simonh

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.

So you could cast the spell in 11 strike ranks. If anyone took a killing blow after SR1, theres not enough time to help them. You might be able to get a Rune spell of a bit quicker but I agree with Narl.

That's a fair question, no problem. If you're perfectly happy with the games you have, stick with them. You'll be fine. RQG is designed to be highly compatible with RQ2 specifically in terms of stats, but it's pretty close to RQ3 as well, so you should just be bale to pick up scenarios and such and use them with minimal conversion so you should be able to benefit from the revival of the game anyway. In terms of what the new edition brings to the table, you're right that some stuff is just adapted to the new game. Other games have had character history systems, but now we have one for Dragon Pass characters, with game-able homeland details. We have three different ways runes are brought directly into the game mechanics. We have a detailed and fully worked out shamanism system, mated with a much more complete and gameable spirit combat system. The skills selection and details are much more complete and useable than RQ2 or RQ3. We also now have a decent sorcery system. Of course it's still Runequest, so a lot of stuff is similar or the same but there's no way you could publish it as a rules update, there are just too many tweaks, fixes and optimisations throughout. As for the art, for a lot of games I can see your point, but RQG takes the integration of art, game mechanics and setting to a whole new level. Some of the game mechanics are directly illustrated, so for example the section on strike ranks is illustrated with a series of warriors with different length weapons. The section on spirit combat has a full page depiction of a spirit combat battle that's also an illustration of a scene from the character diary. The art in the game bring the system and the setting alive like no other game I've seen. OK, some people values that, others don't, but this is a core book published for the market of 2018. If RQ is going to become a top tier RPG it has to have top tier production values, and achieving that will benefit all of us whatever edition of the rules we use. Simon Hibbs

Arguably the BGB supports modern and future era games in which advanced first aid techniques are available and might save a character that’s right on the edge of death compared to Bronze Age first aid. But then again RQ has powerful magical healing spells that are even more miraculous. I agree with your assessment, allowing an extra round to save a dying character creates dramatic rescue situations that are fun to play and GM, and I can’t really see any down sides to it. That’s the way I’d go. Simon Hibbs

The first point of POW you sacrifice gives access to all common rune spells, then each point you sacrifice after that grants access to one special cult spell. See page 313 and the first paragraph of page 314.

We’re seeing this already, with RQ2 people upset about some of the changes, and RQ3 people upset with the system going back to some RQ2 mechanics (even though it still uses plenty of RQ3 stuff). I’m really not bothered about any of that. What’s there works absolutely fine, and if I do have personal preferences of aternate mechanics here and there, I’ll just house rule it. I’ve done that for pretty much every game I’ve ever run anyway, so eh. I’m just really happy with all the cool excellent new stuff, and that it’s all packaged in a fine coherent whole. It makes it so much easier to mod that way.

In RQ2 strike ranks were mainly an initiative system just to determine what order characters in melee would hit each other in. Then Chaosium developed the Ringworld game where there were no melee rounds. Instead each action took a certain number of impulses and combat consisted of a continuous series of ‘strike ranks’. RQ3 took a middle road. You still had melee rounds, but each action or activity took so many strike ranks and you could perform these in basically any order. In RQG, when engaged in combat you have fundamental limits on what actions you can perform. You can attack and defend, or you can defend and cast magic. You then use Strike Ranks to determine when you get to perform those actions compared to other characters. So it’s more of a simple initiative system. It does turn into a bit more of an impulse system when you’re out of combat though, casting magic and reloading and firing missile weapons. It’s still a bit of a middle ground between a simple initiative system and a pure impulse system like Ringworld. Simon Hibbs

I think that’s over stating it, there are some edge cases for sure, but what game doesn’t have those? Most bugs in RQ2 have been fixed. We now have rules for disengaging from combat, weapons used to parry don’t disintegrate like matchwood, characters have Magic Points instead of ‘Temporary POW’ and the weirdnesses of how that worked. Theres actually plenty of RQ3 in there, or similarly effective fixes. Simon Hibbs

I can't find any mention of a cap. Makes sense though. Probably all category modifiers should be capped at say 25%.

Ok, that's fair enough. It does seem a bit odd to me though that in RQG Bigclub has 11 HP in the chest an 9 HP in the arms, whereas for an average character the arms have 2/3 of the chest HPs, so you'd expect them to have 7. As you go up the HP scale, all the locations end up being about the same in RQG. I suppose this is less of a problem with less HP escalation though. Simon Hibbs

It’s worth noting that many of the reversions to RQ2 mechanics were suggested by the designers of RQ3 (or in fact both games). I think RQ3 was a much better game fir campaign play that’s RQ2, but mainly due to the extra mechanics provided, to allow your characters to do so much more, rancher than the changes to the mechanics already there. The RQ2 strike ranks and turn sequence are fine, no complaints there. I don’t really case how skill modifiers are calculated. No big deal either way. Going back to RQ2 Hit Points is odd, it’s a much less scaleable system than RQ3 and doesn’t handle large monsters very well, but well see. I’ll have to see how well RQG handles unarmed combat. RQ3 was more complex, but a lot more capable there. Simon Hibbs

In any case, if aspects of the current rules are working well for you, there’s no big deal to push to every aspect of the new system. Maybe it would be better to adopt it subsystem by subsystem. So switch from old style Rune Magic to recoverable Rune Points. If you have a shaman character, let them start adopting some of the new shamanic powers, then switch to the new spirit combat system. That could be a more manageable transition path. Of course if you’re starting a new campaign with new characters, that’s harder to do. The switch to RQ 3 took a while for us. We were still misinterpreting rules years after switching. It just takes a bit of discussion and good will. In the end though, the GM is there to arbitrate the rules and it’s your game, not mine or Greg’s, or Jeff’s or Jason’s. Simon Hibbs

Google are trying to promote engagement with the content, but what I really love about Youtube is the conciseness and information density of the material. However yes, from a search optimisation point of view apparently 10+ minutes is the magic number these days. Simon Hibbs

S far I've seen complaints that the core rue book should contain: Creature stats; Rules for generating Lunar characters (not just Lunars from Tarsh which are covered) and Pavis natives; Rules for generating non-human characters; Complete rules for Western sorcerers; A complete list of changes from RQ2 (and RQ3?) down to the level of individual spell limits. At this point, the page count of things the core book 'should contain' is probably as long or longer than the actual book. Simon Hibbs

So you're seriously suggesting the new game should cut some of it's current content and replace it with lists of all the differences between it an every previous edition of RuneQuest? Which material would you like them to ditch? How much detail would you expect this to go into - every spell description that's different, every skill description change, weapon stats? For what it's worth, RQ3 never did anything like this. I can see it would be useful for someone to do this as a fan project, but I wouldn't expect Chaosium to spend the valuable time of their writing and editorial staff on this as against actual new material. Simon Hibbs

Only if you’ve never played RQ3. For many of us, this is how it’s been for about 30 years. Simon Hibbs

Welcome to RuneQuest. I think the point of doing movement for unengaged characters first is: a) Because if they are really not engaged and are performing activities independent of the combat, what they are doing by definition doesn’t affect the combat so let’s get it out of the way first. b) To determine if they do end up being engaged or affecting the combat in some way, at which point we do need to start worrying about what strike rank they are doing stuff on, and it’s useful to find that out before resolvimg engaged character actions. Simon Hibbs

Your Glorantha Will Vary - quite right. I like to strike a balance betweeen knowing the sett8mg well being a beneficial and rewarding thing for players, and having the flexibility to go my own way in my campaign. I’ve never found it to be an issue in practice. Simon Hibbs

That’s a really interesting way of doing things, love the character sheets. The way you do skill groups looks solid. You should be able to port in whatever you like from RQG without too much trouble too as it’s still RQ at its core. Simon Hibbs

And who has time to till fields when you’re dashing to the toilet ever 5 minutes? Simon Hibbs

I never got on with the combat mechanics, or resilience/persistence stuff in MRQ/RQ6. It's what turns me off OpenQuest as well. Any fantasy BRP variant has to beat Elric, it's my baseline system for comparison. I'm undecided about RQG on that score, but it's better than any other edition on that score since RQ2 and RQ3. Certainly even if I went with the Elric core system for an actual campaign, It would be just the skeleton inside an RQG body. Bwahahahaha! Simon Hibbs

IIRC RQ3 basically just said here are some charts you can use. If these don't cover what you need, you can use these fractions instead. I don't particularly see any need for the hand-tuned charts to be perfectly consistent with the fractions though. The fractions are just there to help out in unusual cases. Best of both world if you ask me. Simon Hibbs

I've got mixed feelings about a product like Fantasy Earth. I'm not really interested in Mythic Iceland. I might pick it up out of a sense of completeness and curiosity, but can't see myself running or playing it. I could imagine playing an Eastern Mediterranean game with Sumerian, Egyptian and Greek characters adventuring around the ancient world. Ken Hite is running a 13th Age game in a souped-up versions of the Hellenistic Period. He mentions it occasionally on the Ken & Robin podcast, and it sounds like a blast. It would have to include some really strong calls to adventure and resources to promote play. It's very easy for historical supplements to just be summaries of historical and mythical material. As such they can be pretty dry. Pendragon works so well because it gives your characters a lot to go out and do, right there in the core book. Being a knight is a job, just like being a Sartarite Thane, or being an Ernaldan priestess is a job. Legend of the 5 Rings did this very well too by building a lot of factions and forces and conflicts into the world. Simon Hibbs

You can always use them for your own game, if you like. Simon Hibbs

I think both the quotes by Hanataka and prinz.slasar are correct and consistent. If your skill is modified to 00 or less, write it down as 00%. However when rolling for success, if your skill is less than 05%, then a roll of 05 or less is still successful. Skills with a base of 00 are a special case. Simon Hibbs