Mugen

I remember Steve Perrin created a draft (well, it was a draft, but was published barely unchanged) for Runic Magic during the infamous playtest, but I don't remember if the idea was originally from him, or from previous playtest documents from Mongoose.

Fine. That's how I would have houseruled it on the fly if a player asked to do it.

Well, there is a "Regain footing" action, but it stipulates you must not be engaged with an opponent to perform it. I must say that makes sense to me.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. For instance, I think the RuneQuest 3/G set of skill modifiers makes a good base list of skills : -Agility, Communication, Knowledge, Magic, Manipulation, Perception, Stealth, which I'll complete with Melee and Marksmanship. I'd add a "specialties" rule that let one focus on an aspect of a skill and get a bonus when this aspect is concerned. For instance, a good swordsman could have Melee 60 and +20% when using a sword. It's not far from D100 Revolution's skill and traits rule, except this game have a few more skills.

Based on my knowledge of RQ2: 1. An important difference is that characters have generic hit points and localized hit points. If you're hit in the arm for 3 points, both generic hit points and arm hit points will be decreased by 3 points. Skills have a base value, and belong to one of 7 categories. Each category has a modifier attached to it, which is expressed as a multiple of 5%. Contrarily to RQ6, a 1-point difference in a characteristic will usually not have any impact on these modifiers. For instance, in RQ2 characters with STR 17 to 20 will all get the same +5% modifier to attack skills, and characters with STR 21 to 24 will all get +10% to those skills. 2. The most obvious difference is that the number of actions is not based on characters' DEX and INT. Another major difference is that initiative use "Strike Ranks", which are determined by your DEX, SIZ (for melee attacks) and weapon length. SR range from 1 (quickiest action) to 12 (very slow action, or second action in a round). Usually, a bowman will attack at SR 3, an pole arm fighter at SR 5, and a 1 handed weapon fighter at SR 7. Another difference is how Sorcery will work. In RQG, each spell will need a different skill, and you need to spend as many MPs as you put effects levels (intensity, Range, Duration) in a spell. You also need to master Runes and Techniques before learning spells, a process that is binary (that is, you either have mastered a Rune -or a Technique-or not), and not related to your runes affinities.

Well, what I propose here is a base damage value. Even though In didn't say it, my intention was to add a weapon factor to it, either a fixed one or a die. Skills above 100% give higher chances of scoring a special or a crit, and reduce the chances to roll lower possible results : when your chance of rolling a special is 19+, you'll never get a result of 1, and once you reach 29 (with skill 142), you'll never get a 3. I agree though that my proposal for crits could be changed, as they stop being different from specials once you reach skill level 100% or more. Perhaps (skill/5) ?

I would simply use the tens of the roll to determine base damage. Doing so, you'll have a base value that highly depends on skill : -For a 50% skill, you'll have a value between 1 and 5 (with 9% chance to roll a 1, 1% to roll a 5, and 10% to roll each result between 2 and 4) -For a 80% skill, you'll have a value between 1 and 8 (with 3% chance to roll a 1, 1% to roll a 8, and 10% to roll each result between 2 and 7). For a special strike, I'd use the 10s of the skill instead. For a critical strike, I'd use 10 instead (or the 10s for skills above 110%).

There's a lot to be said about first MRQ. I was in the infamous playtest, and I know what piece of crap was their first playtest document. Their latest one, revised by Kenneth Hyte, was good, but for some reason they decided to change it, for the worst. But MRQII is a very good game. I also think both introduction books for Glorantha 2nd Age are excellent. I love how the one for MRQ2 starts from a very broad view of the world and make successive zooms to provide some very detailed settings in Ralios. Their other Gloranthan books seemed crappy enough that I never bought any.

I don't. Really, I prefer skill opposition rules, and Strike Ranks always seem to create characters with the same SR value to me. I agree. Yet, some people seem to think that they need some mechanical bits to differenciate their character from their neighbor... In my experience, Flaws are often a means to increase starting character "creation points" pool, and I prefer to hand more points to players than have a band of psychopaths with enemies I will have to handle. I like how 7th Sea 1st edition treated them, however : if one of your damocles appears in a game, you earn extra XPs. I'm not really a fan of CoC 7th edition, but I have to say my latest attempt at using CoC by the book (*) was painful, as I was always searching for the most appropriate skill for every situation, and was never satisfied with what I chose. So, if anything, I'd say that CoC's skill list needs fixing. (*) I was a GM in a multi-GM game made for a friend's bachelor's party, and I had no choice for the system.

As for myself, I see 3 possible ways to add Folk Magic in the game: -Add the Folk Magic as another magic system, dissociated with Sorcery. -Add the Folk Magic spells to Sorcery. -Replace Sorcery's most simple spells with their Folk Magic equivalent. As for myself, I would do either option 2 or 3, as there is a lot of redundant spells between both magic systems. And if you chose Option 1, I would not introduce a "Folk Magic" skill either.

A minimum 1% seems fine to me.

Well, you could simply add a die, or a static bonus, to the tens of the roll, based what you consider an "average fighter" in the original game. Say, for instance, you consider that average guy to have a 60% skill, a d4 bonus to damage and a broadsword (d8+1 dmg), for an average 8 damage per strike. On average, the value of the 10s die of a d100 roll under 60 will be 2.5. Which means I'll'have to add 5 or 6 to the 10s die to get the same similar damage, or... a d8+1 for more randomness (I was quite lucky in choosing 60%, I admit...). Edit : yes, damage output can go up to 2 point over what my average guy can do in BRP, but that's counterbalanced by the fact Atgxtg's system doesn't have crits.

Maybe I was not clear : what I meant is if you have 4X% chance of success, you have a critical if you roll under 04. So, yes, 10% of your successes are criticals if your chances of success are under 100%. But they keep increasing if you go past 100%, and, for instance, they will represent 15% of those if your chances are between 150 and 159.

In my version of this system, Criticals happen when the roll is under the tens of the chances of success. In such a case, the "0" is read as a 10. Otherwise, it is a 0.

In the latest playtest version of Mongoose RuneQuest 1, if attacker and defender had the same level of success, the result was different depending on who had the highest roll. For instance, in case of a parry: -If the attacker had the highest roll, parrying weapon's AP were substracted from damage. -If the defender had the highest roll, twice parrying weapon's AP were substracted from damage. Usually, weapons had 4 AP in MRQ1. Too bad this was discarded in the published rules...

Note that, In terms of probabilities, this method gives almost the same results as "roll under skill, highest roll wins", but requires 2 additional subtractions.

In my view, "roll under, highest roll wins" is a very simple and efficient way to solve an opposition between 2 characters, and in my opinion the most elegant way to do it in a roll under game, even though it needs special rules for skills above 100.

About the "highest roll wins" versus "lowest roll wins". There's a problem with "lowest roll wins' : if the character rolls over his opponent's skill and below his own skill, he can't win if both rolled a success. Say for instance I have skill 65 and my opponent has 40. If I roll 55, my only chance to win is that my opponent misses his roll. With the highest roll win option, it's the opposite : if I roll between 41 and 65, my opponent must roll a critical to win. With some skill values, high roll wins even gives higher chances of success to the lowest skill.

I own a 4 panel RQII GM screen. Its leftmost panel is white with the name RuneQuest II written on it and a grey luck rune. Its rightmost panel shows a dragon head. Some tables will be useful for RQ6/Mythras, such as the weapon tables.

Other Suns, too. Is Space Opera % based ?

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One thing I'd change in OQ, though, is the way starting experience is assigned. I think it doesn't allow for much character diversity. I also don't like the fact it uses the Mongoose RuneQuest versions of the sorcery spells Fly and Tap. Oh, and base skill values. I prefer the more homogeneous Stat1 + Stat2 or Stat x2 from RuneQuest 6.

If I was to play BRP again, I think I'd tie each skill with only one of 4 characteristics (STR, DEX, INT or CHA) and use CON and POW essentially as HP and MP sources.

You could try OpenQuest or D100 Revolution. OQ is a very simple version of BRP, with the 3 magic systems of RuneQuest 3 added (and a much simpler version of Sorcery). D100 Revolution is a multi-genre, BRP-related game which offers modular complexity. At its lowest complexity level, every context works the same : each protagonist gets "hit points" equal to one of its characteristics, and will lose some after each successful attack by its opponent. It also uses few skills and "traits" which are used to increase skills.

You should be very careful of the impact of POW economy on skills. If you have to change 15 skills every time you spend or gain POW, it might be problematic.