styopa

That should be a quote for the book cover. One reason that I'm not a huge fan of the breakpoint-based stat mods. RQ stats do change a fair amount, with some of the changes being meaningful (I got a +5% now!) and most not.

Considering that the effort here is to make RQG streamlined and simpler, I think it's a lot easier to say "that 6 point piece of armor already includes necessary and optimal underpadding". If people really want to overlay, just make the penalty so heinous it's prohibitive: 3x ENC for nonrigid armors, 5x ENC for rigid, with (something like) 2x penalty to all physical movement skills including attacks.

Agree 1000%. I'm genuinely curious (with the 'discovery' that some Theists can be sorcerers) if that's going to be the approach in RQG.

Maybe there should be a specific rule stating that? I think part of the ... dispute... going on here is the difference between printing a rule and making a ruling. As I said very early in the discussion, no, in a printed commercial work where there's a finite amount of space, no, it's very much not worth laying out every conceivable circumstance and scribing a particular resolution. It's in the sandbox nature of RPGs generally that there simply aren't enough rulebook pages in the world to comprehensively cover everything any player or monster could do. All a dev can offer is an approach of generalities and hope that it's clear enough in method that a GM is equipped to resolve whatever the players throw at them in an internally-consistent manner. Perhaps Peter misunderstood my initial point - when I offered how *I* as a GM would mechanically handle it IF a player wanted to to fight solo with a hoplite shield and a 2h pike, perhaps he misunderstood that I was proposing such a "ruling" as a "rule" that should somehow be included and published. Not at all. In turn, I took his reply that even making such a ruling as being "not worth the effort" was snotty and condescending. I perhaps misunderstood. I agree with him that it's not worth including in a rulebook, full stop. OTOH, if he actually believes that the 'right' approach to a player wanting to try that is to simply hand-wave and declare "don't do it, it's stupid", well, then I guess we simply disagree in a GM's role.

Sure, it's only useful for humanoids but IMO they're probably a plurality of targets - if nothing else, they're usually the PCs.

So if a player in your game wanted to do that, I'm genuinely curious what would be your response? Patronize him to death?

That's exactly it. One my auto-filling version in excel, that's just meant to have everything tallied and visible in one glance. It may be redundant here.

Is it worth WRITING into the rules where even in a massive rulebook space is at a premium? Probably not. But the idea that there shouldn't be rules to handle it is absurd. The effort is infinitesimal, and jotting it down just helps one be consistent. I have a whole page of 'off the cuff' rulings that I've made over time about how NESOI stuff (not elsewhere specified or indicated) has been ruled on so I don't change my stance later inadvertently. What, you're just going to tell the player "that's dumb, don't do it"? Sorry, I'd rather give my PLAYERS the agency of what they're doing or not. I've seen players make lots of choices that - from behind the GM's screen - seem pretty stupid. Sometimes they still succeed and talk about it years later.

I think it would be clearer if the ACTIVE actor is always the one rolling. That's what we use. Poison 8 vs CON 11? The poison is rolling vs a 35% success, instead of her rolling to resist at 65%.

But there's nothing stopping them from all being attack spirits, certainly? While I certainly understand your point, I (and this is just my very personal take in RPGs) dislike systems that rely on flubbly-wubbly hand-wavy 'cultural norms' to constrain player behavior. "Well they just wouldn't do it that way" leaves entirely too much open to opportunistic interpretation. Further, to forestall it and maintain balance in the game then requires a substantial amount of setting-knowledge on the part of a GM to is not going to be commonly available (if we're actually trying to get people INTO this game and not just satisfying the 30-year-grognards?)...just like the elsewhere discussion about the imbalance of the Peace spell. It's all well and good to say "well, in the setting it's only available to the high priest of X subcult"...but if that's not explicitly laid out (ie mechanically limited in the rules), how would a new-to-Glorantha GM KNOW that? The answer is: they wouldn't. Any opportunistic player could say "ah, my character is now a Priestess of Eiritha so I'm taking that spell (afaik nothing in the rules talks specifically about requirements to be a high priestess, either). IMO all the setting detail in the world is nice, but unless it translates into actual black and white mechanics, it's decorative RPG Rococo.

Or just use d100s, those damned things never stop rolling. Then you guys can have all the dramatic tension you want, as they roll around for 5 mins, then off the table, and people are reaching under the couch to try to find them.

Why? I thought we'd had that conversation already that in RQG there weren't (what I thought were canonical) magic-system exclusivity that I'd understood existed in previous systems - that you can have a theist-sorcerer, for example. Oof. 27 spirits? I cannot conceive either letting a player have that many pets, nor having an NPC launch the same as an all-out assault on a PC party. Ash Ketchum as Grand Shaman.

Plus, for us the most important point was that with Bladesharp you can still crit.

...effectively. I'd rule that sure, you can sling a hoplite shield and wield a 2h pike by yourself, but I'd say - the shield only provides passive cover for left arm, abd and chest for attacks coming from straight ahead or the defender's left side - no dodging (or a massive penalty to dodge, like -75%) - with a pike you'd have reach - ie the ability to attack someone 2 hexes away (at half-attack if someone is in the intervening space) - BUT if your opponent can dodge/parry your attack, they can continue to move, and if they end up adjacent to you, you would have no way to attack with the pike at all.

I think as you posit is really supposed to be the canonical approach, but it's a funny juxtaposition: in D&D (PC) innate magical abilities are fundamentally rare and limited to magic using classes (ok that's become less so as editions advance) and everyone's got a sackful of +1 swords they aren't bothering to use). In Glorantha, the world is INNATELY magical, with *tons* more magic at every level of society but simultaneously actual durable magic items are pretty rare.

That's certainly a way you can take it, but should that happen what, nearly 60% of the time (for characters with 100% - I'm assuming Phil's math-fu is strong)? I call for die rolls to (generally) give me RESULTS, not indeterminate states?

Er, you seem to assume that all compression is lossy? http://www.cvisiontech.com/reference/pdf-compression/lossless-pdf-compression.html It's not. (even if it was, there are a number of people who might want to carry the pdf on their phone and there retaining high image resolutions is sort of pointless on a 5" screen)

I didn't see any immediate difference in quality.

I actually get a 404 with that link, but you can find it through the blog master page, here's the url that shows: https://www.chaosium.com/blogselkanas-saga-1-telling-diverse-stories-with-runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha/ ...which looks the same?

I'd love to see it too, but if I were a publisher I wouldn't touch those subjects with a 20' pole.

Then I'll let you do the work. I've been mulling over a campaign idea around Medieval Earth set around 1090 AD, in which 90 yrs ago a conjunction between Earth and Glorantha began (ie medieval Europeans with Glorantha as "the incomprehensible fantasy dimension" they keep going to), so I was toying with developing a sort of Europeanized version of chargen (nowhere near as detailed as a background as RQG, but more the barebones you're talking about). But now that you're already working on the structure, I'll wait and see what scaffolding you build and hang my ideas on that. Thanks

Thank you. Would it be possible that the next episode of Rune Fixes perhaps include a fully detailed example of a combat? Something pretty complicated so as to illustrate as many rules IN PLAY as possible, ie Vasana and a dual-wielding buddy vs three trollkin, one of whom opens the combat with missile fire and continues firing into melee, etc.?

Oh I wouldn't, just go with Abdmn for Abdomen. Eggs and omelets. I wouldn't toss out the full words for all the others just because you have to abbreviate that one.

If they're customizing the dice anyway, I'd suggest that instead of a decorative border, for the d20, the base of each triangle could list the hit location for humanoid. That would be cool and pretty useful.

Seconded. And I recognize that sometimes that comes off as carping, my apologies. Jason has done a magnificent job of archaeological renovation, taking 50 years of mechanics and weaving them into a fresh whole. Would I have made all the same choices? Nope, but I'm in the cheap seats, it's very easy to mutter from here because nothing I say is of actual consequence to the product or my own career. And besides, as he said, it's a rules framework; it's meant to be a starting point for people to run their games, not as a straitjacket. MGF.