styopa

Pretty much the ethos behind BRP, no? Fundamental rules framework, upon which is hung the different mechanics appropriate to whatever setting is being run. (Note, this is slightly different than what GURPs tries to be: a rules set that encompasses everything possible.)

Except in Glorantha, the (red) moon plays a very specific cosmological role. I'm not sure that translates?

Ages ago I ran a campaign based on 1090 AD medieval Europe, where a great magical cataclysm had rifted mundane earth together with a magical dimension about 100 years before - long enough for the immediate-disaster thing to have settled out, but not enough time for social systems etc to have significantly changed. People were basically still 'figuring it all out' (ie I could use medieval art, architecture, and mostly history without having to make too many wholesale changes to accommodate magic, etc.). I'd always planned in that campaign that if anyone had tried to dimension-travel or investigate the 'magical dimension' that was the other side of the impact, it would have been Glorantha. Didn't last long enough, though.

Then you'd really hate my campaign. Since metric/decimal systems are so completely anachronistic for a quasi-medieval setting, I never use them ever. I'd far rather tell someone "that town is 6 leagues away" than tell them it's 30km. Besides, if we're primarily concerned about making sure everyone can understand, when are all you guys all getting rid of your silly local languages and just standardizing to English?

If you dig into that source page, further down someone actually posts FATEs numbers, to some degree putting $ behind the ordinal positions. And, as Jeff commented, it should be kept in mind that this is a VERY particular slice of an economy that's less and less driven by retail sales. (Although I'd point out that if anything, that probably depresses Pathfinder's share as much as anyone, I understand they're largely direct-sales themselves?) That's why I originally started my comment using Reddit's numbers. Objectively, a game could sell 1000 copies (either direct or via retail) but if nobody's talking about it, that's probably a better indication of where it is in the constellation of the RPG universe. (Pathfinder is nearly 28,000 btw; egad. I don't know if those numbers do or don't include all subreddits, either.) While part of me would love to see that vibrant an RQ community, I don't really want RQ to be so vanillified that everyone plays it. I'm displaying my 49-yr-old bias here, but some of the RPG world has gone the same direction MMOs have trended: no risk, no actual danger, no effort required. I don't want RQ to be that. I play it because I *like* my games a little harder, a little more (ok a lot more) dangerous. By that measure I think if RQ stays true to itself we simply will never be as attractively easy as D&D, bluntly speaking. And that's perfectly fine. It would be nice to see a few thousand regular RQ redditors, if only because there'd be a comfortable churn of new ideas, adventures, etc. It'd be nice to have "new RQ stuff" to read every day. But hell, if you just excised the "Look I drew my character" posts from Reddit, D&D's would drop to about half anyway....

If you're interested, there already are some good videos up from GenCons previous: Long but worth watching!

Oh, and maybe of passing interest in this discussion as well: sales ranking of RPG systems based on retail reporting since Q32004. http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=69358&d=1437395191&stc=1

You probably meant to reverse those comparisons, respectively? I'd completely agree. I'm not saying "make RQ like D&D" - that would be silly (and pointless). *IMO* people come to RQ for essentially two reasons (AFAIK almost nobody starts playing RPGs in Runequest, which itself is a damned shame, but very much due to your China vs Liechtenstein effect...): 1) mechanical: people sick of the rationalizations in D&D look for a 'tighter' system with more realistic combat, results, hit locations, more danger; or 2) setting: some people are enchanted with Glorantha and as RQ is sort of the 'go-to' rule set for Glorantha, end up here. Number two is of course, no longer really completely true: Heroquest is specifically Gloranthan, and one could say that it's supported by everything from 13th Age, FATE, GURPS, even probably a d20 variant or three (one could even now sort of say Mythras supports Glorantha, oddly). But Glorantha = RQ and RQ = Glorantha to most people still. I'm very much a #1 guy, admittedly. I probably am far more interested in simulationism than 99% of the gaming public (hell, I'm probably one of the dozen people that actually played Phoenix Command and LIKED its gun-combat system). So on that front, I know I'm not the target audience. I can get over that, certainly. My point is that I believe RQ can be brought into the 21st century and appeal to modern-day new gamers (and their expectations) and still remain essentially RQ. For example, the opposed die-roll mechanic is a clever, quick (modern) resolution system. I believe Jeff said it's being used to some degree in the new RQ which I think is terrific.

Did you actually just criticize D&D's confusion & variety of editions in a RUNEQUEST post? Seriously? FWIW I thought RQ6 did a good job of bringing RQ back into the commercial limelight, certainly, although some could credit that increase as a by-blow of RPGs flourishing generally today. I think it would have been better had it been more closely tied to the canon/world, frankly. MRQ was fairly clever in going back to 2nd age, that was a fresh approach, if not as sound mechanically as RQ6 later was (which itself wasn't as sound as previous editions, itself ***very much only IMO***).

Which is perfectly fine for many people, particularly grognards that have been futzing with RQ systems for decades. *NOT* so great for pulling in new players to the genre. Runequest reddit has 306 subscribers, 2 viewing. D&D reddit has 136,000 subs, 1300 viewing.

It'll really depend on how they're implemented. I didn't play Pendragon, so my understanding of it is only secondhand, but AFAIK in that game the passions DROVE play. For example, whether a character would lie to an NPC, cower in fear from something, etc could be essentially taken away from the player's control, and made subject of a dice roll result to which the player was expected to hew. That would trouble me deeply, because that takes agency away from players. OTOH, Runequest *needs* runes and always has, not to mention a better "tie in" to the world of Glorantha. That seems a natural place for them to dovetail.

Previous years Jeff's done a great job of youtubing his discussions of the Guide, hopefully that same plan is in place for RQ's discussion.

The RQ2 explanation was that these spells simply "...involve the forceful alteration of the fabric of reality by the use of one's POW." (Presumably meaning "temporary POW" in RQ2 terms, ie MP. No theoretical construct or interpolation of 'spirit entities' was even hinted at that time. Which, I think, was what you were saying a couple of posts ago: "... An animist might understand this as "the spirits aid my sword" while the materialists might understand this as "the natural energy flows briefly favor my sword" or whatever. ..." At the same time, then, to say it's "Spirit Magic" and not "Basic Magic", "Common Magic" or "Hedge Magic", etc is to take a side, isn't it? To say that it IS, in fact, little spirits doing this stuff is saying that the animists are right and the materialists are wrong. It seems rather unGloranthan to to attribute a single magical 'culture' that their interpretation is metaphysically correct. Frankly, I could see it having all those names DEPENDING ON WHICH CULTURE YOU'RE TALKING TO.

I sincerely hope that the new RQ takes *everything* widely regarded as a "good idea" and implements it. I get that it's based on RQ2 and they want to remain at least reasonably consistent with former materials* but RPGs (and what players have expected from them, and how they play them) have evolved a lot since 1979 or whenever RQ2 appeared. *I know the new Chaosium doesn't have ample resources, so this makes sense. At the same time, this backward focus somewhat condemns us to "oh look, it's Pavis...again". Glorantha's a big, big world, with tons of cool stuff. If you browse around, you'll find some fascinating campaigns run in Safelster and other places. Heck, the (IMO) greatest-ever narrative of one of the old house RQ games was mostly set in Pamaltela.

In that sense, then yes, pretty much every version of RQ AFAIK has had a "spirit ally" for Rune Lords of any sect. Those don't necessarily (again, as far as I remember) need to be tangible creatures but could be "summonable" things?

Meh, it's asserted to be so, but works nothing like that in practice. There is, as far as any of the rules ever in RQ history as far as I know, no "spirit" that gives a sword +5% to hit and +1 damage (Bladesharp). Spirits can deaden sound (Silence)? I have to use a spirit (Spirit Binding spirit magic spell) to bind a spirit? That's rather recursive. And by the logic that these are all being done (in a hand-wavy way) "by spirits", then I could cast a Spirit Screen around my pile of gold and make it undetectable by Detect Gold? No such mechanic has ever been implied?

TBH, RQ doesn't really have a "*poof* there's a monster doing what you want" esthetic. At least in RQ3, there were summonings as a ritual thing, but they were (AFAIR) limited to spirit creatures in some way or another. There might be a "call X" for mundanes, but it would depend on one being nearby. It was certainly never a combat-tactic thing. It's one of the lines where RQ magic diverged clearly from D&D; another example would be AoE spells - RQ doesn't really have any. Instead of everyone having +1 swords, everyone's got Bladesharp 1 (which has the same effect). Personally, I've always believed that the spell lists for RQ needed SUBSTANTIALLY more quantity, in almost all aspects. Spirit magic always had a reasonably broad variation, although I think the regionality of it was underplayed. Most games I played in (or DM'd, admittedly) the same basic set of spirit magic was available no matter where you were. Divine magic was simply too few spells, and the POW sacrifice system compelled players to really make the same optimized choices because it was so expensive to get a spell.. Further, most cults have a stock list of common spells and then a small handful of cult specialties. Combined, that made them (IMO) too dull and predictable. Every Orlanthi Wind Lord had spells X, Y, and Z. The new RQ divine spell point thing will help a lot in the predictability, but I do believe each major pantheon should have its own ample common spells, and then each god have a pretty good selection too. Sorcery (of which I believe I'm one of the few people that seems to have liked RQ3's approach) needed tons more spells, and more flavor. The spell-list archetypes was a fine start, but then I'd added someone's RQ spell list from Tekumel, letting my sorcerors choose from vanilla (but flexible) spells from the book or more elaborate and interesting spell effects that might be slightly more efficient but far less flexible individually.

It seems to me like it would be a logical goal to try to "revamp" the system for 2016, and then harmonize them across various games. Sort of a BRP 2016 which then has "COC" flavors, "RQ" flavors, etc.

I like the 'tiers of success' thing (imo someone in the RQ3 community had done that back in the 80s, with terms like supercrit, etc maybe that was Steve Perrin), and don't know why RQ6 (in particular) didn't adopt it. Ergo, a success vs a fumble is the same 'degree of success' as a Special vs a Failure, or a Crit vs Success. Seems pretty robust. In particular for RQ6, it could have been implemented to mitigate the balance issues of some of the overpowered special effects. ie "you have to have 3 successes to pick from this group", etc.

" consecutive Sever Spirits were used as attrition damage " How? Maybe I'm misremembering, but isn't Sever Spirit more or less a save-or-die thing? If they pass, they live. If they don't, they die (but they don't get otherwise weaker for surviving the attack). How is that attrition? Or am I misremembering the spell?

I think there is ample granularity available in D100. It's just a matter of the degrees of success and how frequently you want them to occur (with the follow-on question is: are the relative VALUES of these successes appropriately scaled as well)? Frex: RQ RAW (2, 3): Crit 05%, Special 20%, fumble inverse of crit but always 1%. In this case, the "crit" should really be significantly better than the special, comparable to the value of a special over a normal. RQ (6): "crit" 10%, with SFX available anytime you beat the other guy by a success level; my quick napkin-math figured this at almost 30% of the time with equal skills (not super confident on that result, sort of brute-forced it); one of my main issues with RQ6 was that this happened far too frequently, and that the advantages (the special effects) were overpowered for their frequency. You could certainly brew your own levels, per jux's example: half skill: good success skill: marginal success (above skill but below halfway to 100): marginal fail (above halfway to 100): bad failure ....certainly doable, but in that case I'd have to say that "good failure" would be so frequent, it would have to be weak or the system would be amazingly lethal. Making "special" stuff happen more frequently really just makes the combats more brittle and specials less ... special. I originally liked a system I saw that made doubles-rolls crits (as success or fail) until I realized that with a 95%+ chance to succeed, you STILL had a 2 in 5 chance of any failure being a fumble...holy crap that's nasty. 1 in 5 (RQ RAW) is already pretty harsh, where as your skill increases, your chance of a failure being a fumble starts at 5% and increases as you get better to 20% in kind of an interesting jagged curve.

Thinking more on my idea last night, even 10% is too cheap; for example a 50% attacker could jack his attack up to 100% for sacrificing -5 damage. That sounds like a lot, but if he's using a Greatsword (2d8) and has a strength damage bonus (say, 1d4 or more) what he's sacrificing is, on average, only 1d8+1d4, leaving him with 1d8 damage and +50% to hit? Nah, that seems too powerful. And at 20% per point, I'm not sure anyone would use it.

Agreed, I was thinking about 10% as the 'value' too, actually. 5% seemed like it might be too 'cheap'. As far as RQ2, meh, it could be an option. I think the point of the RQ2 thing is compatibility with old materials, and a RULE change like this - not changing tables of values, etc - would still be ENTIRELY compatible with any old RQ2 material you pick up, no conversion necessary at all.

Just spitballing this out here: what if you freely allowed players to modify their attack/damage rolls at will? Maybe even parrying AP? Again, this is just a hypothetical, let's throw out the following ratios: 5% = 1 point of damage. So if Rurik at 90% attack is trying to hurt Bagdob the Chaos Warrior with the chaos feature of heavy armadillo armor-skin, it might be worth dropping his attack to 70% to really smack Bagdob with a +4 damage. OTOH, if Rurik is fencing with his friend he might take -6 hp damage and +30% to hit, because he doesn't want to hurt his friend, but definitely wants to score the first touch. I *might* be inclined to allow spending % in the same way to increase the AP of a parrying weapon (a master swordsman or daggerman could probably more artfully use the weapon for parrying than Glug the Farmer) I *might* further be inclined to say that 5% = 1 point of damage = 1 point of SR - anyone could strike more quickly if they're not concerned with actually hitting hard enough to do damage, and the "long, slow windup of a mighty blow" is easily understood. Hmm. It would certainly make a more tangible benefit to having skill over 100% - since you're capped at 95%, if you don't really care about the increased impale/crit, I'd guess that % over 95% would almost always be spent as either a quicker attack or more damage, meaning really skilled combatants are DIRECTLY more lethal. EDIT: there could be boundary caps on these manipulations, of course - for example: - attack% couldn't be increased beyond 2x your original. - damage couldn't be increased beyond the max rolled damage of your weapon - combat total SR couldn't be reduced below your Dex SR, and SR increased beyond the end of the round doesn't "roll over", you'd just lose your opportunity to act that round. (or somesuch)

Thanks for the update Mike!