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Dimbyd

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Posts posted by Dimbyd

  1. Ian Cooper has published some notes from Saturday's Impromptu Con on Discord. As not everybody is on Facebook, I have cut and pasted the posts here. Note that the bolding comes from me, not Ian- and my comments are in italics 

     

    First up, what was discussed in the first session on the QuestWorlds rules:

    * We started with a goal to extract just the rules text from HQ Core for the SRD

    * Once done, the pared down text revealed issues around use of game terminology (failure and defeat) that we needed to correct.

    * Marginal, minor, major and complete have always been an issue because they implied you only get the prize on complete. Should be you always get the prize but price, or what else you get varies.

    * We wanted to offer consequences (penalties) on a partial success (marginal) as an option to the GM (exhaustion etc.)

    * Masteries remain difficult to explain and it takes time for folks to 'get it' if they don't have the option to play with someone who has mastered them.

    * We moved to "counting successes" over "bumps". A mastery is a success, a success on your roll is a success. Most successes wins, and highest roll if tied. Difference in successes is degree of victory and used to determine tally in a sequence, hint as to consequences and benefits etc. Zero degrees of victory is a partial success - you get the prize, but there is often a cost.

    * We factored out the common part of all 'long' contest types - a sequence of contests and just note the different methods of tallying relative position: First to Five, APs, Penalties. Long Contests became Sequences and Simple Contests just Contests.

    Core Rules book will be first. Will have lots of advice on how to be a player or GM in a storytelling game (including ideas like scene framing etc for the GM). Hope is to keep rules clean for easy reference and have extensive examples.

    Examples and art main work oustanding.

    SRD is close to final, please promote the SRD in appropriate forums so that we can begin to slowly build buzz around the engine again.

     

    Next [was] the session on genre packs.

    Second book will be about writing genre packs and adventures. It starts with, but goes beyond the advice in HeroQuest about genre packs.

    Three example settings:

    * Pioneer Space: Patrolmen and Free Traders on the frontiers of space, rooted in 50 and early 60s S, Heinlein, Norton etc (think valve powered machines, fixed phones in retro '50s style)

    * Age of Miracles: 70s NYC Superheroes. Disco and Vigilantes (much lower power level than Cosmic Slop)

    * Brave New World: Renaissance Fantasy, exploring a Hollow Earth

    Each also used as an opportunity to discuss high-tech, supers, and magic

    Then we will have more advice on writing adventures including advice on relationship maps etc.(using those relationship maps as enabling sandbox play) (including excerpt(s) from Robin Laws' Sharper Adventures in Heroquest- which is absolutely essential read for Narrators- Pdf on Chaosium website) 

    We plan to also cover "templates" to let you easily create archetypical characters from a genre. Sort of a cross between 100-words and PbTA playbooks.

    Followed up by three settings:

    Doc Vandal:  1930s Pulp from Dave Robinson (who has written a few novels starting the title character}

    Cosmic Zap: Cosmic level superheroes from Ron Edwards (think Jack Kirby's 4th World work for DC and the Eternals}

    After Thought: STL SF from Sean Hillman

    Finally we had a brief discussion of QuestWorlds Glorantha might look, but speculative at this point. 

    Baseline: HeroQuest Glorantha but use the Core Book for rules, this is just another genre pack. Background, keywords, cults etc all work.

    Magic: A few changes. Feedback has shown us that whilst experienced Gloranthans love the flexibility, new players can find the freeform magic daunting. Plus 500lbs gorilla in the room, RQG

    Some early thoughts:

    * No more thresholds i.e. 1W for initiates, 10W for devotees; use 'flaws' for the price you pay in time, restrictions etc. instead

    * Lay Members: Just have one rune (elemental) and Worship Pantheon

    * Initiates, Spirit Society Members, Sorcerers: up to three

    * Devotees, Shaman, Mage: (may be up to 5, including magic system etc)

    Basic Magic: Same for all, not an exception for animists. Prayers, Charms, Spells but augment-only

    Rune, Spirit, Sorcery: Pretty much what we have now - can be used directly:

    but...

    Freeform is hard, so we may have **optional** one-sentence decriptions. We may lean on RQ magic for some of these. So perhaps:

    Bladesharp - Makes an edged weapon unnaturally sharp.

    Protection - Provides magical armor against all physical attacks

    Both of these just augment a fighting skill

    or for Rune Magic

    Shield - Provides magical armor against physical and magical attacks

    We'll also provide general advice that magic is usually here, now, against that group and more needs a ritual.

    This is really 'early design thoughts' so you can have your say. We don't want to block folks improvising magic here, but the concern that providing suggested spells hampered creativity needs to be offset against the lack of yardstick and the fact that anyone picking up an RQG book will naturally look to the magic there and question how to facilitate that in QWG (this is partially informed by discussions with players with D&D backgrounds and had not played Runequest)

    Ian also discussed the for the credibility test for use of abilities- the credibility test would be different for the 1970s supers setting than for the Cosmic Slop supers setting. 

    There was a discussion on the appeal of retro settings to a younger audience. Ian takes the view that QW's game engine is well suited for pulp adventures and also stressed that  the racism and sexism of the pulps would not be a part of the genre packs. He saw the genre packs could be shorter books/ PDFs say 30-60 pages, possibly at a paperback size (ala the original Hero Wars books) . People with anime/ manga backgrounds- please let Ian know if you're interested - the writers he knows are not knowledgeable enough (as far he is aware) 

    Hope that helps folks- I'm playing in Ian's Coming Storm/ Eleven Lights campaign online where Ian is testing the new rules. I'm ethused by the changes.

     

    Andrew

     

     

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  2. Quick reminder to all of us who want to get hold of physical copies now. 2020 has disrupted international supply networks. The number of passenger aeroplanes in service has declined dramatically- thus affecting people using spare capacity on passenger planes to deliver goods. The decline in flights and other transport have pushed up costs. Pandemic required Health and Safety slows down distribution from loading and loading cargo to customs inspections to distribution hubs and postal/parcel providers. 

    A lot of logistics capacity is rightly being prioritised for pandemic related supplies. It's a bloody miracle/ hard work that normal life is able to carry on. 

    Patience everybody. 

     

    Andrew

     

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  3. I’m really looking forward to the new edition. Which will be such a radical change that pretty much all previous editions’ adventures will be compatible.

    People do realise that Arthur didn’t exist; that Greg introduced some amazing gaming elements of progressing technology; and Greg misled you all on the correct pronounciation of “Cymric” . 
     

    Having a new edition with the production values of recent RQG & CoC with widespread distribution will help grow the game. And from what  I understand of the proposed releases- there’s real thought being put in to support the line. 
     

     

     

     

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  4. On 8/24/2020 at 12:38 PM, Crabus said:

     

    It’s OpenQuest with some new mechanism (that I noted) :

    • A new magic system name rite. Quite straightforward. You have a list of 3 or 4 spells by spellcasters speciality.
    • A Virtue, that can be used to improve a roll result (critical failure to failure, failure to success or success to critical success)
    • Valour, that are HP before HP (named wounds). So you decrease Valour first and wounds after (when Valour is 0). Valour come back quickly.
    • Clash points. Kind of action points for combat but that can be spent in many ways.
      • In defense, you can use a clash point to make an opposed dice roll. The winner (high success) wounds the looser. If you don’t have clash point, it’s an unopposed dice roll, if the attacker success the defender is wounded. Work very like Pendragon combat with this clash point twist.
      • In attack, you can perform a special attack by spending clash points (slash attack or power attack)
    • Initiative. DFT (?) + 1d6 but the group can decide who go first. To be honest, I didn’t understand the initiative system.
    • Mettle that we used quickly, that is a fatigue system.
    • Corruption. Not really used, but you can probably guess what it is.

    There was a mechanism for some highlighted skills, 

    Lovely to game with you Philippe. Hopefully we will game together again.

    The highlighted skills were skills that you could roll with advantage- that is the tens dice could be rolled twice and the best result can be used. There was also a cultural virtue which gives you an auto-success. I liked the modified Openquest system and the plot was engaging. And the players were great. 

     

    I will also be buying the core book and campaign. 

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  5. Taking a break from the Welsh language culture wars for Pendragon 6th edition...

    Lloyd Gyan- one of the UK's most enthusiastic GMs - he runs the drop in sessions at UK Games Expo and Dragonmeet is running "Nuns!" as part of the online Gauntlet con. Its at a friendly time to both Americans and Europeans being 18:59 BST, this coming Saturday. There are three spaces still available and hopefully I'll see some of you online as a fellow player:

    https://gauntlet-con.firebaseapp.com/event-detail/-MAXLi61sWiTZysruWRA 

  6. 1 hour ago, TrippyHippy said:

    If the central forum for discussing all things Chaosium is unable to verify the truth in an announcement or not, it’s not a very good official announcement is it?

    You know, when I summarised Chaosium panel announcements in the past; I had the exact same “how can I trust this”.

     

    it was more than a little annoying.....

     

    Then MOB published it as a Chaosium blog post. 

  7. Mike was guitarist/ keyboard/ vocalist on Frank Zappa’s 1988 tour. 

    He’s currently doing the same roles (and is bandleader) for the Bizarre World of Frank Zappa featuring holograms etc.

     

    He’s a remarkable songwriter & musician.

     

    Andrew

     

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