sdavies2720

I only just now (that it's too late) realized that MRQII could be pronounced as "Murky." Better voicing than "Burp." Steve

Broo & Barf

And there are subtleties of MRQII that change the feel: For instance if the attacker crits on his attack, but the defender parries successfully then no damage will get through. The attacker still gets a Combat Maneuvre for his greater level of success, but choosing "ignore armor" isn't going to help him (0 damage getting through is still 0 damage). The attacker should pick something like "Disarm" or "Trip" or whatever. There are subtleties here that I like, but that are definitely different from traditional RQ & BRP. Steve

I have one player whose refrain is, "I was told there would be no math," said in his best whiny-student-before-a-test voice. Steve

LOL! I can't tell you how often this happens to me. I read something, I read it again, I think I know what it says. Then someone asks a question about what's written and I realize I've still misread it! Steve

Try it late Friday night, after a long week of work and several beers...the game comes to a screeching halt Actually, it's not a big deal, but just having one threshold is working smoothly for us, and the combat maneuvres (CM) are really working well for my players. Talk about coming to a screeching halt -- we typically have to wait a couple of minutes while the player drools over his CM options before deciding which one to apply! Steve

While I wish that Mongoose hadn't used the RQ name without committing to it for longer, I've lived through this before and my campaign will survive. I wish I really knew what killed MRQII in the market, but honestly the problem is too many smoking guns, not too few: MRQ1 was...not good. MRQII I think is brilliant, but the first two supplements had problems (understatement!), lingering fan disgruntlement over past Mongoose performance, the RQ name, and treatment during the MRQ1 "playtest," too many competing variants of the same game (BRP, oop RQ, MRQII, OpenQuest, CoC, others), connection to 2nd age Glorantha, and a shrinking RPG market. It feels like this should be a table that also includes "roll twice", "roll three times", and "roll four times" on the table. Steve

LOL, I think he meant the "RQ name" and the "Second Age setting" either singly or combined. Given the chaotic heritage here, I can't begin to imaging how a consortium could be successful. Steve

My fuzzy memory of one of the original versions let you train up to 25%, or 50%, or 75%, but that crossing over the threshold required experience. So you had to be field tested at least a couple of times in your career. But maybe that was a houserule along the way -- too many variants, names, and years to remember clearly. Steve

I'm more or less the same. I don't have all the preceding games, but then I switched to MRQII for my current campaign, but still bought the hardcover BGB. I just don't want it to go into hibernation again.

I used an alternate system that used fewer points for a reroll and had a bunch of other uses for points. Players usually horded them to make sure they had enough points in case they got hit badly. Fumbles that matter only occurred once every few sessions, so they would often just burn the points to make them go away.

If you have fallen in love with MRQII, run it. I doubt that other systems will match that. Having GMed almost every version since RQ1, I find that it's hard for me to remember which was which (and even sometimes difficult to read what's written instead of what I expect to be there -- I think some playtesters expressed similar challenges). With only two systems to keep track of, if I were you I'd use the one I love (MRQII) as reference, and just remember which things in the BGB are different. The BGB is really flexible and covers all the ground you are asking about. In some areas that breadth means that it is not as deep -- but it's actually a simple system and the coverage is at least good everywhere. I ultimately went with MRQII for my campaign because I was running fantasy (which MRQII was specifically written for) and I could just hand the core book to players. I didn't have to give them the book and a list of options and modules that we are using or not. But, I just bought the hardcover BGB and it's beautiful. My fantasy campaign is pretty high powered at this point, so I'm continually going back to it for power ideas and different options. And I miss the Characteristic rolls so much, I just use them ad-hoc when it's appropriate (e.g. a hero is tripped in the pub while carrying drinks and the player asks, "is there any way I can fall so the beer spills on the Fop at the table?" Agility check handles this easily). One advantage of the similarity of the systems (and past works too) is materials can be used across systems without a lot of work. Good luck with your new campaign! Steve

Moved over to the Mongoose forum, where the same ground is being covered by that community. Steve

This is where things ended up in our game: Every fumble was negated. This was an outgrowth of too many Fate points, and rerolls being one of the most powerful uses. We never had more than 2-3 used in a session, but they were inevitably either for re-rolls or to reduce damage effects. I've rectified by reducing the number of things for which Fate can be used, correspondingly reducing the number of points awarded, but making Fate more powerful in those situations (we're essentially using the MRQII system now) . It was a new change as of two games ago, and so far the results are good. Steve

My experience is it's much easier to get these meta-systems wrong than it is to get them right. I just abandoned one because I realized that the players managed their points so that they basically could never fail. And that's just no fun for anyone! Steve

Mine is printed correctly.

It is a beautiful book. I bought it because even though I'm running MRQII at this point, I really like having all of BRP's rules in one place. And this is so much nicer than the softcover version (not that those weren't nice too). Steve

I'm basing this off a city I built for my campaign, which has a mishmash of elements. One of the advantages of writing for gamers instead of a historical journal is you can pick and choose. So, for example, the city is inward-focused, so many of the blocks are full side-to-side with buildings facing a courtyard -- that's more common in the middle east than in say medieval england. But it's a temperate climate, so protection from cold and rain are going to be more important than heat avoidance. There's a big river that periodically floods, more like Sumer or Babylon in design than London. So my hope is to provide a practical "do this, do that" level of tutorial for a fantasy early medieval city, while pointing out alternate decisions and styles along the way...assuming that Profantasy wants me to continue writing these! Steve

LOL. I hadn't seen the connection, but you're right that it's clear -- especially with the temple mount. I'm using the process (and some maps) I used for one of the cities in my campaign. There's something buried deep and forgotten beneath the city. There's actually a passage that leads down to it, but it is protected by magic that turns away people who are not consciously looking for it. The players haven't picked up the clues to start looking, so the compulsion magic appears to still be working Steve

Somewhat off-topic for BRP, but of interest to RPGers: Profantasy posted my first two installments of an article on mapping cities. You can find it on their blog at http://www.profantasy.com/rpgmaps/. I have a whole series er um, mapped out, but I'm sure that a few comments or traffic will help them decide to go forward. The articles feature Profantasy's Campaign Cartographer, but a lot of the information is about where cities grow, where to start in laying out a city, that sort of thing, which is useful no matter what you use to make maps. Steve

I've asked my FLGS to order a copy, so hopefully they will start to get channel buzz as well.

What's cool is they found out they only need one starting character with different pictures!

RQ has always been short on 'official' magical items. I think this was in part deliberate, to distance itself from D&D's item fixation (e.g. the tendency to define characters by their items, "I'm a fourth level hobbit bard with bracers of dexterity"), and part a reflection of the rules: Items that 'just' imbue a spell are great. In addition to just a roster of items, I'd love general magic item tips. Here are a couple of mine: If using Hit Locations, give out armor piecemeal -- it reinforces the unique mechanic and makes characters look like the scrappy survivors they are Have most starting items powered by the wielder's POW/Magic points. For more powerful items, think about where the power comes from. Steve

LOL, I think that's the first time I've heard of someone switching to BRP to make combat MORE predictable! Steve

LOL. And to make it scientific, we should run the test, what? maybe 10 times?