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Yup, in early SB there were no spells, and all magic was accomplished by summoned beings. Mind you, a sorcerer could do something like bind a fire elemental in a ring and then be able to shoot gouts of fire at people but it was still the summoned elemental that was doing it. The line got blurred with Sorcerers of the East (who had spells) and Demon Magic, before Elric! pretty much ported over RQ Battle Magic.

Of course. It's much like the cameras with "unbreakable" cases. The camera is smashed to pieces, but the case remains unbroken. Steel, not surprisingly, can withstand impacts that flesh and bone cannot.But it only absorbs so much of the force and passes the rest onto the wearer. But you're still much better off with the plate than without it. Most "damage" to people wearing plate is impact/crushing, even damage from spears and swords. The plate stops the weapon from penetrating, but much of the force of the blow still goes through to the wearer. You can increase the padding to soak up more of the force, but that has it's own drawbacks.

And even that is wrong. Padding works great against maces and would be classified as soft armor. There is turning an edge, stopping a point, and soaking up impact. Mail works be turning an edge, and since most blunt weapons do most of their damage by impact, mail isn't all that effective. But the padding underneath still is. It's just that against swords and axes you get a combination of protection. Plate over padding is probably about the best armor to wear against blunt weapons. the rigid plate helps to disperse the impact over a wider area, and the padding cushions the blow. One possible special for those who want to add something to crushing weapons other than the usual crush crit would be broken bones. They could take longer to heal. This wouldn't make crushing weapons any more powerful in the battle, but could make a difference afterwards. Especially if broken bones took more Heal to repair.

Good question. I figure it would probably be something like the Gift & Geases tables, with the severity of the service tied to the number of points of Rune Magic. Instead of that, I suppose we could do what they did in Stormbringer and list appropriate sacrifices and services for each type of spirit, along with some sort of intensity scale that matches up action with Rune Points. We could have it so that sprints have favored actions, which are worth more points, acceptable actions, which give "normal" points, and disapproved actions, which either aren't worth anything or a have a reduced value. Maybe (and I'm just brainstorming here, before the caffeine has kicked in) we could tie this to a characters Rune's? It would seem to me that having a high Fire or Air rune should help when dealing with those types of Spirits. Maybe the Shaman could wager some of his % in the appropriate rune, or maybe the opposite? That is if you lose to a spirit it reduces your score in th erune that opposes it's own. And/or maybe the whole thing could be reduced down to a geas/taboo. For example, a shaman might be obligated to get a check in his Air rune (or suffer some penalty,. like a reduction in the Rune % or in POW) and all those tasks and services are really just ways for him to try and get a check. So a Shaman who loses to a fire spirit and needs to get a check in his Fire rune becomes something of a pyro.

And there is the problem with the RPG market. As long as something sells good, it doesn't really matter how good it is, or how well organized, etc. or even why. At the end of the day it's the sales that matter not the quality or consistency. That stuff only matters down the road when the supplements come out. Oh, and I'm not pointing the finger at RQG here. It's just the general fact that by the time people really get to look over a game and have a good grasp of the mechanics, it's too late, they've already bought it. Or, as an extreme example, if 100 million people buy RQG and all hate it, the staff at Chaosium might be disappointed or hurt, but the $3.000,000,000 in sales would put the company and RQ in the best financial situation they've ever been in.

So the shaman contacts the spirit and says, "If I win, you give me the Rain Rune Spell, but if you win I go get you some venison, whddaya say?". I think there should probably be at least some token MP expenditure to make it worthwhile for the spirit. Or at least some way for the spirit to benefit from the sacrifice, like it gets MPs or a POW gain roll or something. As for the services, they should probably be related to the type of spirit being contacted. Air spirits might want an area opened up for the wind, a structure knocked down or some such so they can move more freely, a fire spirit might want something burned. I think the thing here is that the sacrifice or service should be something that is actually inconvenient for the shaman to do. If it's too easy then he isn't really gambling, and it becomes a cheap way to get free Rune Magic. Having to fight some sort of enemy spirit in Spirit Combat in behalf of the spirit could work. Say the Shaman looses to a Fire spirit, and it wants him to get rid of a pesky water spirit that's been protecting something, say a ship, the fire spirit wants to burn. So the Shaman gets rid of the water spirit, and the ship get burned. An now the Shaman has to explain to the owner why he got rid of the protecting spirit. Hmm, a Shaman claiming that he had to do it because he was in debt to a fire spirit sounds about right.

Definitely. And the influence it exerts on Bilbo and Frodo to put on is part of that. It's a ring so there isn't much it can do other than nudge the bearing to do things that could get it noticed by Sauron. But, the selfish nature of Sauron works against him to some extent, since the bearer develops the desire to keep the ring. Certainly one of the better retcons.

I think now the next step is to work out the gambling bit. It would be nice if you could bet (i.e. risk something for the desired magic), raise the stakes (up the risks but up the benefits), and so me how try to improve your "hand" in the gambling match. An idea: 1. Once the desired is spirit is found the Shaman makes a wager to try and entice the spirit to gamble. Magic Points seem the obvious choice here, although spell knowledge could be a possibility, as could be some sort of of possession or curse. I'm thinking MPs equal to twice the points of Rune Magic desired seem like a good amount. The GM could match the MP risked vs. the Rune Points on the resistance table to see if the shaman is successful in enticing the spirit to gamble. 2. This could be followed by a gambling roll for the shaman (and a secret one by the GM for the spirit). At this point either side can fold (and pay up), or they can continue. Then either side can choose to up the bet, focing the other to either match the bet, raise, or fold. 3. When all bets are in both sides reveal thier "hand" with the result treated as an opposed roll. The winner collects his rewards, and the loser pays up. Optionally, you could allow for a "mystical" draw to try an improve the hand (sorry for the cards reference, what sort of gambling methods do shaman and sprints use?) in between the betting and the reveal. In that case either party can reroll to try and improve their roll, but if they fail their skill roll their result gets downgraded to the new roll.

Yup, but ti was still a boost from RQ. Of course with the way HW/HQ works it usually doesn't matter much, as most things boiled down to opposed ability ratings.

HQ has ubiquitous use of everything. Basically everything in HQ is described as or a subset of a keyword, which has a rating. The only real differences between magic and non-magical keywords is that magic gets to bypass some of the limitations of normal keywords. There was an example of this the rules, where one character uses their Orlanthi ability to fly to easily win a jumping contest, even though their rating was much lower than the jump ability of another contestant.

Yeah. I wasn't addressing the orginal argument, just that magic is more prevalent and easier to use in HQ.

Yes, but I think what Phil is pointing out is that an Orlanthi in RQG is still going to be limited to flying once or twice per adventure, depending on how many points of the spell he has, while an Orlanthi in HQ can fly as much as he wants.

Kinda. It's mentioned that the ring, as part of Sauron, wants to be found, and subtly works at returning to him. The idea was that the ring chose to slip off of Golum's finger, as Gloum would have stayed underground forever, while someone else might travel about, making it more likely that the ring could return to it's master or be discovered. I believe Gandalf states that the Ring choose Bilbo over Golum. A perfectly good idea. I think there was an old RQ item that has a ancestor in it that could act much like an allied spirit, cast spells on the wielder's behalf (if she chose to) and so on. "Demon" in SB is a rather loose term. It could easily be any other sort of being, and not necessarily malevolent.

It's probably just a technicality but maybe instead of the large list of Rune Spells, Kolati should have a large list of affiliated/allied cults (spirit societies) that they can join to get access to their Rune Magic? Probably with reduced responsibilities to the second cult. That way Kolat could still provide some spells, although less that what you have, but have access to a wider range of spells through cult affiliations. You might be able to get a game mechanic close to spirit societies via affiliated cults.

Mostly I think you would need to just multiply Superworld characteristics by 5, adapt sequencing and quartermoves for those with superspeed, swap out SIZ tables (Cthulhu and other big nasties get a little smaller, I think I got some notes for that in with my Kaiju stuff) and work up a power point pool for characters. It shouldn't be all that difficult. Going from Superworld to CoC1-6 isn't much of a change, and from there you just make the changes to switch over to 7.

Nice maps!

Oh definitely. It helps to immerse the players into their characters' culture. Back on topic... The Infallibility Rule- I's okay (and inevitable) for GMs to make mistakes. -It's even okay to admit them. --Even to players ---And it even okay to correct them when and if necessary. ----You might even learn something from them, too. Quite a few GM's especially new ones starting out, feel that they have to be perfect, or at least appear to be, and that they somehow loose trust, credibility and respect if they admit to a mistake or try to correct it. This is compounded by the fact that everybody makes mistakes and new GMs will make more, try to cover for it, and end up losing the trust, credibility and respect that they were trying to keep.

You used to get the checks when you make the roll. You rolled for improvement during downtime, or It's a port over from Pendragon. There is helps to give a epic feel to the game, since players will notice time passing and see their characters age-something rather rare in most other RPGs. I assume that the designers wanted to give RQG that effect.

Yes, but it probably depends on the group. In our group at least two people at the table could do the 5%/20% calculation in their heads (there are a couple of tricks for that, if you are interested), so it was very fast at the table. Only occasionally did we stop to check to see if something was a crtical or special, and that was only when a roll was vary close, and the outcome really important. Yeah, I've tried a couple, including some similar to Harn.

And page protectors can make it fluid resistant, reducing the risks of spilled soda on a rulebook. And it could make it easy to use alternate rules. They could sell PDF updates online and we could swap out sections to customize things. For example, they could do a DEX ranked initiative system for those who don't like Strike Ranks and people could just swap out those two pages.

EEk! I was hoping more along the line of Harn, where we could print out the updates (and variants) for a ring binder and replace as needed. Let's face it, the current RPG model for most companies is Print a Game, put out supplements for awhile, then do a new edition and repeat the process. Often, there are good reasons for a new edition-bug fixes, improvements ans such. Other times not so much.

I could see them doing like software companies do. Once they get the book "debugged" they could collect all the new errata and changes and then incorporate them into periodic updates and new editions. We could get RQG 2019, RQG 2020 and so forth. Maybe even with a discount for those who purchased the previous edition. They would never really have to, or need to, do another edition of RQ, either, just put any changes into the next update.

The Gm has a lot of control over how much bookkeeping there will be. He gets to decide when method to use, and also, to some extent, how much property the players get to lord over. The GM doesn't have to start the PCs out a landed knights either. Early editions of Pendragon started the PCs off as Squires, who them became Household Knights, who aspired to be landed. You could certainly run things that way if you want to avoid the paperwork.

The Book of Manor is a detailed way of handling a knight's manor house, including things like the defenses, retainers, income boosting improvements, religious works and so forth. The Book of the Estate is designed to handle multiple manors and other larger holdings, and is supposed to be more streamlined. BotE basically superseded BotM, which I guess is going to be dropped. IMO that's a good thing. BotM is okay when characters have only one manor, but it really bogs the game down once characters start to get multiple holdings. BotM kinda ruined my last Pendragon Campaign-we spent more time on the Winter Phase then we did adventuring, and BotM was a major reason why. Thats where BotM and such come in. Although the specific game mechanics vary depending on what version of the Land Upkeep rules you use, it boils down to making some sort of Stewardship roll to see what the Harvest was like and how much the Knight gets that year. If your player gets that widow, make sure you don't use the Book of the Manor-not if you want to do anything else. Quickie Feudal Economics: This is Pre 5.2, when the standard income was 6£ instead of 10£, but it should give you a basic rundown. A landed Knight requires 6£ for upkeep (prior to 5.2), but a household knight only requires 4£ (again prior to 5.2), because he doesn't have a wife and children to support. So if a PC knight got an second manor, and took on a household knight to fulfill his military obligations, then the Player Knight would come out 2£ ahead on an average year. Now the Player Knight could do better on good years, and might do a lot worse on bad ones, but one average, he's 2£ ahead. Now if he had five extra manors and five household knights, he'd have 10£ extra each year. Now longterm, some or all of those household knight will probably end up landed and holding those manors in service to the Player Knight, and most will probably be held by someone to begin with, but those extra knights also provide the Player Knight with a larger force for war or raid, and that leads to more income too.

It's not quite so simple. Unlike most other RPGs characters often survive the battle only to die weeks later. A character who has his Chirugery Needed? box checked (usually from a major wound, but it can happen from other things, such as poisoned weapons), then that character doesn't heal normally, and his wound might even get worse, depending on his die rolls and the skill of the attending Chirugeon (Surgeon). It's quite possible that by the time the first squires become knights some of the original knights will have died. It's easily possible to derail an entire game session because some of the characters take a major wound in a "minor" encounter, and then the rest of the group has to bring the wounded to a healer, where it can take months just to see if the characters will live or die, then more months for them to recover. I've had groups actually miss a year or two because they were wounded out in the boonies with an inadequate healer, as their hit points fluctuated week by week. This is just a heads up. Don't try to squeeze too much into a year until you get familiar with the pace of things. Many adevntures can take place at any time, though, so you can usually run an adventure later than originally intended.