soltakss

It wasn't meant to. Nope. The example I gave showed how HQ can use different ways to resolve a conflict. If she had Unaided Walking 10M4 then she would be able to walk through earthquakes or through hurricanes or when paralytic. I gave an example of how HQ can be used. I neither defend nor encourage it. I happen to like both HQ and RQ, and Legend and BRP. If I had to make a choice between which system I would play forever and to never play the other systems ever again, I would choose Legend. My house campaign, however, uses RQ3+, RQ3 with a healthy dose of stuff adapted from HQ, Legend, BRP and house rules. HQ when working really well encourages a different mindset than standard RQ. I find that this mindset can be carried back to RQ and that this is a liberating experience. Other people's experiences may vary. Other people's opinions may vary.

Personally, I much prefer HQ1 to HQ2, but that's because I don't really understand HQ2, well I do but I don;t agree with it. Why is HQ better at emulating Glorantha than RQ? It isn't. Why is HQ better at emulating Glorantha HeroQuesting than RQ? It isn't. Why is RQ better at emulating Glorantha than HQ? It isn't. Having got that out of the way, we come down to the nitty gritty. What does HQ do differently to RQ? The resolution system is far more elegant in that it works at any level and is really scalable. The same conflict resolution is used for combat, for task resolution, for social conflicts and whatever else you want to do The opposed levels of success are excellent (Succeed a bit, fail a bit, succeed really well, fail really badly and so on - I can fail and end up with a succeeds really well, depending on my skill and the opponent's roll) You can use emotions, spells, relationships, skills, abilities and whatever you want to resolve conflicts in exactly the same way Results are narrated, so work well with a story-based game Abilities/Spells do not have a fixed effect but can vary according to their usage or what the story requires Abilities/Spells can have simple or overblown verbose names So, what does this mean? I have a PC who is a healer of Chalana Arroy. She has no combat skills at all. She is attacked by a bandit, but uses her Loved by Everybody, Unbelievably Cute and Cant Attack Me I'm a Healer abilities to ward off the attack. The bandit attacks with 10M, her adjusted ability is 10M2, the bandit rolls 8, she rolls 1, as she has a 1 mastery advantage, she bumps her opponent's roll from a success to a failure, so would get a Major Victory, but spends a Hero Point to bump his failure down to a fumble, scoring a Complete Victory over him. He offers to help her and stays with her as a bodyguard. Now, how would you do this in RQ? It is very difficult to achieve the same result. She would probably use Orate or Fast Talk to stop him attacking her, with the implied "I'm a Healer" to help. But there is no way of quantifying that, except perhaps as a +20% bonus or whatever. We have found that we use a lot of ideas from HQ in our RQ games. These are not mechanical ideas, but soft ideas of what results can mean, how to apply odd skills and how to be far more flexible than we ever would have before.

I've not read the Kult games, so can't help on that. However, introducing Gnostic elements to a medieval game is very fruitful. The Cathars are said to have a strong Gnostic core, as have many of the other heresies of the time. Kabbalist Judaism appears in the medieval period and that has Gnosticism in spades. Some say that the Templars were moved towards heresy through Gnostic beliefs, although I am not sure if that was the case. There are many Gnostic practices in the medieval period, especially among small sects in the middle east. Once the Crusaders meet with them and learn of their ways, they could easily bring back some of the beliefs. That is why the Middle Ages was such a melting pot of beliefs. On the one hand the Catholic Church became steadily more conservative and resistant to heresy, on the other hand beliefs were being brought back from Outremer and Moorish Spain, with Jews being expelled and moved between countries, ancient Christian sects being awoken or rediscovered and many marriages between people of different beliefs. As I see it, Gnosticism has several core beliefs: Belief by Inner Knowledge - the certainty of belief Teaching of secrets to certain ranks of believers, so outsiders learn some secrets but the inner circles learn higher secrets Absence of hierarchical structures - either everyone is a preacher or there is a preacher class, but no layers of priesthood Some differences in how the Godhead is seen and honoured - this isn't strictly a Gnostic belief but many Gnostic sects do not believe in the Catholic Trinity How should it work in play? Gnostic sects might get their Blessings through different means to other sects. This is only important if you use Merrie England's ideas on how sects get their Blessings. Members of the sect might get an awakening of knowledge or Gnosis, almost an illumination or revelation. This gives access to more secrets and maybe to extra Blessings. Members of the sect might be able to recognise other members by using secret phrases, handshakes or other signs.

Just watching the first series again and, whilst I agree it is a fantastic series, it does have engine noises in space. But, I can forgive it that.

Traveller scenario, PCs have a teleport device and a master surgeon (actually more like a mad scientist with a habit of making modifications while the other PCs are asleep). One PC is planetside when he trips a booby trap and a nuke goes off. The master surgeon teleports to him immediately and makes a stabilising medical roll as "It clearly says that he can stabilise the patient within so many seconds of the damage, allowing time to treat the wound later". The GM grumbled a bit, then grudgingly allowed it, so the master surgeon teleported back to the ship with said patient. When he used his computer to diagnose the injuries, it said "He's been hit point blank range by a nuke". Worth a try, though.

I think the rationale is that if you are strong then you can more easily throw yourself around. But use DEX if you want. It is very difficult to break BRP by making small changes.

Imagine this with 4 people, one hides and rolls a special, three try to Spot and two roll normals, one fails. What does this mean? The ones who failed don't see anything anyway, the one who succeeds would have seen a normal roll, but don't see the hider. For some things, yes. But in a binary effect like hide and seek there should be a winner. In that case, the Hide is the winner as it is the default. In other cases, the GM should decide which skill defaults to be the winner.

You could have one of the races as being major on one world and minor on the other. Maybe they were stranded there for some reason and occupy a small part of a continent. If their culture is different to the major one on the other world then it might be a bit of a shock when they encounter their cousins or when other people encounter the race on the other world. For example, suppose a group left world A as refugees and arrived on world B. In World B they have developed a culture of freedom, as opposed to the tyrannical rule in World A. Or, suppose in World B they are religious heretics with a vastly different world view to those in World A (pacifists for example). People who encounter them in World B would see them as freedom loving pacifists, probably easy targets for slavers and so on. Then they arrive in World A and expect the ultra-tyrannical warmongers to act in the same way.

There, you see, he is nice ... Sometimes

The way I do it is to move all rolls up a level until one fails and then use that result. So, a Success vs a Special becomes a Failure vs a Success. It is easy and doesn't involve working much out at all. Also, BRP rolls are made simultaneously, in theory, so the idea that if I roll a Special then the other person has a harder roll doesnt really wash. In reality, it makes me feel very happy until the opponent rolls a 01.

Depends on the races and the worlds. If there is free travel between worlds then have them on both. If travel is restricted or magical then they would have to have a very good reason to be on both worlds. Also, do they look like the other races in the worlds? If not, and the worlds have a xenophobic element, then they might have a reason not be be on both worlds.

There was a GM, to be known as "Curly Andrew", who ran a series of RQ adventures in the "Acid Pits". As we were all Rune Lords wearing iron, the name immediately causes suspicion. Features of the scenarios included: 1. The only way in was being carried by an illuminated Griffin who riddled us on the way up 2. The random encounters on the way in invariably caused fatalities requiring Divine Intervention resurrection 3. They were called the Acid Pits for a reason 4. Whenever we called it off and dragged our broken bodies away, or more likely bugged out using DI, he sighed and said "The Treasure was just around the corner" 5. He used his PC (In 1986ish) to print out 20 sheets of "Chaotic Demons", which we looked at and then banned him from ever GMing again Obviously, I am such a nice GM that nobody has ever had complaints about the way that I run things. Honest.

The cult of Bstard Gee-Em appeared in an early RQ Fanzine called "Pavic Tales", so RQ GMs are definitely not above being evil or abusive. I though it was a requirement, actually.

That wasn't being defensive, but your post was ... Repeated quotes are not a sign of sarcasm. What they are is an attempt to answer individual points without losing the answer in lots of text. It is easier to quote a section of a post and respond to it. The original post was about using deities in a game, but that seems to have been a mask for a particularly bad gaming experience. I've never played Bushido, but I have played in games where honour is paramount and it does change the way you play the game. Sure, you have a choice of whether to do something dishonourable, but that could severely affect your PC. Regarding deities in a game, having Odin pop up mysteriously and offer advice in a game is OK. Having Ares and Athena rock up in a battle and start cracking heads in a game is OK. Having the Black Assassin God appear behind your PC, kill him in one undefendable strike and disappear is not OK.

Classic Fantasy is being ported to Legend, I believe. Once that has been published it should solve most of these issues.

I like to be prepared as a GM. It makes my job a lot easier and helps build confidence in the setting. Normally, my settings are sandboxes, and usually published ones, so I have a lot of material at hand, which helps. I have a document that covers the major NPCs of the game and what they do. That helps if the PCs ask about such and such a place or who can do something. I also have brief notes on most of the places in the setting. T^hese normally cover half a page or a couple of paragraphs and this helps if the players ask about the place or want to go there. Probably a third of my scenarios are published ones, a third are ones that I have written or have downloaded from the web and a third arise from encounters or from the players deciding to do something. Where I have a published scenario, or one downloaded from the web, I tend to use parts of the scenario and allow the players to digress quite a bit, sometimes they come back to the scenario after several sessions, sometimes they don't. I never stick to a scenario and always have a way to get out of the scenario or a way to get back in to in. I tend to be good at thinking on my feet and at moulding and merging scenarios together, which does tend to help. Another thing that helps is to have some kind of metaplot, or things that will churn away and happen if the players don't do anything about them. This helps give a framework to the campaign and provides background events that the players can interact with or ignore. It sometimes helps drive the campaign along if it gets a bit quiet. It also helps to have several plot lines on the go at the same time. They can chug along independently, interact or become so intertwined that they become merged into a single plot line. It gives the players something to aim at as well, and avoids the "what can we do now?" effect, which sandboxes can suffer from.

Looking at their recent releases, it seems to be CoC, CoC and a lot more CoC. BRP doesn't seem to be getting a look in.

Sounds good. It makes perfect sense. The OGL is generic, even though some people have called it a Legend OGL or D20 OGL or whatever. The text is perfectly clear that you can use any OGC material that is covered by an OGL, as long as you include the correct copyrights and mention the supplements that have been used. So, that makes any D20 OGC material fair game for conversion to CF.

It really does depend on the setting and on your take on magic. For example, imagine a 17th century game where a witch uses witchcraft. It wouldn't bother those in her coven, it probably wouldn't bother the people in her village, but it would freak the hell out of a puritan preacher.

Laminating is fine - if you want to ruin a map by covering it with plastic then it doesn't affect copyright. Copying the map and then laminating it might be different.

If you want a character with monkey features, then I'd just say that the character has them. It is easier that way. However, if you want to build a character from, say, a human base and add features then Mutations might work. A human already has hands, so I'd add prehensile feet and a prehensile tail (if you want monkeys not apes), probably some kind of bite. Bear in mind that the mutations are just samples and guidelines - if you want something that isn't there then invent the mutation. You are not randomly rolling and hoping you choose the right ones, you are picking them and you might as well pick new ones which work.

OpenQuest is as good a D100 system as any, so it should be fine for what you want. You roll a D20 and compare to a hit location table. The exact results depend on which variety of D100 game you play. Hit points per location generally depend on SIZ+CON, again differing by nversion. It's quick and simple and better, in my opnion, than having no hit locations.

Welcome aboard. OpenQuest is a nice D100 variant, very fast and very simple. It isn't always to my tastes (No Hit Locations is the biggy for me) but I have played it and it works. All D100 systems tend to be gruesome on the combat side. Ways to improve this include: Increased hit points for PCs (doubled is a good start) Readily available healing magic/potions Delay in dying after serious wounds to vital locations No General Hit Points HPs don't scale in any D100 game - the rationale is that if you take a person and then take the same person 10 years and a lot of experience down the road, they will have roughly the same physical capabilities, so why should they be able to absorb more damage? However, in D100 games, the ability to avoid getting damaged by having better skills, better magic and so on mitigates that by a fair amount. CoC has, at its heart, a cut-down D100 system, with basic skills and basic combat. OpenQuest does skills and combat a lot better, in my opinion. What CoC does is model the inevitable slide towards madness and the grind of slowly losing your marbles as you are exposed to more and more occult/eldritch knowledge. Whether that would work in a Gothic setting, I do not know, not being familiar with the Gothic games. However, if you want your PCs to slowly go mad then, by all means, use a variant of the Sanity rules from CoC. D100 games in general (including RQ variants, OpenQuest, BRP and Legend) seem complex, but that's because a lot of them have different rules for different types of magic. The core system is incredibly simple (Roll D100, try and roll beneath your skill or try and roll beneath a proportion of your skill for extra effects) and is used across all areas of the game. Combat can be more complex, and Legend/RQ6 both have very detailed ways of enhancing combat. Magic systems can be complex, with multiple skills and many spells, but that adds to the flavour of the games. For me, they are simple, but that's because I have played them for a long, long time.

I've never been keen on Daleks or Cybermen. The robots from Westworld/FutureWorld and Beyond Westworld always appealed to me. They were androids but weren't super-powerful yet were still dangerous.

Everything is based on the Legend SRD. Character Generation is Legend, but LifePath for Legend would be available as a free download. Legendary Abilities would be based on the RQSciFi documents. Spaceship combat would be a combination of standard Legend/Pirates of Legend/new SciFi. Equipment just does a job, so is system-neutral. Some equipment will give a bonus, others just allow you to do something. Psionics would be part-based on the RQSciFi document with some odds and ends coming from various Legend magic rules. After all, it doesn't matter where a rule comes from, only that it works. Probably about the same size as the Legend core rulebook. I don't want it to be much bigger and it won't be smaller, and that's a fact!