BWP

Wow.

7 hours ago, lordabdul said:

That's... a.... really selfish take on reading RPG books in my opinion

How is thinking that a rule will cause problems is "selfish"?!

Let's play a mind-game.  Let's suppose you're reading a manual on electrical repair of small appliances, and you come across a section that says:

"First, fill your bath-tub with water.  Now get in the bath-tub.  Now plug in the device you want to repair into an active electrical outlet.  Now start stripping the wires."

Do you think it would be "selfish" if you think to yourself "you know, I don't think I like these instructions, they may lead to a situation that I will find undesirable"?

When you read rules, you evaluate them within the context of what else you know about the game, and make a decision about whether those rules are compatible, incompatible, easy, difficult, or whatever.  That's just ... normal.

20 hours ago, Jeff said:

Like so many of your recent posts - when you write that something is  "poorly-thought-out," it often seems to mean little more than "I don't like it, therefore it must be poorly thought out."

No, it means "I think that this was poorly thought out because the implications of the new rule lead to poor results".  When a new rule is introduced and it causes obvious (to me) problems, then that's a problem with the rule; and it logically follows that therefore there was a problem with the process that brought that rule into existence.  I certainly don't expect that you will agree with me, but accusing me of just spitting out a "I don't like it, so there!" response just makes it appear that you have no interest in criticism (or perhaps more likely, you don't have any interest in my opinions).

20 hours ago, Jeff said:

As an aside, your constant negativity about RQG in a thread about "RQ3, house rules, Borderlands and questions" is getting into tedious troll territory. Please steer your conversation appropriately, or start a new thread somewhere else.

Well, I thought that I had been responding to questions that had been directly put to me, and explaining the reasoning behind my various opinions (some of which are actually very positive towards RQG), but I agree that it's wandering off-topic.

18 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Jeff and Co. are final arbiters for canon, but here I do differ with him. In RQ (with CHA, whether that's a home–ruled RQ3 or RQ:G), its the combination of POW and CHA that forms Divine Favor (I might even add INT in there).

CHA is simply the insubstantial facility to attract, interact, and influence others, including spirits of all sizes.  

POW is the strength of your characters spirit.

I agree.  "CHA = the gods smile on you" doesn't make much sense with the species values as they are presented (and also, more critically, doesn't make much sense with the existence of the POW attribute).  Yet another poorly-thought-out RQG rule that I can safely workaround by house-ruling out of existence.  (That doesn't mean that CHA can't still have importance.  I don't hate it as a limit on the number of spirits you can simultaneously keep under control, for instance.)

So what you are saying is that creatures (i.e., entire species) with low CHA are incapable of getting "divine favour".  That makes sense for some species, certainly.  For others ... not so much.  As I said ... a change whose consequences were not thought out.

To implement this change for the reasons you state, what was needed (and clearly not done) was to examine each sentient species and make sure that the CHA statistic for that species was appropriate for this new definition of what CHA is.  Instead, what was actually done was that old CHA values from RQ2 were copied, RQ3 APP values were relabelled as CHA, job done, boy that was easy!

20 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Yes, and by the way I'd be grateful if you could answer my earlier questions about combat and movement!

Sorry, I thought others had already addressed your questions ....

On 11/26/2019 at 8:35 AM, lordabdul said:

So the whole thing about "Attacking on the Run", for instance, which reduces your movement to 2m instead of 3m per SR, that's only for the SR on which you attack on the run, then, right? Like, in a melee round, you could be running full speed (3m/SR) for a few SRs, then attack an enemy you're running by (only moving by 2m on that SR) and then continuing to run in the remaining SRs until SR 10?

Yes.  Although I guess there's enough latitude in the wording of the rules to permit various interpretations, that's certainly how we've always done it.  For each SR of movement, you decide what sort of movement you want to do (within the limits of what is permitted in that particular tactical situation).  For example, you might want to move at a run (2 x base speed) or flat-out (3 x base speed), but you can't do other stuff whilst you're moving like that.  We also have a house rule (at least I think it's a house rule) that you need to spend a SR at the lower speed before you can move at the higher speed, and similarly you need to spend SR to slow down (or risk falling over or worse).  Also the GM might rule that a particular terrain type modifies the speed in other ways (e.g., mud might stop you from running at all).  TBH, I can no longer remember how much of all that is in the RQ3 rules and how much we incorporated from other games that offered similar tactical movement options; the whole move-one-hex-at-a-time was part of DragonQuest and Aftermath!, and the effect of terrain on movement (and skill roles required to avoid accidents when moving fast in difficult terrain) is also found in the WEG Star Wars D6 rules.  We've always played out our battles on a hexgrid, since time immemorial.  You play umpteen different games over forty-plus years and they kind of blur together after a while.  As I've stated elsewhere, I like my games "crunchy" -- I was playing board wargames before I ever looked at an RPG, and the same is true for most of the guys I've gamed with over the years.

On 11/26/2019 at 8:35 AM, lordabdul said:

That's kind of funny to me that RQ3 is using these big, abstract melee rounds that are a dozen seconds long, only to actually use Strike Ranks as, effectively, smaller combat turns, down to a resolution of around 1 second. Basically slashing the granularity of combat down to a GURPS-like level of 1-second turns.

That's always been one of the attractions of RQ for me, ever since RQ2.  RQ3 was a refinement and enhancement.

I guess I kind of understand the idea of "simplification" of combat rules as found in many modern RPGs, with the aim of being more appealing to people who aren't very interested in tactical situations -- but it's not my preference.  My objection to the RQG combat rules is not just the dumping of the RQ3 improvements but IMO the attempt to turn RQ2 combat into something more "modern" has not been very successful and has led to a lot of confusion and dissatisfaction.  We know the BRP core has various expressions of how to do combat, and if the aim had been "modernising and simplifying" then one of the several other BRP combat systems would probably have been a better option.

On 11/26/2019 at 8:35 AM, lordabdul said:

Doesn't that make combat combat much longer to play, as the GM needs to go through each SR one by one, checking with every player what's going on and how interwoven actions resolve exactly?

Yes.  The people I game with have no problem with that.  (It is always possible to "simplify off-the-cuff" if a particular situation doesn't seem like it needs the full tactical execution to resolve satisfactorily.  Obviously that's a judgement call at the table.)

On 11/26/2019 at 8:35 AM, lordabdul said:

Also doesn't that result in combats where characters are frenetically running around each other like a bad Benny Hill episode?

Um, no, not in my experience.

On 11/26/2019 at 8:35 AM, lordabdul said:

What prevents me from always attacking and running away, then running back/attacking/running away again?

Um ... the rules and the situation, usually.  It's easy to get into melee, not so easy to get out of it again.  If you don't want to give your opponent free attacks you need to withdraw rather than move.  Also in RQ3 you normally need to spend 3 SR (or your DEX SR) between each action.  Also each SR of movement delays your other actions by an equal amount; if I normally attack with my sword on SR 6, but I have to spend 2 SR to move up next to my target, then I won't actually attack until SR 8.  If you do a lot of movement you won't be doing much of anything else.

That being said the rules are not perfect and don't cover all possible situations, and sometimes the GM has to make judgement calls.  Well, that's why he's there!

On 11/26/2019 at 12:38 PM, lordabdul said:

There's a little known game from WotC that also puts things like creature stats in a completely separate book.

Not the same thing.  D&D makes it very clear that the game consists of three core books, and if you don't have access to the three core books then the game is not complete and you won't be able to play it.  (They also go to some trouble to point out that it's really only one player -- the DM -- who needs access to all three books.)  That is not how RQG is promoted.

I'm not questioning the need/desirability of making the Bestiary a separate volume.  I'm only commenting on the marketing decisions.  Mind you that's only a tangential consideration to the issue of why the RQ3 rules were superior.  Lord knows that were plenty of poor marketing decisions surrounding RQ3!

11 hours ago, prinz.slasar said:

If you read the RQG Core rules, you will find many crossreferences to the Bestiary and the Adventure Book - even to supplements which aren't out yet: e.g. Game Master's Book/Guide

So I have to read the book before I buy it to discover that buying the book won't give me the game that the back cover says I'll be getting when I buy it?  Huh.

11 hours ago, prinz.slasar said:

So right from reading the Core Rules it's obvious that there's more thant the Core

I think you've missed the point of my argument.  There are few games that don't suggest "there's more, if you want it".  That is light-years away from "this is not a complete game, even though we claim it is".

11 hours ago, prinz.slasar said:

Beside its flaws, the Quickstart has all needed informations for rules, pregens and critters to play the scenario without any other material.

The Quickstart rules are not included in the core rulebook, nor is it supplied with the core rulebook, and if you see it on the shelf of your FLGS next to the core rulebook it would cost you additional money to actually purchase it.  How is it relevant to any discussion about the contents of the core rulebook?

11 hours ago, prinz.slasar said:

RQG is like DnD

No, it isn't.

20 hours ago, lordabdul said:

RQ3 was heavily criticized for its expensive price tag.

I didn't say one word about "price".  I'm talking about what you got when you bought RQ3 as opposed to what you get when you buy the RQG, which is advertised as "all you need" when clearly that is not even close to being true.  In terms of rules (as opposed to setting info, etc.) RQ3 was a very complete package.  Someone not interested in Glorantha could get up and running fairly quickly if they wanted to.  (And the RQ2 rules were pretty self-sufficient, too.)

FWIW, my copy of the RQ3 Deluxe set cost me A$90 in 1984.  I was broke for quite some time afterwards!

On 11/23/2019 at 8:41 AM, soltakss said:

RQ3 had an awful lot of RQ2 stuff in it as well.

I'd be interested in which RQ3 Rules you think have been dropped from RQG.

Well, APP back to CHA obviously.  I've heard the arguments and I don't know that I disagree, except that now we have the obvious cases of ugly critters now having limits on their magic etc., which I think is yet another clear example of "let's write a new rule and not really think about the consequences".

Sensible hit point calculation and location distribution.

Sensible skill bonus calculations.

A better way of determining species characteristic maximums.

Missile target locations.

A more integrated combat system that incorporates movement and other tactical options.  (I'm not really including the change back to 12 SR, since the number of SR in a round is an arbitrary value to begin with, and any particular arbitrary number is as good as any other, assuming that everything else related to SR calculations is adjusted accordingly.)

Combat and damage rules that actually make sense as written.  I'm not claiming that RQ3 was perfect in this respect, but it was better than the hot mess that's RQG.

Is knockback in RQG?  If not, then that's something that was dropped.

I don't miss the "Fatigue" rules, as such, because they were not a strength of RQ3.  The concept of Fatigue is not a terrible one, just a real bear to actually administrate.  I can't really remember the ENC rules from RQ2, but I don't recall having any real problems with it, but I liked the RQ3 rules better (when Fatigue was removed from consideration).  I don't know what the equivalent RQG rules are, if there are any.  (I don't think I've ever been involved in any game where encumbrance and carrying capacity was not kind of hand-waved most of the time, but I think that it's important for any game to address the issue in some way -- better to have a system you don't like than no system at all, IMO.)

While I like a lot about the RQG character generation (i.e., background info, etc.), I'm not thrilled about the narrowness of its focus.  For me, one of the fun things about creating a character in RQ3 is the diversity.  RQG, as currently presented, has really squashed that hard.  Now I'm sure that future supplements will open that up a lot, but it's just so much hot air right now.  (To be fair, RQ3 had to wait for the Genertela box set for many of its options -- but out of the box RQ3 gave you more than RQ2 ever did.  RQG is clearly superior to RQ2 in this regard, certainly, and in many ways superior to RQ3 too, but the new stuff we gain doesn't necessarily completely compensate for the stuff we lost.)

Related to the above, the complete absence of non-humans from the RQG book is ridiculous.  Not only does it mean you can't play anything other than a human, you can't even meet anything that isn't a human.  The bare minimum that should have been included is a short list of common animals, so your players could at least fight a rock lizard or something.  Nowhere in the RQG advertising does it tell the prospective new customer that "this is not a complete game, there's more stuff you need to buy before you can play anything interesting."  The treatment of non-human PCs is obviously worse in RQG (the basic rulebook), and similarly obviously worse than in RQ2, because that at least gave you stats for many non-humans, even if there was almost nothing related to character generation for them.  Add in the RQG Bestiary and we're at least back to the same as RQ3 -- no better, no worse; but RQ3 didn't force you to buy an extra book to get to that point.

Finally, I've not looked at the RQG magic rules in detail, so can't really comment extensively, other than I am not yet convinced that switching spell limits to CHA is a good idea (as touched on above).  I need to study and compare the rules sets more before I can come to any firm conclusions.  I don't really have any problems with the other changes to the magic systems that I've heard about, except maybe sorcery -- I really like the idea of the RQ3 manipulation skills but the overall execution was horribly flawed.  I think I miss the idea of familiars and how they're created, too (again, though, the actual rules were bad).  I suspect a lot more work may be required to develop the RQG sorcery rules further.

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

Here are some examples:

That's your list of "awful lot" of similarities?  I'll grant you the skill stuff.  The rest is pretty ephemeral.  The changes to INT/SIZ had become standard in just about every BRP-based game released post-RQ2, so saying that it's a "RQ3 change that was incorporated" is misleading at best.

I'm reminded of a situation from many years back when one major Australian car was released (with a new name) by a different manufacturer (under a business agreement that was presumably beneficial to both companies) the "new" car was not "just" a copy of the original, there were literally hundreds of differences -- and a list was provided to prove it.  The vast majority of those differences were things like "replaced company A's badge with company B's badge on front grill", "replaced company A's badge with company B's badge on boot", "replaced company A's badge with company B's badge on steering wheel", and so on and so on.

Yes, there's a bunch of changes equivalent to "badge updates" in RQG.  What I'm concerned about are the meaningful changes -- the ones that make RQG play differently to the previous versions.  I've already indicated that there are new things I'm totally in agreement with -- but they're new things.  What bothers me are the old things that went backwards.  There's far too many of those.

17 hours ago, Jeff said:

RQG has an awful lot of RQ3 rules - those rules that were originally developed as fixes for RQ2.

I wish someone would say what they are.  All I hear is people asserting that they exist, honest.  I can't see them.

17 hours ago, Jeff said:

But lots of other things were added to RQ3 that Greg (and Sandy) recommended jettisoning. I agree with Greg that overall RQ2 was better built than the final RQ3 - although there were specific Rule Fixes that ended up in RQ3 that were good (and they pretty much all show up in RQG). And RQG reflexes that perspective. 

While I have tremendous respect for Greg and Sandy, I think they were mistaken.

On 11/16/2019 at 7:46 AM, soltakss said:

RQG is a good mix of RQ2 and RQ3 rules with some better stuff added on.

Umm ... I keep looking and all I see are the good RQ3 rules that are missing.  I can't recall noticing any RQ3 rules of note in RQG, and certainly nothing that would constitute "a good mix".

On 11/16/2019 at 7:46 AM, soltakss said:

There is an awful lot of RQ3 rules in RQG, don't believe the lie that it is just RQ2+, it is really RQ2/3+.

It's not a lie from where I'm sitting.  What are these "awful lot" of RQ3 rules that you're referring to?  There's an entire thread (that I started) on "how much RQ3 is in RQG?" and the answer boiled down to "not a lot, and that was a deliberate choice".

On 11/16/2019 at 7:46 AM, soltakss said:

What extra rules are in RQG? Off the top of my head:

• Runes are used well 
• Passions are really good
• The Sacred Time Economy is excellent
• The Resistance Table is better than before
• The way that Runemagic and Rune Pools work is really good
• It is slightly harder to lose a limb in RQG than in RQ2/3
• Sorcery is redone, probably better than RQ3 but I am not sure, as I haven't really grasped them and won't until I play a Sorcerer
• Shamans are a lot better in RQG than in RQ2 /3.

I'm not disputing any of that.  The RQG core is still RQ2, and that's a fundamental problem with the game.  You can put nice sauce on a bad piece of meat, and it's still a bad piece of meat, even if it's edible.  Much better to have nice sauce on a good piece of meat.  Particularly when the chefs have trouble even cooking up a nice sauce ....

18 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

So your opinion of RQ 2 and RQ 2.5, er RQ G... we can put you down as undecided then hmmm?

Undecided?  Here's what I wrote in a thread about "favourite version of RQ" from a couple of years ago (before RQG was actually released, I think):

"I started with RQ2, which I liked just fine, but it always felt a little incomplete ... but I like my games crunchy and detailed.  So when RQ3 came along, offering a lot more "crunch" and (mostly) refining what I already liked about RQ2, it quickly became my favourite system."

The design of RQG was a backwards step -- unless, of course, you're really keen on reselling all of those old supplements.  It doesn't help that, having decided to just copy-and-paste the old rules, nobody (apparently) thought to actually compare the new rules that were being written to make sure that they actually meshed correctly ... leading to the current messy state.  (Of course if they'd started with RQ3 the new rules might be equally messy!)

18 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I will agree that RQ 3 is a better system (the best thing-possibly the only great thing, that AH did was to bring war game editing and organization to RQ, alas it ripped a part of the soul out the system when it removed Glorantha and then tried to tack it back on, I am sure that is half the reason they want to RQ 2 to try to find the soul.).

TAHGC didn't "remove" anything.  That was Chaosium's idea.  You can blame the production quality problems (flimsy paper, high price, etc.) of RQ3 on TAHGC, but all of the content problems (including the at-times terrible artwork!) were Chaosium.  All of the good content, though (including the rules improvements) was also Chaosium.  TAHGC deserve some fingers of shame being pointed at them, but make sure that they're being pointed for the right reasons.

(What I don't know is if the complete re-editing done by GW in the UK edition was approved by Chaosium, or if it was all their own work.)

18 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I wish to use a system I see stretching into the future and maturing well.

So do I.  My point is that we have yet to see any evidence whatsoever that it's going to come from today's Chaosium, so your "wish" is really just "hope".  There's nothing wrong with "hope" in itself, but (referring back to the OP) providing advice along the lines of "stick with RQG, because we hope it will be good one day" is perhaps less than ideal.  And again ... even if all of the current issues with RQG are perfectly resolved with forthcoming errata, the game may become playable but will still be inherently flawed compared to the alternatives that might have been.

14 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

RQG provides runes, passions and a Rune Magic system that actually works. 

Even though RQG badly needs a second edition made in less hurry, these bits are good enough to warrant using it.

You've touched on the really good bits of RQG (and I'd also add the new character generation stuff), but have not mentioned the horrors of, well, nearly everything else.  Fortunately, those good bits are really, really easy to incorporate back into RQ3.

On 11/11/2019 at 12:07 PM, Bill the barbarian said:

You mean the only problem with RQ G would be that it is based on RQ 2. Sounds okay to me. Again, opinion. I agree that the rules to RQ 3 were sound, but I see no reason that RQ G will not make it there.

I didn't say it was "the only problem".

As for RQG "getting there eventually", that would require some evidence that those rules are going anywhere -- evidence that is currently lacking.  (Granted that it's relatively early days yet, but that works against it as much as it works for it.)

Supposedly we're getting some sort of major errata/overhaul in the not-too-distant future?  If so, we'll see how that looks and then judge how well the development process has gone.  Even with a completely successful overhaul, though, we're still stuck with "advanced RQ2" as the core engine, and it just can't carry that load.  RQ3 is just that much better.  Given that any rules set will need lots of house rules to work for the games I want to play in, I'd rather begin with the superior starting point.

5 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Why do you think that they won’t be better.

Um, do you need me to re-post my previous reply?

3 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Alas, I have to agree with soltakss. Though the RQ G rules are not quite ready for prime time (that never stopped Belushi et al) they are great and weill be better than RQ 3 ( a system I loved) eventually.

Why do you believe that ("will be better eventually")?  Being completely tied to the RQ2 rules engine pretty much dooms RQG to be never more than "advanced RQ2", which is pretty darn limiting.

There are lots of good reasons to house-rule RQ3 in various ways, and several of those reasons come from RQG, but the core engine of the game is a lot sounder than the older rules.  (IMO, obviously.)

I just purchased my copy of RQG last week (and downloaded the PDF directly from Chaosium).  I have no idea what the version number of the document is (there is no statement that I can see other than "First Printing" on the indicia page) but the file is noted as "last modified 2018-10-17".

This version does include the "Second Printing Corrections" that were posted ... somewhere ... on this site, so I'm guessing that it's as up-to-date as any current printed copy.  Why the indicia was not updated I could not tell you.

Of course it does not incorporate (nor does the printed text) the clarifications in the RuneFixes - 03-07-18" document because ... reasons?  (You have to download this latter document separately, if you can find it -- it's not automatically part of the purchase.  Again, because ... reasons?)

What does "a season to study" mean?  During that season you're reading the book and doing nothing else?  Are you allowed to take breaks mid-season, go away, do something, come back and resume the study?  If a book requires multiple seasons do they have to be done consecutively?  If you're allowed mid-study breaks, is there a limit on how long a break can be?

22 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

It has not, there is nearly two full pages of material in Rune Fixes which would have had quite a significant effect on layout.

Huh ... so a significant chunk of errata for the rules, that's been around for nearly a year, and yet there's no way for a new purchaser of the game to find it on the website (unless they read literally every single page; as has been noted before, the Rune Fix page doesn't come up in searches, and why would a new purchaser even think that there might be something to search for?).

It doesn't matter that it's posted in places the "regulars" know about; it needs to be right there, in your face, on the product page, which is the first and only page you would expect a customer to look for this kind of thing.

17 hours ago, Jason Durall said:

It was meant for the GM Screen Pack as a special handout, but for some reason between the multiple editors, two layout people, and production handoffs it got overlooked.

It will go into the pack for future printings and I'm seeing if Rick can add it to the .pdf version for everyone who's bought that. 

Has the content of the Rune Fixes file been incorporated into the most recent hardcover printing?  If not, are there plans to do that for future printings?

(I.E., if you have just recently purchased the slipcase set, or plan to in the near future, is the Rune Fixes file redundant?)

Victrix make a range of 28mm plastic figures kits (i.e., assembly required) for various ancients armies.  I don't own any myself at this time but I've seen them on display and each pack seems to offer quite a variety of options (different poses and weapons combinations) and of course for use in role-playing a bit of mixing and matching could create some quite interesting display figures IMO.

https://www.victrixlimited.com/collections/ancients

12 hours ago, Jeff said:

This is it gang! If you don't have the RQ Core Rules, the Bestiary, and the GM Pack and Adventures Book what precisely are you doing on this forum?

Playing older, better versions of the game?

Actually, still saving my sheckels to buy the books.  Spare cash is at a premium these days, unfortunately.

Individuals (player characters) can always vary from the norm.  That's part of what makes them unique.