Pentallion

34 minutes ago, Baulderstone said:

If you have to understand the history of a product line to understand why a name isn't confusing, then it's too confusing. 

Actually, Baulderstone is right Jeff.  You literally CAN'T call it RQ 4.  New player comes in, what ya playin?  RQ4.  If the newbie has ever heard of RQ 6 he's immediately going to think we're playing an older version.  In fact, he might even go try to find the newest version if he finds he likes the game.  By the time he figures out this IS the newest version he's like wtf?  Now if all this is attempted to be explained to him up front, he's going away with the impression this game is stupid.  RQ4 AFTER RQ6 came out?  That's stupid. 

Sorry, but that bull don't fly.

Heaven forbid that while that great first impression is being made, someone should bring up ducks.

Been gaming for 35 years and can honestly say I've NEVER met anyone who hated Traveller.  But we're getting sidetracked.

I think the RQ background idea will help new players get immersed, not hinder them.  Of course, until we actually see it in action, we won't know, but in concept it sounds like a great addition to the game.

On 6/12/2016 at 10:29 AM, pachristian said:

Let me get this straight: I am trying to teach a new player to play RQ.

The first thing they are asked to do is to make up two stories of life and adventure that they then do not get to play? I'm going to ask a player to spend an hour writing background for their character, in an unfamiliar world and an unfamiliar mythology before they can even start making their character? That's a lot of work and investment to ask a player to start with.

I don't think I can sell that to a new player. 

I need them to be able to jump in, play, and THEN start learning the world and the mythology.

Sorry, this just doesn't sound very new-player-friendly. They need to start in media res - in other words, do stuff first, fill in backstory later.

I take it you've never played Traveller.  Rolling up the character is like playing an adventure itself.  People LOVE Traveller because of that.  Of course, it's all modular, so you aren't forced to do use that part of the game, but you should definitely give it a try.

On 6/12/2016 at 6:30 AM, smiorgan said:

**JOKE MODE ON**

 Can your maternal grandfather die in chargen before your mother was conceived?

**JOKE MODE OFF**

Impressive tool for a Pendragonesque Dragon Pass campaign. Very immersive.

I'd like also to have an alternative option for quick chargen to accommodate different play styles and the possibility of zero-to-hero for those who like it. Sometimes one just wants to fight baboons off Gringle's pawnshop and start worrying about ancestors, picking up passions, later in the campaign.

Just my two cents.

 

OMG my mind is arleady twirling around a Lunar chronomancer campaign where the players mother was born after her owm mother had already died.  Everyone knows it is impossible, but in a chronomancer family, these things happen.

I defer to Jeff, RQ4 it is.  But personally, I like RQG Runequest Glorantha.  Because the two finally coming back together again makes me happy

8 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

Care to share your bat-killing techniques?

http://www.glorantha.com/forums/topic/king-broyan-and-the-crimson-bat/

RQ can't get here soon enough! 

12 hours ago, Texarkana said:

Most of my problems were with RQ6 - the maths required to adjust skill levels with difficulty grades, then dividing another skill/passion by five to get an augmentation, it all made peoples brains melt. Then the long time required to choose special effects in combat (there are just too many to choose from). When I ran "Asterix and the Deep Ones" using CoC 7th edition last year, that take on d100 was much easier for people to grasp. Less edition specific - the RQ character sheets were old school in how they communicate information to players - the actual character gets hidden by the amount of detail on the sheet. For the Asterix game I built my own character sheet and ruthlessly pruned away peripheral information.

Where I live in New Zealand, conventions games are largely drawn from the story focused games published in the last decade. It is unusual even to see a D&D game on a convention listing. So when I ran the RQ game I had a bunch of players who really didn't want to be playing an old fashioned physics simulation, and my game was not their first choice of play for the session. I could have pitched my game better, but for me its currently holding the prize for least amount of fun GM'ing at a con.

Then you're going to like the newest version of RQ way more.

On 6/9/2016 at 10:33 PM, RosenMcStern said:

If someone had not noticed, I have opened a split of this thread in the generic forum.

 

On the other hand, it is worth nothing that RQ itself was supposed to provide a different experience than it actually does. It was meant as a "heroic" game portraying characters like those found in the Dragon Pass boardgame, but it turned out to be a perfect "gritty" game instead.

"Instead" is incorrect word usage in this case.  BECAUSE is the correct word here.  Because it's so gritty, it allows for truly heroic gaming.  I once, using only common divine spells found in RQ3, figured out how to actually bring down the Crimson Bat as it is detailed in all its horror in Elder Secrets.  So easy, even a Balazaring could do it.  When you're that squishy and you do something that epic, you've transcended the grittiness into the truly heroic.

RQ has always been able to do that.  That's what makes it so special.

Let me be another who, the moment I saw Jaldon's wrong river, had some faint recollecton of having read something about it a long, long time ago.  maybe in a Reaching Moon?  I'm sure it was just a blurb.  One sentence at most.  Probably why nobody can pluck the memory out of its hole.

How many shelves of D&D modules you can fill compared to how many shelves of RQ modules you can fill is directly proportional to how many people play D&D to how many play RQ.  And it's not because people don't play that modules aren't written, it is directly the opposite causality.  D&D mass produced modules for people to play.  RQ did not.  That is why, plain and simple, so many subscribe on reddit to D&D and so few to RQ.

Adventure modules take the burden off the GM and make playing easier.  You want more RQ players, start cranking out RQ adventures.  That is how they expanded their base.  I've been waiting forever for Chaosium to do the same, but adventures come out slowly, even after 35 years.

7 hours ago, styopa said:

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.

Yeah, not a big fan of using passions to drive the story.  I think passions are kinda silly myself.  A player knows who his character is, he doesn't need a percentage value to tell him. 

I'm pretty sure Lhankor Mhy DOES have them.  The condition that they must be bearded, for instance. 

There may be no Waha Sun Domers either, but Yelmalion worship of Lokarnos doesn't preclude Morokanth or other Waha worship of Lokarnos.  If anything, it cements that Lokarnos worship is present in Prax.  I think it is even more proof that the Morokanth have a sub worship of Lokarnos.  The chariots in both cultures nails it.

Perhaps it is only half jokingly that one might infer that where there's a White Bull secret society, might there not also be a White Wheel secret society?

Emma Peel will do?  WILL DO?

Is this an insane version of the Dr.?

The God Time follows the laws of Dream Time.  In other words, there is no limiting function.  If you dream it, that's what happens.  the laws of time do not matter in our dreams.  Nor do they matter in God Time.  Our memories work much the same way.  We can remember things in whatever order we desire and even find meaning to a conversation that occured years later to an event that transpired  long before and vice versa.

It seems pretty obvious to me that, while it may not be brought to light in the gaming material published so far, the Morokanth are also worshippers of Lokarnos.  They race chariots, so they probably need the God of the Wheel to make their chariots overcome the problems with wheels and mud or even the weight distribution.  They trade in slaves and Lokarnos is the Merchant of the Gods.  Both Drive (Vehicle) and the spell Hie Wagon strongly suggest that Morokanth chariot racers are also worshippers of Lokarnos.

On 5/10/2016 at 4:45 PM, styopa said:

Maybe it's a difference in definition, but I meant specifically for someone who is NEW to the system.  

Another thing you can do if you're new to the system is give your PCs a rechargable ressurection item.  River of Cradles does this for its beginning level campaign and I do this for all my campaigns.  New GMs and new players alike can use a make over button and Ye Ole Ressurection Stone is invaluable.

10 hours ago, Mortilas said:

Greetings there !

I'm a long time french game master of Runequest (the original first edition was the very first RPG i bought after reading a review).

I apologize ahead of time if the topic was covered elsewhere. I have big expectations about the upcoming new project but i wanted to share some ideas about a precise issue that had bugged me for a long time in the combat rules of the original system.

The Attack/Parry system worked fine until the skill % reached 90-100, but then the fights dragged because parries wouldn't fail often enough unless, of course, magic allowed someone to shift the balance. I happen to have done some ancient fencing and the idea that a fight between two novices would be shorter than a fight between two master at arms didn't feel right to me. More importantly, it didn't really feel dramatic either from a movie point of view. Apart from combat, there also was the issue of comparing opposed skill successes (social interaction, perception vs stealth ...).

That's why i liked the idea of "the highest roll among identical levels of success (normal or critical) beats the lowest",

• it shortens the fights between high skill fighters and also felt "intuitively right".
• it adresses the issue of conflicting skill rolls (not only combat related)

Another approach was also used in  the Hawkmoon RPG :

• you could parry several times in a round but your parry % would drop by a cumulative 20% each time.
• a Master (90%+) gained a free attack after each successful parry but each successive attack would drop his skill by 20%, cumulative too.
• The consequence of that was that a fight between Masters would lead to a flurry of  attacks / parries / riposts until one failed or was hit. That "felt" much more dramatic (and also more realist for the fencer in me *winks*).

I am unsure which system the designers are leaning towards but i really want to point out that the gaming tables i ran stumbled on that issue several times, either because of realism or storytelling rythm concerns.

 

 

 

The second approach started with Stormbringer and is my personal favorite.  High level battles get decided quickly and high level vs lower level, the advantage also quickly decides the battle.

1 hour ago, g33k said:

A great many early Runequest players got into RQ specifically because they HAD BEEN players of WBRM!

Yep, I was one of those players.  Don't remember any turtles in the boardgame, but there were ducks...ducks...and more ducks.  And there were runes on the mapboard even.

The movement rate pretty much doesn't stand up for any "per hour" analysis, be that RQ2/3 or any other set.  RQ2 Borderlands had 12 second rounds.  Human moves 8 m per round.  But can charge at 16m in a round.  That works out to a running speed of 4.8km/hr.

Creatures in Glorantha move excruciatingly slow lol.  But same is true for basically every rpg.  You can't convert to actual running speed.  It's a game and that's merely something to give you an idea of which being is faster while allowing a tactical movement rate to be used in battle situations.  Think of it like football.  The guy can run a 4.4 40 at the combine, but on the football field, he's never going to run a 4.4 40 because the other players won't let him.  He has to dodge and juke and there's contact and he has to look to find his way, cut back, etc.  To gain 40 yards could take 10 seconds.  which, by the way, would be movement rate 8 in RQ.

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

Very slow or very short races...

Note that one of Velakol's spells is Mobility...

I bet that's a popular spell amongst the Morocanth.  Necessity really, if you want to raid for humans.  That and slow.

Velakol Surestrike, from the Borderlands campaign, is described as having his favorite pastime as chariot racing with other Morokanth.  He has a four herdman team of matched pairs.

So all this talk of mud and 20 man teams are obviously incorrect.  Not even Greg gets to Greg Borderlands.

1 hour ago, metcalph said:

 

They run on four legs, I assume, being as speedy as any other steed in Prax.  

Alas, according to the Borderlands campaign, Morokanth are only as fast as humans on foot, having movement 8.  Impalas move 10,, but Bison and other herd beasts move 12.  So running away is not much of an option.

So she's saying that runes are going to kill all the turtles?  Turtles can't go extinct!  Howsoever shall I complete a lightbringer quest if Sofal is dead?  No, I won't stand for it.  Not metatextually, not metaphysically and not meta...meta...metaturd...metaturdal..metaturtlely.

The runes like ducks right?  Cuz we need more ducks no matter what anybody says.  If there being runes means the ducks have to die, then that's where I draw the line.  Best thing the God Learners ever did, ducks.

6 hours ago, Patrick said:

You're a brave man ;-)

Just crazy