simonh

If I were writing the scope for a BRP core book, I'd make it emulation of fairly realistic historical gaming through to the present day. So everything from cave men, through swords and sandals, Swords and Muskets and the 20th century. All at a fairly basic level of detail. No magic, no SF, no psionics or super powers and no 'genre fiction' special or optional rules.

The vast majority of gaming genres start from some historical or contemporary point of reference, so the core book's job would be to cover those common points of reference as thoroughly as possible in 32 pages.

Maybe Chaosium has other plans based on their needs to support future products, so maybe that wouldn't work for them, but without knowing that, this is what I'd do.

Simon Hibbs

The thing with BRP games is it's probably the most modable, hackable system there is. For skills, if you don't like the skill categories, modifiers, base percentages, etc just change them. However you calculate skills, as long as the end result is expressed as a % you're good to go.

I may well end up swapping out the entire combat system and using the one from Elric. Not a problem. If you really wanted to, you could probably port the runic affinities and rune/spirit/sorcery etc systems across to RQ6/Mythras. Cool.

You'd need a little bit of rules system 'glue' to get everything to work right, but in my experience of hacking previous BRP systems together very little.

Simon Hibbs

I don't really have a problem with instant heal spells, any more than with instant attack spells. Injuries in RQ are still very significant threats that can reduce a characters effectiveness or take them out if a combat at least temporarily. Unless there's some particular problem in the game that could be solved  by having healing to take longer I'm happy with it as it is.

Simon Hibbs

10 hours ago, General Panic said:

 The obsession with 'myth' as the driving theme of the setting to the extent that the object or reward of the game is to immerse in and explore Gloranthan myth is for me, and so far as I believe for people I played with, a crushing bore.  

Sure there were players in my RQ campaigns back in the day that weren't really interested in the mythology all that much, but for me the mythology drove the background and setting so it came out I the game pretty naturally. Show, don't' tell.

So for example one of the PCs in a game of mine was killed. Previously he'd had a 'relationship' with an Earth Spirit, actualy a minor deity. She turned up at his funeral and performed a ritual. I played through his character's journey down into the underworld to stand before the Judge of the Dead, where she presrnted herself along with the other PCs, showed she was pregnant and laid claim to his soul. Basically we played through a Resurection ritual. All based on the mythology, but played out in the game.

One of my favourite issues of RuneQuest Adventures fanzine was about an expedition into a cave complex inside the hollow bones of Wakboth, pinned under The Block in Prax which was hurled at him by Storm Bull. So what Glorantha allows you to do is not just tell them the story (yep, boring at least got some), but actually put them in it.

Simon Hibbs

Aside from previous experience, RQ2 and 3 didn't tie advancement in skill to cults much. Yes you could get s bit of a training bonus and a discount on sime spirit magic but that was it.

the man readon to join a cult was access to Rune/Divine Magic. Cults were the only way to get it. Now it was perfectly possible to get by without, but that was a whole lot easier in RQ2 than it was in RQ3 because RQ2 had a lot more potent spirit magic, much more widely available. Griselda was a classic example. She and her associates avoided cult membership as being too restrictive and politicising and got by fine with just a potent array of spirit magic, but frankly doing so permanently held them back in the small time back street leagues. But RQ3 made characters like that much harder to play unless to GM gave them access to a friendly shaman.

So I don't think skill advancement is a big issue in game settings without cults, but heavy duty magic access, other than sorcery, certainly is. That's why I suggested that for a more traditional Swords and Sorcery setting you might allow access to Rune/Divine Magic purely for devoting to a god without requiring any cult membership, or allow access to such magic via research. You could adapt the method of learning spells from tomes used in Call of Cthulhu.

Simon Hibbs

On 2 March 2016 at 10:41 PM, Atgxtg said:

One other thing I wonder about with the new "runic affinity" based divine magic rules is that getting spells from associated cults would seem to be less productive than before. For example, a Humakti, with a high Death affinity isn't going to be able to cast any divine healing magic at any reasonable reliability.  I wonder if this will impact some of the relationships between the cults. It seems far more useful to bring along an ally from an affiliated cult than to learn any of their divine magic.

Yep and definitely a feature, not a bug.

There's always Spirit Magic, or Spell Trading

Simon Hibbs

17 hours ago, Texarkana said:

The way I got around my RQ6 players always spending their first six improvement checks on Combat Style, Endurance, Evade, Willpower and Magic Skills, was to start giving them 10+ improvement checks whenever a significant quest was concluded (typically around 4-6 game sessions, or once every 2-3 months real time). 

I used exactly the same method in my last HeroQuest game, many years ago now. Small drives and drabs improvements always went to the same abilities, but less frequent but larger tranches of ponts resulted in much more satisfactory improvenent patterns IMHO.

Simon Hibbs

RQ asked that the way you learn things is from other people, so you join societies (cults, guilds, etc) with other people to learn things from them. That makes a ton of sense and if you look at Conan or the Lieber stories their worlds are full of cults and guilds and societies. It's just that the protagonists tend to avoid such entanglements.

However theres nothing to stop you ruling that you can get all the magical benefits of worshiping a god without bothering with the cult. Religious devotion and the resulting benefits then just become a matter of personal devotion.

To properly emulate what we see in heroic fantasy though, you'd probably need some alternative system of research or personal development. Perhaps even a system for magicians to research spirit and rune spells from ancient magical texts.

Simon Hibbs

The RQ2 method of calculating HP per location did beak down for higher HP values, but a quick fix instead of reverting to formulae is to use the table iteratively for 'blocks' of 20 HP, plus any remainder.

If your creature has say 35 HP, add together the table values per location for 20 HP and 15 HP. This gives 10 HP on the arms, 14 HP on the chest, etc.

Fan publications are probably fine.

However a company publishing a commercial RPG themselves releasing a free supplement for playing it in the SW universe might be sailing a bit close to the wind in terms of commercial exploitation of the franchise.

Simon Hibbs

23 hours ago, Jae said:

Whilst I'm on the subject, is there a reason that Heroquest has both setting free and Gloranthan versions, but the next Runequest (RQ7) cannot?

From what's been said the plan is that first they will produce the new RQ as a specifically Gloranthan RPG, and around the same time they will produce a very stripped down new 32 page BRP Essentials rules booklet based on the same new core engine. New RPGs produced by Chaosium will be based on this core system, but customised to the specific setting and genre. So rather than have a generic RQ system with different settings, they will have a generic BRP system and RQ will be one of (hopefully many) implementations.

Of course this is exactly the model Chaosium used in its glory days, when it published RQ, Stormbringer, Elfquest, Rimgworld, etc all based on BRP but all adapted and is nothing new. I would guess that the new family of games will have somewhat more similar core mechanics than those games did as there was a lot of experimentation and evolution going on in BRP back then, but I may well turn out to be wrong about that.

Simon Hibbs

I agree that you can actualy do a lot in 32 pages. Enough to cover essential rules for, perhaps, ancient and modern character generation, combat and equipment. That should be plenty to get on with.

Im afraid I don't have the general fondness for the BGB though. I find generic systems like that too flavourless and lacking context and balance. When you develop a set of game mechanics and stats for a specific setting you can calibrate everything from the skills list, weapon stats, vehicle stats, etc to achieve the balance you need for that game. The game balance I would want for a SF Call of Cthulhu setting though might be completely different from the balance I'd want for a Star Trek like setting, which would be very different again from what I'd need to recreate Star Wars. No one generic set of SF rules and stats would work for all those styles of games. That's especially true if they are provided as a disjointed selection of uncoordinated chunks of rules.

I'm afraid that's how I find the BGB. It's actualy not useful to me to run many genres of game. Taking SF as an example it provides a skills list and some stats for certain specific flavours if SF. but if I did a BRP Star Trek game and a BRP Aliens game, the overlap of identical mechanical material between each other and the BGB would likely be fairly small. Generic systems just have to make too many compromises for my tastes.

Savage Worlds can get away with it better because it's explicitly a system for pulp action adventure. But BRP aspires to be useable for a more varied spectrum of uses, and it can only do that by sacrificing pure adherence to a single set of unvarying mechanics and allowing for more customisation and tuning for different settings.

Fair enough, and thanks for setting me right.

simon Hibbs

It is clear that the new Chaosium team are re-imagining the RuneQuest rules from scratch. There may be many elements from old and current games, but it's being constructed from the ground up to be a rules set for Glorantha and a true direct successor to RQ2 in a way that even RQ3 wasn't, but also informed by modern BRP derivatives. I'm very much looking forward to seeing what they come up with, but what it certainly won't be is a cut and paste of rules from the BGB or any current single rules set.

I didn't do the poll because I think it's missing the point. It's a selection of options from the past. RQG and the new BRP it spawns will be new rules sets that will have to stand on their own terms. I think this is going to be a fundamental reboot of BRP.

I can't wait to see what they come up with. I've not been as interested and excited about a Chosium release since the 80s.

Simon Hibbs

I don't think optional rules like Sanity belong in a BRP Essentials book. The reason is that if you're going to put in non-core optional rules for one setting or genre, why not another, and another, and another? Where do you stop? If it's not essential, it shouldn't be in Essentials.

Simon Hibbs

I answered no to the survey, but probably will run a one-off and would love to play it. Ever since the mid 90s my house system for Glorantha has been the Elric game system with RQ3 Magic. RQ6 is the first system that might pull me away from that once CRQ comes out.

The new edition will be called just plain RuneQuest with no number, so adding a spurious '7' is just going to confuse things.

Simon Hibbs

I think Fergo113 covered the spirit of Middle Earth magic quite well (see the download section),

at least his material would be a good place to start from.

There's a lot of interesting and high quality stuff there, all extremely well done.

It is what I'd call a very heavyweight system though. You couldn't just sit down and start playing a magician, you'd need to spend a whole afternoon going through the magic rules before even starting. I'm also not keen on the idea of spell specialty skills. I don't think magicians in ME actualy have special magical skills. Magic isn't a seperate subject you learn, if you want to learn nature magic you just raise your Nature Lore skill or whatever to huge levels and then apply your will. Magic is an extension of the mundane, not seperate from it.

I don't want my players to have to look at or think about lists of spells or blessings or such. I'd prefer a mechanic where they have their character's skills on their character sheet, look at the situation in the game and the opportunities it offers, and then apply pool of points to buy and fuel powers and artifacts in a more organic way.

I'm verging on moving to HeroQuest for the system. It certainly has the flexibility for this sort of thing, but I think it should be doable in BRP. I want to retain that gritty basic system and have the heroic and the magical manifest in a very 'real' world.

Simon Hibbs

An interesting concept, though as you say, it's a tough call to get the mechanics right for something like that in any system (and a lot of what the rings could actually do would be open to much debate I'm sure ).

It seems to me that most magical artifacts in ME are just extraordinarily well made. Lembas bread is amazingly nutritious, elven cloaks and ropes are amazingly easy to use and work with, for the most part the swords are just realy well made swords.

To make it work I think I'd need to move away from a spell based model of magic. Instead, magic is channeled through your skills. It's like using hero points to achieve some amazing feat - in fact why not use a hero point system as the magic system?

So magic items are made by supercharging a craft skill roll. Magical feats are also hero point-supercharged skill rolls. Rings of power act as hero point stores, or accelerate the refresh of hero points.

Ditch hero point. Use Magic Points, but drasticaly reduce the refresh rate to 1pt per day, or even per week, and your POW functions at the MP level if it's lower than normal POW. Rings of power principaly act as regenerating MP stores of some kind. I like the idea that magic items have a will of their own, so maybe they have their own POW.

Hmm... More thinking to do.

Simon Hibbs

I'm very interested in this because I have plans for a ME campaign. I have already run it as a one-off one-day game and would like to run it as a regular game with my local games group. For the one-off I used a homegrown diceless system based on Amber but with a proper skills system. This worked well for a one-off game because it allowed for extremely fast play, but for a campaign I might prefer to use a diced system. I'm a long-time BRP gamer and this looks promising.

My game is early Third Age though. It's an alternate timeline where the PCs rescue Isildur at the Gladen Fields and become powerful and trusted Lord of Gondor under a noble, but increasingly paranoid and erratic king. My hypothesis is that Isildur had possession of the nine rings and the ambush was an effort by the Nazgul to retrieve their rings. Of course, if the players rescue Isildur some or all of the nine might be retained and who better to be their keepers that the heroic saviours of the king?

However as a full-on ME game I need a system that stays completely true to the source and avoids any trace of lapses into D&Dism, or even RQism to be honest. I also need solid mechanics for powerful artefacts like rings of power. That's a tough call for a game system though.

Simon Hibbs

I'm sympathetic to the idea that a character that could normally split attacks on ranks 16, 11 and 6, who is stunned until rank 10 should still be able to get an attack in on rank 6.

But that's as far as I'd go. No delaying actions from while the stun is in effect, and I'd insist on the attack at rank 6 be at a reduced skill chance as though the character had split attacks normally that round.

Simon Hibbs

Great looking project, the artistic style is very atmospheric.

Just out of curiosity, could you summarise some of the changes you have made from OpenQuest and you motivations behind them? It would be hugely helpful to have a general idea of how the mechanics vary and whether the setting and material could be used with straight OpenQuest.

Simon Hibbs

That would leave the orc in a big disadvantage, as it already 'lost' 9 DEX ranks. Penalising it for an other round seems to be unfair to me, if you 'calculate' DEX ranks. Your 'DEX calculation' could now be simplified by saying 'the orc loses its next action' - no calculation needed.

What if the orc has 110% skill and does split attacks on DEX rank 11 and 6. In that case does an orc stunned on DEX rank 10 lose the DEX rank 6 action, but only get the DEX rank 11 action enxt roudn delayed? Surely the orc should lose two actions, as it was stunned for a round.

Concersely if the orc had only one action on DEX 11, if it's stunned on DEX 10 it has lost nothing that round as it's already acted, so surely it must lose it's action on DEX 11 next round otherwise the only effect has been to delay one action by 1 DEX rank.

Simon Hibbs

In an ambiguous case like this, I'd need to discuss it with my players and come to a consensus with them. I'd not be comfortable handing down an edict because could be a matter of life and death for a player character.

My preferred solution is that if the affected character hasn't acted yet this round, then the effect is just for the remainder of this round.

If the character has acted this round then the effect lasts for the remainder of this round and for the whole of the following round. In other words if the character had actions remaining to be taken this round they are affected, in addition to all actions next round.

That's a fairly harsh interpretation, but keeps things simple and would probably apply this to NPCs anyway regardless of characters wanting more fiddly and generous interpretations for themselves, just to avoid book keeping headaches for yours truly.

I can imagine one other interpretation that is viable. If the affected character hasn't yet actes, then the effect applies to this round, however if the character has already acted the effect does not start untill the beginning of the next round. In other words remaining actions this round are not affected. After all, when you stub your toe or bash your head it doesn't hurt immediately. There's often a brief pause of a few seconds untill the pain kicks in. I'm not sure about this one, but it is reasonably fair.

Simon Hibbs

I still think that the Character generation in BRP Goldbrick is too convoluted however. It's not that I don't want the options there, it's more to do with how they formatted them - so that somebody who wants a basic game of basic doesn't have to plow through it all to get there.

I think the character generation summary on pages 22 and 23, which actualy present 90% of the character generation rules in a handly sequence of numbered steps, and directly page-references the more detailed rules, goes a long way to simplifying the process.

Rules summaries are one thing Chaosium are realy good at - nobody does it better. The index, quick reference sheets at the back, and character generation summary are pure gold.

Simon Hibbs