soltakss

Saying that RuneQuest is not a game about combat is false, in my opinion. I know that you aren't saying that, but replying to that kind of view, but I am replying to you in this case ... Back in my RQ2 days, we regularly had combats that involved a hundred NPCs and 10 high level PCs, including setting up the combat and then cursing and removing the 5 Invisible Until Attacks NPCs. Sometimes a single combat would last for two sessions and we'd have to draw the combat onto a sheet of A4 to put it back again next time. I can tell you that such combats were not balanced. By the way, what are CR Ratings? Are they like the Treasure Factors mentioned in the OP? I generally like the idea that a scenario says that it is for low-level, mid-level or hi8gh-level PCs, as that makes it easier for me to judge how many changes I need to make to the NPCs. But, in RuneQuest, the addition of even 1 PC makes the party a lot stronger. A party of 6 PCs is a lot, lot stringer than a party of 3 PCs and encounters should be judged accordingly. Yes, an NPC party with roughly the same skill levels will be comparable. However, RQG uses skills that have a lot of variability, so you just cannot use straight combat skill to work out how good an NPC is. A highly skilled Elf warrior with a 0 Damage Bonus would not be as dangerous as a low-skilled Giant with a 4D6 Damage Bonus, for example. RQ2 Had Treasure Factors, which actually did this in a reasonable and simple way. I have used them to guage the strength of NPC Parties for years. Of course, as I am a tinkerer, I have changed how my TFs work, mainly to cope with high level PCs. Don't know what CRs are, so cannot comment. Perhaps that is true. I haven't been a beginning GM for a very long time. Here's a radical opinion - It doesn't matter how strong the NPCs are. Seriously. If the NPCs are too strong, you realise and run away. If the NPCs are too weak, you steamroll over them. If the NPCs are very strong, you might be able to just about defeat them, which is a great feeling for players. I have had examples, in my recently finished RQ campaign and in a previous RQ campaign, where I have joked that I am happy that a high level NPC lasted more than a round in combat with the PCs. No matter how hard I made them, no matter what abilities they had, the PCs would chew through them. I am talking about monsters with 100 APs and 50 HPs in the head, for example, so how balanced is that?

Generally, as a RQ GM for over 30 years, I don't really balance combat. I have found that a seemingly simple combat has been pretty deadly, with criticals and impales, combined with missed parries and fumbles, taking out most of the party, with the party only surviving because of a couple of lucky blows by the remaining standing PCs. I have also found a vastly overwhelming party of NPCs being taken out by a set of lucky blows. So, balancing combat is difficult. As I have just mentioned, in another post, I like to self-balance by not having all the NPCs fighting at one, having some of them hanging back, some fighting in pairs or alone and so on, which gives the PCs an edge, If the PCs are doing very well, I call in the reserves, if they are doing particularly badly, I get NPCs to tie them up or restrain those who have fallen, just to take the NPCs out of combat. For me, Demoralised NPCs hang around at the back, but Demoralised PCs take part in the combat, even that gioves the PCs an edge. If the NPC Party takes more than 50% csualties, it will probably fall back or just plain run away. Balance is always interesting, as I have found that a PC Party can kill a Big Bad Boss NPC fairly easily, but someone else warns against using Big Bad Bosses as they can wipe out a party. I suppose different people have different views on what makes a balanced encounter. Back in my RQ2 days, I used to pride myself on a high level group of PCs finishing a Clearing Out a Chaos Temple scenario by using the last few Magic Points. Balancing a whole scenario is a lot harder than balancing a single encounter.

Treasure Factors is a useful way of doing this. However, my rules of thumb are: A PC Party can usually defeat an NPC party of similar skill level/numbers A PC Party often defeats an NPC Party of similar skill and slightly higher numbers A PC Party often defeats an NPC Party of higher skill and similar numbers A PC Party sometimes defeats an NPC Party of similar skill and much higher numbers A PC Party usually defeats a single NPC of higher skill Making the NPCs tougher, by making them trolls, giving them better armour, just increases their effective skill. I generally self-balance by making the NPC party not as disciplined/organised as the PC Party, so they use sub-optimal tactics. That really gets pressed home when the PCs meet a well-organised, disciplined NPC Party with good tactics, then the PCs wil probably struggle. Don't forget that, in RuneQuest, running away is always a good option. PCs don't always have to fight to the last PC, better to run away, lick your wounds and come back again at a later date. Old supplements, I am afraid. RQ Glorantha (RQG) doesn't yet have a back catalogue of supplements with examples of such NPCs. Stangrers in Prax has The Coders, a high level group of Lunars. Dorastor and Lords of Terror have examples of high level Chaos NPCs. RuneMasters has some high level Rune Lords, Rune Priests and Rune Lord Priests. Griffin Island has some high level NPCs, they might also be in the Gloranthan Classics Borderlands supplement. All are fairly compatible with RQG and RuneMasters is still available, I think.

Many thanks, free scenarios are always appreciated.

That's what makes it so interesting.

Because some people like to nerf powerful characters. Only Rune Lords can exceed 100%, Rune Priests are restricted to DEXx3, only certain professions are available to certain backgrounds. All nerfed in the past, all discounted by me, as a GM.

One way of reading the Wooing of Erbalda is "Ernalda was held captive in Yelm's Court. She saw a young, simple godling and realised he was her ticket out of there. She seduced him, letting him think he was doing the chasing, let him prove himself to her and then let him take her out of Yelm's Palace.", so it was all Ernalda's Plan.

There are different ways of telling the myths, concentrating on different things. Aggressive, domineering Orlanthi will tell it in a different way to Ernaldans. Yelmalians will tell it in a completely different way, and, yes, they do tell the myth of Orlanth, the Bad Husband of Ernalda. Peace and War Clans will tell the versions that suit them best, but also the myths that suit their time and place best. Myth is flexible, there isn't just one telling.

No, I'd love to send commands by email - More Books Quicker!

Yes, it makes sense, as not every ball hill hit a target. You also neeed to decide who gets hit in a crowd. Do you randomly decide, or does everyone get hit once until you run out of hitting shots?

I liked the myth, it's the kind of thing the Ernaldans could use, for their telling of what Orlanth did.

As Joerg says, this isn't an Olympic Highjumper clearing a bar, instead it is someone trying to jump up a wall, or to get on a tree, or perhaps to clear the horns of a bull. If you want to clear an obstacle without touching it, just add in a level of difficulty depending on the height.

One of the cool things about HeroQuest is that there's no one way to use it. I like to keep it very simple, quick and dirty, other people like more complexity. Whatever works for you is the best way to run and play it. Happens to all of us. It does get a while to wrap your mind around it, but it is worth it in the end. Wait until you use it to run SuperHeroQuest, that really rocks. Sounds good to me. Keep it simple, 2 Keywords with Breakouts is about right. I don;t use base skills, I just have everything as a Keyword, less effort that way. If the players want to emphasise cyberware then they can add it as a breakout. Yes, they sound pretty good to me.

Ah right, I thought it might have beemn connected to Framing a Contest in HeroQuest. Apologies for any confusion.

Hero Wars was an attempt to make a narative game that appealed to RuneQuestors and it did things like break all skills from a keyword. That's what has happened here. HeroQuest nicely includes those skills without even mentioning them, but, as a GM, I sometimes list the skills that a typical Keyword might have, as an easy reference for me to use. So, you could just include some of the skills in the Keywords, as has been suggested, or leave them as they are. HeroQuest is a nice, forgiving system and works however you play it.

I know what you are saying, but that smacks of using Game Mechanics to describe a non-game thing, which I don't like at all. The Myth is a story, nothing more. Once you put the Myth into a HeroQuest, then Framing becomes important, but a Myth doesn't have to be Framed and, I would suggest, is a poorer Myth for being Framed. Orlanth as an Example is a well-trodden myth series, whether Orlanth as a Good Example of Orlanth as a Bad Example. Is he the Lawgiver? Umath gave some laws, Heort game some laws, maybe even Vingkot or Ernalda, but I thought that Orlanthi laws generally didn't come from Orlanth. However, I am probably almost entirely mistaken. Yes and no. Orlanth very rarely screws up the thing that he is doing at that time. Orlanth slew Yelm to establish himself as the King of the Gods and to break away from the Bad Emperor once and for all. In doing so, he was surprisingly successful. However, it had several side-effects, not least relaly annoying Humakt and throiwing Glorantha into the Lesser Darkness. He had to fix the side-effects, but the original deed was a good one. Again, yes and no. Sure, Myths can serve as indications of how the deity, and by example worshipper, behave. However, I see Myths as powerful stories and only link them to game play after the Myth is written. Myths often make no sense and need to be interpreted. Why? Because that what happened, interpret all you want. Now, I am fully aware that Glorantha is a made up workd, so the myths are made up and hence something only happened because someone has said that it happened, so everything sort-of falls down at that point.

Maybe we can spawn off a Discussion Thread to discuss things like Bronze Enchantments, so this thread stays for reporting of issues.

In my Glorantha, some slaves are taken to the Block and forced to touch it. The Block is made of unattuned Truestone and unattuned Truestone has the property that you are forced to cast all your Runemagic into it, or at least that was the RQ2 rule. Since the Block is so big, it has an unlimited capacity, so just sucks all your runemagic and rune points out of you. Not good for the slave at all.

One one level, the HeroQuest is an enabler. If you perform Orlanth and the Scarf of Mist, then you get to abduct a Water Nymph, with all the baggage that goes with it. Part of that baggage is that the two are bonded together and can be married, so that might cause the marriage to happen. I can see an Orlanthi performing the HeroQuest to abduct a woman from another tribe/clan, where the woman wants to marry but the clan won't let her, doing it as part of a HeroQuest means that clan has no choice because the HeroQuestor has mythically done the abduction and marriage. In Real World Myths and Legends , there are many examples of abduction-marriage. Paris and Helen is the most famous, but Genghis Khan's wife was abducted on her wedding night and taken away, to give birth to a son 9 months later, which caused problems down the line. Even now, in Central Asia, marriage by abduction is a real thing. Once the women are married, there is a real stigma around escaping, as they are married.

Personally, I wouldn't slavishly tie the extra Luck Points to Characteristics. Is a Dragon unbalanced because it is cleverer than a human or has more POW? Not really. It can fly, breathe fire, has thick scales and can rip people apart with tooth and claw. Instead, I'd have something like: Characteristics: About humanlike + 0, Better than Human +1, Way better than Human +2, Massively better than Human +3 Powers/Abilities: About humanlike +0, Useful but not devastating +1, Some devastating +2, All devastating +3 OK, so that gives a dragon +6, a giant +3, a troll +3, an elf +2, a dwarf +2 and so on. Having 23 Luck Points per session is way over the top, but having +6 is manageable. I agree, but it's a way of balancing. Yes, I agree, which is why I don't balance races. You want races balanced, but balk at ideas as to how to do this. If you restrict Professions then you control, to a certain extent, what the PC can do, which means you can limit what skills they start with. That affects balance. That isn't what I mean. You give out items that humans can use, but not a dragon. You don't need to track what items the dragon has. Not at all. If I faced a group with 2 humans, an elf and a dragon, I would focus all my fire on the dragon. A dragon can attack 3 people w=per round and can breathe fire, so it is the equivalent of the other 3 opponents. Anything else would be unrealistic. But, you'd rather impose something on the PC to hobble that PC, quite blatantly openly? It seems as though you want to balance races, but think that balancing races disadvantages the PC. Of course it does, which is why I don't like the idea. Any auto-balancing means that some races are disadvantaged and some are advantaged. Are you going to give Halflings more Luck Points because they are small? What about less intelligent or less powerful creatures such as Trollkin? Do they get extra benefits? Even worse, what about my human PC who has all characteristics at 8 and my other PC who has all characteristics at 18? Are they balanced? A weak troll with STR 15 is not as strong as a human with STR 18, but you'd balance down the troll? If you are going to balance races, you need very strict guidelines as to how you determine who needs balancing and how.

Copy this, print it out - Jeff got something wrong! First time I can remember! 😉

Have we been Jeffed?

For me, this allows a PC to have a worship without it failing all the time, which is fine. I'd just houserule that a normal Worship Ceremony always works, to be honest, with a roll if you want to do anything more sophisticated. A sacrifice whould be for important things. If you wanted a Worship Ceremony to bless a marriage, bless people going off on a raid, lift a curse on a clan and so on, then a sacrifice would be required.

I wasn't dismissing your ideas, just saying why I wouldn't think they were necessary. As to solving the problem: Extra Luck Points for other races - You work out a system of handicaps for races, with each worth a certain amount of Luck Points, then assign the difference to the other players. So, if a human is 0, an elf/dwarf/troll is 1, a centaur/minotaur is 2 and a dragon is 3, a party with huamsn, an elf and a dragon would mean the elf gets 2 Luck Points and the Humans get 3 Luck Points. That way, they can be more heroic and can do more than the dragon. GM Luck Points - The GM has the same number of Luck Points to be used against the problematic PC, so the GM would get 3 Luck Points for NPCs to use against the Dragon. Disadvantages - You assign a number of Disadvantages to the problematic races, which makes them weaker. These could be general disadvantages or ones specific to the PC. So, a Dragon might have a religious geas of Never Breathe Fire Indoors, or a Troll might have Never Hide Under Bridges. Restrictions - You restrict the Professions available to problematic races, so a Dragon might only be a Warrior or Sage. Also, restrict the skills they can use or the spells they can learn. Some races might not get cool stuff, so you give out human armour, weapons, things a dragon cannot use, that way the other PCs get more kit and the dragon gets nothing Enemies - Problematic Races get more enemies. A Dragon is a Dragonslayer magnet, for example. In combat, who are the NPCs going to fight, the humans or the Dragon?

Ah, you see, I treat NPCs the same as PCs. I don't have one rule for PCs and one rule for NPCs. That, for me, was one of the great strengths of RQ, NPCs get experience rolls, can join cults and obey the same rules as PCs.