styopa

/facepalm. It falls between two stools: RQ2 had a charming, simplistic set of rules. No, not everything was covered specifically, but it left great swathes of open space for individual GM's to rule/be creative. RQ3 took a much more (too much, to some) wargamey approach as a more sterile yet comprehensive rule set. RQG sections, depending on the author, seem to vacillate between the two poles a little bit inconsistently.

I have to say it IS a multibook set, it's just that the nature of reality being what it is, the three books (or even more if you include the gods book as fairly essential to the game) are coming out sequentially instead of simultaneously.

Or, in extremis you could always just go looking to see if you can bring back Arkat. That always fixes things nicely.

If you're watching pro wrestling enough to make that connection, you're more than halfway to being American, no matter where you live. And yes, it may have not been precisely 3:16 when he said it but it was too good an opportunity to pass up. Such are the necessities of creating holy scripture - one may take some creative license with the actual truth to ensure maximum truthiness.

(shrug) RQ is deadly. Always has been. Easy enough to houserule that 0 or lower is unconscious, and that they're losing d6 hp at the end of each round, dead at -1/2 CON or something.

As someone who's played both, personally I disagree that WFRP 2e is any better ...but it's pretty clearly an aesthetic chgoice. I personally prefer RQ(X) where X is probably 3 with modifications but honestly, they're more like cousins than unrelated strangers.

RQ2 hp scaling is goofy. You want to deliberately build a system that gimps "big monsters" so they're easier to kill, that's fine. I prefer big monsters to be actually terrifying because they are. Bigclub is THREE STORIES TALL (9m) He's SIZ 69. On a human proportions (yes, setting aside physics) he's 15,000 lbs. Firstly, the idea that he's got body hp (28) double that of a decent adventurer is...well, sorry it's silly. The only reason he's tough in SPH is because he (conveniently) has +10 AP skin. Without it? A single good special arrowshot to the head kills him. Secondly, because the RQ2 location hp mechanics go up linearly after a point, the damage proportions between limbs/core get all whacky making limbs intuitively too high a proportion of body hp. For a normal 10-12hp human, chest is 5, legs/abd are 80% of that (4), and arms are 60%. For a Bigclub, his legs are 90%, arms are 80%. What that means in RQ2 he can be nearly dead from one completely-mangled limb, where in RQ3 he'd be at about half...like a human. I'm not trying to convince anyone of everything, Jeff and I simply will never agree on that. Ultimately RQG has made their choice to prefer to be in synch with RQ2 stuff like SPH, Griffin Mtn, and Duck Tower instead of RQ3's River of Cradles, Dorastor, and Shadows on the Borderland, etc. cf already discussed a year ago at

Avalon Hill did that with Advanced Squad leader. Later expansions added whole chapters, as well as usually 2-3 pages of replacement pages with clarifications and rewritten rules.

Jeff 3:16 absolutely nails the essence of Glorantha. For new players, I've always summarized that other games are a pastiche of medieval Europe with magic bolted on, and then (more or less) backward-rationalized into the setting. Glorantha has magic in its very fiber, from the roots on up. Glorantha wouldn't run without magic. Composition/Editing tips for whoever is compiling your video: when you're doing online video, don't sit (human-interaction-norm) comfortably apart. Cut the L-R distance between 2 people in half or even a little more. center the mike in the shot, drop the camera height to eye level or a little below, and zoom in so half your shot isn't bookshelf. Frame the bottom of the shot with the table they're sitting at. Have the rulebook or mockup on the table. Cut to some of the art from the book more, it's a great feature. for a simple comparison, look at good mythical morning, they've pretty much nailed the 2 guys with a mike format. I've already mentioned sound before, but a big sound-deadening blanket hanging behind the camera would clean up that reverb a lot, esp with the timbre of male voices.

We use randomized initiative + dex modifier, -for weapon siz. We've never enjoyed the fixed-initiative system in RQ, it's far too predictable.

RQG rulebook version 1.1 post edit:

(bothered by the arbitrary ex post facto relationship here). I can cast a spell, but the context of the spell defines what I can do later? (I'm not asking to clarify, I know the rule is as you state it, I'm arguing the rule itself.) Let's say I have a "create hole in the ground" spell. If I cast it anywhere, I can still then swing a sword. If I happen to cast it under a person, then I can't. Would seem to be simpler to say either: "You can't cast a spell and attack in that round" or (my preference): you get 2 actions a round from the following list as long as you have SR to do it (attack, parry, dodge, cast spell)

It's not that they don't state what they're DOING, it's that they don't declare it at the beginning of the round. For us, when their initiative comes up, they just do what they want at that point.

We abandoned declaration of intent and haven't missed it at all. I'm pretty sure you could do that in RQG as well. We found it may have been slightly more realistic, but added a lot of complexity too. So, getting rid of it was a net improvement FOR US.

8 point spell them is only a 16 point spirit on average, easily defeated with moderate spirit screen...

For those who have campaigns outside Dragon Pass, I'd recommend http://www.pbegames.com/lifepath/ for character history. It's pretty wild.

PM if you want them, I have a nice, cleaned up and fully reformatted PDF.

The 'gaining shamanic abilities' makes more sense if you read Sandy Peterson's Shaman doc from ages back, from which this system was entirely lifted. (I know, because I'd stolen it earlier to use in my game). https://web.archive.org/web/20091018044347/http://www.snark.freeserve.co.uk:80/docs/ (you may have to try a few times, it's DEEP in the wayback archives, I timed out twice before it came up). In that version not all taboos are equal, they only provide SOME reset based on how substantive they are. So if your next point-buy is 2 characteristic points, you could drop it to 1 with a rather trivial taboo (don't eat bison meat - because who actually plays out what KIND of meat they're eating?). But if your next point-buy was 4, that trivial taboo would only drop it to 3. You'd need something major like 'never use a missile weapon' or somesuch meaningful to drop it from 4 to 1. Make sense?

https://muleabides.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/you-must-be-this-lucky-to-play/

Not true at all. I don't think I "designed" a single character for the first 4-6 years I played RPGs.

I *personally* would agree with you 100%...but I rather suspect is that is because of our common ages and history. It's certainly not the gamer marketplace today, where the bulk of players likely played a handful or more of computer/console adventure games before they ever cracked a PnP roleplaying game book. The paradigm today is very much not "you get what you get and the fun is in dealing with it"...it's "you get to play what you want to play because that's what's really fun". I'll leave the Psych 101 implications of what this means generationally to others.

Spiders and insects (ie with trivial limbs that don't count toward body hp) also had 0.1 I believe.

Agreed, but once you've gotten a rule book like this with a ring binding (ie it will lay perfectly flat and open wherever you want it to) you will always long for it.

Significant cheers!

It's almost like this whole thing was cooked up by some Beloit College stoner in his dorm room, and mythological consistency wasn't a huge priority....