soltakss

Personally, I'd be happy if he finished the Argrath Campaign.

There are a lot of other writers who can write form mongoose or Issaries. Not everything has to be by Greg Stafford, even in Glorantha.

Sounds great. Any chance of posting it online somewhere? The Alternate Earth RQ Group would love to see a copy.

I think the Mongoose idea of 10% criticals was a good one. 20% and 5% add extra calculations/looking at tables.

Pah! 20% is a fifth, 5% is a 20th, both really easy to calculate on the fly.

In any case, you only need to calculate them if you roll roughly the right amount. So, if I have 60% Pedantry and I roll 40 then clearly I haven't specialled or criticalled. If I roll 05 or 15 then I need to work it out because they are close to special or critical.

It does irritate me when people say RQ was maths-heavy and hard to work out. Maybe when you add all the bonuses and penalties together it takes a bit of working out, but that's what calculators are for.

I don't know. I can see some here are interested, but I have delved into the Icelandic sagas and histories, and from what I can remember it seems it would be a little bland. What sort of adventures would you have, other than raiding and feuding and fighting the occasional troll?:confused:

Roman Empire? What's there to do apart from conquering new lands, buying slaves and a bit of trading?

SuperHero Games? Running around in lycra saving the world.

Medieval Europe? Avoiding the plague, trying not to be invaded or drafted in an army, fighting foreign wars.

Every setting has the potential of many different scenarios. A Fantasy Iceland setting can acyually double as a Fantasy Scandinavian setting and can cover lands as diverse as Iceland, Greenland, Vinland (as has been mentioned), Ireland, Northern and Western Scotland, Northern and Eastern England, Northern France and Russia. Trading and travelling would be key as would kinstrife, blood feuds, monster fighting, settling new lands, fighting, raiding, taking slaves and exploring. There's the clash between cultures, the clash between religions, the clash between the old ways of raiding and the new ways of settling. A Viking character could quite easily find himself on the Black Sea or American coast as the North Sea or Atlantic Ocean. Stories such as Pathfinder, both the original and the new one, would fit such a setting hands down.

Also, used together with other Fantasy Europe settings, it could form part of a larger set of scenarios/campaigns.

So, you can find adventure in any setting.

Spaceships, warriors, firearms and a temple - what more could you ask for?

It looks OK, but cover art has never, ever sold a book for me.

It looks as though they'll be pushing the D100 idea, which is probably a good thing.

Why not hold off and see what Pedro does, then add flavour/background to areas where it is missing?

Or were you thinking of doing something and charging for it?

I wonder how far the setting could be stretched.

Could you use it, for instance, for Anglo-Saxon-style rules, in which case could you use it at the end of the Roman period, thus linking in with Pax Romana?

Or, perhaps, stretch it the other way and use it with Stupor Mundi?

I've never seen stats of Cthulhu Mythos Gods. Anyone care to post some so I can compare?

Stormbringer had the best rules for combat with gods. They went something like this:

1. Gods were always polite and let the PCs go first.

2. PCs rolled and did their damage.

3. The gods then killed the PCs automatically.

Easy peasy.

Is Moon Design Publications still in business? They did a pretty good job on RQ material in the past, while it was lying bleeding and abandoned in a ditch.

Yep, Moon Design are now the prime licence holders for HeroQuest and are producing the official HeroQuest lines. Or they would be if they could get a printer to actually print things.

The problem is that if you have a dedicated Gloranthan Forum here then you will inevitibly get the same kind of meaningful discussion as on the old Gloranthan Digest or the World of Glorantha or even the Immoderate Glorantha group.

People will ask questions (I know, how could they?) in the forums and other people will offer their own opinions. Fine if the question is a simple one like "Who were the Lightbringers?" as that has an nice simple answer, but if the question is something tricky like "Who were the Lightbringers?" then that can open up a can of worms with many different posts from different people with different opinions.[*]

At the moment, fortunately, the Forum benefits from the fact that there are no Gloranthan Heavyweights posting (no offence to anyone here who considers themselves as big Gloranthan Heavyweights) and that there are no D100 rules out yet. So, any discussion is lightweight. But, sure as eggs is eggs, if you had a Gloranthan Forum then the really big Gloranthan Hitters will flock here and bog down any discussion.

Perhaps you cpuld include a link in the Forum's Homepage saying that any questions regarding in-depth Glorantha should be directed to the World of Glorantha group.

Obviously, questions on how the rules work in Glorantha are fair game, as are stats of Gloranthan creatures, new spells and so on. But not questions on what colour are Uleria's Panties.

The same could be said for other game worlds.

There is an Ancient Rome supplement coming out. We could have an Ancient Rome Forum, but that would very quickly get bogged down in intellectual discussions about what types of trireme the Romans used or that there were no such things as Celts in the Roman Empire and other such discussions.

I know nothing about Deadworld, only that it involves zombies. But if you hade a Deadworld Forum, then you'd get discussions about what happened in Comic number so-and-so and how that differed from such-and-such or that you couldn't possibly use RQ zombies as Deadworld zombies cannot speak and run fast, or whatever.

So, I'd say NO to Forums for any of the game worlds. Otherwise, if you had a forum for Deadworld or Ancient Rome then some bright spark will say "I play RQ2/3 in Glorantha, why can't we have a Gloranthan Forum?" and then all hell will break loose.

[*] Long term fans of Glorantha and the various Digests will know what I mean here.

I see that the Master of Stupid Polls has migrated at last.

At least you don't have to fill in the poll to reply, which is good.

Pavis-Prax using RQ3 and Greydog using HQ.

I doubt if I'll change from RQ3 to D100 unless there are major improvements.

But, I'll steal ideas from D100 and RQM.

There's no way that any game will challenge AD&D/D20's position in the market. A lot of people like playing those games and have no reason to stop.

But, they can also play other games and players of other games can play AD&D. I know I played a campaign for a couple of years after I started playing RQ and most people in my RQ games have played AD&D and many other games as well.

The best anyone can hope for is that people buy and play their games regardless of what AD&D/D20 players do.

It's a bit like an iPOD Killer. There's no such thing. Some people will buy an iPOD and another music player, some will just buy an alternative. But, a lot of people with buy just an iPOD as they think they are cool.

You mean HQ, no? Why does everybody think that HQ is so simple? I had to read the rules three times till I fully understood them and recognized how odd and strange the gaming concept is. Its everything else than intuitive and what I am expecting from a good roleplaying game.

OK, to completely hijack the thread .....

Basic rules of HQ:

1. You have skills, keywords and affinities each of which has a Rating.

2. Ratings are described as a number then a mastery symbol (either W or M depending on the setting - don't ask!) and another number.

3. You roll a D20 below the first number on your skill, if you are being opposed by someone else, they roll on their skill.

4. You get 1 - critical, equal or below skill - success, above skill but below 20 - failure, 20 - fumble.

5. For every number of masteries (number after the mastery symbol) higher than your opponent, you can move your result one place to the left (towards a critical) or if you already have a critical, move their result one place to the right (towards a fumble).

6. If you have any Herio Points, you can use one of them to move the result one place as well.

7. You compare the results as follows:

1. Results are the same (critical/critical, success/success, failure/failure,

fumble/fumble) then the person who rolled the lowest has a Marginal

Victory.

2. Results are one level apart (critical/success, success/failure,

failure/fumble) then you have a Minor Victory

3. Results are two levels apart (critical/failure, failure/fumble) then you

have a Major Victory

4. Results are three levels apart (critical/fumble) then you have a Complete

Victory

5. The reverse gives you a Marginal/Minor/Major/Complete Victory

8. Results of a contest depend on what the contest was, what the aim of

the contest was, what the stakes were and the situation.

9. Generally, the better the victory the better the results.

10. You can help a skill by augmenting it with a similar skill. For every 10

points in a skill (Masteries count as 20), yiou add +1 to the skill to be

augmented.

11. Certain situations can help or hinder a skill, you get a bonus or a penalty

to the skill

12. Certain activities are harder to do, this is reflected by having a different

opposing score depending on what you are trying to do. Most things have

an opposing score of 14.

13. Skills are increased with 1 Hero Point, Keywords and Affinities with 3 Hero

Points

14. Affinities contain multiple feats, you can add a feat to an affinity by

spending 1 Hero Point

15. The Narrator gives you 1 Hero Point at the start of a session and a

number of Hero Points at the end of a session/scenario

And, basically, that's about it.

Very simple, very scaleable, very easy to use and very quick.

It's all the junk and subrules and special circumstances and magic systems that blow it up into a complicated game. Mythic Russia took a lot of the junk out, but didn't make it as simple as they could have, unfortunately.

BTW I dont know whats all the fuss about this artificial cathegory "storytelling game". I mean I am sure that my games are telling good and dense stories (at least according to my players) So I am not sure why storytelling games should have other rules than so-called simulative games. So for me a rpg rule is a rpg rule. There is no differenciation between different styles, because there are not just 3 styles out there. There are 300k styles out there. Obviously the cathegories have been made at some point by bloated self-acclaimed "experts" which think to know the whole truth about the hobby. (Sorry but these things make me a little bit mad)

True. Any game can tell a story and any game can be used for power-gaming hungeon hacks, including HeroQuest. But, many of the things about HeroQuest can be narrated so I see why they call it a story-telling game. It isn't, though, as you still need to roll dice and that determines the outcome of any situation. But, it is a lot more flexible than many other games and I have found that I run RQ differently having played and Narrated HeroQuest.

But, this is a BRP forum not a HeroQuest forum, so apologies about the threadjack.

Soltakiss, ANYBODY who has played RQ as much as you is most assuredly a BRP fan-atic. As for 'rubbish magic system', watch your tongue, sirrah!

RQ had battle/Spirit Magic, Rune/Divine Magic, Sorcery and Ritual Magic as well as various kinds of other magic. What did CoC have? A list of meaningless spells with no links between them. Ringworld and Superworld had no magic at all. Elric had demon summoning but no real magic. No comparison, really.

All in my opinion, of course.

I would also love to conversion rules from any system actually, to BRP. But as there are few people who like to play all the games, there probably won't be that many webpages dedicated to all the systems (I only know of yours!).

That's a shame as well. I hope there will be more.

Funnily enough, when people talk about the BRP community, I'm never sure what they mean.

I've played Stormbringer once or twice, Hawkmoon once, CoC once or twice, never played ElfQuest, never played Ringworld, never played Worlds of Wonder, tried and failed to run a Superworld Campaign and played a hell of a lot of RQ2/3. Of all those games, the only one I have time for is RQ. To tell the truth, I wouldn't play CoC except at gun point and have little interest in the other games. So, does that make me a member of the BRP community? Certainly a die-hard member of the RQ community, but BRP always left me cold (no SRs, no Hit Locations, rubbish magic).

But, D100 seems, with its optional rules, to be a good extension of RQ3, despite having an ultra-generic magic section.

But, I happen to like RQ2, RQ3 and HeroQuest. Despite having reservations about RQM, I've enjoyed every game I played. I will probably like D100 as well. That almost certainly puts me in the BRP camp and also puts me in the RQ camp. So what am I?

I just don't see any peaceful cooperation in our times.

That's a great pity. It really is.

Probably the best thing that can happen is for both camps to ignore each other.

I can't see that happening, at least while I am here to stir them up!

You were in the playtest for this? Can you answer any questions about it?

I was in the original playtest group, not the new one that playtested the actual game.

The version I playtested was nowhere near complete, was full of holes and was drastically changed for RQM.

I can answer some questions, depending on whether I get told I can't.

I've kept all the documents and the emailed digests since I joined the playtest, for what they are worth.

Why is that?

Because I was told that I couldn't.

I asked Nick Middleton specifically if I could submit any articles about RQM to his new fanzine and he said NO because of the OGL Policy and Mongoose's actions. He quoted personal morality, whatever that is

To be fair, he said that I could send them to D100.org, but that's beside the point.

As for why MRQ came out the way it did,

Well, I had heard from some people from the playtest groups as well as some Mongoose employees that the rules were much more BRPish up until the last draft, when Matt Sprange rewrote everything. I also heard that pretty much all the complaints about the system were pointed out by the playtesters, too. If you can mug a playtester and look at some of the playtest drafts you will see a RPG that looks a lot more familar. MOngoose orginally advertised the game as the return of RQ, and played up the involvement of Stafford and Perrin in the desgin on the new edition. I don't know why Stafford doesn't write anything for MRQ, or why Perrin left the playtest. But neither had a hand in design of the game as originally advertised.

There were two playtests.

The first was a Yahoo Group that had various versions of the rules, of which the last version was the closest to a BRP-style game. Earlier discussions were on things such as "Do we need a D100 or should be use another dice rolling method".

The rules that I saw were so full of holes it was unbelievable. I couldn't take anything from those rules and use them in RQ3. In fact, I started a RQ campaign using the playtest rules but my players asked me after the fourth session to use RQ3 as the new rules just didn't work. I kept a variant of Hero Points and Experience Points and a variant of Steve Perrin's magic system which needed a lot of work and isn't satisfactory even now.

Steve Perrin was invited on board to create a magic system based on Runes and Questing for them (Rune-Quest, geddit? No, neither did I) and he came up with a half-arsed system that didn't work as written, in my opinion. (For example, he wrote the cults of Uleria as a Moon Goddess because she had emotion-affecting spells and emotion came under the Runic Powers of the Moon and Waha the Butcher as an assassin cult) There was then a period of playtesting dead time, enlivened only by an exchange between Steve Perrin and Matthew Sprangue where emails were meant to be sent privately but accidentally sent to the forum. The gist of it, as I recall, went something like "I haven't been consulted or paid" and "Did you expect to be paid for what you had written", then things went downhill quite badly.

The second was a closed group for specially invited people, of which I wasn't one, that rewrote the rules and developed them into what is now RQM.

The DBRP Playtest went a lot better, I thought, with actual dialogue between playtester and co-ordinator and ideas being written back into the rules.

Couldn't keep my nose out for long ....

The problem with a new setting is that it had better be good, very good.

Glorantha is a very good setting that a lot of people hate.

What's to stop people hating any brand new setting?

Also, to be a good new setting, you need background, lots of it. Do you think that D100 could cope with producing background supplements rather than scenarios? I don't know, to be honest.

Alternate Earth is one of my favourite settings, whether it is called that or not. Fantasy Europe, Fantasy America, Fantasy Russia, Fantasy China, Fantasy Japan etc. all sound good to me. Plus, you can't stop people producing supplements for a historical/fantasy period of real world history.

For those of us who are system-agnostic, we already have Stupor Mundi (Fantasy Holy Roman Empire), there's a Samurai supplement coming out for RQ (Fantasy Japan) and a Roman one for D100 (Fantasy Rome) and the more the merrier in my opinion. You could even count Mythic Russia, even though it's for HeroQuest, certainly there will be some conversions of the new Companion into RQ and D100 when I have the time to do them.

David Eddings wrote a couple of good series based on the Belgariad which always seemed perfect for a RQ/BRP conversion. But apart from that, I can't think of a setting I would particularly like to see for D100. Any zombie genre film would be good for D100, but you wouldn't make a setting out of it with loads of supplements.

What you need is a setting with many races/species, different magic systems, different lands/countries/worlds and some good storylines.timelines to work with. That way, you could publish supplement after supplement. That's why Fantasy Earth is good - so many lands to cover, so many wars/dynasties/periods, so many cults.

Also, don't forget about licencing costs. I don't know what Chaosium's budget is like, but can they afford to licence big players? Or will they be stuck with licencing comic books or graphic novels? Don't get me wrong, comics and graphic novels have a devoted and large readership, but is that enough to get people engaged? Slaine, for example, has a huge following but the Slaine RQ supplement is not that good at all and didn't engage me. What if Chaosium produced a couple of similar things that didn't capture the imagination? Where would they be then?

Better for them to produce some geenric things first and some Fantasy Earth things with no licence costs, then put out some licenced worlds.

And, no, don't give me Call of Cthulhu as I, personally, couldn't stand the books and the game leaves me cold. So, I personally wouldn't buy RQ CoC supplements.

So, I'd go heavily for Fantasy Earth. Or choose something that is out of copyright, some Victorian gung-ho, Boys Own setting.

As a long-time player of RQ, I was pleased when Mongoose brought out their version, but not so pleased to see the quality of the supplements.

I was also pleased to see that Chaosium were bringing out BRP as well, although not so pleased to see it had a lot from CoC in it.

As I have no life of my own, I visit several, although by no means all, of the RQ/BRP forums and have noticed some things happening time and time again.

People seem to be very supportive of their favourite system and dismissive of the other, similar systems. Quite often, this is not just system based but seems to have a large amount of hostility to certain companies or people.

For example:

1. There are many people who like HeroQuest and snootily dismiss RQ.

2. There are a lot of people who like BRP (or D100 as it will probably be called) and despise RQ, HQ and the companies behind them.

3. There are a lot of people who like RQ and despise HQ.

I seem to be in a minority, for some reason, as I like RuneQuest, HeroQuest and BRP. In fact, I see them as being from the same family of games, yes even HeroQuest, and see them as being very connected.

Other people, however, do not share my views.

Sure, they all have their faults and could be better, but they are all fairly good systems - after all, I've been playing them in various forms since 1982 and don't play ANY other RPG.

What I would like to see is people supporting all these games. I'd like to see websites with conversion rules and examples of how to use Legendary Abilities in D100, HeroQuest Cults converted to RQ, the excellent modularity of RQ applied to BRP etc.

I'd like to see fanzines for BRP also accepting dual-stats for RQ, or even stats for D100, RQ and HQ. I'd like to see fanzines for RQ accepting D100/HQ stats. I'd like to see variants of RQ/D100/HQ rules written in such a way as to be compatible with the other rulesets.

Is that too much to ask?

What I am afraid might happen is that the BRP/RQ gaming fraternity splits up into warring factions. That D100 becomes violently incompatible with RQ and vice versa. That people are forced not to write things in one system because someone leans on them or threatens them with some legal action.

At the moment, I can't submit anything even remotely connected with RQ to a proposed D100 fanzine. So, I couldn't write up a Fantasy Europe setting and say it was compatible with Stupor Mundi, because Stupor Mundi is based on the RQ SRD.

Personally, I think that this is a short-sighted approach.

We all know that RQ only survived as long as it did because of the fanzines and online discussion groups/websites, mainly Tales of the Reaching Moon and the Gloranthan and RQ-Rules Digests. If it hadn't been for them, RQ would have vanished long ago. Similarly, Chaosium probably wouldn't have bothered bringing out D100 if the RQ community hadn't been as strong.

Part of the problem is the Licences the new games come out under. Issaries has the Fan Policy that has driven many websites off the web and has stopped many publishers from publishing. Mongoose has the Open Gaming Licence, which seems reasonable, but makes Glorantha off-limits. I don't know what Chaosium has for D100, but unless they make it fairly open, then they are going to struggle.

In my opinion, Chaosium will need a lot of third-party publishing to bolster D100 as I can't see them matching Mongoose's output on their own. Mongoose is also going to rely on third-party supplements to produce RQ settings outside their own ones. Issaries have had several publishers producing supplements for HeroQuest, but I think they need more and that their Fan Policy is too restrictive.

If people worked together, they would have a lot better chance of keeping the games alive and well supported.

If it came to a battle between Chaosium and Mongoose, I know who I'd put money on.

So, what BRP-style games are out at the moment?

RQ

Stupor Mundi

GORE

D100 (well, out soon)

BRP Monographs (RQ3 in all but name)

How many of those are well supported?

RQ

That says it all, really.

I'm beginning to wander as it's very late, so I'll stop now.

Except to say, please don't start the System Wars as I don't really want to see these games being flushed down the toilet again.

I've put on my tin hat and asbestos flak jacket, waiting for the flames to come ......