Mugen

I quite like D&D 4th edition "Skill Challenges", even though they may seem too much "gamist" to some people. Skill Challenges were introduced as a means to have a technical framework for non-combat "encounters", that can be rewarded with experience points, but can be used without this notion. Basically, a Skill Challenge is a situation which requires more than 1 skill use to resolve. Players state their intent and make a roll if the GM considers it fits the task. Difficulty will depend on whether or not you idea can contribute to the task. It's also possible to roll just to aid another player, which would not count as a success or failure. You need X successes before rolling Y failures to succeed (originally, Y was equal to X, but it was later set to 3). In some cases, failures will change the context of the adventure.

Steve Perrin's Quest Rules also had a similar success level at half success chance. As I never purchased the combat rules, I don't know what is the impact on combat. IIRC, James Bond 007 also had such a success level step. Definitely.

@NozbatNever heard of this show ! 😄 From what I can see, it looks a lot like Le Chevalier de Pardaillec (sorry, I couldn't find an english version).

I'm not keen on using runic influences here, as I think Sorcery should primarily be based on skills. That's an idea I had back in the MRQ1 days, but never made into a real ruleset : use Runic Magic skills as a base, and put Sorcery Skills on top of those. Not very different from the RQG Runes & Techniques, in fact, but with R&T as skills.

Yes, that's one of the possible fixes I have in mind. Runes seem like a natural fit for those categories.

To me, Free INT is also a major concern, but so is the need to develop an individual skill for every different spell (even though Intensity, Range and Duration are gone). IMHO, knowing some Fire-based spells should give a bonus when learning a new Fire spell. But it's a complaint I can also make for weapon skills.

My history with RQ3 is similar to yours, I think. At first, I really tried to play in Glorantha, and bought everything that was available in French (that is, essentially Gods of Glorantha and Genertela). But I failed miserably to capture the essence of that world. But I loved the rules, and didn't want to give up on them. So, I created a setting that was built from the ground to be compatible with RQ3. Among other things, the cultures followed the d8 table : 1/8th were primitive, 2/8th were Nomad, 3/8th were Barbarian and the rest were Civilised... Nowadays, there are a lot of rules from RQ3 I can't stand anymore (Skill bonuses, Strike Ranks, for instance) and others I never really used (Fatigue). But my hopes for RQG was for something closer to RQ3 than RQ2 or Mythras while also being simpler.

As for myself, I'd be in favor of having Hit Points that are essentially Fatigue/Morale Points, and the only noteworthy Wounds are the result of a StormBringer-like "Major Wound" rule, or continuing the fight with few or no Hit Points remaining.

Yes. A minor complaint I'd have is that I prefer crit chances to be 1/10th of your skill rather than 1/20th. Of course, I can make crits happen if I roll a 1 or a 2, but it feels less natural than rolling under the 10s of a skill with a d100. I'd be more in favor of having fumbles when you roll a natural 20

I prefer to have base skill values set to 2 x a characteristic, with average base values around 21% to 26% and a maximum of 36% at character creation (and possibly 42% with RQ3 rules for maximum characteristics). Difficult skills might start at lower values, of course. Concerning difficulty, it seems I completely misunderstood your post, sorry. For some reason, I thought that the lower the difficulty, the harder the task was...

So, if your skill is inferior to the difficulty of the task, it has no effect whatsoever? I think that's counterintuitive. So, if 2 characters with combat skill 99% fight against each other, they'll basically just hit each other every turn unless one of them rolls a crit, or the PC spends energy points ? That's not how I'd envision a fight between 2 skilled fighters. I think you need to have another solution for this case. As for myself, I dislike having different scales for characteristics, because it means I have to treat INT differently from the others, and I can't roll x times and assign results as I want. Couldn't you re-use your "scale" mechanism for INT, too ? Not that much, given there's only a 15% difference between someone with a 3 and another one with 18, and 7 or 8% difference between them and an average person.

Just to clarify : the percentiles/d20 divide worked like in Bushido (and other FGU games, I guess). You never rolled a d100, the percentile value was just here to record experience. It's also a game that used Margins of Success, by the way. I remember that in its second edition ("Premières Légendes Celtiques"), the MoS of the confirmation roll was added to the first. D&D3.X also had "confirmation rolls" on a 20, but it disappeared in 4th and 5th editions.

I don't remember how CoC7 works, but I'm personally in favor of letting the highest roll win if both protagonists fail their roll in a skill opposition. Warhammer 4th edition does this, but it uses margin of success, and not straight reading of the roll. That is, if you rolled 30 and your skill is 47, your MoS is 1. If you rolled 63, it's -2. If your opponent had a skill of 50 and rolled 60 (MoS -1), you' d beat him if you rolled 30 and he'd beat you if you rolled 63. From a mathematical point of view, there's not much difference between this and the "roll under your skill, but as close as your skill as possible" approach, if the highest roll also wins in a double failure case. But it requires less subtractions. So, you have to chose between a quick and easy but counter-intuitive method, or a clunky but intuitive method. Or you can re-work the game to make it roll-over, using d20+skill instead. Skill oppositions will be simple and intuitive.

But you're speaking of a game that was specifically designed with the idea in mind that skilled characters should not overshadow average, unskilled characters, unless they're from the rogue or bard class. At level 20, a maximized non-rogue character is going to have 55% more chance of success than an untrained character with ability 10. Quite like if in BRP only "rogues" could go over 80 with a skill with a base of 25.

You don't add particles to a name because you need it. You say l'Allemagne, la France, l'Angleterre, and Londres, Paris, Berlin or Haïti, but not le Londres, le Patis, le Berlin or l'Haïti. It seems most names with an article were country names, and the only exception I could find was Haiti. Some town names have articles : Le Havre, Le Crotoy, etc. For instance, there's a movie named "Dans Paris", and not "Dans (le/la) Paris ", and it doesn't sound weird at all. Saying "je vis dans Paris" is not weird either. Although one could consider that it's easy to understand the concept of living inside a city but it can't apply to a whole fabtasy world.

My gut feeling concerning France is that D&D has always been the number one game in terms of number of players and sales, and by a large margin (except perhaps during the 4th edition days), and CoC second. I think that a reason for this success and the lack of a national equivalent to Drakkar or Demoner or Das Schwarz Auge is that in the early 80s, D&D was considered by many as "the true game", and other equivalent games only as ersatz. DSA was rather successful, having 2 competing editions, one for toy stores and the other for book shops, but national equivalents like L'Utlime Épreuve were often overlooked.

I thought about this, but I don't think it's a valid comparison, as we're talking about celestial bodies rather than fantasy worlds. You wouldn't say "sur le Paradis" or "sur Asgard"' for instance. Unless you're referring to a world where Asgard is a planet, of course.

Well, it was only the 3rd "premium" supplement in the french edition, after Gods of Glorantha and Genertela. But, even if I had never heard of those before, it felt odd to me crystals had not been introduced before.

I guess a reason why cristals were rarer in RQ3 is because they were not present in the core rules, and you needed to buy Elder Secrets to find rules for them.

I don't know if this was changed in RQG, but in RQ3 MPs were more important than POW for Sorcery. Which explains why Vampires could be Sorcerers despite having 0 POW.

I disagree, even if I can't provide any grammar rule to support my claim. To me, "en Glorantha" sounds as strange as if you had said "en Lyon" or "en Paris". The difference I make is that Glorantha, Lyon or Paris are words that do not take an article such as le, la or les in front of it, contrarily to... any real-word country or continent names I can thing of. Edit : I found one exemple that contradicts me (and others certainly exist) with Haiti. I wound not say "dans Haïti".... 😞

While both systems are indeed very different, I see HQ as an evolution of Pendragon, which was itself an evolution of BRP. The original system for conflict resolution, with APs set to the value of the ability used in the conflict, was very reminiscent of RuneQuest Spirit Combat, where POW was opposed and Magic Points served as "Hit Points". It's even more clear since HQ:G introduced "roll high wins" as a method to break ties.

I've been in favor of this change (along with roll high wins) since the beginnings of HeroWars. I'd perhaps use a reroll instead of a straight 2 successes if the d20 equals TN, but it's really not important. The only reason to not opt for this was that some results in the HW and HQ1 opposition table had "exchange", where you drained APs from your opponent. But since AP are now just an option, it's better to do it that way.

IIRC, RuneQuest 3 had an option to let players allot points freely. It's not something I'd do with BRP myself, though, given the min/max potential.

That's how you deal with it, but I don't remember rules for this anywhere. For instance, if two blacksmiths with different skill levels work on the same tool, does the one with the best skill create a better tool, or does he create it quicker ?