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Oh, that might explain the minotaurs in the building across the "street" from the Thanatar temple... Thanks for the help, I think I can make it make sense now...

In doing some just in time prep (aka making random rolls while the players sit across the screen waiting), I rolled three random runes marked on a plinth and got Spirit, Beast, and Harmony. Among my RQ2 cults they don't match any cult (didn't pore through the RQ3 stuff). Do these runes happen to match any cults? If not, does anyone have any ideas what they might signify? Oh, and for a bit more information and excitement, the plinth is next to a small Thanatar temple in a ruin in the Big Rubble... And on a related note, someone posted somewhere (here, Facebook? MeWe) about a Thanatar Johnstown Compendium thing they were working on and I can't find the reference anymore...

Yea it would be cool to have a registry of online games here just to see what all is being run. I run an RQ1 game on Roll20 but I’m currently full, still, I’d be happy to list. Roll20 and Facebook have been good places to recruit.

Yep, this looks like a pretty easy purchase to justify for me. You've got a winner here.

Yes, rules need to be consistent - to a point. There can be reasons for variation. These may or may not be obvious. But let me share a little something from my history of RuneQuest play (I've been playing since 1978). Back in the early days, a very nice gentleman named John T. Sapienza (who also created many of the character sheets in the early days - some very excellent character sheets by the way) came out with a "unified" table of weapons. He made similar weapons across all types of weapons (sword, mace, spear, axe) that followed some basic patterns. I was like "ooh, this is so cool" and started using his weapons table. Fast forward some time of playing with those. I noticed that all of a sudden the choice of weapon seemed less significant, the charm of the old RQ1 weapons table with its quirks was gone. The new more "unified" weapons table was NOT better. Not for me. And now that I recently did an exhaustive comparison of RQ1 and RQ2 and actually looked at how the weapons changed (RQ2 weapons are more unified that RQ1 but not as unified as John T. Sapienza's), I realized yet another reason to stick with RQ1. Or another story, this from a different game system, Arcana Unearthed (an alternate "Players Handbook for D&D 3.0). That system has some energy spells that are unified, in fact, you get to decide the energy type at casting time. And guess what happens. Ooh, we're fighting something immune to fire, I'll cast lightning. Heck, don't know if it has immunity and we don't know it has a vulnerability? Cast the energy type least likely to have resistance. No, I didn't really like that. It was annoying (despite how much otherwise I enjoyed the system). Besides, RQ actually has a lot of symmetry in it's magic. Bladesharp has sister spells for other weapon types. Protection has the same relative effect on damage as Bladesharp. Now yea, the system COULD have had "Enchant Weapon" instead of Bladesharp, but different cults prefer different weapon types (and some even ban some weapon types) and by not having a generic spell, those cult differences can be shown. And it's less confusing to have differently named spells rather than write down "Enchant Weapon, Blade" if you have a unified spell but you have to pick the version to learn. And Spirit Magic, Rune Magic, and Sorcery all work differently in ways that it doesn't make sense to share spells across them. There may be spells that look the same between these magic types, but they are still different spells and them having slightly different effects may well make sense. Frank

Yea, I originally thought is was more of a shine and polish, which was a lot of my justification for NOT purchasing RQ2 when it came out. But after doing a page by page comparison, I realized there are a lot more changes than I had thought previously. One day I will summon the energy to spruce up my comparison document (similar to my one for Classic Traveller) and submit it to Chaosium to be published. But that will be a significant amount of effort. In this thread I've just tried to highlight what struck me as the most significant changes.

With the importance of INT in RQ1/2, I don't allow anything that lets you pick and chose stats, but I do use 4d6k3 for attributes, 3d6k2+6 for INT. I did actually have one campaign where I allowed point buy for attributes, but in that campaign, I didn't compute Ability Bonus from attributes, instead, you got to assign one Ability Bonus +25%, two at +20%, two at +15%, two at +10%, and one at +5% out of Attack, Parry, Defense, Manipulation, Stealth, Knowledge, Perception, and Communication. With that, the value of each attribute became equal enough that point buy worked out ok. It does lead to some optimization, have at least a 14 DEX (so you can raise to 21, I don't allow increase past 1.5x original), SIZ will be the largest of STR, CON, and SIZ ideally (since you can't raise SIZ), and INT will be as high as you can muster. But there were enough trade offs. Actually, when I first started the current campaign, I did straight 3d6 rolls (2d6+6 for INT). We still have one original character. If someone really was unhappy, I'd let them roll another character, but so far, 4d6k3 has made for pretty reasonable characters.

Ah, what was the mystery that we cleared up? I always love to talk RQ1!

Cool, thanks. And ordered to complete my Classic RQ print collection...

Oh, and one more thought... Maths are really cool. But sometimes holding too tight to elegant maths results in something that isn't as fun or flavorful. An acquaintance of mine, one John T. Sapienza (you might recognize the name) once published a mathematically elegant table of weapons for RQ. When it came out, I loved it. And then I returned to the RQ1 weapons table because the Sapienza weapon table turned out to reduce flavor rather than increasing it. In fact, when I did my big page by page comparison of RQ1 and RQ2, I realized yet another place I don't like the changes of RQ2, the RQ2 weapon table is less flavorful to me even if it might be more elegant or more realistic or whatever label you want to apply.

People can be wrong about what a given probability actually is, but people can't be wrong about their preference for how a particular way of determining what the probability of success is. Someone isn't wrong for liking changing the multiplier for harder (or easier) tasks. I understand probabilities pretty good and I love it. I also like additive modifiers just fine too. And yes, additive vs multiplicative do different things. Different parts of the game system are doing different things. Maybe it should be noted that I have been playing RQ since 1978 and actually still prefer the original rules. The original rules actually had almost no probability modifiers for skills except Defense for combat, and 1/2 skill for long range of bows. I think Apple Lane added +/- 20% for height advantage. RQ2 added a few more modifiers. And yea, most games bell curves are poor approximations of the normal distribution bell curve. That's why I love that college system (that was developed somewhere around 1980) that actually uses the normal distribution for resolution. An Excel formula that produces almost exactly the table we used in college (2 numbers on the table are different) is =NORMDIST(-$ADJ,0,$STDEV,TRUE) where $ADJ is the adjustment modifier you are solving for, said modifier to be added to the skill rating to compare against the target number and $STDEV is the number of adjustment points in one standard deviation (the game uses 20/3 or 6.6666... for this, so a +7 adjustment modifier is just slightly past the first standard deviation. It's that simple, though my friend when he was developing the game didn't have a handy NORMDIST function... Well, maybe he had access to a Fortan library that contained such a function, but he couldn't just drop a formula into repeated cells in a spreadsheet. And that's way more explanation that you were looking for 🙂 , if you even cared about an explanation...

How do you feel about crits and fumbles? They are probability multipliers. Should we change it so a crit is scored if you roll, I dunno, Skill-50 or lower? So someone with a skill 100 crits half the time, and someone with a skill 50 or below never crits, or always crits 5% of the time? And then how do we feel that at skill 95 + crit-modifier or better a character will always crit? With crits being 0.05 x skill, it takes a 1900% skill to reach a 95% chance to crit (see Ring World for one way to handle very high skill levels like this, see Hero Quest for another way with it's mastery levels system). My point is that multipliers and additive/subtractive modifiers do different things to the probability curve, and sometimes one makes sense to use and sometimes the other makes sense to use, but multiplicitive modifiers aren't invalid. And depending on where you are on the probability scale, each method can create modified probabilities that don't make sense. Different people see probabilities differently. I see your point, and sometimes your point actually makes sense to me. Other times, a multiplier makes more sense to me than an additive modifier. And that's fine, if we all agreed on how probabilities and such should work, there would be only one RPG. Heck, I could argue that the system I played in college that used the standard normal distribution ("true bell curve") for resolution is the only one that makes sense. But guess what, in that system, sometimes things don't make sense either... And it ONLY works with additive modifiers. I'm pretty sure there are games that use logarithmic scales in such a way that an additive modifier is actually a multiplier. Actually that normal distribution system I played in college is one way to actually handle skill ratings on an open ended scale as long as you can live with there always being a chance that a very inferior skill can succeed and a very superior skill could fail. Within the realm of that resolution system, we also understand that the ratings place you somewhere on the curve (with a 0 rating effectively being in the center of the curve) so a 2 rating is not TWICE a 1 rating. The relationship between a 1 and a 2 rating is exactly the same as the relationship between a 100 and a 101 rating. The system makes opposed rolls very simple, in fact, the scaling of the system could use it as a perfect drop in replacement for the resistance table, for ratings within a few points of each other, the probability is pretty close with increments of 4-6% (due to the bell shaped curve.

True, sometimes you care about the chance of failing, and that's the tricky thing about probabilities and multipliers. If you want a STR 3 to fail 6 times as often as a STR 18, then you need to do different probability math. So you can either have a multiplier of the chance to succeed or the chance to fail, but not both. A an additive/subtractive modifier has it's own quirks. A -20% on STR x 5 means STR 18 goes from a 10% chance of failure to 30% or 3 times, while a STR 6 goes from 70% to 90% or less than 1/3 more, for STR 3 it either becomes impossible (-5% chance of success) or goes from 85% to 95%, less than 1/6 more. No matter what modifier mechanism you use, and what probability curve you use, base probabilities at different points on the curve will change differently with different modifiers, and how the change feels to an individual will depend on how aware they are of the success vs fail rates and which they care more about. As to lifting weights, that probably shouldn't be a success/fail chance anyway. If you feel it should be random, the randomness should be a random modifier to the expected max weight the character can lift, either negative only (i.e. this character absolutely can only lift 90 pounds, but sometimes can't even lift that, or this character usually can only lift 100 pounds, but there's a 1% chance they could lift 120 pounds or something like that. That all depends on what your model for STR and lifting is. I personally like the attribute multipliers, and I like the occasional skill multiplier even though usually skills are adjusted by a fixed percentage. Then there's the resistance table that gives a STR 1 a 45% chance of matching a STR 2 while a STR 6 has only a 20% chance of matching a STR 12, so the doubling of STR really doesn't feel like it has meaning. Of course originally the resistance table was only used for POW vs POW which doesn't map to anything concrete like how many pounds can you lift. The resistance table would make more sense if the STR scale was logarithmic where a delta of 1 point of STR always means the same multiplier of raw strength. In the end, I ask myself does the mechanic create enjoyable play. And actually, no matter how you do the probabilities, it creates some kind of enjoyable play, but the meaning of the numbers on a character sheet changes with the probability methods used. I'm down with that. I also know that for myself I actually quickly get a sense for how the probabilities actually work and what the chance of success or failure will feel like.

Working with probabilities is always weird. On the one hand, STRx1 or STRx5, the STR 18 character always has 6 times the chance of success as the STR 3 character, well actually at x1 the STR 3 character gets an advantage due to the 5% minimum chance of success. This seems fine and logical to me. On the other hand, at STRx1 the STR 18 character only has a 15% better chance of success compared to a 75% better chance of success for STRx5 and that seems illogical to some. If we look at expected value over a large number of rolls, adjusting difficulty by multiplying the chance of success by some constant modifier actually seems more fair than adding or subtracting to the chance of success. Over the course of 100 rolls, expected value of STRx1 would be 5 successes for the STR 3 character (assuming you still grant an automatic 5% chance of success) and 18 for the STR 18 character. If we instead subtracted, so 45% (taking the modifier based on the average 11.5 attributes), then the STR 3 character would have a 5% chance of success for an expected value of 5 successes over 100 tries while the STR 18 character would have 45 successes, now he gets 9 times as many successes for only 6 times the STR.

I got an answer, apparently there is an issue with the Solo Quest POD not being up to snuff so it has been withdrawn. I look forward to it becoming available again, it's the most significant item missing from my Classic RQ collection (well, other than Wyrms Footnotes).

What happened to the Solo Quest POD? That is actually the one I am most interested in... Frank

Yea, I lucked into RQ1 (well, not necessarily luck, during that time I was sucking up almost every RPG I could find), and I was too penny pinching to swing for RQ2 a year later. Later on I would discover more of the changes and be happy I stuck with RQ1. Now I have RQ1, 2, and 3 and see SOME good stuff in RQ2. I have yet to see much in the way of mechanics I really like from RQ3 though I did at one time have previous experience more like RQ3 and used the less granular ability bonuses of RQ3, but now I'm back to the RQ1/2 ability bonuses.

Here is a thread I started back in July to answer this question:

I've shied away from NPC party members, and have been pushing to shed them. That said, last week it just seemed cruel to not have a 3rd party member when we had a logical choice PC that was going to be sidelined due to MIA player. I'm willing to share dice rolling around for PCs belonging to players who can't make it, but having run a lot of GMPCs in the past, I just don't like coming anywhere near there anymore. And I especially don't like using them as a conduit for information from the GM to players which used to be one of my justifications for having NPC party members. These days if I want to pass hints and stuff to the players, I'll just tell them.

Just last week I ran a RQ1 session with 2 players. I sent along one PC of a MIA player who was being dropped from the campaign with them. One of the players was playing his 2nd PC from a time we had a small group that he was putting out to pasture. The other player wasn't going to be training. I put together a quick little scenario for them to try and break into a trollkin tower in the Rubble. They did break off combat and flee but they managed quite well. Combat is tricky, but smart players can keep themselves from being overwhelmed and of course it helps if you keep the numbers you throw at them reasonable.

Cool, I look forward to getting this to supplement my RQ1 campaign... Yea, I'm going to back port some spells...

I'm sure I'll disappoint someone with my recommendation, but as a die hard RuneQuest 1st edition fan, I say go with RQG, and that's without even seeing the game... Sure, there's a lot I don't like in it, but I didn't like the changes RQ2 brought. But all the stuff mentioned above? That's good reason for new folks to play the new game. Now if you're actually interested in playing games from the 70s and 80s, get Classic, heck, even get RQ1 (you can even get it POD for a quite reasonable price) and get some of those other classic supplements. I might some day get RQG, and who knows, maybe lightning will strike twice and I'll change my mind about it. But that's me. I'm that weird guy who still does RQ1. And once you start in with RQG, sure, pick up some of the classic supplements, but also look at the new stuff, especially that cool Johnstown Compendium fan stuff, everything I read about it sounds like there's some really good material, some of it from folks who have been playing as long as me, or at least close to it, maybe even a bit longer (especially if you consider White Bear & Red Moon board gaming), I'm not sure when the various big names got started... Frank

Are the Redbubble mugs microwave safe? I'd love a Cults of Prax mug or the Dragon Pass or Prax map, but we use our mugs in the microwave all the time...

Ooh, those sound exciting...

As a grumpy old grognard who still prefers RQ1, I've got to say that I love ALL of what is being done on the RQ/Glorantha front. Sure, I may chime in with "I wish" or "why don't you" but I actually try to be realistic. And gosh, not only is my favorite edition available in PDF (who could have even hoped for that), they made it available Print on Demand! I may grumble about the price of the new edition, but I get that the production effort that went into it with art and play testing and all demands the price it is. Fine. I can live without it, but I'm glad it's available and is exciting people. And as someone who stuck with RQ1 and really didn't find RQ3 that compelling, I'm excited that RQG built from RQ2 not RQ3. It probably means less effort to adapt RQG materials to my RQ1 campaign, though bummer, the timeline was advanced. Well, that will knock out some material almost entirely and other material will need adaptation, and the cultural changes knock out more material. But I'm sure I could pick up almost any product and make use of it. And that Johnstown Compendium deal, that is so awesome that fans can produce stuff intended to plug into Glorantha without major pain. I'll eventually pikc up some of those titles and use them. Cheers to all! Keep up the good work! And don't take it too personally if I grumble a bit here and there...