Mad Ainsel

pg. 133 The gamemaster should pay attention to the players to see if any of them mention their adventurers closing and/ or {add: locking} the door behind them. pg. 157 The Company of the Manticore’s cavalry {soldiers} are trained to stay calm in battle but are not trained to fight on their own as warhorses. by context, I assume it should read "horses" or "mounts"

It was a while before I discovered that one too. Even so that one can fail with use. I'm looking forward to a real bound book.

I found that RQIII was somewhat more "pedantic" mechanically speaking. I have to keep referring to the crit/impale/fumble table, which is becoming a chore for aging eyes. I put it in my Kindle with larger type. In a recent character sheet redesign, I added spots for those special numbers to reduce the load on players. I understand the more precise nature of it, but question the need. RQII you just had to remember your times tables, ala fives and twenties. In spite of that, I generally liked and preferred RQIII, and its pedantic approach, as I went to it exclusively and even heavily incorporated its sorcery system in my own non-Gloranthan campaign setting. This is just as well as I found much of the early RQIII Glorantha supplements to be slapdash in nature. I thought "Gods of Glorantha", in particular, tried to do too much and none of it well. I was either not interested in many of the cults, or I was interested and found them lacking in details. I'm looking forward to Chaosium's redux of that one and long form cult write ups. No doubt it will have to have Kyger Litor too....;) I found the chargen system in RQIII to make fairly anemic characters. By the time they could deal with a few trollkin, as starting out adventurers, they were already 'one foot in the grave' old. I frequently had to tweak them a great deal to get them to where they could hang on a bit in the game. Sometimes even tossing the chargen rules aside entirely. This is particularly evident with sorcerers who I thought gave up too much physical prowess for a poor exchange of magic.

I tend to view Strike Ranks as time, but only provisionally. I consider it a concept to be played with rather loosely where the vicissitudes of combat need tweaking. A horde of identical trollkin would have similar initiative (SR) with respect to other combatants, but I wouldn't have them strike simultaneously, time wise. "Identical" is a convenience of mechanics to help speed play in real time, the die rolls obfuscate such things. It also means an old man like me doesn't have to grab for the reading glasses as much, and that's a big help as I just have to remember one skill set for multiple monsters and NPCs. I generally didn't allow anything more than one Dodge and/or one Parry in a melee round, regardless of the number of combatants, figuring if a PC had more than one opponent, "Well, it sucks to be you." But that is just my GM style. One could use defensive measures against multiple attacks. Within reasonable limits, of course. Being taken down by a horde/swarm does limit one's options to calling ransom or saying one's final prayers. Of course in Glorantha those prayers might not be so final...

I don't know if I could keep it straight (it might require yet another character sheet redesign....), but I like how it would reflect extra experience gleaned from longer, more arduous scenarios. It seems more natural than that first success being the experience "end-all" of the adventure.

I hadn't thought of that approach. That might be a better solution, giving beginning PCs, who fumble more often, a decent chance to advance while maintaining the balance that Joerg mentioned.

As a new poster, I thank you all for having me on board. It has been a number of years (10+) since I've GM'd RQ3, but I recently ran one for the family as my future son-in-law has an interest in RPGs. Having rolled a bunch of beginning characters and put them through the Rainbow Mounds, the party was thoroughly routed by Whiteeye's gang, particularly after a number of memorable fumbles. It put me in mind to implement an experience change that I've been considering over the years. It has been said that we learn more from our failures than our successes. In that spirit I have been considering changing the eligibility of experience checks from one of rolling experience when a skill is successfully used to that of an experience check when one fails. Early characters fail a lot and they might learn what NOT to do next time. It seems me that this would advance beginning PCs to a level of decent competency early, and from then on make it harder to achieve additional skill. Thereby aiding the survivability of young inexperienced PCs. It could help new PCs play catch up to some extent. I look forward to any thoughts, pro and con, on how this might work on game balance.

I generally have the PCs roll weapon damage twice (e.g. Broadsword for the impale becomes 2d8+2), magic augmentation or damage bonus as per a normal hit. The PCs particularly skillful thrust didn't change the magic effect, nor did the PC suddenly become twice as strong. RQ3 is lethal enough as it is.