smiorgan

Another thing that I have noticed. I've said this on Facebook but it's worth repeating: the strike rank tracker that comes with the starter set is an amazing tool. Very useful to teach the rules and to keep focus.

In general, the starter set is well worth having. 

I'm currently running a group of 4 through a RQ campaign, 3 of them relative newbies to the system and I am not having propblems with RQG with all the bells and whistles on. It works. We do forget to apply this or that other rule from time to time... and nothing bad happens. Which brings me to my main point.

BRP in general, and RQG in particular, is not a tightly designed system. It's a system with a super simple core and layers of detail that hang loosely to it and are there to add color and granularity. If you strip the layers you will lose color but the system will not break down. In other words, BRP degrades nicely. That's in my opinion the single most important unwritten rule at the mechanical level.

That makes RQG very unlike other rules heavy systems - e.g. Pathfinder or D&D4 - that are tightly balanced with very interdependent parts that would break down the system if taken away. In my view, RQ6/ Mythras is an attempt at making RQ a bit more tightly designed, while RQG went cheerfully in the other direction.

As I said, I'm not having issues with RQG full on, but my plan B was to start taking away parts and reduce complexity in case my players were overwhelmed. And it's very easy. You can go pretty extreme without destroying the system. Obviously, the game becomes less fun, at least for people who like detail. 

0. Ignore character history in generation. But that's already written in the rules.

1. Ignore sorcery. We're in Dragon Pass, after all. And those Lankhor Mhy scholars will be fine with just Rune Magic as in RQ2.

2. Ignore weapon strike ranks. SR1 for Rune Magic, Dex SR for missiles and spirit magic, Melee SR for melee. 

3. Ignore locational hit points and effects of wounds althogether. General hit points only. Just use hit locations for armor and to record individual wounds for healing. Yes, that means that you can have 1 hit point left and a 10 hit points wound at left arm and be fine. 

4. Ignore damage to weapons. Just use weapon HP to determine max. damage parried. 

5. Ignore effects of criticals and/or specials and fumbles in combat. Ditch the attack-parry matrix except for the cases that involve normal success and failure.

6. Ignore multiple defenses and/or the -20 penalty. You can parry or dodge once per round (for a deadlier game). Or you can defend as much as you want without penalty (for a less deadly game). 

6. Ignore levels of success althogether. Remember to still use the subtraction rule for skills over 100. In opposed rolls, if both parties succeed you roll a second time remembering to apply the -25 penalty. If it's still a draw, higher skill wins. If both parties fail, the GM narrates a suitable outcome.  In every case, opposed rolls are the most overrated mechanic in rpg design history. Just have the players roll their skills - represent opposition with a malus.

7. Ignore the resistance table. Use opposed rolls of the stat x5, or x4.

8. Ignore penalties for failed augments. Note that if you ignore levels of success successful augments are always +20. 

9. Ignore passions. Unless you use a spell to create them.

10. Ignore runes. Rune magic does not need a roll.

11. Ignore augments althogether.

It might have escaped some of you guys that Advanced Sorcery, the only supplement ever published for Magic World, is now available print on demand on DriveThru.

https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/128316/advanced-sorcery

It repackages a lot of magic from Elric! (corebook, Bronze Grimoire and the Unknown East) and adds a few extra spells and interesting skill based powers.

Wow! That was some thread necromancy feat! 

I echo the sentiment. But, in all honesty, first I want see Lords of the Middle Sea and Mythic Iceland 2e.

Quick update. Major spoilers about Gaumata's Vision scenario ahead:

For the moment they have little to brag about with Allabeer or Vega.

Correct. Resolution is not really a phase since damage etc. is resolved earlier in DEX rank order. That paragraph is badly written. It comes from a much less confusing paragraph in the Elric! rulebook, which became worse in the 2008 edition of BRP and unfortunately was not edited out in the 2023 revision. 

25 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

The Sandheart Militia are unlike other Sun County militia formations because they aren't part-timers (farmers serving one season per year). Read Tales of the Sun County Militia to understand the Goldbreath family's experiment. As the Sandheart Specials are a bunch of specialists, why not let each of them suggest their main professional skill? The impala-riding scout was hired because he can Track, the Lhankor Mhy forensic tech is there because of his Human Lore, and so on. They don't each derive their income from the same skill, so why would you write the rules as if they did?

@Nick Brooke @Scotty Thank you both for the very good advice! 

4 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Loyalty (to commanding officer).

They're all devoted to Vega Goldbreath (some fanatically and embarassingly so) and very loyal to commander Allabeer. So, that would be a walk in the park.

I'm running a game in Sun County and the players play "irregular" members of the Sandheart Militia. When Sacred Time comes they will have to make their income rolls. What kind of skills should I test?

Given their "irregular" nature, the characters come from different backgrounds, and some are likely only temporarily employed by the militia: for instance we have a Yelornan priestess-in-training sent by her Big Rubble temple to gain military experience abroad and a Lunar noblewoman, the restless daughter of Duke Raus - Yes, unknown to most Jezra has an older sister.

- Should I focus on their salary/ bounties/ prizes as militia irregulars or on therir income back home, or roll for both?  I'd say rolling for both is more fun provided that I can have the Yelornan travel back to Pavis etc.

- Which skill should I test for the militiaman income? The "Warrior" skill "Battle" does not seem appropriate. But there is no "police officer" profession in RQ. I'm tempted to say that the default is "Insight" - as an investigator's skill (they are currently collecting red herrings and chasing wild geese down South in Black Rock), but the player can make a case for another skill, such as Track, for instance. I'd give some leeway.

On 11/26/2023 at 12:43 PM, NickMiddleton said:

Picked it up recently as I had some spare cash and was curious...

Sadly, its based on the older PDF, NOT the revised PDF, so errors like critical chance still being a flat 01-05 rather than 1/20th of skill are still present in the printed version. 😞

That's sad indeed. Thank you for sparing me the painful experiment (I was tempted to check).

On 11/23/2023 at 4:00 PM, Jason D said:

I quite like it at well, and the folks at Fria Ligan and Fredrik Malmberg are good friends of Chaosium. 

I've ran the quickstart and one game from the campaign in the box set, and quite enjoyed it. Can't wait to run it again. 

 

I find that Dragonbane hits the "Stormbringer-sweet spot" in the complexity-simplicity continuum.

I'd love Chaosium to publish something like that for BRP but with more sword and sorcery vibes (Howard/ Leiber/ Moorcock). Call it not-Stormbringer / not-Magic World. 

I look forward to Lords of the Middle Sea to be like that, but I think there is room for a fantasy cousin.

Update: I've played Dragonbane solo this summer and it was good fun. I like the system quite a bit. The BRP heritage remains clear. Combat is deadly and fun. Sadly, I have not had the occasion to run it for my players yet.

 , 

On 10/23/2023 at 8:18 PM, Jason D said:

One thing we just got in that excites me is a Aesir/Vanir family tree done in Icelandic/Scandinavian style by artist extraordinaire Katrin Dirim. 

Here's a little preview of one of our favorite couples: 

Lovely! 

@Jason D Are there any news on Mythic Iceland 2nd edition? Now that the new BRP book happened, is the project going to be affected? I'm really looking forward to see this great setting do a combeback. 

Is there a downloadable version of the simplified Pendragon sheet on page 5 of Book 1 of the Starter Set?

Thanks

No, but you can get Magic World (PDF or POD), which has all the RQ3 creatures of Basic Creatures, ship rules, a few sorcery spells that were omitted from BRP and other assorted RQ3 and Stormbringer stuff, all BRP compatible. 

Magic World however does not use hit locations, so if you are using this option you might want another monster source instead (Gateway Bestiary+ Glorantha Bestiary should cover 99% of the creatures of the RQ3 book and add a few more).

On 8/25/2023 at 6:21 PM, Atgxtg said:

In older version of RQ elemental were corporal and could be hurt. The guideline was where or not the creature had hit points, those that did not couldn't be harmed physically.

In older versions of RQ... Actually, that's the case also in the current version of RQ (Glorantha Bestiary page 177).

Elementals (partially) immune to physical damage was a Stormbringer thing, originally. I did not remember that it was followed by BRP.

3 hours ago, Gwyndolin said:

So I have been preaparing a hexcrawl and putting together some rules for running it with BRP.

1. Do you think the BRP can work with this kind of play.

> Yes, definitely. It's pretty deadly but is going to be a lot of fun. I ran a great RQ2/3 mini-campaign with Griffin Mountain, which was 90% hexcrawl. It was a lot of fun until the allosaurs of the Elder Wilds ate the whole party. 

2. Do you have any suggestions for things I might be missing.

>Add to the encounter tables rival adventuring parties, NPCs with an intersting story that can function as quest givers or rescue the party when it is in dire straits. A crashed spaceship in the middle of the plains. 

> You might want to check the Griffin Mountain reprint for RuneQuest Classic. Even if you don't run it as is (it's in Glorantha and everything...), it's one of the greatest hexcrawl campaigns ever made. 

3. Should I make more use of the D100 in the tables.

>I'm always for more d100!

4. Just general thoughts and feedback would be super appreciated. ❤️

>Have fun with that. The map is gorgeous.

 

Answers within the quote. Yes, I'm old and lazy.

Man, Chaosium is releasing so many things that I WANT these days it's not even funny 🤣.

The whole happy Cults of RuneQuest train, the Pendragon starter set, the new BRP corebook, and countless JC titles (including the whole Pavis - Rubble - Borderlands series).

And this pretending I don't care about recent Call of Cthulhu releases or Rivers of London - which requires unheard of levels of self-deception!

Seriously, people, we were so happy reminiscing about Chaosium's distant past and discussing house rules and complaining that monographs sucked and you plunge us into a new Chaosium Golden Age? That's not fair! 

That's hubris. You are a bunch of God Learners or worse ...troll-loving illuminated Arkati!

7 hours ago, Pao said:

The more I'm trying to convert PF2e to BRP the more I feel like I'm just combining them, and I realize that I like this version more than trying to convert PF2e to BRP.

Cool, go for it, then!

Personally, I would never do that. I like my BRP and my D&D separate. Even Classic Fantasy is too much of a combo for me. Plus, I'm lazy and what you're doning sounds like a lot of work.

But that's really just me and I totally cheer you having fun with your project!

6 hours ago, Raleel said:

they are highly compatible, as in both d100 roll under systems. Mythras is derived from BRP/Runequest, and was actually Runequest 6. A few skill changes, a few nuances like base skill percentages vs basing them off of stats, specials and criticals being slightly different. Mythras has Special Effects.

I'd say that when you get at it you find that they are more subtly different than they seem at first blush.

Action economy in combat is completely different. Istead of DEX ranks you have combat actions. All powers / effects that manipulate combat actions have to be redone.

Levels of success are different with critical at 1/10 skill and no specials. So, all effects that depend on success level have either to be critical based 1/20 or special based 1/5.

There is no Resistance Table and you never roll characteristic x5 as a percentage. Having special skills instead.

You have no general hit points, just locational ones.

Dodge and parry function a bit differently.

The magic systems are different from those in the BRP UGE book.

That said, yes, they have the same ancestry and it shows: Mythras and BRP are much much closer than, say,  BRP and Pathfinder. 

The RQ wiki has a very short Glorantha primer:

https://rqwiki.chaosium.com/glorantha/

The Glorantha booklet of the RQ Starter Set is a very good intro.

There are also a few nice introductory videos on Youtube:

2 hours ago, Mugen said:

In order to give some comparison points, a character with a bonus of 0 has 30% chance of success versus a DC 25.

BRP characters tend to have lower chances in skills where they have no experience at all.

But the difference between 2 freshly created BRP characters is also very likely to be bigger than with 2 PF level 1s.

I think that here there's no precise conversion. BRP's philosophy about difficulty levels is just different. It's much less granular and less tightly balanced than Pathfinder. When I run BRP-based games, 90% of the times I call for raw, unmodified, skill rolls. Then you have easy actions at skill x2 and difficult actions at 1/2 skill, which I use very sparingly. Then you have the situational modifiers on page 114, which also are meant to be used sparingly. But, really, the assumption that every action is against a certain DC is very un-BRP.

Also, as you have noticed, the idea of an untrained skill is very different. Level 1 untrained PF characters still have a fair chance against low DCs, while BRP characters can really suck at skills they don't have. So, what's the solution? A few ideas:

 - Don't call for a roll if failure is problematic/ uninteresting.

- Fail forward. Have the characters roll and fail pushing the story forward. If they succeed against the odds, it's a big success and they probably can increase their skill.

- Have the players choose wisely survival-critical skills when they allocate skill points

- If you want to call a roll where everyone has a fair chance use characterstic x5 rolls instead.

- Especially in important / dramatic/ tense situations have them use the augment optional rule coming up with plausible secondary skills to roll to augment the mandated roll see the optional rules on page 38. Have them roleplay and provide a rationale for that. 

4 hours ago, g33k said:

You really do want to take a look at "Classic Fantasy," either (or both) the partial one for BRP, and/or the completed one (for Mythras).

 

@Pao If you are working with BRP UGE, as you say, you might try to track the old Classic Fantasy monograph on Ebay, which is 100% compatible. Classic Fantasy for Mythras is much more complete, but it's...well... for Mythras - which is a relatively different branch of the big BRP d100 family (Mythras is an excellent game, anyway). 

2 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

I express hatred for no Chaosium title other than Blood Tide.  Do not encourage its exchange by paying money for it.  It's stunt rules were workable, though.

I endorse the recommendations for Classic Fantasy, though.

!i!

What's particularly wrong about Blood Tide? It's fairly badly edited as other products of those years -  it was the "dark ages" just before the Stafford-Petersen restoration, but why the special hate?