soltakss

It is now. The file is at http://alternateearthrq.soltakss.com/meta-outline1.txt If there is anything else on the Alternate Earth RQ Group that people want on the website then let me know.

Replying to many posts at once ... Ah, I see. I quite like the covers of the standard RQ range, they are plain and simple, obviously part of a range and don't involve fancy pictures that need to be interpreted. Some of the rune choices are a bit iffy, but the concept is fine. RuneQuest with Runes on the cover, it makes sense. Sorry, can't see it myself. But I am a bit dense. Why? Nobody is upset or offended, as far as I can see. I just moved this to a new thread because that's probably where it belonged. All games have been influenced by D&D, to some extent, whether positively or negatively. That doesn't make them good or bad. The fact is, as you have said, that RQM is definitely in the BRP camp. Exactly, and they are a good thing in principle. I'd have liked a more heroic way of getting them, but not every setting has HeroQuests, so learning them as the culmination of a skill makes sense to me. and And Land of Ninja had Ki skills, many people had HeroQuest Abilities, Demonic Abilities and so on, all of which could be modelled using Legendary Abilities. I'm all for non-standard parts of games being standardised and Legendary Abilities seem to have done so. In my RQ-SciFi SRD, I've used a lot of Legendary Abilities for people with very advanced skills and they seem to work very well. Having different levels of feats or talents is fine by me. RQM has them in the descriptions of Ducks, for example, where every duck has a special ability/feature. I can't see anything wrong with things like "Ambidextrous", "Good at Languages" or "Good with women" being minor abilities that certain people have as part of a character generation. It adds flavour to the game. Having full-blown Legendary Abilities at the start is a bit much, but why not minor abilities? I certainly wouldn't allow all of them just by meeting the requirements, although some of them are clearly skill extensions and would be picked up by a Master or taught by a Guild or School. From what I've seen of D&D/D20 (through the SRDs), feats are more like Feats in HeroQuest, where you could have Make Pottery as a Feat. I prefer special abilities to be, well, more special than this, which is why I like Legendary Abilities, in principle. It is. However, RQM is taking abstraction a bit far, in my opinion. The way it handles Runes. Bad. Very bad. Very, very bad, indeed. And the maps in Clanking Ruins, those were very bad as well. Separating Experience Points and Hero Points is a waste of time. Be like HeroQuest and use the same things for both roles. That is partly because the people involved in earlier versions of RQ were not involved in RQM. (Don't mention Steve Perrin, we all know how that went ...) Similar accusations were levelled at RQ3 and that turned out OK in the end. We all wanted the new version of RQ to be fantastic, but it fell short. Then we all wanted the new version of BRP to be fantastic and that fell short. The problem is that every one of us who has GMed RQ/BRP for a long time has our own views about what makes RQ/BRP good and what is required to make it better. I swear blind that building on RQ3 is the way forward but I know a lot of people who say that RQ3 was a mistake and that building on RQ2 is the way to go as well as people who say that RQ2/3 were mistakes and building on Stormbringer/Elric is the way forward. Almost nobody says that building BRP on CoC is the way forward, which says a lot about the CoC rules. The funny thing is that I was using this approach in my RQ campaign that eventually dies 12 years ago. It makes a lot of sense and is better than the tick-chase, but this has been covered in a different thread. The difference between RQm and D&D is that Experience for RQM is awarded according to how successful the PCs have been and, optionally, how well they have performed, how well the players roleplayed and so on. D&D experience is according to how much treasure they have gained and how many creatures they have killed. So, a healer in RQM could heal a regiment and get some experience, whereas in D&D the healer would have to kill a few orcs on the side. Using Experience Points and abstracting physical characteristics being like D&D means that games such as HeroQuest are like D&D. Hang on, they both use D20 as well! :eek: Probably because the same technique doesn't work well in all possible combinations. I don't use Opposed Rolls in the same way as in RQM or BRP as I don't like either approach. I use Made it by Most and Levels/Degrees of Success and that works well for me. I'd love to use Characteristic x5% rolls rather than the Resistance Table but me players prefer the Resistance Table, so that's what we use. Attacking and Defending Rolls make more sense to me, but there you go. Certainly, I use RQ3 combat with some RQM combat options, but combat in my games is always very fluid. Opposed Rolls are found in both RQM and BRP, in one form or another. Apparently they are the Future, but I prefer the Past. However, it isn't one of the things potentially lifted from D&D and I wouldn't want a detailed Opposed Rolls discussion to choke this thread into silence. We can do that ourselves.

I've created a new thread http://basicroleplaying.com/forum/basic-roleplaying/1486-why-rqm-not-like-d-d.html#post24279 for why RQM is/is not like D&D, rather than confusing the Missing Table thread.

Moved from a different thread ... There were some dubious comments made about Mongoose RQ (RQM or MRQ) being influenced by D&D. Don't worry - there are a lot of people on this forum who have very strong views anout Mongoose RQ, D&D etc. In my opinion, RQM has nothing in common with D&D, or at most about the same in common as any other roleplaying game. RQM doesn't depart very far from other versions of RQ. Most ofn the rules are very similar, in my opinion. Apart from Strike Ranks, you can use most of RQM with RQ2/3 and vice versa. It is far more similar to BRP and RQ2/3 than D&D. Objectively and in my opinion : RQ2 and RQ3 are quite similar RQ3 is similar to Thieves World Companion, Ringworld and Stormbringer BRP is similar to RQ2, RQ3 and Stormbringer/Elric RQM is similar to RQ2, RQ3 and BRP It is more like DEX Ranks from CoC, in my opinion, except for the D10 Initiative Roll. Didn't Stormbringer have a DEX Rank idea where you attacked on your DEX? In theory it makes sense, the way that RQM does it doesn't and I prefer the RQ3/Optional BRP Strike Rank rule. True, no more Resistance Table, which is a shame as it is useful. I had never thought of Persistence as being like a Saving Throw, but I suppose it could be seen that way. And a good thing too. RQ/BRP needs this kind of thing in a more fomalised way than has existed in the past. I would like to see them in BRP as well. It makes it less D&D-like, as least the D&Ds I have seen. DEX has always been important. In older RQ versions if you were big, quick and skillful then you could attack very often in a round. And are a bad idea. The same thing was said about RQ3. Later supplements have shown that RQM has produced some good material. Personally, I play RQ3 with some rules from RQM, some from BRP, some from RQ2 and some extra house rules. I wouldn't play RQM at the moment becuase I am not that interested in Second Age Glorantha. In my opinion, Mongoose formalised a lot of stuff, made things more reasonable and added a lot of things that have been used in other games for a long while, all good things. That isn't to say that it is more like D&D, rather it is a more commercial game and perhaps that's the problem. RuneQuest players have always been a bit snobbish about their game, especially those who play in Glorantha and those who would never play in Glorantha (long story) and most would agree that earlier versions of RQ knocked spots off other games. However, this elitism has always been coloured by the fact that RQ is not as successful as D&D, an apparently inferior game, and this has always been hard to take. So, many RQ and BRP people have taken the attitude that making a game commercial, or selling out, is moving towards a D&D style game. Yes, the way that Runes worked is a mistake. Making them physical tokens that could be taken is a mistake. Linking spells to certain runes is a mistake and the way that Gloranthan cults wotk with Runes is a mistake. However, this does not make this more like D&D. "Kill things and take their stuff" is not a D&Dism. Look at many films - the heroes take stuff off dead people all the time. Medieval battefields had teams of people whose job was to strip the corpses of their armour and take their weapons to be used again. Winners of jousts or duels were awarded the arms and horse of the losers as a prize. Weapons and armour was so expensive that taking the arms of the dead is a valid tactic, the inclusion of magical items makes it more economic. In RQ2/3 the looting of corpses was a standard event and wasn't thought of as wronf, except by Hunakti. The anti-"Kill things and take their stuff" is to a certain extent a Hero Wars/Hero Quest/Farmers Collective snobbism in itself, one which does not reflect history or economics. :confused: I'm not even sure what this means. I saw a version of RQ4 and didn't like it that much, it certainly had a lot of wargamey ideas, especially in the wooden movement and combat actions. RQM is far better than that. One of the ways that RQM is like D&D (D20), and that hasn't been mentioned elsewhere, is that RQM has been produced under an OGL and has an SRD. This has obviously been copied from D20 and is an excellent idea.

Presumably Mongoose RQ (RQM) as that is available as an SRD. RQ4 was a different beast entirely.

Registration is here Formulaire d'inscription you need to click the box that says you have read the terms and conditions. There's no need to translate these as nobody reads terms and conditions in any case. Click on the Enregistrez-vous button and you go to a page that asks for two user names, one when you sign on and one that shows when you make a post, they can probably be the same. You must enter your email address twice (adresse e-mail) and password twice (mot de passe) and change the Bot-Check from Non to Oui, unless you are actually not human. Then enter the two words underneath the picture words and press Soumettre l'inscription. Then you get an email in French and click on the link beneath "Pour activer votre compte, cliquez simplement sur le lien suivant :" and enter your username and password and you are registered. Simple, really.

If you want giant spiders then have a look at some RQ bestiaries. RQ Trolllpack has stats for giant spiders that eat horses. I can't remember off hand if the RQM SRD has stats for giant spiders, it probably hasn't but is worth a look anyway.

Where you are going right is realising that 1000 milligrams = 1 gram and 1,000,000 milligrams is 1 kg. I think that Atgxtg missed the milligram reference. So, your calculations are right. It also feels right, which is more important. As to the general point, whenever I am writing up creature stats, I normally think of how big the creature is in relation to other written up creatures and choose a SIZ/STR range accordingly. It's not very scientific but it works for me.

A new question per thread is better otherwise the thread gets confusing. Every point of ENC counts against the character. If you want to be a nice GM then give them free ENC up to STR and then make everything count, but that would be a house rule.

It doesn't sound too powerful/over powered. As Harshax says, suck it and see. You'll soon find out if there are problems or if the PCs are walking every encounter. Don't make all the encounters the same strength. Throw in some weak encounters at the start to make the players comfortable, then throw in a few tougher ones. As the party improve then throw in tougher and tougher opponents, as well as a few weaker ones to make them feel good. One thing I like to do is to throw a tougher foe at them at the start of the campaign, then throw the same unchanged encounter at them later on and see how easy they deal with the encounter. Then point out to the players how far they have progressed. Don't worry about the Level 20 encounter at the end of the campaign. In my experience, a well-organised party who help each other out is a match for very powerful foes, especially if the party has magic.

The advantage that BRP has over D&D is that character generation is very flexible. Sure, there are professions with skills, but they are not carved in stone. D&D has fixed character classes and quite a lot of things don't really fit those templates. What I would do with that player is to ask him to describe his awesome character concept and then fit character generation around that. You should then be able to assign skills etc without a problem. Starting a new character is as easy in one system as another, so she shouldn't have a problem. Paladins are tricky as they are a very D&D concept. However, it's easy to have fanatical knights in any game, as long as you ensure the paladin has magical abilities that depend on his status. Be careful with this - BRP can be quite as combat intensive as D&D, in fact complex fights take a lot longer in BRP than in D&D. Combat situations depend more on the style of the GM than the style of the game, except that experience in D&D is combat driven whereas BRP experience is skill-driven. Good luck.

We use Hero Points in our RQ3 game. Hero Points can be used in the same way as in HeroQuest and RQM. However, we also use Hero Points to raise skills. Each PC gets a certain number of Hero Points at the end of a scenario or at a rest point in a scenario. The number of Hero Points depends on the scenario, how long/difficult/dangerous the scenario has been, but is usually a die roll plus a fixed amount, 1D4+4, 1D6+6 or 1D8+8. Players can then spend the Hero Points on rolling for experience. Skills used in the scenario cost 1 Hero Point per skill roll attempt. Skills not used in the scenario cost 2 Hero Points per attempt. POW Gain Rolls cost 1 Hero Point if POW was successfully used in the scenario. Characteristic Gain Rolls cost 3 Hero Points if the PC criticalled a Characteristic x n% roll in the scenario. Rolls are made using 100 - Skill, with a minimum of INT%, so someone with 70% skill has a 30% chance of succeeding, someone with 95% skill but INT 15 has a 15% chance of succeeding and someone with a skill over 100 and INT 18 has an 18% chance of succeeding. Characteristics are rolled using (Species Maximum - current Characteristic)x5, with Species Maximum being Maximum Rollable + Minimum Rollable, so 3D6 gives 18+3=21, 3D6+6 gives 24+9=33. A human with POW 15 has a (21-15)x5 = 30% chance of increasing the characteristic. Hero Points can be used to reroll any dice roll, including Experience Rolls, at a cost of 1 Hero Point for the first reroll, 2 Hero Points for the second and doubling on each reroll. This allows players to spend huge numbers of Hero Points on improving particular skills. We also play that if a skill was nearly made (within 10% of the actual skill) then a hero Point turns this into a success, so someone with 70% skill who rolls 32 (within 3 of 30) can use a hero Point to succeed the skill. Success in an Experience Gain Roll increases the skill by 1D6, a critical in the roll allows them to roll 2D6 and take the best value, with 1s being counted as 2s because of the failed increase rule. So, someone with a 70% skill who rolls 01 rolls 2D6, a 3 and 5 and can choose which to take. Failing a skill roll result in an increase of 1, as using the skill counts for something if the skill is learnable from. Characteristic increases are rolled using 1D3 with the same rule for critical experience rolls except that failure results in no increase. Training takes a number of hours equal to the PC's skill, but rounded up to a multiple of 8 or 40 depending if the classes are in days or weeks. These either don't cost a Hero Point in which case the player must roll a normal experience roll, or they do cost a Hero Point in which case the increase is automatic. We find that this works really well. It removes the tick chase completely, allows players to specialise in certain skills or areas, gives them a chance to reroll important rolls and allows them to decide how much of their Mana (Hero Points) they want to spend on skill increases and how much they want to save to use in future scenarios. I thought they might complain about spending Hero Points and gaving to roll for the gain, but nobody ever has. I think the 1 point for a failure is enough to make it acceptable. They have never complained about being able to reroll failed experience rolls using Hero Points and love the idea of criticalling experince rolls - they would prefer a gain on a special as well.

As has been mentioned before, Insight and Fast Talk could be generally used. INT multiples might be useful as well, INTx5% for flimsy Fast Talks, INTx3 for normal ones and INTx1% for very clever Fast Talks. Guards, on the other hand, can never resist Fast Talk as one of the prerequisites for being a Guard is that Fast Talk always works on them (or that they are stupid).

Since the Evil Internet swallowed my last attempt to reply to this thread, I'll try again. All of the RQ/BRP Bestiaries/Creatures Books are mutually compatible, to a large extent. In fact, of all the rules I would say that the Bestiaries are the most compatible and easiest to use on the fly. There are some differences that might need on the go conversions. The main differences are Movement, Strike Ranks and Hit Locations. Movement has been covered above and is the least problematic part unless the GM is very picky about how things move. Strike Ranks are probably the most difficult to convert. RQ2/3 have slightly different Strike Ranks but the rules mechanics are similat. RQM uses a totally different version of Strike Ranks. BRP has optional rules for Strike Ranks that are similar to RQ3 and, I believe, DEX Ranks that are similar to RQM. I would use the RQ2/3 Strike Ranks in an RQ3/2/BRP-SR game without conversion, they are slightly different but not that different that it makes a huge difference in the game. To convert RQM Strike Ranks you either need a table that gives the equivalent BRP Strike Ranks or need to convert using the average/specific characteristics. Converting from RQM SRs to BRP DEX Ranks would probably require a recalculation. Hit Locations are only a problem if you use them. Hit Points are calculated differently and might need recalculating. If you don't use Hit Locations then use the General Hit Points in RQ2/3 for BRP and calculate them for RQM stats. If you do use Hit Locations then there are slight differences in the numbers allocated to each area and the hit points in each area. I wouldn't bother recalculating the Hit Points in each area as a few points here and there makes no difference to how NPC creatures react. I'd use the Hit Location D20 table as described in the particular creatures book. RQ2/3 have slightly different D20 Locations, RQM does away with RQ3's Missile D20 Locations but changes the Melee D20 Locations from the RQ2 values. BRP uses a similar set to RQ3. So, id I used something from the Gateway Bestiary in BRP then I would roll on the Gateway Bestiary table for convenience. Of course, if you wanted to be ruthlessly BRP then you could have a set of Hit Locations worked out for each creature type and always roll on those. So, Left Leg is Left Leg regardless of the roll made. Personally, I'd go for whichever method is quickest and easiest. I use RQM stats in my RQ3 game on the fly. In fact, our PCs were rolled up using a playtest version of RQM before we went back to RQ3 because the playtest rules were unusable, some players reconverted the hit points/locations using the RQ3 method but others kept the RQM locations, so if I roll a 7 it hits one person's leg and another person's abdomen. Does it matter? Not at all, I couldn't care less.

I don't particularly like GM's Screens and never use them. However, if I did then I would have GM information on one side and player-useful information on the other. I wouldn't bother with artwork - it's just a waste of space on a GM's Screen, in my opinon.

The trouble with High Fantasy is that most people see it as elves/orcs and dwarves. It's not just Tolkein, of course, many other fantasy authors have used the elf/orc model to good effect. I've never really run anything in that style, apart from D&D, but I mainly run Glorantha, which is definitely an acquired taste for many. If you want a named setting that is High Fantasy but not about elves and orcs, then look at David Eddings' setting as covered in The Belgariad/Mallorean books. It is High Fantasy with powerful wizards but steers clear of classic orcs and elves. The character Silk comes straight out of BRP/RQ, in my opinion. I've just seen on Wikipedia that he passed away this month - I hadn't heard anything about that. Otherwise, use something out of Fantasy Earth - you can have as high fantasy as you want, with as much magic as you want. If you don't want elves and orcs and whatnot then don't have them in the game.

There are several reasons to use Levels of Success. 1. It gives the underdog a chance. If somebody has 10% skill and somebody else has 110% skill then the first character can only succeed by 10 but the second character can never succeed by less than 10, so should always win. With Levels of Success the first character can Special on 02 and Critical on 01 and so can defeat the second character if the second character succeeds/fails/fumbles. Don't forget that Dail is a level of success as well, so if you say that a success beats a failure then you are using Levels of Succes. 2. It rewards skill. In the above example, the person with 110% will special on 22% and critical on 5% and, on average, will have a higher chance of making a special or critical than a lesser-skilled character, so would have a higher chance of automatically succeeding. But, the other method is fine if you want quick and dirty results.

Be careful or you'll turn into a Techie. Oops! Too late. Now you are giving away Techie secrets.

You should really take into account the level of success as well. So, a critical should always beat a special which always beats a normal success which always beats a failure which always beats a fumble which sucks. Apart from that, the method is fine. It's what I use for opposed contests. It's simple, quick and easy. Now, all we need to do is wait for the 5 page deluge of comments attacking/supporting Opposed Contests that is bound to follow.

I intend to buy most BRP supplements as PDFs, with the exception of Rome and possibly Mythic Iceland, so it doesn't really bother me. If the supplements appeared in Wayland's Forge then I might be tempted to buy a paper copy as well, but they haven't so far, apart from the rulebook. Having a PDF and then a hard-copy is no different to me to having a Zero Edition and then the actual rulebook, and plenty of people bought BRP Zero.

There was an article in Different Worlds, I think, that detailed the Thermonuclear Hand Grenade - instructions: Take out hand grenade, pull pin, chicken out ... Good with a teleporter, though.

13000D6? Your formula is way off. I'd put it at 12990D6.

This has become quite angry, for some reason. I gave up trying to understand why any published game was different to the game I actually played long ago. Everyone has houserules and ways that they play and no game can reflect everyone's own rules and styles of play, no matter how many options and sub-rules it has. We were using 4D6 best 3 24 years ago in a RQ campaign and it never hurt us, no matter where it originally came from. It doesn't really matter what the rules actually say. Play the game as you want to, using the rules as guidelines. When I started playing RQ, we had human characters, then I played an Elf, who had higher DEX, POW and INT. The next group I played with had trolls, morokanth, an elf, a centaur, a minotaur and a duck, so 3D6 was comparitively rare. Playing Elric means that you roll on all sorts of weird dice, lots od D8s for chaotic creatures, for example. So, 3D6 is not the norm. Humans have 3D6 because it is easier to roll and the results come out as a bell curve which isn't that extreme. 2D6+6 fives a different shaped bell curve but isn't too bad. Empirically, INT relates to IQ (INTx10) and SIZ relates to weight in stones (or at least that's what I always assumed). You can get 3 stone people and 18 stones people, nowadays 18 stone isn't as uncommon as it used to be. STR/CON/DEX/POW/APP/CHA aren't as easy to measure in the real world, EDU is a strange characteristic and SAN is so far away from my game that I never use it. The way I play RQ/BRP is to do whatever I feel comfortable with. When we had multi GM groups, the GMs had different house rules that several of us disagreed with but still played. The rules are honestly not that important. They are a framework, nothing more. If you don't like a particular rule then use another one. You won't be a heretic and won't be ostracised from the gaming community. I'm not being patronising or giving you permission to play the game how you want to, just saying what needs to be said. Personally, there's a lot about BRP that I don't much care for, and I am on record as saying that. Having said that, there's a lot that I like. I'd prefer it to be more like RQ3, but I'd like RQM, D20 and all other games systems to be more like RQ3 as well, so that isn't reall a surprise. What is a surprise is the hostility that this thread has generated.

We're just full of hot air, so don't be intimidated. There's nothing better about having gamed for a long time than having just started gaming. We just have more anecdotes that we repeat endlessly. Forums such as these will help a lot, hopefully. We all have times where we have run into a problem that we need advice about. A lot of us have run into the same issues time and time again, which is where experience can help. So, ask away - we don't bite. We all get that. I, for one, am continually amazed that people still turn up for our weekly RQ sessions and always seem to feel that I am GMing by the seat of my pants. Looking at some of the posts, it amazes me that I don't do a lot of stuff as a GM that other poeple do naturally. BRP is a lot more flexible than D&D, and RQ is a lot more flexible than BRP, in my opinion. This is definitely the place for tactics and ideas. You get better by doing it, same as anything. If you can't get a local game, apart from the CoC game, have you tried PBEM (Play by Email)? That can be good, if you get enough players who can spare the time. Where do you live? Are there any gaming conventions near you? They are good for one-off gaming sessions - you can also bring along a scenario and run it, getting more practice.

RQ2 had 3D6 for SIZ and INT and RQ3 had 2D6+6. The change was put in, I believe, because 3D6 gave a very wide spread, perhaps too wide. If you go with the rough idea that INT x 10 = I.Q. then INT 15 means IQ 150 and INT 3 = IQ 30, so 1 in 216 people would have an IQ of 30, which is way too low. Similarly, SIZ 3 equates to a very short/light person and 1 in 216 people being very short/light didn't really work.