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Yeah, but the drawback is that it is all about SR, and not about skill. So a big character, with a long weapon, and a good DEX is able to really shift his location around, while a master who doesn't have a good SR is limited. Yup. Personally, I think neither version is all that great. It would be nice to see a method that factors in for skill and SR. Maybe something like 1 hit location per SR, or 2 per SR if you take a penalty.

It would be easier to make suggestions if we know what sort of games do interest you. There is/was a lot more to Rome than just intrigue. A few ideas that I've had for a Roman campaign: 1) Roman Army: The PC are members of the Roman Legions. Probably as new recruits so they can learn the ropes. I was thinking of putting them on the border somewhere an deal with the problemsthat come with the territory. One possible variant of this idea would be to run thier outfit as a sort of Roman take on the Phil Silvers Show. 2) Young Gaius: This idea was for the PCs to meet and befriend a young Roman, Gaius. Over time, they would watch him get into debt, and finagle a governorship out of Rome to escape creditors. While away he goes on a series of conquests, expanding the Empire (and helping raise the wealth to deal with his creditors), and making quite a name for himself. Part of the fun with this is that, knowing my players, I doubt any of them would recognize Gaius Julius Ceasar as that Julius Ceasar until big things really start to play out. 3) King Arthur: Historical Arthur, if he existed, was probably a Romanized Celt, and a group of men trained in Roman methods of warfare, could have held off the Saxon invaders. A campaign with a group of Romans, or Romanized Celts, cut off from Rome, trying to hold the British Isles could make for an excellent campaign. In some ways you can run just about any Medieval type of adventure, and quite a few Renaissance adventures as well. The Romans had a lot of social, governmental, and financial institutions an opportunities that didn't exist for the next thousand years or so. Even a few "modern" story ideas can work well in a Roman setting.

Yeah. I for one am not a fan of the changes made to the system in Mythras, etc. So I'm glad Chaosium didn't go that way with it. I do think the game probably would have benefited more using RQ3 as the base instead of RQ2 (Steve Perrin did address/fix some of the flaws on RQ2 in RQ3), but I think going MRQ2/RQ6/Mthras with the game would probably have killed it in the eyes of a lot of RQ fans. Besides, why take the RQ name away from RQ6 just to make another RQ6?

Yeah, but that can be said of RQers, too. Is supect we have a higher percentage of houserulers than the norm because, since we have basically been running an "ophan" RPG for years, we are used to wrting up a lot of our own stuff. Even the BRP "Big Gold Book" is more of a tinkering kit than a RPG. Yes. The average gamer seems to play stuff as written, and also tends to play pre-written adventures. Speaking of which, I hope we get to see some RQ2 style campaign packs again.

I think he had it right the first time. While old RQers like us can and will houserule things, the people who are new to RQ are probably not going to houserule things much at all. And yeah the whole "living game system" is important as far as new blood goes - not to mention Chaosium's sales figures. It doesn't do them a heck of a lot of good if people are hunting down and buying for 30 year old editions of RQ off of eBay or some such.

Ya know something, I think that is probably Chasoium's biggest problem here. It not that RQG has to compete with the other RPGs out there, but it also has to compete with all the earlier editions of RQ/BRP/Strombriger, etc. that the company has produced over the years. It could very easily wind up in a situation where people like it, but not as much as they like RQ2/RQ3/Mythus/whatever. Or they don't like the latests slant on Glorantha (like what happened to MRQ's 2nd Age Glorantha, and, to a lesser extent, HeroQuest). But then, I suppose if we like the content, but not the rules we could always port stuff over to whatever version of the game we prefer. How hard would it be to port over the new chargen, passion, runes and and magic rules over to RQ3?

Yeah, for NPCs it doesn't really matter all that much. In fact, that's probably why when they ported RQ2 adventures over to RQ3 they just used one set of stats for a sqaud of underlings rather than the indiviualized stats from RQ2. When all is said and done, the players really won't notice if one Trollkin has club at 27% and another has it at 28%.

IMO I disagree. While I've never personally tried to hack up an elephant, I'm confident that it's not all that easy. I think that RQ3 hit points are more sensible that RQ2 hit points for multiple reasons, including the absurdly high db that go with large SIZ. It's not a game breaking mechanism. RQ3 works just fine mechanically. Now RQ2 hit points might match up better with Greg's stories, but then so does HeroQuest. On the other hand RQ2 attack bonuses were a game breaker. Big Club the giant probably has a STR of 70 sih, and an Attack Bonus of around +60%, making him at expert at using any weapon he picks up. Sadly, I think the new RQ's push back to the game's roots is going to mean the loss of a lot of good ideas that came with RQ3, and the incorporation of some good RQ3 ideas out of context (such as 2d6+6 SIZ).

One problem he I see with it is that, realistically, we don't always lean from out failures. That is, in game terms, while somebody might fail at a 10% skill over and over, there is no guarantee that they will figure out just what they are doing wrong. For instance somebody working of deciphering some written message could continually fail but those failures won't help him to lean to read.He will need to study the alphabet and words used in that written language. And I just don''t see how that guy who always failed test on a certain subject in school should wind up with the highest skill score. Nor does it mean that when they do figure out what they are doing wrong they will know what do about it in order to improve. For example, I know somebody who plays guitar, but can't play the sort of music he wants to play fast enough to do it properly. Technically he is playing the correct notes, but just not fast enough, and he doesn't know how or if he can play them faster. Failure here doesn't really help. Repetition might help here. But if it does doing wrong very fast won't be of as much use as doing it correctly very fast. So basically, at some point, I think you do need to succeed at something to get better. I think the old adage exists because when someone makes a significant mistake, as opposed to a failure, hindsight is 20/20. A skill check for a fumble is probably more appropriate. As far as game balance and such goes, character would progress much faster early on, and much slower once they get good at something. A really skilled warrior might actually not survive getting an experience check in battle ("the good news is that if you can find somebody to reattach your arm, you'll be better with your shield parry."). I suspect that this method would probably make "skill check hunting" more common, and probably turn in into a problem for those GMs who do not consider it one now (me, for instance). A new character can reliable fail at just about everything.

You shouldn't have needed to in order to answer the question.

Thanks.

Well then no thank you. I wasn't aware that the formula for hit points was all that much work.

Gloanthan Thanksgiving? Such as? And does the % values matter as far as the characteristic mods go? Does somebody with a Life Rune Affinity get a CON bonus? if he masters that affinity to 90% does he get a bigger CON bonus? What does the Mastery rune give? Do personal runes add to anything other than characteristics? Is there a Gloranthan equivalent to Pendragon's Religious bonus ? And does having high scores in a cult's runes actually mean anything in the way the character stands and functions in the cult?

Shouldn't there be more Trollkin with each edition?

Thanks, and now...more questions! 1) You said characteristics are modified for Homeland and Runes. Can you give some examples? What would somebody from, say, Dragon Pass, get for mods? For instance, how would a Humakti differer from a follower off Orlanth Adventurous (different runes) as far as characteristics go? 2) Are the category modifiers exactly the same as RQ2, or have they been tweaked? 3) How are Hit Points calculated? 4) Does Occupation affect skills at all? 5) If Occupation gives you your Homelands, how do you determine Homeland as the first step? 6) Is there anything in the book to cover more experienced characters, like there was in RQ2 and RQ3? 7) How big is the book in terms of page count and material? Say in comparison to other editions of RQ. 8) Anybody know when the full game is going to be available to the rest of us?

Fair enough. To those who were fortunate enough to accure a copy, how does character generation work? Is is like RQ2, EQ3, BRP? Judging from some of the posts it seems a little Pendragonish with the background stuff, but does any of this lifepath stuff actually affect game stats and mechanics, or are they just there to flesh out the character for roleplaying.

I'm so glad. I'd hate to think that there would ever be an RPG out there that couldn't be played without purchasing the company's custom made, overpriced toothpicks. And that's great. Props can add to the atmosphere of an RPG session. Nothing wrong with that, per say, either. If a company wants to try and make a profit selling obviously fake (as opposed to counterfeit) money, that's up to them. But when I see an RPG company with a history of limited funds and products jumping into such a field, with other companies already established at doing it, I'm not happy. I really wonder if Chaosium might have done a bit better over the years if they That's not so clear. Heck, I doubt if there are even a LOT of core Chaosium customers. If there were so many core customers buying up such products wouldn't the company been in better finical shape all those years? Really? So If I criticize the "collectible" nature of games these days I'm criticizing the people who buy such products? No, I'm criticizing the decision of an RPG company to spend money producing products that won't sell enough to be worth the investment. That's not the fans fault. Just how many boxes of Orient Express toothpicks do you think they call sell? And will the company make enough off of them to justify the investment? It's a niche market of a niche market of a niche market. There can't be that many gamers who play CoC, bought Horror on the Orient Express, and also bought the toothpicks. Exactly. I don't see paying around 80 cents a coin for play money. To be a practical investment it probably needs to cost less than just using real money. Years ago, I did up some PADD props for a Star Trek campaign. If I were to do them today I wouldn't spend more making them than the cost of a cheap tablet. In fact, I'd probably just buy a cheap tablet or two to use as PADDs. But I wouldn't spend 80 cents to buy a prop penny, unless there was something significant that made the penny very important to the adventure. I mean, I could certainly see buying a Maltese Falcon prop to use if I were running that story and an RPG adventure. it would have a nice impact on the players when revealed. But I wouldn't want to spend the money on a high grade studio replica of one just to have around the gaming table. BTW, it's off topic, but consider mixing the plots of The Call of Cthulhu and The Maltese Falcon into a single adventure.

Thanks for the background info. That the old Chaosium had such massive money problems and all despite raising three quarters of a million dollars is quite surprising and, yes, depressing. When I thing of how lacking Chaosium was in supporting any of their product lines other than CoC, and how the BGB barely got out of the door, and then languished with little support, it's shocking. It's almost as bad as what happened with Decipher.

Actually I was referring to all the merchandising for Orient Express. Coffee mugs, medallions, luggage tags. All to support ONE CoC supplement. Wouldn't all that money and effort been better spent on useful gaming content? Or, at least for more generic CoC products that would sell to those who didn't buy Orient Express? The whole thing looks like a desparation move, which, apparently, it was. Exactly, which is what is so bad about it. As well all are aware, RPG companies have only so much time, effort, and money to devote to products. So if we got lugage tags and medallions it was at the expense of something else.

It's depressing. It reeks of desperation. Thanks for the link. I'm glad for the information, not so pleased with what Chaosium is doing. It looks more like ThinkGeek than The Chaosium. Judging from the prices listed on the website, no they's not. A bag of 51 "tabletop coins" list for $39.99 or about $75.40/lb. It would be a lot less expensive just to rob my piggy bank and use real coins. Most players think that GMs are stingy with wealth now, just imagine what it will be like when buying enough Lunars to learn a Battle Magic spell cost more than the core rules.

I don't mind the special dice so much- they serve a purpose. Oh, can you elaborate on that?

"This cave ain't big enough for the both of us. Draw!"

And hopefully just as easily avoided. I don't mind this sort of product, but I sincerely hope that it doesn't become a necessity to play the game.

Oh, I agree the logo can make a bit of a difference to somebody unfamiliar with a RPG, and I also don;t find the new logo all that appealing. That said, I'd much rather have a great RPG with a yucky logo than a yucky RPG with a great logo. Or, to put it another way- if the logo is the worse thing about the new RQ them we are in very good shape.

I doubt anybody is going to say, "Gee it's a really good game, but I'm not going to play it because I just don't like the logo."