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Luck Rolls are useful in a last-ditch situation. But, we use Hero Points as well to enable the players to take control of their PCs' lives. One example we had last week used both Luck Rolls and Hero Points. A Storm Bull went into a room containing a Basilisk. He failed his Sense Chaos and used a Hero Point to reroll it after a bit of hinting, but failed again. He then failed a Scan to see the basilisk, failed a Listen to hear it, failed a Luck Roll to spot it before it glared and then his POW was overcome by the low-POW basilisk, so he used another Hero Point to make the basilisk reroll the POW vs POW roll. None of it was his fault, he just failed 5 skills that were between 60% and 70%. I never fudge dice rolls, but I try to give PCs the chance to get out of problems themselves. The same PC (he is unlucky) fought the Avatar of Chaos in the Eternal Battle and failed his parry, used a hero point, failed again and had his abdomen ripped out, but a good DI to Storm Bull fixed that one ..... Well, that's just tough. A PC almost put the skull of a chaos hero on her head as a helmet, despite warnings that it had residual POW and sensed as chaotic. Had she done so, she would have been possessed and the player would have lost his PC until something cured her. Some things just happen.

The trouble with games without GMs is that sooner or later they will meet someone who isn't part of the party or a player character and they need someone who is independant to take control of that character. That's what a GM is for, to play the parts of all the other people in the world. Railroading has its part to play in a game, but can be counter-productive. Players often like their freedom to choose what they can do in a game. They want to go off and kill the chap who insulted them in a bar. They want to court the woman they met in a random encounter. They want to set up a caravan to trade with a nearby town. All well and good. However, it can be taken to extremes. I've been in several games where the players have complained that they have been forced to do scenario after scenario with no input into the game. When given the choice and asked "OK, what do you want to do?" invariably, the result is a lot of slack-jaws and faffing about as they desperately struggle to decide anything. Having said that, I've played in a number of scenarios where the players have boycotted certain parts of the scenarios. I've also had memorable scenarios where the players have dictated the scenario, what happened, where they went and what they did, with the GM following along like a lost puppy. A GM has his place and can be very useful in directing a game, controlling what happens and speeding the game up. But, there are times where the GM can sit back and let the PCs fight amongst themselves, plot amongst themselves and have a good session with minimal GM input. I played The Pool once and it was terrible. I couldn't get into it at all. I've also played narrative games where there was very little dice-rolling and I didn't like them much. I liken them to the games we used to play when we were little - "make believe" games - where my brothers and I would tell a story with characters who did things in the story. All very nice, but no substance. Sometimes you need risk, danger and threats to make a game exciting.

CoC has no hit locations, as I recall, so you have to kill an elephant on total hits. RQ has hit locations and an elephant would have 1/3 of its hit points in its head, so a 60HP elephant has 20HP in the head. Add 6 point skin, or whatever, and an impale with 3D6+4 would do 3D6+26, which is more than enough to take an elephant down. I play RQ and don't like CoC, so I am biased, but having hit locations makes combat more reasonable to me.

RQ2 had 7 for every D6, with additions of 3 or more having + 1. So, 2D6+6 and 3D6 gave a max of 21, 3D6+3 gave a maximum of 25. RQ3 made it even easier with max rollable + min rollable. So, 3D6 has a max of 21, 2D6+6 a max of 26, 3D6+3 a max of 27 and so on. I always thought that SIZ = weight in stones worked fairly well for most humans. Also, SIZ=dress size (UK) for females gives a rough idea of how big a woman is.

Which the players in my RQ3 game absolutely love. There'd be a riot if I took them out again.

A Paladin being the chief of an orc clan. That's the kind of messing about with stereotypes I like to see.

One of the things about BRP and RQ in particular that has always annoyed me was the idea that what was in the rules are the only way of playing it. So, trolls are always Gloranthan ones, spells are always the standard ones from RQ and so on. Absolute rubbish, really. If you want a crackle-zap, high magic campaign then it should be fairly easy to write new spells or adapt spells from other systems. RQ has no levels and runs from Magic Points, so spells have to be adapted, but there is no reason at all that the spells from, say, AD&D can't be adapted to a RQ setting. You could have a specific groups of people, Archmages, who learn these spells. Each spell takes INT=Level to learn and MPs = Level to cast, but MPs can only come from the Archmage, not from crystals, unless the Archmage has special magical items. Most of the spells would be high-powered for a normal RQ campaign and most people wouldn't get them, but most of them can convert fairly easy. I don't know about D20 as I've never played it, but I assume there are spells that are similar to the ones from AD&D. So, there's no reason why BRP can't have a high-powered magic system. In fact, looking at the Spells SRD at http://www.wizards.com/d20/files/v35/SpellListI.rtf, there's no reason why BRP can't use this as the basis of RQ magic, especially as RQM is covered by virtually the same OGL as D20. Sure, you'd have to change the spell effects slightly to take into account RQ/BRP Hit Point values and change the casting times a bit, but nothing too drastic.

Well, the standard explanation is that they all derived from the same root/mythological source and so would share a common culture or have very similar cultures. In Glorantha elves come from Aldrya and dwarves from Mostal. In M Iddle Earth, they have common ancestry but have slightly different cultures. But, there's no reason why they can't have as radically different cultures as humans do. What, no Orc societies? You mention enslaved orcs, so why don't they have a society? Not bugging you, just interested. My view of society is that it comes down to Us and Them in the end. Historically, Us were differentiated from Them most easily racially, as that made things obvious. Language also differentiated Us from Them fairly easily. Religion differentiates Us from Them, but is more subtle. When a language/culture became dominant, it was more difficult to separate Us from Them because Us could include many conquered or allied people of different race, language or religion, so culture became important. But, there has always been a gut-deep feeling of Us and Them in any society. One thing that has bugged me for a while is this. Why are non-humans normally all the same race? Sure. Glorantha has different types of elves, but they are more of a sub-species than a race. Most other settings have elves, dwarves, orcs and whatever but no races within them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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?

That's a great pity. It really is. I can't see that happening, at least while I am here to stir them up!

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.