soltakss

The player said afterwards that he realised he'd made a mistake when he saw my face upon him attacking Uzarl, but he'd made his decision by then.

In my experience, there is very little that a determined and well-organised party of PCs cannot defeat. Perhaps not the first time, or the second time, but eventually the PCs will come back and defeat the foe. Combat autopilot mode is something that a lot of parties fall into. It is very dangerous. The way to beat it is not to put a hideous undefeatable foe against them but to give their kill-crazy actions consequences. If it makes them outlaws or puts them in peril then that should work. Ha! Suitable prompts beforehand do not always work, believe me. I ran a scenario where the PCs went against a group of vampires, led by Uzarl, a Mistress Race Troll Vampire who was several centuries old and who the NPCs in the campaign repeatedly warned the PCs against engaging. One Dark Troll PC was late to the party and missed all the warnings, so when he encountered Uzarl, he was so indignant and furious that such a thing could exist that he went hand to hand with her. The first thing they did was Sever Spirit each other and both died and came back with Divine Intervention, then they killed each other with Fear and Basilisk Gaze, and their allies used stored Divine Intervention to come back, then they fought hand to hand and used pretty much all their traded/drained healing magic to survive, before he killed her. The funny thing is that I designed Uzarl to be able to defeat the party of Rune Lords single handedly, yet a single very determined PC defeated her. I also had a recurring NPC, a Giant Broo, that lasted approximately 3 SRs in combat with the PCs, as they were so terrified of him that they instantly killed him on sight. I couldn't work out why they were so scared of him as he had never posed a threat, but they continued to be terrified of him throughout the campaign, no matter how many times he turned up and no matter how many times they killed him. In summary, no matter how gross you make an NPC, the PCs will always find a way of killing him/her.

This is actually quite tricky, especially if you want every encounter to be balanced. Treasure Factors could give a very rough level, but I have found them unreliable for this. In my opinion, a group of organised PCs can take down a smaller group of far more skilled NPCs. Here is what I do when working out encounters. 1. For one on one encounters, the NPC should be pretty much the same skill, within 20%, with similar levels of armour and magic. Giving more armour will make it more challenging, more magic might make it more challenging depending on the magic, more damage will definitely make it more challenging. 2. For group encounters, NPCs can be within 40% skill, as PCs are capable of absorbing a higher level of differences than a lone PC can. Individual increases in damage/armour/magic might make a slight difference, but not a great deal. 3. For group encounters, being massively outnumbered might pose a problem, unless the foes are made of tissue paper. A 2:1 ratio of NPCs : PCs will be very difficult to beat, unless the PCs get into a position to minimise the numbers attacking them. A 3:2 ratio should be beatable, though, but will be a tough fight. 4. For a group of PCs against a single monster, unless the monster has so much armour that the PCs cannot penetrate it, the PCs are likely to win. Even then, the PCs will struggle on until they score enough critical hits to take it down. Things that help PCs defeat far stronger opponents: 1. Healing each other 2. Ganging up on opponents - multiple attacks on the opponent, splitting attacks against different PCs 3. Using clever tactics 4. Missile weapons can soften up any opponents before the hand to hand fighting starts 5. Different combinations of spells can be used to a party's advantage

What setting are you looking for? Some settings don't have all the weapons, so a Dark Ages Earth wouldn't have firearms and a far future game is unlikely to have self bows.

Yes, Legend would be perfect for that kind of game. What you would need, though, is a set of backgrounds and professions, cultural weapons, special magic rules, stats and rules for various types of djinn/genie and a lot of talk about atmosphere.

That's why it's got a knob on the end, after all.

I don't know. Perhaps we weren't using them right, or we misunderstood them. Our group played HQ for 3 or 4 years, including performing the Lightbringers Quest in Glorantha, and in that time we rarely used Extended Contests successfully, despite using 2 Narrators. Other people have played a lot more HQ2 than I have, so they would have better ideas of how it plays.

Thanks for the kind words. I am halfway through converting it to Legend, or rather converting Legend to SciFi, using many of the ideas in that document. However, it looks as though this will come out some time next year, in the grand RQ tradition.

The magic section in HQ1 was butchered to make it "realistic Glorantha", which made it quite complex. I use Affinities as scores or augments, Feats to cause effects or augments, Wizardry to cause effects/augments, Animism to cause effects/augments and that's about it. I'd also use Mysticism in the same way. For all of them, if you have a relevant spell/feat/ability and a skill then you can use it to augment or to have an effect, no matter what is being used. I also don't differentiate between magic types in terms of power - so, common magic is as powerful as feats or wizardry. I really don't like the idea behind HQ2 magic, for several reasons: 1. Using Runes as the basis of magic doesn't work for me, because Zorak Zoran's Death Magic is vastly different to Humakt's or Hunter's Death Magic. 2. Feats are too high level - sure, have HeroQuesting abilities, but call them something else and keep feats as powers 3. Deities are not differentiated enough for my tastes (I really liked the idea of each Deity having its own powers and abilities) In HQ1, if you have a skill of 10M then you know roughly what that means in the grand scheme of things. A Clan Chapion might have a M2 skill, a Tribal Champion an M3 skill, dragons might have M5 skills and so on. In HQ2, this seems to go out of the window and your skill seems to be roughly the same no matter if you are a farm boy just out of short trews or a superhero taking down dragons. It is probably something that I don't understand properly. Again, I don't really understand it and haven't internalised it. Again, I don't really understand it and haven't internalised it. I have hold-over benefits from a good roll or action that last for a bit, which is probably the same kind of thing. Through the narration and through the action. Mythic Russia uses Chained Contests, which are far easier to use than Extended Contests. So, in a complex situation, we break it down to a series of contests, each of which is augmented by the PCs and each of which has an effect on the whole contest. That is quick, easy, more exciting and saves messing about with APs, bids, changing tactics and so on. It seems to me that Extended Contests in HQ1 were a way of bringing crunchy tactics back into a game that doesn't need crunchy tactics. It felt wrong to me, didn't play well in any of the games that I played in or Narrated and just bogged the game down too much. Obviously, these are my opinions and shouldn't be treated as a critique of HQ1 or HQ2. Other people love Extended Contests and love HQ2 in general.

There is one at http://www.soltakss.com/rq_scifi.doc

Hi Mikuel Have a look at Simon Phipp - RuneQuest/D100/Glorantha - Home Page for all the houserules that I have used in my RQ games, and much more. Mechanics-wise, I use the following: SuperCrits at 1 for every 100 in your skill HyperCrits at 1 for every 500 in your skill Reduced fumble chance at higher skills Use of Hero Points for rerolls etc (As Legend and HQ) Use of Hero Points as Experience Points (As HQ) Use of hero Points for plot changes, special features, interesting effects Not dead at 0 HP, instead dead less than HPs negative (So, if you have 13 HPs then you only die once you pass -13 HPs) No, as pointed out it is my houseruled version of RQ3. It would probably work, but is better with Legend/RQ6 as they just have Fumble/Failure/Success/Critical which mirrors HQ skill results. Using Hero Points to bump would work OK, as would bumping an opponent's result down. Using mastereys to bump might not work as well, as you would have to work out how many 90%s to use as a mastery and then work out criticals based on the leftover skill. Success Levels are probably a better way of doing it with RQ3. That way, you work out the relative number of levels between results and use that to show the effect. So, if I critical and you fail a roll, then I have 3 levels of success better than you. Use a Hero Point to bump the success level one either way and it becomes easy to use.

I thought I saw something that said that other things that were not mentioned were being delayed. Since Mythic Briton wasn't mentioned, the implication was that it was not in the current queue and hence was being delayed. For what it is worth, I am glad that it isn't. Obviously, I claim full credit for galvanising you into action following the earlier post. A Pyrrhic victory is still a victory. So what if the streets are filled with disease and corpses and there is nothing left in the city to sack as it has all been destroyed. At least we will have won!

Hmmm, Mythic Greece and Mythic Arthur have been delayed/shelved, but the Fall of Byzantium is scheduled, so that is bad and good news for Alternate Earth. Not a happy ending for the PC besiegers? So, the city doesn't fall in the end? Glad to see more RQ Gloranthan supplement, of course. Many people think they systems are too close, but that really isn't the case. It would be good to see Glorantha as one of their supported systems.

How about both?

In which case "in Bacharach" has a completely different meaning.

Mood Design had an extremely successful Kickstarter for The Guide to Glorantha, so successful that it has delayed production by many months just to fit in the extra material promised as stretch goals.

Can't make it this year, should be able to make it next year, I hope.

At the moment, the book is sat on my bookshelf, unopened for 6 months, whereas the PDF keeps being dipped into whenever I want to check a rule. I'd go for the PDF, then once you have saved up, buy the BGB.

Well, actually you don't. It is possible to publish something written for BRP and use the Legend Compatible logo without it being compatible with Legend. You just have to ensure that you don't include any rules from within BRP, or if you do then ensure that they are clearly not OGC material. The Legend Compatible licence doesn't say that the product has to be compatible with Legend!

Minotaurs are fun, especially when 1 or 2 points get through. Good call with the Agony spell- we've always played that a berserk minotaur is immune to all mind-affecting/emotion-affecting spells or effects and shrug off any pain.

He's right. of course, especially in his game. Not every community would have a Yelmalian shrine. In fact, PCs/Adventurers often have to travel to repray spells at a temple, often for several weeks. In RQ, Barbarian is a culture type, not a statement of personality. So, many the people of Dragon pass are barbarians. Yelmalians could be called civilised, but they are probably more likely to be barbarians. After all, they live in villages dotted around Sun County, not in great cities. Elmal is antagonistic to Yelmalio as they are rivals for worshippers and both represent similar concepts. Elmal thinks Yelmalio is a Dara Happan upstart muscling into his territory. Yelmalio thinks Elmal is a barbarian rebel, playing at being a sun god. Orlanthi know that Orlanth is the husband of Ernalda, so they could rightly mock anyone who says differently. Ernaldans also know that Orlanth is Ernalda's husband. However, priestesses and acolytes might know that Ernalda had many husbands, including Yelmalio. Dykene has a temple in Balazar. Aldachur should have a temple as it is full of Yelmalians. The Grazers might have a shrine to Yelmalio, depending if your GM has them worship just the Pure Horse Pantheon or allows some foreign solar deities. Elves worship yelmalio, so you might find a Yelmalio shrine in the elf woods.

Prax and Sartar have been described fairly thoroughly. The Lunar Empire has been described in patchy form. The Holy Country has been touched upon, but not described in detail. The West has been described, but not in a huge amount of detail. Kralorela, Pamaltela and the Islands have been described in very broad terms. The Guide to Glorantha, as has been mentioned, will cover these areas and more in greater detail. The areas should be mapped in great detail, However, I am not sure how much of the culture/history/religions of these areas will be covered.

Sounds reasonable. Probably not within Beast Valley, as they don't like humans on their land. However, Beast Valley is nested between Sartar and the Holy Country, both of which have loads of Orlanthi around. You could have Orlanthi communities in the hills around Beast Valley on both sides, probably in the hills and mountains. Again, that sounds reasonable. One of the tricky things about innovation is that it might step on people's toes. Sure, they are more efficient and better fighters, but it isn't what we were taught by all the generals before us. Th Sun Dome Temples marked on the maps are Great temples to Yelmalio. These are the massive cathedrals, the cult centres, the hub of the Yelmalian Templars. You can pray back any Yelmalian spells at such temples. However, there are many more smaller Yelmalian temples and shrines. The ones in balazar are minor temples, the one in Pavis is a minor temple, the one in Alda Chur is probably a Major Temple. I would expect most Orlanthi clans to have shrines to Elmal, which isn't quite the same. but some might have Yelmalian shrines. Temples to Ernalda might have shrines to Yelmalio, as he is a Husband Protector. Holy Spots could be used to repray magic, as can artefacts, as they act as shrines. RQ3 had the Sactify divine spell, I think, that allowed you to create a temporary shrine if necessary.

Just the idea of spending a fair bit of money on something that is very Stormbringerish, when I know that is something that I don't really want. I get annoyed quite easily these days - I'm turning into a miserable old man. This isn't a RQ vs Stormbringer issue, it's just my "Needing to spend my limited resources in a way that I'd enjoy" issue. It looks from the answers that it probably would annoy me, so I'll try and saty noy annoyed for a while. Thanks for the comments and advice and chuckling brothers.