JonL

A lot of the design concepts that seem to interest you have been done before, though not all at once. In addition to HQ, I suggest you study the following games, look at what they did well, and look at the interconnected bits that support that... GURPS - variable skill progressions and bell curve task resolution. 3d6 for classic bell distribution. DC Heroes/Underground/Blood of Heroes - logarithmic attribute ratings for arbitrary power levels that never break the mechanic as they scale up. 2d10 added for ramp distribution. TORG - log scale mechanics similar to the above, but with a different feel. 1d20 Rolemaster/Spacemaster - Bridges class based and skill based character models. Later editions suffer from skill bloat, but are also very complete. MERP and Cyberspace are their lighter siblings. D100 open ended roll high. Best example of a game that could use an assistant app. Fate/Fudge - Fudge dice actually roll deviations from the mean result represented by your stat. I would look at what these games get right and wrong, and learn from that.

It's to some extent a question of emphasis. A game where armor and hit point values for each part of your body is an important thing you regularly to engage with, where magic is concretely specified and used by spending points, where the reach and weight of different weapons changes when it's your turn to act, and so on directs your attention to different things and encourages a more down-to-earth mechanistic way of engaging with the game world as you play. It's not an either/or proposition, but they tend towards different proportions of focus. More "mugging a baboon for its greaves," as Laws likes to say. That's not a value judgement. Horses for courses, strokes for folks, etc. Catch me in the right mood and I'll relish a crunchy grind-out combat. However if someone generally prefers the Jungian showdown in Red Moon Rising or the extended courtship challenge in the The Colymar Campaign over detailed resource management and tactical skirmishes, adapting content that emphasizes the latter sort of play more so than the former, while possible, is not preferable. I am happy for RQ to get such great support and for Chaosium to be healthy and successful. The economics are what they are. I may nonetheless sigh now and again as things I was looking forward to for years are realized in forms less well suited to my preferences than I had been expecting, even as I appreciate the lovely production RQ fans' money makes possible.

In Pendragon, ratings above 20 get added to your die roll. If your total is over 20, you score a critical success. (Normally, you score a critical by rolling your rating exactly). HQ breaks ratings down into 20pt brackets, called Masteries. When a rating hits 21, you have reached the first Mastery level, notated as 1M, with the 'M" representing 20. a total of 25 would be written as 5M, while 47 would be 7M2 ( i.e. 7+(20 * 2)). Your TN is the number before the M, but your result gets bumped up one grade (Fumble -> Fail, Fail -> Success, Success -> Critical) for every M you have over your opposition. BRP games vary a bit from one implementation to the next, but speaking broadly your special or critical success thresholds are based on a fraction of your skill percentage, your chances of attaining them rise even when you hit the maximum overall success chance. Percentages over 100 can also soak up penalties, help with splitting for multiple actions, penalize your opponents in opposed rolls, etc. - depending on the specific game. All three approaches work reasonably well. The Pendragon and BRP approaches start to fray when you approach double the base range, though as a practical matter that isn't really a problem in any actual game I've heard of. (I think Lancelot has a ~30 in his Lance skill in Pendragon. Highest any character I played ever got was a 24.) The HQ approach , while perhaps harder to grasp at first and having a little oddness right at the breakpoints, has the benefit of continuing to gracefully and meaningfully scale up and up. While the spreadsheet I linked to doesn't encompass Mastery, the odds and result distributions for 17M3 vs 15M3 would be exactly the same as 17 vs 15.

For modifiers, just change the TN values accordingly. A 15 with a +3 augment is no different than an 18. You never modify the die roll itself in HQ, or most* roll-under systems. (* Pendragon's handling of skills > 20 is a noteworthy exception. and an interesting counterpoint to HQ's Mastery scaling.)

That's right. You enter the Player and GM TNs below the grid where it says, "EDIT THESE." The grid then changes to show you the outcomes of all 400 possible combinations of Player and GM die rolls. Player rolls are numbered down the left hand side, while GM rolls are numbered across the top. The counts and percentages on the lower left show the frequency of each outcome within the result space along with a few useful aggregations, while the graph on the lower right shows the distribution curve (with ties split evenly between Marginal Defeat and Marginal Victory for graphing purposes). I like in particular to show people the graph when they complain that rolling 1D20 is "too swingy." The player's individual roll may have a flat distrubution, sure, but when you oppose that roll with another and matrix the results you get very nice bell-ish curves with about 2/3 of the results being Marginal Victory or Marginal Defeat when Ability rating and Resistance rating are equal. Plug in various Ability and Resistance values, and watch how the distribution responds. In particular, enter common starting ability ratings, 13, 15, and 17, and compare them to Low(8), Moderate(14), and High(20) Resistances. Note in particular how the Any Victory/Any Defeat, Marginal or Tie, and Minor+ Victory/Defeat aggregate percentages vary with respect to the matchups.

To be more clear, the rows and columns are what the actual rolls are, you enter the ability rating and resistance down below. The colors and labels in the result matrix adjust based on what ability and resistance values you set.

The columns are the Resistance rating the GM is rolling with. The rows are the rating of the PC's ability.

I dislike the idea of Loksalm falling into corruption and tyranny. I much prefer the arc there to be the challenge of learning how to balance living one's ideals with the reality of living in an imperfect world rather than abandoning them in frustration or sinking utterly to the level of one's enemies.

Refreshing to see senior management owning that. I also appreciate that you all have been taking concrete steps to improve the situation.

Behold, calculated odds and result distributions, masteries excluded.

What is frustrating about the dynamic is that the rules describe traits below 16 and guides for roleplaying, and then scenarios use them as saving throws, sometimes with extremely high stakes.

I really dug his early stuff, but I feel like he's gotten way too self-referential, and has been kind of coasting for ages.

Shargash ate "all" that lived, for those he ate would join Bjiff in the Underworld to await the hour of justice and the new day to come. Those who fell before the standard of Kurzuktum are gone, and their names forgotten. Shargash was thus the great savior of all that died by his hand.

(I was wondering if the Changer was Yelmalio or Yonesh, but looking it up on the Glorantha wiki gave me a Pameltelan trickster god, also known as Running Nose.) I see a parallel between this and the GRoY's account of Mernita's rebellion against Dara Hapa pitting Sedenya the Changer against Antirius.

That sort of approach can have some value, but the whole conceptual model for magic between the systems is different. A GM with a solid grasp on the the lore and how the two games take different approaches to things can indeed adapt things without too much difficulty, but even in such an ideal case - it's still more of a "have to" than a "get to." I can adapt material, but it I'm paying for something I'd rather it be something that is ready for my use case rather than something that requires me to do the work. As it is, I'll sadly continue to get more use out of things like The Brown Book of Zzabur than I will out of Gods of Glorantha (if I even pick it up).

I was under the impression that @Ian Cooper is writing it, but it's been a while since it was discussed around here.

If you still have HQG style magic descriptions from a previous draft, please consider releasing them in some form once the book drops, especially for gods we haven't seen before.

There's the Fonrit HQ book in the works as well. If it sells well, we might see more HQ books exploring corners of the Lozenge at some remove from the Hero Wars action in and around Dragon Pass.

Where I feel the loss most acutely is the Gods book being re-directed. The thing that would have otherwise been most useful to me has its utility (to me) most degraded, with so much word count devoted to crunch like associated cult spell lists & skill training opportunities rather than setting info, Runic associations that aren't on the RQG character sheet replaced and so on. With @jajagappa writing the Nochet book, and with the significant changes to the setting there between the game-lines time periods, I have some hope it will stay HQG. (Fingers crossed.)

Yeah, the Heortlings are not all the Orlanthi. The Chariot of Lightning and the Aoleans are obviously ok with it, probably others I don't remember too.

Esrola is neither fair, nor a maiden. This trope in particular is really only appropriate in it's original context of medieval romances, where you can accept as part of the source culture and genre that 'fair' describing her as being from a social class that doesn't need to work outside and "maiden" presuming her to be in a state of pre-marital abstinence are both complimentary and polite ways to address a woman you've just met.

How many stars do you have to rack up for them to sick the Bat on you? You would need to do some stat prep, but if you've got the Bestiary and the old RQ Pavis/Prax stuff they can mostly fill the gaps. The big HeroQuest in Red Moon Rising will need some interpretive/adaptive work. Thnk through how you might leverage the passions and runc affinity rules. The masks should carry powerful passions as part of assuming the role they represent.

It's worth it for the Red Moon Rising adventure alone.

Those do sound like some helpful improvements/refinements, though one would of course need to see the final numbers to judge the degree to which they redress the imbalances. That being said, I think the whole model remains a bit incoherent from a play standpoint. The huge swings in bonuses incurred by DV/assault-gear/numbers make that budgeting/logistical contest dwarf the impact of the characters' or their allies' Siege skills. When one side or the other ends up with a net +40 or more, it doesn't really matter whether a leader has a skill of 4 or 16, or is inspired+10 by Loyalty. Things I'd like to see in siege rules: * Week long turns where each side takes one action each turn, Attackers might Forage, Assault, Sap/Undermine, Dig-in, or Build, while Defenders might Repair, Sally, Build, Break-out, etc. * Food & Water supplies mattering , with Stewardship rolls helping manage them. Full rations help your fighting & morale, but of course run out faster. * Troop morale mattering, with Orate, Folklore, Battle, or Siege rolls possibly coming into play. * Harrying attackers, whether by a nearby allies or sallying forth. * Attempts to damage/repair the fortress and reduce its effectiveness (undermining, burning, etc) probably involving contested Siege rolls. * Stewardship or Siege rolls to prevent/curb disease outbreaks. * Melee results for PK's influencing the outcome of assaults, much like they do in Book of Battle's battle rounds. Basically, if a siege going to be a major adventure scenario, the PKs should have many significant things to do and choices to make that have a meaningful impact on the outcome.

The severity escalation parallels the decreasing likelihood of the result. Minor Defeat is usually 4-6 times more likely than Major Defeat, depending on the specific rating matchup. The big jump in severity between Impared -6 and Injured -M reflects those odds. I do sometimes hand out Hurt or even Impaired on a Marginal Victory for a Simple Contest in situations where physical harm makes fictional sense in the context of "You achieved your goal, but..." The most obvious examples are things like "You won the duel, but you've got a nasty gash in your left shoulder." or "Leaping from the train allowed you to escape, but with a twisted ankle for your trouble." In Extended Contests, the RP scored against the victor provides a similar function.