simonh

2 hours ago, flynnkd said:

Totally agree with this. A week is a long time, and having my players sit around for the rest of the season resting is not what 'heroic' fiction is about.  Although there will be a tendancy to do that because all the training rules require a season to complete... experience ticks are infinitely faster and suggest a far different game style.  To me RQG rules tend to be quite 'multiple personality syndrome"  in places, and even have a few personalities left over from previous editions. It is annoying.

I think in RQG the assumption is that your character will spend the rest of their time doing their jobs. Characters have careers now that are what they do, they get an income from it, maintain a standard of living in the community, may manage a household, and generally are also members of a cult with obligations. I think the seasonal training and research options in the Between Adventures chapter are during spare time while the character is also doing their regular thing, rather than the exclusive 8 hours a day, 7 days a week dedicated practice as assumed in RQ2/3.

It's great to see that we'll get some cult info and spells for some of the elder races, that's fantastic and a dramatic boost in usefulness over any previous RQ bestiary.

33 minutes ago, Tarumath said:

Illuminating someone would be an awful thing to do unless you are really sure that they will transcend, I wonder what that says about the Lunars and Nysalor. (and probably a lot of other mystical beings and deities who endow people with similar states of consciousness, even Arkat teached Illumination and Orlanth has his Liberating Bolt,etc...)

Is it though? If you know for a fact that personal identity, for anyone, is not real and that the only thing that matters is transcendence and the only path to that is through illumination, then what harm are you doing? What does it matter?

Also I'm not entirely sure that being consumed by the bat is especially terrible, from the perspective of an Illuminated being. We're all just shadows and masks anyway.

Sorry, I didn't mean to squash and lines of thought. It's complicated

Illumination is not transcendence, but it is a kind of awareness of the relationship between the personal self, the cosmos and of the possibility of transcendence. It's one step on that path. For those still attached to their personal existence this is kind of potentially disastrous though, because if they die before transcending, they're gone. Caring about that too much or trying to forestall it can lead Illuminates down dark paths though.

The thing is there are 'illuminates' out there that have become immortals, so they are still around even though they might at one time or other have seemed to die, but for them death isn't the same thing as for us plebs. I think these terms in their common usage just don't really capture the nuances of what is going on with these beings. I suspect becoming an Immortal is another step, or perhapse one possible path towards transcendence. Or maybe it's a blind alley? Who knows.

8 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Because it ties the stat bonuses to the distribution of the characteristic across the population. 

It does anyway, just not a distribution tied to the standard deviation.

On 6/6/2018 at 7:06 PM, Tarumath said:

Nothing special probably happen to dead Illuminated people : without completing a transcendental practice they are still as bound as anyone else even if they can ignore some magical and mental restrictions, they are not automatically accomplished mystics and a lot of them actually end up unhinged because they are merely deeply aware that the world is an illusion without having access to the Ultimate after the first contact that caused their Illumination.

Greg has said that Illuminates are not contactable after death and do not have an afterlife. It's possible that they may become immortal and therefore not die and stay contactable, and Lunar deities such as the Seven Mothers probably fall into this category, but I've been there at many conventions and in many discussions on this and he was quite clear on it. If your Illuminated character dies, they are gone and that's it.

As we have discussed there are many forms of 'awakened consciousness', and Nysalorian illumination is just one, and this may not apply to all forms, but t's the one I'll focus on.

I think what Greg's talking about - and this is just my understanding - is that Nysalorian Illuminations includes a realisation of the illusory nature of the personal self, similar in some ways to some beliefs in Budhism. It follows then that if the Illuminate dies, there is no personal self to continue. That doesn't mean that what they were ceases to exist though, any more than that their physical body disappears on death. They may have spiritual components that continue to exist, but they know that these are not 'them' in a personal sense even in the way that a ghost of your non-illuminated ancestor presents itself as being 'them'. These spiritual components might even still be mistaken for that person by others. However for the Illuminate, their Illuminated state makes them immediately and deeply aware that they will not have a personal existence beyond death. 

Simon Hibbs

You don't have to have creature stats to play the game, you can create as many human NPCs as you like and in fact fighting Lunars, Lunar sympathisers and collaborators, or bandits or Praxian raiders and such is a staple of Runequest. If you do pick up a scenario pack, or one of the many RQ scenarios available free online (Google Runequest Scenario, you'll get loads) on various sites, you can run them fine since NPC and monster stat blocks are usable with what you have in the core book. You might be missing some spell descriptions, but that's about it.

If you're a GM and not just a player, yes you'll probably want more material just as with many RPGs. If you want a set of rules, characters and a scenario in one book, cool. Pick up the Quickstart - it's just what you need.

21 minutes ago, g33k said:

I think he's considering the case where somebody is browsing/buying in a FLGS.

And the back cover of the book does explicitly say, "All the rules you need to play."

 

Is it really not playable with just the core book?

I'm sorry but the suggestion that this is not a playable game is patently absurd.

3 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

The errata are available on the download section of BRP Central. And they do not contradict the examples. So RQ3 did not have this problem.

I vaguely remember some of the SRs being off, but it was a long time ago.

33 minutes ago, Tindalos said:

I'm not so sure.

That would make this the only spell where you're not dispelling the rune associated with the spell, and the description of the dispel technique says you are dispelling a specific manifestation of the rune.

OK, but how does being an expert in Illusion and deception help you clear your mind and become more keenly focused on the Truth? Shouldn't knowledge of the power of Truth help you do that? It would be a bit weird if being a master illusionist made you a clearer and more logical thinker.

Maybe it should be Command Truth, but it seems clear to me that Truth should be in there.

9 hours ago, kpmcdona said:

True, but I am having trouble coming up with a figurative reading that doesn't make me roll for illumination!

It's not verb-noun Dispelling Truth. It's using power over Truth to Dispel something. I agree it's arguable.

1 minute ago, RosenMcStern said:

To my memory... one: Mongoose RuneQuest first edition. And saying that this was the least of its problems is a perfect example of British understatement.

I think pretty much all of them. I'm sure the extended example in RQ3 had errata.

16 hours ago, soltakss said:

That's the kind of thing that Interweb thing is good for. 

Seconded. One of the risks of a long combat example is it getting out of sync with the rules text, especially as revisions, clarifications and typos pour in during the gap between publishing the PDF and the print edition. How many games have been burned by this sort of problem? An example on the web site can be perpetually updated to the latest version and interpretation of the rules, and expanded to cover edge cases that come up long after the publication of the rules. I really think that's the way to go.

3 hours ago, mallion said:

Could I traslate Fan Material Policy for Japanese people ?

I doubt you'll get official permission from Chaosium to do that, because they probably have no way to check that it's accurate and any kind of even implied official endorsement opens them to legal risk. You would probably be best off contacting their licensee in Japan.

9 hours ago, SDLeary said:

True, but the group I played with didn't have the GMs book for some time in those early days, we played almost all from the players book (which had all the core rules in it). 

Except the combat tables, so you couldn't actually fight anything, per my little jibe. In first edition, anyway.

If you’re going to put ‘disarm’ on its own row, we should probably put disengagement, knockback,  every runic ability, each cult write up, every career, each homeland, every skill, rune spell, spirit spell, sorcery spell, shamanic power and goodness knows what else that’s in RQG and not in RQ2 on its own row as well.

3 hours ago, tedopon said:

Yeah, for free stuff it's great, but I'm not doing layout for free and I'd be surprised to find anyone else who would.

It would also be nice to be able to pay artists something. I don't care about making any money for written content, but I feel that layout and art folks should get something for their work.

If people are being paid to do a job then what you're talking about is a professional publication which really is outside the scope of a fanzine. Proper commercial licensing terms are really a different thing.

2 hours ago, Jason Durall said:

We were asked specifically to keep them in the 5-10 minute range. 

That's good to hear. As a viewer it seems to be a sweet spot. I'm quite happy to watch some stuff over that, but if it is feasible to break it down to that level it's a lot easier to digest.

2 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Just because something is bigger it shouldn't be weaker, should it?

It's not weaker, this doesn't affect it's damage bonus or ability to use it's strength to exert physical force, it's just means being very bulky is an obstacle to fine manipulation and agility based tasks, which seems reasonable.

Heal Wound is Common rune magic, so pretty much any theist character with at least one Rune Point can cast it.

35 minutes ago, Madrona said:

Dorastor: Land of Doom was without the book that turned my interest in RQ from "wow this is such a cool game" to "OhmygodIlovethisgame".

Cults of Terror blew my teenage mind back in the 80s.

It's hard to imagine anything nowadays having the same effect with everyone growing up on Game of Thrones and such.

A fun fanzine full of quirky rules options, spells, scenarios, monsters and stuff would be great.

39 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Okay how about the soul sticks around for one round per point of POW? No loss, just a time limit. 

Sounds good, but that many rounds is forever in a combat. I don’t think I’ve ever gained out a fight much longer than ten combat rounds, and the average is significantly less than that.

18 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I could see something like it takes time for the soul to leave the body and the victim loses 1 magic point per round. When they are out, then they are dead. Maybe massive damage has you lose MPS quicker? Just a thought.

Interesting idea, but I don’t think recently deceased ghosts should be significantly weakened like that. I’d want them to be pumped up and mad as hell.

If only the core book, monsters book and  GM book format had been well established in the hobby from the early days by a dominant product, estabilising a well known set of expectations around the many games published that way. Oh well

Seriously though, that’s a fairly hypothetical issue. I see plenty of people wanting what seems like hundreds of pages of extra material in the book, but it’s pretty well spelled out what is in there and the product roadmap has been clearly communicated. It’s not like the combat resolution tables have been saved for the GM book.