DreadDomain

@MOB what about this question (slightly clarified from my original post)?

At the time it was not a problem tthat we tried to solved because we didn't that as a problem. Remember, we were still using weapon SR as a reach mechanism so at long range a spear could me nimble and fast (low SR) but if closed within its optimal reach, it would become more difficult to maneuver. For us the abstraction was good enough. Your solution is a tad more abstract as it folds in reach (low melee SR tends to act first in MR) and nimbleness (high melee SR tends to attack more often in a MR). This might be more adequate for RQG since RQG does not have any closing mechanism.

Not it's not complicated. You simply have to focus on what you (a generic "you" here) are trying to achieve. It is always tempting to throw the baby with the bath water ( why use MR? Why use statement of intents? Why...?) but it does not have to be so. You said it yourself, if you only want to attack multiple times in a round, just allow multiple attacks. There is nothing wrong with rebuilding from the ground up but sometimes a couple of simple houserules is enough for the job.

Nice. Definitely something to try. I like it (theoritically of course).

The "building from the ground up" is a totally irrelevant argument so I would not worry too much about it. It doesn't really matter how many times the argument is repeated, the fact is in this conversation, I am the only one who went through the trials and playtests to make RQ3 work for us. We tried massive changes and it wasn't worth the effort so in the end we settled on minor changes and gave us what we wanted. In RQ3, the changes implemented did not have reaching consequences but I agree with you and I suspect it might be the case in RQG if only bacause of the more prevalent magic. I haven't played RQG so I would play it RAW to start with and if I suspected I would find it lacking, my first temptation would be to ignore rules rather than adding rules. Potential candidates to ignore would be: - Activities within melee (use as per activities outside of melee) - Dual wielding special rules (dual wielding already has benefits on its own) - Splitting attacks - Penalties to multiple defenses Although, I might feel like ignoring these rules could make the game simpler and more to my liking, I have no clue if it really would as I did not try them (nor RAW). I do not quite appreciate the impact magic would have on the play experience.

To make it clear, I do not try to reproduce Conan but my Glorantha that was heavily influenced by RQ3. And maybe that's it. Maybe the inability to defeat an opponent by martial prowess is a feature. Maybe the mechanistic nature of melee combat is a feature. Maybe Glorantha, and by extension RQG, is just not for me anymore. I am just not willing to accept it yet.

Yes, this is exactly it. It is less about detail or reslism and more about making sense within the parameters of the game. Pendragon makes sense in a Pendragon context. There is so many details in RQ that a one attack per 12 seconds do not make sense to me. We had alot of experience with RQ3 so we could make the changes that would give us the desirable flavour. I have no experience with RQG so discussing a theoritical solution is fun but only playing it can confirm it. In the end it could be as simple as ignoring the fact that the MR is 12 seconds and consider it elastic or just allowing multipke attacks but it could be much involved, building from the ground up as you say or even forget about RQG altogether and use another game. You mention Mythras and let's be honest Mythras is a fantastic game. It is in many ways superior to RQG and maybe an easier solution would be to simply port the Rune system in Mythras and run with it. The fact is RQG has alot of positive things going for it so I'd rather try to make it work for me. If I wanted to play in the Hyborian Age, would I use RQG? No, I would use Mythras. But in a Gloranthan context, I'd rather give RQG a chance. It's just that I'd like melee combat to stand on its own. But I agree maybe it can't. Magic in RQG has much more profound impact than it had in RQ3 and maybe combat cannot be looked at without that lens.

@MOB will the pdf be updated to reflect the print copy or foes the print copy already reflects the current pdf?

Conan and Spactacus are clearly not using combat magic so that doesn't help. As for skills over 100%, It does help but it means the skills need to be insanely high (as in beyond reasonable level even for heroic figures like Conan, Spartacus, Gannicus Crixius, Agron and company) to make it work. I can see these combats working fairly easily (with reasonable if heroic stats) in Mythras, HERO, GURPS, TDE, even KAP and HQ... but not RQG (but again, would love to be proven wrong).

Yes, it would be much more useful. Keep in mind thought that what I was describing above were house rules on RQ3 decades ago. I would have to have a cold hard look at how it could be applied to RQG and obviously playtest it. But still, there are two things that would be useful. First, as I already expressed, the RQ2/3/G constraint on the number of attacks in a MR annoys me because I find it artificial and mechanistic, I feel it lacks versimilitude (really, I cannot try to attack two different opponent in 12 seconds?) and it prevents me from immersing or feeling tactical engaged in melee combat. While rewatching the Spartacus series or rereading Robert E. Howard, I reflected that there was no way such combat could be recreated in RQG. So the first question is, if someone feels somewhat the same what solution have they used? Second, I fully appreciate that my sentiment is not universally shared and for some the limit of attacks in 12 seconds is not a bug, but a feature. I am interested to learn why it is the case. Do you feel you can recreate immersive, visceral combat as seen in literature (REH) or on telly (Spartacus, GoT, etc...)? Does the impossibility to attack two different opponent whith a single weapon bother you? Do you feel immersed and tactically engaged. To be honest, I would love to be convinced that the system can work for me exactly as it is.

Nor is it rebuilding from the ground up Absolutely! Of course it offered a different play experience. House ruling without changing/improving play experience is rather an exercise in futility or change for the change of sake. Over time RQ3 did not offer the play experience we wanted so we house ruled it until it did.

Let's say that we clearly disagree. Continuing this exchange is becoming rather pointless as we seem to argue on a side issue (is it from the ground up or not) that is not bringing anything to the conversation.

You do realise that what I just described can be summarize by: 1) Take RQ3 melee combat 2) ignore the 1 attack and 1 parry per MR constraint 3) add a few options to closing in combat 4) playtest and tweak as require You and I have very different of building from the ground up. Revolution d100 is building from the ground up. Would you consider RQG a game built from the ground up. As for RQ3 and RQG, I agree, I would need to replaytest this. Not only are the games slightly different but these were the house rules we used 30 years ago!

Is the printed book the same as the pdf currently in the store?

Of course we could and as I said we did as early as late 80's. The modifications did not create more issues than it solved and the issues it did create were resolved at the time. Yes. Or no. It depends. Some groups will see that as a feature as dual wielding does not become the de facto style become you finally could attack twice in a MR. At the same time, you still gain some benefits. A sword and board fighter will get better defense (from the shield) while a dual-wielder has both versatility (if he chooses different weapons) and a back-up weapon. Of course it comes at the price of extra training. Back then, we saw that as a feature. Not really, it's is just a pacing mechanism and RQG already uses this exact pacing for Missile Attacks. Resolving melee attacks the same way improves internal consistency and reduce confusion. However, so what if SR were a measure of time, albeit inaccurate? The confusion is already created by having a 12 seconds MR divided in 12 SR. So a big, dextrous and quick fighter with a long weapon would be advantaged against a small, clumsy, slow fighter with a small knife. Yes, we also saw that as a feature. What we saw at the time as a bug was that someone with a big or long weapon (low SR) would strike often and a small, short weapon (high SR) would be slow. We ended accepting that while a shorter weapon fighter would be kept at bay, opportunities to strike would be lower and we slightly modified the Close Combat maneuver from RQ3. From memory, in addition to the normal rule, there were three other situations for someone with a short weapon to slide with the longer weapon fighter's defense: 1) if the short weapon fighter would succeed his attack and the long weapon would fail his defense 2) if the short weapon fighter would get a special on his defense 3) if the short weapon fighter would spend a MR successfully defending against the longer weapon fighter (the opposite of disengaging) Once inside the defense, we were flipping the weapon SR (we tried many variants here and I cannot remember if we were also flipping the SIZ SR). The longer weapon fighter had to regain an appropriate reach in the same way described above. It did create quite a few exciting back and forth. As for cramped areas, in RQ3 the rule was to halves the skill%. I can tell you, it was a big incentive to drop/not use a big weapon and have something smaller. I am not "starting to suspect", we played that way for many years . Good points though. We also played with dropping the MR and the Statement of intents but finally realised it gave a structure to the flow of action and helped everyone to decide quickly what they wanted to do in the MR and avoided/reduced decision paralsys in combat. I believe we tried three different things with defenses: 1) unlimited defense 2) each subsequent defense is at a penalty (we tried a few penalties but I believe we used -10% the most) 3) each defense push your next action by 1 SR We flip flopped between the three, they all worked well for us and never quite decided which one we preferred. The first was just easier and the second and third were forcing us to take more tactical decisions. I feel you might be selling the SR system short because we found it to be very easy to change and quite resilient to these changes. The changes we adopted ot those we rejected were less about breaking the system or not and more about creating and enjoyable, immersive flow without cluttering ourselves with extra rules. Like I said, we initially tried different add-ons inspired by GURPS or HERO but dropped them to come back to only a few tweaks to the RAW of RQ. I quite like Mythras (and would never choose Legend over it) and haven't tried Revolution yet. The thing is, I believe RQG is a pretty good game and it just make more sense to use it to play in Glorantha. And it's not that the "core assumption of the game doesn't work for me" (most of RQG works for me). I simply do not like the straightjacket put on the SR system in melee combat.