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On 6/6/2018 at 10:15 AM, Sky River Titan said:

I have read but never run it. I feel like it is an incredible system. However, I am intimidated by the system. I don’t feel like I can communicate it well for someone who hasn’t read the book. I really really need to see someone else run it. Maybe a YouTube video of the authors playing yet?

At its core, HeroQuest is a simple system that can be used for anything. It takes, what, 5 minutes to learn how to play and, maybe, 10 minutes to generate a PC, so you can be up and running in 15 minutes with a new PC for a player who has never played the game.

What slows it down are all the artificial stuff that has been bolted on to model various things. Restrictions on what can and can't be used, for example.

My rules for HeroQuest:

• All abilities are treated the same
• You can use any ability to counter any ability, but it might have a penalty
• Everything is Simple Contests or just straight rolls with penalties/bonuses

4 hours ago, Jeff said:

That would be awesome.

Don't give him ideas ...

On 6/8/2018 at 6:06 AM, Belgath said:

Some distinctions about RQG I feel that really separates it from other RPG. Are the races are Are vary unique from each other and not some Token reprint. 

Probably going to come out in the supplements. RQG is very much human-centric, with other races barely mentioned.

This is a shame, because RQ has always been a game where you can play pretty much any race, some with game support and some without. That, for me, has always been a defining point of RQ.

On 6/7/2018 at 5:18 PM, Gene M. said:

I'm often surprised by how negative and sometimes even hostile some posters here are to Chaosium. 

I'm not.

It's been the case for a long time, unfortunately.

On 6/6/2018 at 2:59 PM, ThornPlutonius said:

Unfortunately, those points do NOT make RQG distinct among other RPGs. They did when Runequest first came out, but not now. Folks can play in Glorantha using Hero Quest. The other three are also properties of Mythras, Open Quest, Legend, Revolution D100, etc.

I just lump all the D100 games together for these purposes. These  points make the RQ Family different from many games, including HeroQuest.

Many other games have taken some of these on board and have produced similar styles.

12 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

There's also more detail, for instance Speak Other Language has three whole pages.

Not necessarily a good thing, that could have been condensed very easily.

13 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

LOL! It's funny how the rule books get bigger but we somehow end up with fewer rules in the books. But they did use smaller fonts back in the old days (like 4 point in the RQ2 appendix).

Oh, we have a lot more rules, they are just different rules. 

On 6/8/2018 at 1:32 AM, BWP said:

I don't  expect RQG mechanics to change in any significant way now, of course, but as the game goes on I do hope we can get away from the apparent "RQ3 bad, RQ2 good" philosophy.

Although the design philosophy is that RQ3 introduced some changes that didn't work well, it is not a case of RQ3 bad, RQ2 good.

As it is, I expect that any games of RQG that I run in the future will come with a whole new swag of house rules, many of which will be there simply to reintroduce aspects of RQ3 that I never had any complaints about.

Sure, as would I.

So my question boils down to: how much of RQ3 has actually made its way into RQG -- i.e., tweaks or additions to the RQ2 rules that clearly were sourced from RQ3?

A surprising amount.

• INT/SIZ use 2D6+6
• Acolytes have been renamed God talkers, but are substantially the same
• Spirit Magic is used instead of Battle Magic and has no limits on Variable spells
• Rune Magic has no limits to Stackable spells
• Enchantments are more similar to RQ3 than RQ2
• Temples are pretty much as RQ3
• Towns and Cities are pretty much as RQ3
• Game System uses incremental percentile skills, rather than multiples of 5
• Experience/Training/Research is mostly as RQ3
• Non-Combat modifiers are generally as RQ3, even with the Dropped Lantern Table.

In fact, I am very tempted to use RQG as the base to future RQ campaigns, instead of RQ3, as it is better in many ways, and I am speaking as a huge fan of RQ3.

* I say "apparent" because I'm only picking up on the comments from those that have got the PDF and are quoting here and there.

If you liked the changes brought in for RQ3 then you will probably like the rules in RQG.

Some things are different. 

• The Resistance Table goes up to 95, as in RQ2, instead of 99, as in RQ3. 
• Divine Magic is Rune magic, as in RQ2.
• Sorcery is enough like RQ3 to be easy to convert, but different enough to fit into RQG better

Similarly, some subcult magic would work and some wouldn't. I'd say that cults such as Barntar would still provide magic that worked, even though Barntar is the son of Orlanth and Ernalda, he is a different entity. Simialrly, if you have joined the Magical Weapons Subcults, then your magic might work, as they derive from the Magical Weapons themselves. Associate Magic would still work, if given from someone other than Orlanth/Ernalda.

But, in RQG, you have Rune Points for your cult, so I would say that you couldn't use/replensih your Orlanth or Ernalda Rune Points, so you might not be able to cast Subcult or Associate Cult Rune Magic unless you had Rune Points for the subcult or Associate Cult.

p47 The Runes & Cults Table doesn't include Foundchild, although Foundchild is included in the 2 Cult Lists/Writeups later on

p379 - The Black Fang cult has a section on Rune Priests that says "Spirit cults don’t have proper Rune Priests, so Priests of Black Fang are shamans, instead. Like most shamanpriests, they can sacrifice POW for the cult’s Rune points.", but the previous section on Spirit Cults has Shamans, with "Rather than traditional Rune Priests, in these cults the shamans tie themselves to the spirit, gain what few Rune spells are available, as well as the ability to teach the spirit’s magic to their followers.", so just replace "Rune Priests" with "Shamans" in the Black Fang writeup and amend the paragraph.

p416 "However, any ability listed on the adventurer sheet at or above 75% with an experience check box cannot be trained—it must be improved through experience." and p417 "As with training, an ability listed on the adventurer sheet at or above 75% with an experience check box cannot be researched—it must be improved through experience.", but p417 under the Training Cost Table has "* If ability can be trained above 75%.". These are inconsistent statements.

p417 "No characteristic may be increased for any reason (except through magic) beyond the maximum amount rollable on the characteristic dice (in most cases, 18 for humans) plus the number of dice rolled (2D6+6 counts as 3 dice for SIZ and INT, and 3 dice for the rest). Thus, humans may not normally have any characteristic higher than 21.", but p418 has "To determine if POW increases, add the adventurer’s maximum rollable POW not including any Rune characteristic modifier (i.e., 18 for humans) plus the minimum rolled POW (3 for humans)." and "Example: Harmast wishes to increase his DEX through training and research. His species maximum for DEX is 18, and the minimum is 3. Together, these equal 21. ", the last 2 are not consistent with the first. The first is the RQ2 way, the last two are the RQ3 way.

 

52 minutes ago, Chris Gidlow said:

I am pretty sure this is an error. Very many characters are shown as left handed, either because of the original art or because the original art has been flipped in the design process. 4 of the Pre-generated characters are shown holding their primary weapon in their left hand, only one with it in her right hand and two without handedness shown. In the developed world left handedness is no more than 30% of the population, and in the developing and historic world it is much less frequent. almost unheard of in military contexts. I think if handedness were evenly distributed in Glorantha we would have heard about it. I would expected left-handed characters to have that noted either in the stats or in nicknames. This isn't a solitary incidence. p137 shows a whole army of left-handed hoplites. p193 strike ranks are illustrated left handed as are the ranged weapons on p211. the guard  on p221, etc.

Character generation says that you can choose or roll handedness. It says that dragonewts are left handed, but doesn't mention that chaos is left handed, as was the case. We always used to joke that it was easy to detect an ogre as it would be left-handed.

In my experience, just pick a method and go with it.

The Resistance Table is fine, if you think that POW is the thing to use. In fact, I was nevr sure why the Resistance table was dropped in the first place, it is simple to use and fairly elegant. However, it does fall down with large Characteristics - POW 210 vs POW 200 means almost guaranteed success even though the proportional difference is slight.

Opposed POWx5% Rolls is a bit more along Mythras lines, you use POW as the main stat and then use Mythras opposed rules to work it out. 

Having a different skill entirely is what Mythras uses at the moment, so you could use WillPower as that.

But, what I wouldn't do is have some things use the Resistance Table, others use Opposed Characteristic x5% rolls and other use WillPower.

41 minutes ago, g33k said:

TDM also has Constantinople, and have announced several more down the pipeline (of which the one I most-eagerly anticipate is a Mythic Mesopotamia; but it is also, so far as I can tell, one of the ones furthest-off down that Mythic Pipeline...  😛  ).

Thanks, they have Mythic Greece, which is going to be one of my favourites I am sure. Alephtar Games are Kickstarting a Nippon game for Revolution, as well, so there are at least 3 companies producing Alternate/Mythic/Fantasy Earth supplements on an active basis.

Not sure about the name, but Joerg's post is broadly what was discussed at EternalCon.  Sounds good to me.

As for other publishers, there's plenty of room for everyone in Fantasy Earth.

• Chaosium has Land of Ninja and Vikings, as well as Mythic Iceland, Blood Tide and a host of things for BRP.
• Alephtar has Stupor Mundi, Crusdaers of the Baltic Coast, Winds in the Steppe, Celestial Empire, Merrie England (3 versions) and has a Kickstarter planned for Nippon.
• Mongoose has Deus Vult, Vikings of Legend, Samurai of Legend, Pirates of Legend and Land of Ice and Stone
• The Design Mechanism has Mythic Rome, Mythic Britain and Mythic Constantinople
• We have Dark Ages Cthulhu, Cthulhu Invictus and Val du Loupe.
• Cakebread & Walton have Clockwork and Sorcery, Renaissance and Pirates & dragons
• Mystical Throne Entertainment have Ultimate Mongol Empire Guide, Ultimate Roman Legions Guide and Ultimate Three Kingdoms Guide

Please forgive me if I have forgotten any, but most are listed in the Alternate Earth Supplements, which I need to update.

Here is my review.  Very short summary: I liked it and may well use most of it as my default RuneQuest, but with Revolution skills.

21 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

All,

Just to let you know the thrust of our announcements at UK Games Expo.

HeroQuest OGL and SRD

• We are going to release the HeroQuest engine under an OGL
• There will be an SRD soon (before end of July)
• The OGL engine will have a different brand name, we will reserve HeroQuest for HeroQuest Glorantha.
  • It is a Gloranthan term, and by calling it HeroQuest Glorantha we avoid collision with the boardgame

That is excellent news, long awaited. HQ, or whatever it will be called, needs the support that OGL will give it. At its core, HQ is a fine, elegant system. It slows down when too much is bolted on for no reason other than to complicate it.

21 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

"HeroQuest" Genre Packs

• We want the ODL to make it easy for folks to produce 'genre packs' for "HeroQuest" either relying on our core rules, or including them as our Glorantha genre pack, HeroQuest Glorantha does
• To show what we think it can do, we plan on releasing a number of genre packs
  • Ron Edwards is going to do a supers genre pack for us
  • We are in negotiations for a  pulp license
  • We want to do a SF genre pack
  • We want to do something the breaks new creative ground
• We are very open to pitches for new genre packs
  • If you want to write of us, this is a good starting point.

This is what was discussed at EternalCon and presumably at UK Games Expo as well, glad it is out in the open.

As I have mentioned before, Superheroes is a genre that HeroQuest fits really well, straight out of the box. All it needs are examples of Character Creation and templates for Hero Types. 

SciFi would work as well, but that tends to be grittier and gritty doesn't work for HQ.

Any setting with very creative magic would work for HQ, as would Urban Fantasy. I can see the Magicians TV Series using HQ very easily, for example, as would The Tomorrow People.

19 hours ago, simonh said:

This stuff is complicated. I’m not sure that’s the correct way to combine the different probabilities.

EDITED: Oops, found a silly bug. Updated below

I just worked up a Python script to go through all the possible combinations of guard and player rolls and count up the successs. It came up with 2943 winning combinations for the guard out of 10000 possibilities, or a little over 29%. I didn’t consider fumbles though. I used ‘elif’ to avoid double-counting.

Although Probability Theory is fine, I find that this is the best way of working out exactly what the chances are. I did the same thing in Progress 4GL/OpenEdge to work out success chances for RQ6. 

16 hours ago, Yelm's Light said:

I suspect that the river people are a lot less likely to cave to Praxian tribes than Oasis People are.

Our Oasis has so much fruit that we can afford to share it. We help support the Nomads, as they are descended from our people, but have forgotten. So, they eat our fruit and take our women, so what, we have plenty of fruit and plenty of women. They'll soon go and someone else will come to share in our bounty.

17 hours ago, Joerg said:

But again, both types are grounders, not riders. Discussing cultural differences between them beyond the military problem they pose is idle.

For me, the Lunar farmers in the River of Cradles, the farmers of Sun County and Sartarites of Pavis County are not Oasis Folk, they are just farmers in Prax.

To be one of the Oasis Folk, you need to be descended from Tada's People, you need to be tied to your Oasis, to depend on it to feed you, to drink its waters, take part in its rituals. You know that genert will take care of you, even though he is dead. You know that you don't need to bother with Nomad raids, Lunar tax collectors, Sartarite rebels or even chaos incursions, because everything will be taken care of, as it always has been. That's why people think you are lazy, you lounge about in the sun all day, waiting for the fruit to ripen, only picking it when necessary and storing it away for the rest of the year. Why work yourself to death growing oats or barley when your trees produce enough figs for you and your people to live off all year round? Anyway, who wants to eat oats and barley when you can eat figs all day?

4 hours ago, HorusArisen said:

And again great book, I look forward to the next two instalments.

I look forward to far more than just two instalments.

The rules, as they stand, have some variety. You roll on Characteristics, but if they are uniformly low, you can add some points. Runes increase Characteristics. There are options in the rules that allow you to pretty much roll whatever you want. It even says that different ways of rolling up Characteristics will appear in the GM Guide.

However, for a game like RuneQuest, having higher Characteristics doesn;t break the game, so if you have 85, 90 or even 95 points to spread across 7 Characteristics, it won't break the game.

What might cause problems is inconsistency, so ine player rolling and another uising a Points Buy. I don't think even that will break things, but some players will get their calculators out and say "Your Characteristics before Rune Modification add up to 93 but I only had 90 points to spend, Waaaaaahaaahaaa!".

18 hours ago, Jeff said:

Yes it will. Runequest Fantasy Earth will be RuneQuest after all.

You are going to hate me for this question, but what will RuneQuest for Famtasy Earth be called?

It can't be RQG, as Fantasy Earth is not Glorantha, so would make no sense.

Perhaps RQNG for RuneQuest Next Generation, or RuneQuest Not-Glorantha?

10 hours ago, Furry Fella said:

This Age bit has me bothered.

Most of thre players in my gaming groups over the years have said "We are heroes, we don't want to be ageing" and we have ignored the ageing rules since then. We'll ignore them in RQG as well.

As has been mentioned, you can split any number of points across characteristics. 

Just because it isn't in the rules doesn't mean you cannot do it. Rules are guidelines to help you play, not constraints to stpo you doing enything else.

I think the Sorcery diagram is different to the other rune diagram, as it looks at different things.

However, assuming the cross lines of the pentagram in the OP indicate sub-runes, the text and diagrams do not agree. However, it is not really clear if that is the case, as the diagram itself does not explain much.

The Rune Order certainly agrees across all of them, i.e. Air trumps Fire/Sky, Fire/Sky trumps Darkness and so on.