Yelm's Light

I guess so...had mine for 2 decades or so now through an EBay bundle, probably cost me five bucks. Not sealed, of course, but in pretty good shape. Unfortunately, you couldn't pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

Hmm...more than 48 hours since the poll ended and Morrus hasn't "compiled" the poll results? Most automated polls that I know of are, well, automated. What, is he writing a review of the winner?

My image was of the Kurgan's sword with small blades extending diagonally from the tang. Of course, that was a substantially more modern weapon and assembled in sections. He had a fearsome-looking skull helm, too...

Not generally so much as in CoC, I'd say. RQ tends to be more focused on politics, general dungeon-crawling, or character development, although dealing with Chaos, undead, and vampires would veer into that realm.

STR vs. STR is common as well...

Back in prehistoric times, when I was a newb, I certainly did.

Yeah, it does pretty much break the distinction. To state the obvious, Rune Lords are the martial types, war leaders and champions, not having the prerequisite time for prayer and study of things magical (hence the tendency toward one-use Rune Magic from RQ2 and the lack of any mention of their access to Rune Magic in the rules). Priests and the rarer Rune Lord-Priests were the ones able to cast reusable Rune Magic. Throwback that I am, I prefer the old system. Essentially, you're reducing common Rune spells to a middle class between Battle Magic and Rune Magic...too powerful to be Battle Magic, but simpler or less time-consuming to learn than cultic Rune Magic. Associated cults' magic would tend to be more difficult to cast under your system, unless the spells shared cult Runes. (To compensate, you could apply a bonus for Priests only when casting associated cults' spells whose runes differ.)

Getting in early on the crowdsourced editing: 1. Shouldn't that be Sor-eel? I see it in any number of permutations on the net, but in the official sources I've seen it was spelled that way. 2. Second sentence, second paragraph: the tenses of the two clauses don't match. "suffered" should be "had suffered". 3. Second sentence, third paragraph: "now there" should be "now that there".

In other words, an effective Defense skill. Yeah, I'd HR against that in a heartbeat.

Umm they killed Inigo Montoya's father?

That was fast...1600 votes already, although it's not clear whether that's 1600 users or 1600 choices..

My initial response was "What's EN World?" Based on the time signatures, I'm guessing it's a European site. However, I did my duty...every other option was yawn-worthy to me anyway. 7 votes overall so far, and the results are hidden. So get in there and vote!

I assume you're talking about me. Not playing a game and not understanding it are two different things. I've run two dozen different game systems, and have had RQ3 for around 15 years now. I'm fully capable of making an informed decision on which game I prefer, thank you very much.

Literally none of this is supported by RQ2. You can HR it all you want, of course, or perhaps argue that casting a spell on an enemy while on heroquest would invoke this. Likewise for benefits from casting on holy days. The spells are the spells, and their effects are clearly defined. There's no provision in the rules that remotely justifies it.

Interesting that you should use the D&D analogy. I'd thought of a similar one, only to the completely opposite effect: D&D to AD&D was a quantum leap; rules were fleshed out and a great deal more detail was added, and TSR went to the hardbound format. RQ2 to 3, not so much. The negative buzz around RQ3's release wasn't a great sign, and when I got around to reading some of it I was less than impressed. Sorcery didn't add anything at all for me. (There's really no need for players to create spells, and never has been, in RQ or the vast majority of other RPG's. If they want to do that, they can run their own game.) The fatigue/encumbrance system is a joke unless you're into PC-menhirs, the rulebooks were made for planned obsolescence, and RQ2 worked just fine and actually had campaign packs. RQ3 also didn't have the Gloranthan flavor, which was what drew me to RQ2 in the first place.. By then I'd experienced the BRP games, and pretty much every one of them was more interesting to me than RQ3. (Of course, it helped that I'm a big Niven, Moorcock, and Lovecraft fan.) I didn't want a rewarmed version of what I already had, in any event. If I was going to get a new game system, it would have to be just that...which led eventually to WFRP. By that point, RQ3 was relegated to the ash heap of history, until the Gloranthan campaigns came out, and even those I converted to RQ2 with a minimum of effort.

Guaranteed Republican.

I'll take too much info that I can pick and choose from over too little any day of the week. At the very least it provided all kinds of ideas for new directions for the players to follow. Dwarves and elves were really fringe figures for me and my group. I've only had a couple of players who really wanted to play Aldryami, and literally none that were serious about running a Mostali. Dragonewts were my go-to deus ex machina NPC's in Sartar because no one ever truly understood their full motivations.

The RQ3 scenario packs were pretty high-quality, you just had to convert them, which was easy enough.

There are examples in the Cult Compendium (River Horse and Frog Woman) that are specifically described as Spirit cults, and which grant Rune spells. I would think those types would necessarily have to have runes, both apparently having Water and Movement at least. As for your average, run-of-the-mill non-spell-granting spirit, I have no idea, although Spirit might be a good candidate.

Not while the Pool is plugged, it won't, barring subsurface currents that won't affect the water level. Unless you do what Joerg is apparently suggesting, which is to come up with some kind of mythical rationalization for why all this water will just magically disappear from the world's surface without a drain.

That was one snow melt that continued to the ocean. Where is the runoff from Magasta's Pool going to go?

RQ3.

That appears to be a typo; it should be Discorporate, and it's explained on p. 3 of Vishi Dun's character description, followed by more rules involving spirits and spirit combat. These are relatively lowish-level characters; I see no reason to assume they have access to spells not listed. Priests have full access to small elementals, but there's no reference that I know of saying that initiates enjoy the same advantage. (Bear in mind that Seven Mothers has a number of subcults which provide some of these rune magic spells, so an initiate might need to specialize in particular subcults to gain access.) Neither, I would think. I expect it was merely an omission from the Spirit Magic Summary. Likely the QS isn't a complete list of spirit magic spells anyway. I would think so.

...and don't mind the giant baby sleeping on deck...

Formatting choices aside, RQ3 never gave me a compelling reason to play it. The fatigue system was a joke, and since my campaign was firmly ensconced in eastern Genertela sorcery was unnecessary (and a real pain in the ass from a game balance point of view anyway). And variable skill increases were easy enough to HR in without shelling out a bunch of lucre for a marginally-different game. In fact, the systems were close enough that once AH actually did come out with their scenario packs it was another simple matter to convert to RQ2.