styopa

Curiously, no, I just skimmed the RQ2 rulebook pretty closely, and didn't see ANYTHING explicitly mentioning the 1h thing=attack or parry, 2h thing=attack AND parry rule. Been using that one myself for 30 years, maybe it was clarified in RQ3? Don't have those books handy.

"You didn't look hard enough" -Mithras

Meh, I think "trip" and some of these others were artifacts of the extraordinarily punishing nature of SEs in RQ6...the benefit of special effects was so radical that it paid to pursue them intrinsically. I just found them happening far, far too frequently in every combat (we joked that they should be called CE's: "common effects"). It also made it trivially easy for a couple of relatively puny combatants to lock down a much better fighter...inordinately so, in my book.

I think jux has some great points. The unique situation for Glorantha is that while most fantasy games have to also present "the world" to the players, Glorantha already has The Guide which is as staggeringly comprehensive as a fictional world can be. So Chaosium has the opportunity to be able to present a rules system with a fairly minimalist setting background, knowing that the rest is out there if people want it, already.

My goodness, I don't think I'm smart enough for this forum software, or it hates Chrome. Anyway, replying to Hannu's comment: " We had many. It is relatively easy to get to Rune level if you play for awhile even if you start as lay members. if you start as novices it will be faster.... " Then clearly your combat isn't lethal enough. /joke. I'm kidding of course; considering the RQ3 requirements were typically something like 90% in ~5-7 skills, which is about 50-55 skill checks (with +1d6 on successful check) (Interestingly, starting at a skill of 25, with no stat modifier, it's 55-65 rolls. Starting at a skill of 50, that only drops to perhaps 45-50.) How long in your campaign would it take for your players to get 50 checks in 5-7 key skills? Once my players decided what they wanted to be, they were acutely conscious of focusing on those skills, of course, meaning they were ALWAYS trying. Basically, in those key skills you could count on them having a success every time they had an opportunity to resolve skill checks, so they'd get anywhere from 1-3 skill checks per key skill per play session. So that's only about 20-25 play sessions to Rune Lord candidacy? A real life year, meeting 2x monthly? It's a while, but not a terribly LONG while, IMO. (IMG it wasn't 'automatic' that you hit 90% in those skills, you got to be a RL. I said they could TRY for RL whenever it was contextually appropriate, but some cults only gave you 3 tries, for example, or other cults required a massive donation and significant service to be considered. And if RAW the cult required "90% skill in bow and arrow" I didn't care what their character sheet skill % was...they simply had to demonstrate to the Priest in a ritualized ceremony that they could successfully arrow "...9 of the 10 totems representing enemy tribes..." or whatever.)

I think the 'dullness' of high level combat is true, if a teensy bit overstated. Then again, it seems fairly 'real life' reasonable that two master combatants would be evenly matched and could trade blows for an inordinate amount of time. In application though, how often did these combats occur in such a context, where one or the other (or both) combatants didn't have some 'other' thing going, like powerful magic or friends? A melee duel at those levels of expertise in Glorantha without substantial magic in play is nearly inconceivable. That said, I definitely expect that one of the things they're going to take from RQ6 is the special effects. I very much disliked how common they were and how RAW unbalanced they could be, but the combined principles of a: to every exchange there's someone who wins, and this win can be directly translated into some sort of advantage (even slight), and b: special effects are driven by character choices thus adding another level of interest in the interplay of combatants - both of these NEED to be included. I'm a simulationist; I don't want my combats to look like Crouching Tiger SFX scenes. But I realize that some people do want exactly that. The special combat effects is a great mechanic as well to give to a DM to 'dial up' or 'dial down' the fantasticness of such scenes.

Yep, this is how we ruled it: It was a Divine Magic spell, essentially, ergo 1sr. It enables essentially a 'flash heal' but of course, costs a divine spell.

In my view, that chart is missing Steve Perrin's Quest Rules?

Good overview from Jeff covering the 'guiding principles' of the rewrite. While he focused primarily on the filtering process as it applies to RQ3 (taking what was good, abandoning what was bad), I hope that principle is in play drawing from other subsequent rules sets as well; AiG (the first one, unpublished) had some very good ideas in there that were essentially doing the same thing - keeping the good from RQ3 and rejiggering the bad. Off the top of my head some of the Shaman mechanics worked neatly. What I missed from his explanation, and maybe it's implied in a way I simply didn't get, was where RQ6 meets the road here? As we all know, RQ:G or whatever we're calling it, was born of RQ6, yet the discussion centers primarily around RQ2 and the 90/10 principle focused there? So is RQ:G going to be fundamentally Glorantha-fied RQ6 with a flavoring of RQ2, or will it be RQ2, modernized and updated with learnings from RQ3, (4), MRQ, MRQ2, and RQ6? I'm a little sad to see Jeff's scourging of RQ3 Sorcery again. I know dislike of it was widespread, but I actually liked it and felt it really worked as a credible anathematic alternative to the Spirit and Divine magic systems, and it seemed relatively true to the Western metaphysics of everything resulting from manipulation/combination of vanilla 'core' techniques. Not to say it was perfect; Sandy's rewrite made it much better, and I ended up using much of the (excellent) RQ Tekumel material as my campaign's "western" credo. Nevertheless, It's probably not a coincidence that the person that played our long-running sorcerer was a math major in college...

When Rick's title here is "AVATAR OF CHAOS" is anyone particularly expecting him to hew to a meticulously-planned release schedule?

That's fantastic! I admit I haven't followed it very closely, but I thought it was only going to be 'rough previewed' at Gen Con in August? I'd be delighted to run game(s) in the Minneapolis/St Paul area once we have enough of (even beta-grade) rules to do so.

Using a RQ6 (is it "a" RQ or "an" RQ? Does it depend whether you're speaking King's English or Vulgate American?) approach, I'd suggest that losing a 'part' of your style like that would just knock your skill down by a difficulty step or 2, depending on how drastic you want to be. (I wouldn't be too drastic, as I'd submit that part of learning a 2-weapon style would be at least a basic instruction in use of only one of them.) Then again, my RQ6 housemod had a lot more steps to provide just this granularity: x2 x1.75 x1.67 x1.5 x1.3 x1.25 1.0 (standard) x0.75 x0.67 x0.5 x0.33 x0.25 x0.1

Would love to volunteer to run RQ Glorantha games, but AFAIK it's not releasing this year?

I've run RQ3 campaigns since the 1980s, and the SR mechanic has always been something needing houserules. MAINLY I didn't like the predictability of the original SR system; where the players could reliably tell what order events would happen in any given round. In particular, I didn't like how having a crappy SR means called-shots 'cost' you less than other people; if a called-shot just bumps you to SR10, and you're already going on SR9 or 10, all you lose is half your to-hit. We are simulationists, but ESSENTIALLY we use an init system that only determines who MOVES first; attacks are almost an incidental by-product of whoever is acting. Here's what we've done: Each round d10* is rolled for init, add your Dex SRM (* in fact, we use variable init dies depending on the circumstances; normally a d10, but it might be a d8 or even a d6 for a very tight/constricted space, where Dex should be REALLY important; d12 or even d20 in a wide-open space where an individual's dex isn't going to make that big a difference in who goes first) Count down from the highest. (These rules are predicated on the use of a hex map; not all combats will need to be played out on a hexmap. If we don’t use the hex grid, it’s simply init+quickness goes first, with the principle that meeting-combats first-strike goes to the longer weapon.) Starting on your init, you may move freely 1m/SR to a maximum of 2x your species Move Rate (subject to fatigue limits). (Moving backwards, 2x; Moving Prone 2x, Moving from enemy ZOC 3x; always can move at least 1/turn.) If there’s a question about who should move “first” in a SR, NPCs move first. You and all active, aware opponents (i.e. got to roll init this round) have ‘threat zones’ in the frontal ½ arc: i.e. the area that can be hit with the equipped melee weapon – on a hex map this would be the 3 adjacent frontal hexes for an opponent with a medium-or-smaller weapon. Larger weapons may reach more. If you move into a ‘threatened’ zone but your arc doesn’t reach, that opponent MAY spend action for this round to interrupt & attack. If you suffer a serious/major injury, you must immediately stop moving. If you move so that your ‘threat zone’ touches an enemy, you may attack. If your and an opponent’s threat zones meet at roughly the same time, highest REACH gets the ‘opportunity’ attack first. If weapons are same length, higher DEX goes first. If DEX is also the same, attacks are resolved simultaneously. If you move in a (more or less) straight line you gain your hexes moved this round/2 (until contact) as a +damage modifier for melee Called shot means you strike at half-skill, that's all.

Delighted to hear Steve is back in the fold. RQ had/has some of the most innovative, simulationist mechanics in RPGs, and it will only be better for some of the 'refreshing' concepts that have come up over the last 30 years of RPGs.

Mike & Jeff, Delighted to see this is moving forward. All I can say is that PLEASE use beta testers that try to break/game/exploit the system. Having game-testers that idolize the system and play it the way you 'intend' it to be played is good for what it's worth. But to really build a durable rules-set that works, you need people that don't hold it sacred.