styopa

Ooh, thanks for the link. I'd never even heard of it, now I have something new & interesting to dive into.

Personally, I don't play RQ for heroism, I play it for something slightly closer to realism than The Other System. (shrug)

We've been talking it over, and are probably going to settle on an interpretation that is: - if you're wielding a 1h weapon that you've declared an intent to attack with that round, any parry with that weapon starts at -20. So an offhand weapon (as long as you haven't declared an intent to 2-attack) just buys you that first parry at 0 modifier.

I think it's a tough row to hoe. On the one hand, part of the genuine attraction of RQ is the depth and texture of the setting. I get that there was a strong impetus to weave that into the game (and the background stuff does do that). Unfortunately, the strong implication is that stuff is REQUIRED which - let's be frank - Glorantha can be intimidating in its baroque-ness. I think a "clean" supplemental char gen system is a great idea.

I've introduced RQ with a quick demo combat, a couple of stick-picker farmboys tracking down and dealing with a wolf (or a bear if they're long used to playing d&d). The goal is to kill/cripple at least one (or both, for long time d&d players), to illustrate the mechanics...and also how very much more deadly RQ combat is. Then we make their real characters to play.

Https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/7793-rqg-character-sheet-fillable-pdf-ver-12/ doesn't have any form restrictions. Oh, and checkboxes are implemented and larger for easy notice. I left out any autocalculation as it's sort of anathema to teaching the game, imo, and makes it harder to deal with exceptions.

And then go to the various online pdf compression sites, and change it from 90meg to 43 meg.

Not if the tool is written well. I'd rather Chaosium do exactly as Jason said: focus on the core books now, do the online stuff later.

http://rollforfantasy.com/tools/family-tree-creator.php Free is pretty cheap.

To answer the op - none. Ignore the excessive navel-contemplation of Deep Gloranthan Esoterica that you see here. AFAIK the game is fully playable as-is (ie you probably need really 2 books: the RQG rulebook that is out now, and the bestiary). If you don't want to wait for the bestiary, Chaosium has in its wonderful free pdf section FANGS, which was a bunch of pre-rolled monsters for RQ2. https://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/RuneQuest/Classic/CHA4002- FANGS - Monster Stats.pdf There - you're ready to play. If there are later amendments or such that come in other books, include them or don't, up to you. Yes, is there a risk of retcon if you adopt the structures later presented (say in the GM book or the Gods of Glorantha)? Sure, but there's a lot LESS of the chance of retcon now that Jeff is pretty much the gnostic arbiter of One True Glorantha - better than the olden days where Greg was liable to 'discover' something without a great regard for what had been written before. EDIT: curiously, shortening that url doesn't work, ie https://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/RuneQuest/Classic/ gives a "not found". Which is sad, because it implies that there are other free RQ classic PDFs. But if you look at https://www.chaosium.com/runequest-classic-pdfs/ ...no mention of anything free. Maybe from someone @Chaosium could reply? Edit 2: even the free pdf page...https://www.chaosium.com/free-downloads/ doesn't link to it, suggesting instead that it would be found on a page relevant to the subject (Classic or RQ2)...which it doesn't seem to be?

Wait. I can attack with a weapon, and (with that same weapon) parry an open-ended number of times. But if I smack someone with the edge of my shield, I can't parry with it? That makes no sense at all.

What I see it boiling down to is that there end up being few mechanical incentives for wielding a second weapon (ie the possibility of a second attack), parrying simply isn't one of them. I think people are finding this intuitively hard to cope with particularly when the weapon list bothers to call out a "parrying" dagger and give it extra AP.* (shrug) it's a simplification like removing the separate parry skill. PERSONALLY I'm more interested in the long-term impact of the repeated ability to parry - particularly for characters in the area of 100% skill where they reasonably have a chance to successfully parry (or dodge) 3+ times a round - on the balance between offense and defense. I'm going to be curious on how this plays out for people long-familiar with RQ2 or RQ3 and the lethality of combat. *the idea of a purpose-designed parrying dagger itself seems fairly anachronistic to a bronze age setting, as much as the rapier (yes, long discussion about bronze age rapiers already done here, but as per Lindybeige they were substantially different than text description in RQG)? Then again there are arbalests, and other anachronistic stuff here anyway.

The 5e wiki is amazingly complete. We just played 5e last weekend and only the DM had their books with them; the rest of us just pulled everything up on the wiki on our phones/tablets. Hell, it was probably easier finding some of the more obscure rules that way than paging through the books. The Guide was close; quite a bit of CnP from other publications, leavened with lots of new material. The pdf of the guide is handy, to a point, because it's searchable. A thousand times this. I get that YGMV, but ultimately it's handy if at least the registration marks are all in the same place. The Guide was close.

Careful what you roll.

You mean like this? https://smallpdf.com/compress-pdf Online, free. It shrunk the RQG newest version from 90 megs to 43.

Seems like you could just use plain old paper and it would work better than a form with a ton of wasted space? Or, if you're really all about the family, there are a ton of online things (wiki tree, for example) where you can load that stuff in and get a 'family tree' style chart anyway?

I know that relationship is laid out in HQ but I don't really understand it? In RQG it doesn't make sense to me that the magical center-rune that ties the elemental runes together is moon, when we actually HAVE a magic rune. Wouldn't that make more sense?

I see that as well - maybe it would be helpful to put a version number on the pdf, or better still, just a 'date updated' near the link?

Yeah, I'm thinking specifically in the context of tabletop play, with miniatures. In the olden days back when I was playing this and that other frpg in late 70s early 80s, we never used miniatures either - we were too poor - but at least my group uses them a lot today and the teens/millennial enjoy them a lot.

You're not wrong, and it's a powerful observation. There seem to be contrarian streams in the RQ mechanics in that sense; for example it's silly to precisely measure number of blows, movement, facing, and stance...if the combat round encompasses a rather substantial 12 seconds. For example, I could see an argument for drawing up rules that embrace a more nebulous positioning paradigm...that each person fighting exists in overlappable 10x10 squares, with two melee combatants vaguely sharing that space otherwise unspecified.

Would kind of obviate the reason to be a top-level backer, no?

Sharp edge dice 4eva.

Funny, that's what I ended up with here. Seems the most economical use of space AND flexible just to have a small empty space where players can use hash marks or whatever. Not sure why when I open it using the link above, it shows a line border on the right side of column T - does everyone see that? I think it's a preview artifact, it doesn't show when I actually open in google sheets.

Actually, a charming scenario idea. Thanks.

I think it's regrettable if different regions have fundamental character differences like that, as if a Malkioni from Loskalm is somehow intrinsically different than Dragon Pass Orlanthi. Then again, it's a mythic-based world, not an empirical one. I can certainly see it being true, and maybe even interesting gamewise. But maybe it's the fundamental American in me that objects to irrevocable determinism in biology for people, that we're not all fundamentally the same.