simonh

I recently got into The Black Hack. I was looking for an OSR game to introduce my kids to old school dungeon crawling games and was all set to use Blueholm (the blue book was my first RPG) when I found TBH. I’m still torn between them, but Black Hack got me thinking about how to do a similar sort of thing without the levels and classes, and with a slightly more flexible system. The result should I hope be appealing to the audience here. The Quest Hack I tried to stay true to the stripped down ethos of The Black Hack while pivoting away from classes and levels. I’m also looking for ways to give it a hint of distinctive setting flavour, while remaining open to easy adaptation. There is a swords and sorcery spin on TBH already called Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells, which I only discovered today having already written TQH, but it’s a lot more fiddly and still has levels and classes and hit dice. I’ve picked it up anyway and do like it, but it’s gone a bit far beyond the simplicity David Black achieved to still be the same sort of thing. So far it’s just a Google Doc, but it’s enabled for comments. It’s reasonably complete but l’ll probably be adding in miscellaneous equipment and the consumables mechanic from TBH. Any comments or suggestions here or on the doc appreciated. Simon Hibbs

I don’t think that’s what happened. As far as I can tell they only asked it be removed from the download section of their official forums, not that it be consumed by the eternal void, but I’m just going from the information on this thread. After all, they’re not going after OpenQuest and that’s a much bigger and more direct rival to RuneQuest. Simon Hibbs

For those who have insufficient ducks in your life, or insufficient Jannell Jaquays adventures, there’s a Kickstarter just for you. Simon Hibbs

Personally I prefer the armour dice in Elric and roll for a locational injury or special effect only for major worlds. Fortunately you can swap in one or the other very easily. Want to play Elric with the hit locations system from RQ? Very easy to do. Simon Hibbs

RQ is already super moddable. People swap in and out ideas from other BRP games and adjust or replace mechanics all the time. I’ve certain,y done this. For a long time I ran a game in Glorantha using the game system from Elric and the magic system from RQ3, with a bit of rules ‘glue’. In fact, thanks to David Dunham here’s the mod. Are there really any significant barriers to doing this? Simon Hibbs

Minarets? All I see are EWF era magical defence and lookout towers, built to spot Nomad raids out on the open plains, that have been rebuilt by the Lunars. Simon Hibbs

Glorantha was mentioned in 29 threads in November on RPGNet forums. Runequest was mentioned in 41. It’s has nowhere near the mindshare it once had, but there’s still a lot of goodwill and potential interest out there. I’ve been spending my a bit of time there in the last few weeks and they come up all over the place when good systems, game mechanics and settings are being discussed. Simon Hibbs

Until the game is out, there is no RQG fold to bring people into. Make a fuss about it now and we’ll just bow away any momentum between now and Q2 2018. We need to keep the flame burning, but keep our main store of powder dry. There is the RQ Classic line, Glorantha Classics and that’s it for right now. Soon there will be 13th Age Glorantha though and hopefully then things will begin to kick off again for Gloranthan gaming. Simon Hibbs

I believe it’s being changed so that you ‘buy’ spells as you get rune points, so if you have 4 rune points you can know up to 4 spells. At least that was discussed here at some point. I’m highly in favour. Simon Hibbs

Bear in mind that in the BGB category modifiers, and any other way of having stats affect skills, are all optional. If you aren’t using category modifiers, then the problem of their interaction with skill caps goes away. RQ is the seminal example of a BRP game with stats affecting skills, usualy through category modifiers, and I don’t think it has ever had skill caps in any of its iterations. Simon Hibbs

On skill cap levels, orctye max skill percentage range you’re aiming for, 50% is really very low. Charactersxwill fail very often and will not feel they can in any way rely on even their best skills. This disproportionally penalises non combat skills. Combat skills often get used many times in a single fight. This means in any one fight the difference between a skill of 50% and one of 30% is likely to be noticeable because over say 10 attacks the 50% guy will usually score noticeably more hits (though runs of 3 or more misses are still going to be fairly common). Non combat skills tend to get rolled only once each time they are used though. If you roll a knowledge, stealth or perception skill for example, usually one roll resolves the entire situation at hand. This makes non combat skills seem very swingy and unreliable in the mid range of skill percentages. When I’m starting a game I usually aim for the characters to have best skills in the 70% to 80% range. I like my players to feel that they have competent characters with useful best skills they can mostly rely on. After all, you can always apply a half chance or -20% difficulty modifier to up the stakes for a tougher challenge when you think it’s appropriate. The players feel they have earned their success. You can work it the other way and give bonuses to the chance of succcess for easier tasks, but then the players are likely to feel their success has been gifted to them by the GM rather than that they earned it. Simon Hibbs

Skill caps and fungible points pools, put together, destroy character differentiation when it comes to main skills. This is why they are generally not used in published BRP games. Consider two characters. One has a Perception bonus of 10% and an Attack bonus of 0%. The other has the reverse, a Perception bonus of 0% and an Attack bonus of 10%. They are both training their Sword skill (20% + Attack) and Search skill (10% + Perception). The skill cap is 50%. It costs the first character 50 points to train both to 50%. It also costs the second character 50 points to train both skills to 50%. You end up with no difference in ability or cost between the two characters. Note that actually the skill cap isn’t really the problem so much. Either character could buy one of those skills to 60% and the other to 40% for the same cost, either way round. Their category modifiers difference is irrelevant to the cost of raising either skill to whatever target levels they choose, when you consider the cost of both skills together. Skill caps do guarantee that a non-specialist character in an area knows they can match a specialist in at least a few key skills if they want to because they know the specialist can’t beat the cap. I might be specialising in stealth skills, but I know that if I buy one combat skill up to the cap of 50%, I will be exactly as good in the skill as any combat specialist character, regardless of their stats and category modifiers. You can kiss a key element of niche protection goodbye. Unimproved skills do still differentiate, but by definition if they are unimproved, they must be of marginal importance to the character. Points pools and caps only really help when it comes to breadth of skills in a category. A character with a high Knowledge Bonus can raise 5 Knowledge skills to useful levels much more cheaply than a character with a low Knowledge bonus. But the whole point of category modifiers is to boost individual skill capability. The best way to avoid this problem is to either apply fixed adds to selected skills, or if you prefer a points pool set a maximum spend per skill. This allows category modifiers to still differentiate the characters. Simon Hibbs

I think the problem is that an ability of Wizard taken very broadly is, in magical terms, like having an ability of ‘has arms and legs’ in physical terms. It’s just way too general, unless you have specific and well understood capabilities and limitations that go with it that define what Wizard means in the setting. At best, very broad abilities should be taken to grant only the minimum base level of competence in simple tasks that fall in the category. So ‘College Trained Wizard’ might not even grant much in the way of magic at all, but grant a basic grounding in magical theory, knowledge of the major texts on magic, contacts with fellow students and faculty members, knowledge of the college facilities and stuff like that. It’s a super broad ability, so only grants the bascs that every student that studied at Wizard college would have, but none of the specific capabilities that would distinguish students, such as the specifics of the magic they specialised in. Wizard is even more uselessly broad, so only grants the general features all Wizards have, whether College Trained or not, and not even any of the capabilities College Trained Wizards have that distinguish them from other Wizards, which probably doesn’t really leave much.

Ive watched the TV show, which was great, but not read the books or RPG so I’m not familiar with the details of how magic works in the world. College Trained as aWizard seems too vague to me. RQG has much more specific magical abilities precisely because magic is so hard to make specific in this way and I’m sure the Fate based RPG does too, so I’d look at those to get some inspiration. Having said that, there are RPGs with fairly broad magical abilities. A great example is Monster of the Week. It does this by specifying a range of standard effects you can get from your magical ability, then makes anything outside that the realm of more specialised magic.

The idea that auto fire makes a gun less accurate doesn’t take into account that the additional recoil from firing the extra rounds only comes after you’ve already fired the first round. That first round can be just as accurate as a single shot, but then you have the extra chance that one of the later rounds might hit even if the first one didn’t. Simon Hibbs

I’ve only played th new edition once, but CoC makes a great fantasy RPG almost as is and the new edition probably more than any. CoC magic has a great dark fantasy feel, with sanity blasted sorcerers casting strange spells from blasphemous texts. The only thing it needs is a bit more of a knockabout melee combat system. I’d recommend picking up the RuneQuest QuickStart. It’s free on Drivethru RPG or the Cahosium site. Not so much for thbut full system, though you may find you like it, but to pick up some ideas to enrich the CoC combat system a bit as it’s based on a similar-ish core system. Though rather than hit locations, you might consider using dice for armour, as in Elric and Magic World so e.g. maybe leather armour protects for 1D4, Chain for 1D6, plate for 1D8, or something like that, Simon Hibbs

In my defence my tongue was, metaphorically, jammed very firmly into my cheek while writing that. Simon Hibbs

Don’t forget the stats for all the main characters from White Bear & Red Moon, way back in Wyrms Footnotes issue 2, for arguably the original game system for Gloranthan roleplaying - Arduin Grimoire.

I think so, the same should go for Orlanthi cattle raiding. You're trying to steal cattle, not start a blood feud. That's one thing I found a little OTT in the Coming Storm. The Orlanthi tribes were constantly massacring and slaughtering each other in the backstory, happily burning down steads full of women and children. It does set up a very dynamic set of clashing political and interpersonal forces. Maybe it's about showing how bad things can get when there isn't a strong central royal authority to keep the peace and enforce justice, but then the Praxians don't have that either. Simon Hibbs

I payed a Bison Rider (I think that was the tribe, it was a long time ago) in Home of the Bold and counting coup was definitely referenced in the character background. Of course that’s not really canon, but it’s a good point of reference. Simon Hibbs

They look like real people ready to fight for their lives, rather than people in a costume party at an animatronic theme park.

I always like the cover of the King Arthur Companion, also a Jody Lee. I’d wanted a copy for years and never though I’d be lucky enough, but then I found one on Abebooks for just a few quid.

We thought about that, as there are two per location. Well give it a go. The Camelot game looks interesting, I'll check it out. Simon Hibbs

School was closed for the day, so my girls had a few friends around and decided to have a game of KofK. They had a really fun game, the only thing they mentioned is that everyone ended up with at least one Waha's Blessing which caused a stalemate where they never got used. Of course that doesn't really affect the rest of the gameplay, they still had fun and over the 3 games I've played I've never seen that happen. One factor could be that I've noticed the girls are reluctant to use offensive cards against other players unless they have no real choice, such as if the game is entirely oriented around attack. So it's possible they only got into that position due to that. Has anyone else see something like this happen? Simon Hibbs

Got mine yesterday in the UKand had a game with my wife and kids last night. Went fine, the rules are easy to learn and we had a lot of fun. Simon Hibbs