DavetheLost

I play mostly Pirates & Dragons. I would love to see the rest of the world beyond the Dragon Isles get further development, but I understand that is not in the cards.

I really like the idea of the three book approach for OQ3. I have the OQ Basics book in hard copy and love the format. The one thing I personally am not wild about in the OQ3 proposal is eliminating the three approaches to magic. I really like that OQ has three distinct and different sorts of magic, almost four if you cont the demon summoning of Crucible of Dragons as its own thing. I have never liked that in D&D all magic is really the same. The only difference between clerical magic and wizardly magic is in the spell lists. Otherwise all the mechanics are exactly the same. This makes me question why even have Druids, Magic Users, Clerics, and Illusionists as separate classes with separately delineated spell lists. Why not just have one spell casting class? If. setting is going to have different sources of magic I think they should be differentiated mechanically. I have played and enjoyed games where all magic is the same and comes from a common source. Unified magic can work well. But it needs to made part of the setting that it all comes from the same source and works in the same way. Not the priests get their magic from the gods, the shamans bind spirits, and the sorcerers study arcane secrets of intellectual and formulaic magic, but the mechanics are all the same. If you decide to unify OpenQuest magic into a single system perhaps the original three systems could make an appearance in OpenQuest Companion volume of optional rules and expansions as Blindluke suggests above. Also a reminder that you were going to remove "Flex" and "Set" from the category of "spears", but keep the "Long Spear" special rule for long spears. A rules clarification and streamlining that will help update things.

My deepest condolences to Greg's family and friends. I knew him only through his work, but that has brought me years of pleasure. He will be greatly missed.

Pirates & Dragons from Cakebread and Walton ticks a lot of your boxes. It does feature magic and fantasy elements pretty heavily though.

Wishing Ken a quick recovery from surgery. And keep your head on Peter. P&D at Cangames might tempt me to go again. I'm only 90 minutes away.

This is happy news. I saw some early mentions of Green Hell, loved the concept and have been completely unable to find it since getting into OQ. Now I know why.

Thanks Newt. That does make more sense now. Long spears and certain polearms can be set to recieve a charge with a change stance action, and a change stance action to go back to using them for melee. And they are all two-handed. Short stabbing spears are one-handed and cannot be set to recieve a charge, although they can be thrown. Lances, obviously cannot be set. Flex for spears made a certain amount of sense for medium spears that you might use with one or two hands, but no issue from me with dropping it. Makes things simpler.

In the weapons tables the group of spears have the characteristics of flex and set. The long spear has the characteristics of 2H and LS. I assume that the characteristic of 2H for the longspear overrides the flex for the spear group and the longspear requires two hands to use. My question is about the LS characteristic. It states that it allows the weapon to be used as a longspear and to be set against a charge, with a "Change Stance" action required to change its usage. Does this mean that unlike other weapons with the "Set" characteristic a longspear requires changing stance to switch from using it set against a charge to using it to thrust at an opponent? It's not quite clear to me what the game mechanical differences between longspears and shortspears are. I understand that pole weapons are two-handed, and can be set against a charge. I presume that they require a change stance action to set or to return to using as a melee weapon after setting them, is this correct?

I am quite happy imagining that Gloranthan bronze has somewhat different properties to our real world bronzes. I see the word "bronze" as being the closest English translation and closest Earth metal in properties.

I would hope that a GM and players could come to quick agreement as to what is or is not an "attack spell".

you are right, I was specifically thinking of the case of a single archer. Dodging multiple arrows is not going to happen. Nor is dodging an arrow from an archer you can't see. A nice big shield is definitely your best defense.

RQ has always had a realistic combat system. To me this is a feature, not a bug. I can attest from personal experience that one good hit is all it takes to knock you out. I did SCA heavy combat and even though it was "just" bruising damage it was not unheard of for people to quit the field after taking a heavy blow, especially on a lightly armoured body part. I also had the joy of dropping an axe through the end of my thumb, half severing it. That wound took my hand out of commision for weeks, and it was a small wound. See also bow hunting. One hit from a broadhead arrow will drop a big game animal. A deer or elk is about man-sized and you cannot convince that all those hunters are scoring critical hits every time. A replica Viking spear or Dane axe is easy to drive through flesh and bone. We tried it last year on a roadkilled carcass donated for the experiment. Cleaving ribs is easy for an average strength and size man. In my experience and opinion weapons don't do enough damage. Armour values relative to weapons values in RQ are about right. Weapon damage relative to hit points could actually be higher for a realistic game. Getting injured hurts, a lot. Much of the initial shock and trauma heals fairly quickly, if it doesn't kill you. But there will be residual stiffness, reduced mobility, etc. That an RQ character can actually take more than one injuring weapon hit and still fight is pretty damn heroic. Dodging a missile attack is not all that far fetched. I would assume it means that rather than standing there like a static target for teh full round you are moving. A dodge would indicate you are actively trying to throw off the archer's aim. Again a dodge is an abstraction of a number of a factors in play into a single die roll. In this case it is everything making the shot more difficult that the shooter has no control over. It makes sens to me, especially as you can see where the archer is aiming and see when he is preparing to release as well as the relese itself. An alternative might be to apply a penalty to the archer's Ranged Combat skill to reflect the difficulty of shooting at a moving target...

I have Z. I took a look at 600 page pdf, closed the window and never looked back. The old school art is nice, some of the ideas are good, but 600 pages is way beyond my limit these days. I might go half that for rules and setting. That assumes a fair bit of white space, illustrations, decent sized font, and core rules simple enough that I don't need to open the book often during play.

Interesting take away for me is that in OpenQuest, and, at least, the 2006 edition of Mongoose RuneQuest Fanatiscism is specifcally called out as applying to melee attacks only. But in Chaosium RuneQuest it applies to any attack.

Specifically for the Crucible of the Dragons setting, but also applies in general. When starting off new characters to do you allow them to pick from the whole list of Battle Magic spells or only specific ones available from their hometown, cult, etc? I am letting my players choose from the full list for initial spells, but subsequent spells they will need to find a teacher for, and that will limit the list. Some spells will be very hard to find a teacher who knows the spell, and that is before getting them to be willing to teach it. I think it will make for interesting roleplaying opportunities while also allowing players to have the spells that are most important to their vision of their characters.