Daxos232

The reason I want to try playing without a board is because I have heard many people on this forum say they find miniatures, "too restricting". My group has always played with a board, and I wanted to try it without to see if it encourages more roleplay and creativity from players. Dstack1776 has a point with the deadliness of MRQ2. But I don't think its anymore so than BRP, its just easier to do "cinematic" action.

RosenMcstern was right there, by "old RQ" I meant RQ from chaosium. Don't get me wrong though Loz, I think you did an awesome job on MRQ2, its easy to understand and use. I don't like spirit magic much, but that's just my personal opinion. I'm going to try MRQ2's combat system RAW when I can convince my group to play without miniatures and a board.

That's a great idea. I like that way of slowly removing elements until its all in your imagination. Rungard, when you use that method with the initials on the paper map, do you have it behind your gm screen where no PC's can see it? That came to my mind when I read your post. That would allow me to keep track of the action, so I can still effectivly manage the combat, but my PCs would still get to experience the chaos and uncertainty that combat provides. Man I can't wait to try this stuff.

I'm really looking forward to trying this method, but I guess whats concerning me the most is player issues. My players are very used to D&D's specific combat rules. I can totally understand their position, its comforting to know the rules and how they work so you can plan out your movements or actions and get the advantages, and disadvantages, you expect every time. My first idea was to use a big drawing pad, and sketch out the environments in pencil, then use our miniatures as normal, but use a string with knots or a pencil with knife marks in it for measurements, but then that's like going back to having the chessex board all over again isn't it?

I got it back around march or april and I have read through the book thoroughly. It looks a lot better than the MRQ1 Players Handbook. It explains things a lot better and the editing is very good. My group started playing MRQ1, and they didn't like its combat system. They had only played D&D before, and did not like going around the table multiple times for actions. I explained the old RQ strike ranks system to them and they didn't want to touch it with a 10ft pole. MRQ2's combat system looks cool, and from the tests I've run with a friend, its fast and deadly. My group prefers a house ruled system that's altered to be like D&D though. They streamlined Common, Divine, and Sorcery Magic. Spirit Magic is somewhat confusing and I personally don't like it very much. It still seems paltry compared to the other magic systems, and I'm just going to have my shamanic cultures use Divine magic with rules for summoning spirits and such. Lots of other things like skills, armor penalties, encumbrance, travel, and character creation are revised well, and I have used the rules for them unaltered. The character sheet they provide is functional, but my group and I use a custom one I made myself. For it's price I think its a good purchase and I'm glad I bought it because its a big step up from MRQ1.

Thanks for the advice, I can't wait to try this method.

My group and I are used to playing with miniatures and a board, that's the way we have always done it. I am interested in GMing a game without the use of such things. I wanted to give it a try, to see if it makes my players more imaginative and inventive. It sounds a lot less restrictive, but my players are used to playing D&D, and tend to be less open to new ideas. Is there any advice that you would recommend for running a true "pen and paper" game?

The purpose of play for me, is to create a good story, with great roleplaying. The GM is like a director, with a script that has challanges and a plot, that can be changed by the choices of the PC's who are like the actors, that get to decide their own character's backstory, motivations, and abilities. My three PC''s and I had probably the best time ever playing an RPG a few weeks ago. After hunting lions in the open steppe, they returned to the nomad trade festival and made a good profit selling the lion pelts, then salted all teh lion meat they got and sold most of that. They went to the inn, where the two troll PC's got a great laugh out of making the nomads and merchants in the inn nervous with their prescense. The one human PC got drunk and found a girl, had some fun, and then convinced her to run away with him, so now he (kind of) has a wife. Then one of the trolls decided to go outside and came upon some goats, and procceded to eat some. The next day they left, fought some elvish raiders, freed some slaves, entered into the service of a nomad sheik, and are going to storm an elven temple in the mountains. This is the kind of stuff that we in our group think is the purpose of play. We want to go have adventures, tell good stories, have furious and epic battles, and make fun memories that later we can say, "Hey remember that one time when.......". It wasn't always like this. We have had plenty of bad experiences playing with other groups and people, until recently. Some of which include: 1. GM's who are only interested in leading us by the nose and letting their "awesome, and untouchable" NPC's do all the fun stuff. 2. GM's who suck at telling stories. 3. Players who do nothing, for example: GM- "Okay its your turn (insert name), what are you going to do?" PC- "Im going to draw my sword." GM- "Okay, thats one action, whats next?" PC- "Thats it." GM- "You realize your friends are in combat and need your help?" PC- "Yeah, I know, I'm just going to stand there and look at my sword." Other PCs- "What the hell man?" This PC continued to do that for many games. 4. And PCs who cheat at their dice rolls, we had one who had the stupidity to pick up a piece of paper, right in front of us, to cover his dice roll, and then he took a moment to adjust his roll to a critical hit with his hand. He then exclaimed, "CRITICAL HIT!" like we didin't see what he just did. We stopped going to their games, and no longer invite them to ours. We currently have only 3 PCs and me, the GM, but we have a good time.

Is the SRD, found in the downloads section, the current rules update?

These character cut outs are great. Thank you for posting them. If you ever come across any greco-roman or mesopatamian looking guys they would be awesome.

One of the reasons why I asked about MRQ1 was because it was my first game I ever GM'ed. I got the BRP gold book in November, but couldn't figure out basic stuff like how combat works. So I picked up MRQ1 for pretty cheap, and I used a lot of what was in that book for my first games. I remember I made a heck of a lot of mistakes from misreading the books. My group and I thought that armor actually took damage, like it was a second shell of hit points, and could be destroyed by normal attacks. We also thought that the base percentages for the common skills was only affected if you had a characterisitc value above 10, like in D&D. So if you had 12 STR and 11 DEX, you had a base chance with Melee Weapons (STR+DEX) of 3%! This led to ridiculously low skills. Even with all those grevious errors, and the fact that we had some crappy people in our group, we still had a really good time, and everyone enjoyed it a lot. Now I have the MRQ2 rulebook and we just played a game last saturday that my players said was the best time they have had so far. I'm creating my own setting, which has proven to be more work than I thought, since I have to make cults, religions, cultures, and assign what spells are available to them and such. Despite all that I enjoy it, and MRQ2 is way better than MRQ1, but for that first couple games it provided a good time. That's why I asked, I wanted to know if it was really that broken. Now I can see that there was a great RQ history of excellence, and that was changed by MQ and other factors. Despite that, I think MQ's RQ2 is a big improvement.

It looks like everyone here at the site has some very passionate views about mrq1, one way or another. I did not assume my post would generate this much debate. I do want to thank everyone who posted, whatever your opinion or standing may be. Its given me a better picture of this whole "RQ and MRQ" thing.

Thanks for that link, it was very helpful. It doesn't look like there is that much content for the mythologies and religion. What about RuneQuest Vikings? Is that any better? My other campaign idea was to recreate something like Michael Crichton's "Eaters of the Dead".

I don't intend to make it exactly like the film, and my PC's probably could care less how historically accurate it is. They don't know jack about Japanese history but I thought that if "Land of the Samurai" had some interesting concepts/gameplay features or mechanics that fit the "samurai" setting I wouldn't mind picking it up. Does it have anything about Buddhism/Shintoism, or Japanese mythology or fantasy?

I'm thinking about a quick campaign to do with my group that can be finished in a couple sessions. I was watching akira kurosawa's 7 samurai and I want to do that with my group. I'm debating whether or not to pick up runequest land of the samurai for the additional content. Would it be worth picking up?

I decided to use BRP's hit point table for body locations and such for my MRQ1 games, back several months ago. I did this because I added the player's SIZ and CON and divided the total by 2 like it says in BRP, and I saw BRP gave slightly more hit points and I wanted my PC's to have that little edge. Thing is, I didn't realize that in MRQ1 you don't divide your total by two, so according to their chart, my players would have more hit points. Of course, their system doesn't use "total hit points" where even if you don't have a major wound, if you take enough damage to equal your CON+SIZ/2 then you die anyways. We play MRQ2 now with the BRP hit points table. So far I haven't had any players die, and they kill most of their enemies in 1 or 2 hits, but they have yet to meet armored foes. What do you think? Do you use MRQ2 or BRP hit point tables?

I keep seeing that everyone says mrq1 had horrible errors and was not a good system. I have the players handbook but that's the only mrq1 book I have. What is it about the system that people didn't like?

I did find Sandy Peterson's alternate "sorcery" rules, but I did not find anything for shamanism. The alternate sorcery looks interesting. Is there a link to the shamanism rules?

I guess its the fact that it doesn't have spells. I was looking for a system that would have a list of different spells for nature users, though if that is not possible I could use it as is.

I have Mongoose's new RQ2 core rule book and I really like it. I know that they made Spirit Magic in this edition actually work, compared to what I've heard many say about Spirit Magic in the previous editions. However I don't really feel like it fits the setting I'm working on. Is there an alternate system from another book that anyone knows about that I could use as a substitute? Something that has that shamanism/animism feel.

I'm trying to come up with some abilities and racial traits for the equivalent of an Aasimar, like the ones in D&D, for MRQ2. Theres a great example for Tieflings on the MRQ wiki, but I'm stumped for what I can do for the Aasimar. Any ideas?

ok heres an idea me and my friend just discussed. We have the idea that instead of a sorceror having to spend only 1 Manipulation point to make his spell anywhere from a range of POWx1 to POWx10, or whatever it is in the book. For every feature of the spell you have to use a magic point, so if you increase the range and the duration, that would cost 3 magic points on top of the 1 it already takes to cast the spell in the first place. However for every increase in a feature of the spell, like for instance I want to make the magnitude of the spell level 3, then you would have to use 2 Manipulation points to get it to magnitude 3, because you already start at magnitude 1 without spending any manipulation points. It would still cost only 1 additional magic point to affect that feature. This way you can still have sorcery be flexible, and you would still have to be really skilled to be powerful sorcerer. What do you guys think of this?

I want to thank everyone who replied to my post. All this insight from different views and opinions is helpful. When I first got into RQ I had the MRQ1 core rule book. It did not explain any of the other magic systems like Divine magic. It just talked about common magic. So when my friends wanted me to make a home brew setting for our games, I didn't have any other magic systems to go off of. I still wanted to give variety, so one player who becomes a priest of this god, is different from the player who joins the sorcery guild. What I did was I just make every spell like a Rune magic spell, each spell being its own skill. There is a pool of very common spells that everyone has access to. For instance, every cult, temple, or whatever could teach you the Heal spell, 1 MP for every 1HP healed. But if you wanted to get a better spell, you would have had to join a group, lets say the cult of the healing god, who could teach you the Greater Heal spell, which heals 1 hit location up to full HP for only 3 MP. Again, each spell is it's own separate skill. And each cult or guild would offer spells that you might not find in a different one. I thought this might make magic more balanced with everything else. I later got MRQ2 and I liked their ideas, but some seemed OP to me. One divine spell, (I can't remember what its called, i don't have the book on me at the moment) could do 3D6! That's a lot! Also I wasn't sure if I wanted to have the idea of Sorcerer's being able to afflict people with their spells from miles away. All that POWx4, POWx5 was giving them some serious range. I kinda wanted my setting to be a bit of a low magic setting, where magic is there but it takes some time to be a powerful magic user who can smite people with the flick of his finger.

In that case I will use them as is.

I got MRQ2 and I like how they handle the different systems of magic. Some of it seems OP to me though, like some of the Divine magic spells. I was thinking about tweaking all of them. I'm sure lots of other people on this site have tweaked the magic systems in previous RQ's and I wondered what is is they changed.