldn't the rules have all the necessary character, equipment and magic choices to support exactly that much Glorantha? Furthermore, does the bestiary need much more than common flora and fauna to the region presented and chaos monstrosities? Also, don't diminish the frustration of dealing with monster templates. The Griffin from RQ2, RQ6 and Magic World all play very differently if you use the Resistance Table or WillPower as a Skill. These changes detract from the cohesiveness that is supposed to be a d100 system. What's the appeal of purchasing an introductory game system that is supposed to be compatible with similar version of the d100 mechanic when you need a passing familiarity with those other systems or worse, needing to buy a core book for a game you're not even playing, just to understand whether the stat blocks in the module you're reading are bog-standard or paragon examples of a creature type? Regardless of how much work you think needs to go into using MW supplements with RQ6 or OpenQuest, the fact is RQ6 ... the current in print edition of RuneQuest has actual players who may or may not know about Glorantha. These players might have come to the game through Mythic Britain, two different Korantia Books, a meaty generic quest book the excellent Luther Arkwright adaption or a very well received unofficial adoption of a very popular Space Opera setting from popular film. RQ6 has excellent cross compatibility with other genres. RQ-New promises to enjoy no such thing. I just don't understand how any of what's been written should justify gutting the combat system for standardized results. Is it because we are going to be treated to more exhaustive cult write-ups for all the Lightbringers, the Orlanthi and their enemies? While I'm glad more effort is being put forth to integrate Runes into every aspect of the character, a lot of what's been written sounds a tad less like sound game design and more about fan-service and writing a new runequest heartbreaker. yrqwv (your runequest will vary) I've had my say on the subject and I appreciate all of you allowing me this indulgence. I won't stir the pot further. Like I said, I'm sure it will be a great new version of the game. I just hope the new edition does more than simply appeal to my loyalty for the brand and the setting.

My point was that removing Special Effects in favor of the original and standardized results of "ignore armor, impale, sever limb" is working at cross purposes to the goal of streamlining the game. Dispensing with Special Effects is not trimming fat at all ... because there is no unnecessary components to Special Effects in the first place. It's a solid modern subsystem that gives players a certain amount of narrative control. Whether this narrative control is ultimately cinematic or literary is ultimately your decision to make. The whole reason RQ6 is 456 pages is because its a generic RPG that has a very non-conversational style of writing. I believe the rules could be condensed considerably by focusing on the parts specific to Glorantha and adopting a less padantic writing style ... although to be fair, I loathe to criticize the writing style or describe it as pedantic. I am simply at a loss as to how to describe a style that conveys rules in more curt manner without losing clarity. As for having RQ 2.5 and a new TDM version of what in production - Choice is great, but I don't see choice doing either product lines any favors. Having backward compatibility to a game that has been out of print for almost three decades versus updating a setting to a game system in modern circulation with active support for non-Gloranthan settings such as Monster Island, Mythic Britain, and Korantia would have been the smarter play in my completely uneducated opinion. The potential cross-pollination between product lines would have been immensely valuable. People are quick to point out that the gears between iterations of RQ and BRP are the same, but every time you tweak an edition, add rules, or publish multiple conflicting stats for the same creature, you add a certain level of uncertainty and conversion work for the ref. So, no. I don't think it's that cool to have two or three sorta similar game systems claiming compatibility. They could have just taken RQ6, completely dropped the magic chapter in favor of Rune-Specific Gloranthan variant and expanded on Passions. Then the most effort would have been spent polishing the most specific Gloranthan bits, instead of going back to retooling a ruleset that has since seen four revisions by three different companies.

I see myself purchasing the rules for the sake of supporting Glorantha, but I'm definitely among the group of people who thought RQ6 was the better evolution of the rules to date. I still have my tattered yellowed copy of RQ2 and a mint RQ3 on my shelf, but no amount of nostalgia is going to make me crack those open at my table. I hope the devs will post more critical material about design decisions soon, such as whether RQ2 and 40 years of unreleased notes means we're going back to a POW economy and the Resistance Table. Strike Ranks weren't a deal breaker for me, but I don't like them. The return to RQ2/3 combat is unfortunate. Special Effects provide a much more satisfying and faceted outcome to combat resolution. RQ2/3 rules for Bypassing armor, impales and severing limbs is certainly less cinematic to RQ6 because they end up being so predictable that no one would boast about a movie where every combat sequence in the film ends with a severed limb. It sounds like they intend to borrow some rules for replenishing Divine Magic from recent editions. That's certainly a positive change. I want the very best for RuneQuest, but it looks like I'll be supporting rules that are matched more closely to TDM's edition.

Was it always the plan to make the next RuneQuest an updated version of RQ2?

I'm still on the fence about this idea, but I had a chance to work on it some more and so I thought I would share what taking the idea to its logical conclusion would look like. I think this created some interesting effects. Brawn replacing STR+SIZ for calculating damage bonus: This was a early example. It allows for odd characters that are otherwise large but not particularly effective at utilizing their strength and size. The +/- for Damage Modifier is using the aforementioned idea that DM alters the die rolled for damage up or down as opposed to adding more dice to the damage roll. Skill Old Brawn% STR+SIZ Dmg Modifier 15 5 -4 25 10 -3 40 15 -2 50 20 -1 65 25 - 75 30 +1 90 35 +2 100 40 +3 115 45 +4 125 50 +5 150 60 +6 175 70 +7 200 80 +8 225 90 +9 250 100 +10 275 110 +11 300 120 +12 325 130 +13 +25 +10 +1 Endurance calculated from CON+SIZ for calculating both Hit Points and Healing Rate. This was an interesting combination that almost resulted in removing a table. The logic behind SIZ and CON being used for Hit Points could also apply to Healing Rate and to the Endurance Skill itself. Healing rate is essentially Endurance divided by 40. Skill Old Healing Rate Endurance% CON+SIZ Head Chest Abdomen Arm Leg 15 5 1 3 2 1 1 1 25 10 2 4 3 1 2 1 40 15 3 5 4 2 3 1 50 20 4 6 5 3 4 2 65 25 5 7 6 4 5 2 75 30 6 8 7 5 6 2 90 35 7 9 8 6 7 3 100 40 8 10 9 7 8 3 +15 +5 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 3, +1/40 pts Initiative suggested itself as a new skill, based off INT and DEX. As a skill, it measures a character's ability to read a combat situation and act decisively, acting decisively should also translate into more opportunities and contribute to the calculation of both Strike Rank and Action Points. Skill Old Initiative% INT+DEX Action Points 30 12 +1 65 25 +2 90 36 +3 +30 12 +1 Influence granting an Experience Modifier. This also seemed obvious. Characters with high Influence and ties to their community should benefit from an Experience Modifier. Characters with high CHA who are the village pariah should not. Skill Old Influence% CHA 30 6 -1 60 12 0 90 18 1 +30 +6 +1

I played RQ3 almost exclusively for about five or six year. Strike Ranks were a fiddly mechanic that made sense if characters were standing still but if they weren't meant to measure the passage of time then they make even less sense. Take charging for example. If a combatant runs nine meters to stab his opponent with a spear, it doesn't make sense that he spends three strike ranks moving then 6 more strike rank in before his spear tips reaches his opponent. I played them by the book and appreciated the attempt but eventually stopped using them. While I do fondly remember the authors citing their experience in tourneys at the SCA being justification for the rules, I have since watched many combats both real and mock, with weapons and without and find them to be a lackluster mechanism for pacing combat. They don't work for me. They add unnecessary math to calculate action times and quite often waste time as the referee rattles off strike ranks where no one is doing anything except still swinging there sword. It's almost like they predicted bullet time as an entertaining construct in an action sequence, however there's just not enough going on in a round of combat to make SRs fun for anything except watching slow motion action sequence in movies. Lastly and leastly I often find myself mentally comentating on my actions as if I'm being a referee in my own game. If I fail to do something, i will often state that i failed my skill check. It's a culture reference ingrained in me and I'm sure many of you do the same. Not so with melee. I haven't been in a fist fight in about five years. In fact, the days of expecting fisticuffs as a matter of course in my day to day are far behind me. Still, I have a hard time performing a mental playback of actual fights in game terms and just prefer a more general mechanic like performing actions in DEX order and working through the list of participants until everyone has resolved their actions. It seems fair and adequately describes the sequence of events I've witnessed or participated in without being overly simulationist.

HarnMaster attack resolution went like this: 1. Attacker Roll compared to Defender Roll to determine amount of damage to roll. Yes, the degree of success was much more important when calculating damage than the actual weapon in HarnMaster. 2. Roll d100 to determine Hit Location. 3. Damage Roll + Weapon Aspect - Armor determined the wound level. HarnMaster had 16 major Hit Locations. With the Face having six sub-locations if that level of detail was desired. 4. Injured character makes a Endurance check You can see the entire combat table for HarnMaster here: http://www.columbiagames.com/resources/4001/harnmaster-combattables.pdf Overall, this method seems to net 1 additional roll over the existing RQ Method: 1. Attacker Roll compared to Defender Roll 2. Hit Location Determined 3. Damage Rolled - Armor = Injury. 4. Apply effect of injury ... (major wound, bleed out, unconscious, etc)

I mention HarnMaster a lot on these forums. It has a pretty interesting wound system which is well outlined here: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9298.phtml Here's a rough draft regarding how I would implement this in RuneQuest. A character's Endurance is the average of CON+SIZ. This value determines an individual's threshold for pain and injury. Larger and more durable creatures take less severe injuries and are less likely to go into shock or fall unconscious when injured. The table below outlines the severity of an injury based on damage rolled against a create of a certain CON/SIZ. AVG(CON+SIZ) Minor Serious Grievous Kill 11 1+ 5 13 17 24 1+ 7 17 23 36 1+ 8 19 26 48 1+ 9 21 29 60 1+ 10 23 32 72 1+ 11 25 35 84 1+ 12 27 38 96 1+ 13 29 41 108 1+ 14 31 44 Healing Rate Days Weeks Months Months Condition Test 1 2 3 4* Difficulty Test - Hard Formidable Herculean** * Initial test against a Killing blow. Else, treat as Grievous ** Skill tests in round that a killing blow was received. Else, treat as Grievous. Each would heals separately. The original amount of damage should be recorded with the type of injury, to calculate the number of days, weeks, or months a particular injury requires to heal. For example, and character with an average SIZ & CON of 13, would suffer a Serious injury if they are hit for more than 7 points of damage (after subtracting armor) and a Grievous injury if the damage exceeds 17 points. An injury with a chance to instantly kill the character would have to total 23 points or more after subtracting Armor. A Condition test is made every time a character receives a new injury. This test is equal to a number of d6 equal to the total number of injuries received. Suffering three minor injuries, or one minor and one serious, would require a Condition test of 3d6. If this test exceeds the character's Endurance, then that character goes into shock and falls unconscious. A Killing Blow is just that ... a chance that a character is killed instantly. The first time a character receives a Killing Blow, 4 dice are rolled in addition to the sum of previous injuries. If the Character remains conscious, the injury is treated as a Grievous one after that initial test. Difficult Test - this is a skill penalty applied to tests made by the character. Only the most severe penalty applies. Alternative: For granularity, use hit locations and modify the would thresholds up or down depending on the hit location. The table above assumes a chest wound. The threshold between minor and serious would be smaller for a head injury and smaller still for an arm injury. If you choose to get rid of hit locations all together, I would not randomize armor protection. The system is already pretty deadly. Let combat special effects indicate when a blow has struck an unguarded area.