StephenMcG

I like death moments to be special in some way. I liked Hero Wars using the Mortally Wounded condition rather than Dead. It allowed me to talk to the players about what they wanted to do. I have agreed for a last effort that allowed the dying warrior to rise, hold off enemies while his comrades escaped. I have agreed for a character to be healed (taken to dwarves to replace his heart - chest wound- with a Heart of Stone). I have agreed for access to healing magics for a price. These moments should be epic if possible, the loss of a character is always mitigated if it comes with a cool memory or story.

Just as a thought. I have been playing this game since the early 80s and thought that rolling 2D6+6 for SIZ and INT was an RQ2 thing, u til I checked and found it to be an RQ3 thing. The game I am playing is cherry-picking a number of different bits and pieces from previous editions. I was wondering how other folks are playing their Runequest. The key differences in my game are that I use keywords, like from Hero Wars, and don't require a dice roll for casting spirit magic. Every character comes with three keywords (for example, initiate of Humakt) that are classed like the skills in King of Dragon Pass: Fair (25%), Good (40%), Very Good (55%), Excellent (70%), Renowned (85%), Heroic (100%+). The idea is that any skill related to the keyword will be at the level of the keyword. If you use broadsword successfully you can note it for improvement and, if successful, note it under the keyword at an increased chance. If Initiate of Humakt is very good, then you can raise the keyword to Excellent if five individual skills under the keyword are advanced to 70%. I allow orphan skills outside the keywords which can be brought together with those from a keyword to create a new keyword as the character evolves and changes. I find this a more interesting way of managing the skill list and allowing players to be a bit more narrative in their gameplay. It is not unusual for characters to have skills like "Make impressive entrance" and "skulk". 🙂 The auto-cast is there simply to reduce thenumber of dice rolls and to make spirit magic more routine. Stephen

I like the idea of Ostrich carriages - birds pulling carriages would be more exotic, even for Pavis.

I almost had to burn the village down to get them to pick up their weapons. In the end it was having one of the local bandits dishonour the name of a PCs mum, that got them all riled up....had to learn to think like a teenage boy...

This worries me. I remember trying to run a bit of a sandbox D&D game for some 14 year old game newbies. I set up the game and characters, let them loose in a medium sized town and 45 minutes they had all taken gainful employment in various establishments, completely ignoring the "dangerous sounding" adventure hints but realising they would need to afford rent and food. This would facilitate that on a larger scale!

Baz Stevens (of the Smart Party podcast) is doing a podcast on him exploring Glorantha through the Runequest Starter Box. He has a new podcast called Runequest Year Zero through which he is detailing his experience. He has just tweeted looking for 101 cool things about Glorantha (hence me posting here rather than the Runequest forum). Have a look and add more cool things.... Stephen

Going to listen to the podcast on my bike ride this morning. Not run RQG much so far but I have disliked the passions etc, not as a concept but on how they work at the table. They add so much rolling for sometimes odd outcomes. I am inclined to change the mechanic so that you invoke a passion, get a bonus based on the percentage and get a tick in EITHER the skill or the passion, if the passion inspired skill is successful. Narrative aims are covered off here and dice rolls are avoided. The bodyguard always loves leika but some are more inspired by that than others....

Yeah, if you have a pro account, steal David's stuff rather than mine! It is MUCH prettier. And it can do more complex stuff. No brainer. If you don't have a pro account then please do root around and ask Questions.

@RandomNumberI play a variation of the rules and have been pushing things onto a sandbox site created for users here. You would be welcome to ask to join, steal what's there and ask for tips on doing other stuff. The character sheet us great but ties you into rules as presented. It is not hugely difficult to make roll20 do most of what you want...

When I read the question my immediate thought was a rare form of light elemental. You take damage when engulfed and it should be able to enlarge itself to engulf others...though doing so might reduce its coherence and cause it to dissipate. A radiation elemental would be invisible to everyone but a light or darkness cultist and those light cultists would have a natural immunity to the elemental... Stephen

I have six of those, may have to invest in more. 🙂 When I read that there are heroquests inside - I find it difficult to keep my credit card in my pocket...

I took the plunge with Roll20 as there are things I wanted to change. You can get a lot done with very little knowledge, what you lose is some clever functionality and almost all the polish! The character sheets make everything look good...

So the window has shifted from hit parry tedium to one side pulling out the big guns first? It was too easy to die in RQ before, does this not make it even more likely? I also presume everyone has a repair matrix to buff their weapons etc? And the first cult to discover the Sword Protection battle magic spell is going to find themselves with a lot of adherents... 🙂 Stephen

This depends on your group and its tolerances but broo are disgusting and their method of procreation particularly so. My players have a visceral hatred of them. If your group are open to body horror and want to divert onto a different route, the broo could simply ask to be implanted in one of its enemies. This would be Alien-like, the larva inside, the PC tainted by chaos, a ticking tome-bomb before it claws its way out. Is there a solution? Can the PC be cleansed? Is there a heroquest, or series of quests? Hints of lost knowledge, or ancient sage that might solve the problem. In the meantime, is there an effect of carrying the larva? Might that chaos taint also provide a bit of chaos feature, triggered by spending a magic point? Will they realise those magic points go straight to Mallia? Stephen

Yeah,have not really moved over to RQG yet, magic is always a wild card in this stuff. 🙂

Many folk criticised RQ2 because early stage characters missed so much. 25% chance to hit is going to miss a lot. I didn't mind that, what I hated much more was when attack rolls were in that 70-90% space. You were almost always hitting but almost always getting parried, simply waiting for the lucky impale or critical. I was wondering whether there is a place for advantage in RQ combat. If you hit and get parried, one of you will have rolled higher than the other. (or, early on, if you both miss, one of you will have rolled lower) That person gains advantage in the next round. The question would be what advantage meant and what you could do with it. My thoughts are, if you gain advantage, the GM passes you a token. You can use that next round to, for example, improve skill by 10%, add 2 damage to a successful attack, alter the hit location dice roll by 2, move your opponent 2m, including a 90 degree change of dancing. Not quite sure if they are all equivalents. 🙂 You can accumulate advantage, using as many tokens as you have to affect the combat. The problem is, that if you do not use it, and your opponent gains advantage in a combat round, they can, instead of taking an advantage token, make you discard all your advantage. You can only gain one advantage in a round, either through hitting or parrying. I don't want to add too much bureaucracy but I thought this might provide some strategic element when many rounds simply go through a hit parry, hit parry, hit parry stalemate and emulate, to a degree the ebb and flow of a swordfight. Thoughts? Stephen

I have been playing an RQ2 game that used HeroQuest versions of the PCs when they hit the HERO Plane. It is all based in the Big Rubble and so there are plenty of spots where the players transition quite easily, sometimes unexpectedly. I tend to do the RQ game until I narrate something unusual, a fish talking to them, a cloud taking the form of a rune or simply walking through a portal where they notice shadowy figures around each of them. It is then that I hand out the HeroQuest character sheets, they know the game has changed and their play style needs to as well. They had a free-flowing dip into a Zorak Zoran heroquest where they were supplemented by their Grey Company predecessors and it got wild, riding the statue to Robcradle and kicking Kygor Litor in the belly. Their ability to interact with trolls has plummeted. They had a much smaller HeroQuest, trying to find the identity of a Lunar Agent which was more puzzle-y and very stage focused that they failed at, with little consequence. I use the Heroquests to change the pace of the game, introduce new elements, get round obstacles that would be near impossible in skill focused RuneQuest. I miss having a huge library of heroquests to riff through for particular purposes but have gotten a but better at simply making stuff up. I do buy everything that says it contains heroquesrs in it though (are you listening Chaosium? It us an open door to my wallet). Stephen

I used to have a conditional bonus to magical items, they enhanced the skill of the user but only advanced at half the usual rate (until the enhancement was paid for.

Oof! This is a serious upgrade to what I was suggesting but one that I might consider for an upgraded villain, or upgraded item. 🙂 What I value is the pointer to the enchantment rules and then see if I can find a similarly powered spell. That should give me an idea of how powerful the effect is. Thank you. Stephen

Well, if we are talking straight decapitation then I agree. If we are talking just a neck hit, then I don't. 🙂 Especially if it is simply a normal hit rather than special damage. In the hands of a high skill swordsman, doing an aimed blow, has a 31% of doing a special inside 4 rounds. I am essentially not even doubling the chance of that special and, in this case, that special would get special damage (slash in the case of a broadsword). I was thinking that a parry would indeed be possible. The spec you are talking about is David's not mine. I like David's suggestion but I think it us indeed a step up in power. Am going to look at Bless Thunderstone to see what I think about judging something on that level. I had neglected thinking about enchantments, which folk are right to point me towards. The point of my mail however was trying to gauge the relative power of a sword that gives an auto head hit rather than special damage. I now have several idwas on building vorpal swords of varying power but no idea of what the relative power is. Also, you have no idea of the abilities of the opponent, nor those abilities in relation to the players. I have managed to have this campaign running for three or four years and only killed one character so far. I think I am doing OK.

I am thinking of throwing in a magic item in the next game I run. The villain has made a vorpal sword using Thanatari magic. I am conflicted about how to make it work. I know that it holds magic, POW was poured into it, the swordsman choose to activate using a native point which uses up some if the stored POW and it remains active for 15 minutes, like a rune spell. What happens then? My first inclination was to say that, when activated, special successes gain an automatic head location rather than a slash effect. But really that is just the equivalent of waiting until SR12 and taking a hit chance penalty. Should it be on top of the slash damage? Should there be two POW costs, they may not know they both also inflict INT damage that automatically is dedicated to Thanatar... Essentially I want them to think hard about tackling this guy. I want them to explore combat options like disarm etc. or using other tactics. I also hope they get the sword with some magic left in it, which they can use (risking chaos taint) and potentially being tempted to deal with devil if they want it recharged. This will be their first potential compromise, chais until now has been the foul side of gorp and broo. Thoughts? Stephen

I am inclined, when not interested in investing more time in the contest that has similar result outcomes, to adjudicate who wins a contest by either who succeeded by most, or failed by least. In all cases, the lower the roll the better. I do like the advice on making a tie a feature rather than a bug though. 🙂 After all, contests are often at the heart of a game and the more interesting these can be, the better.

I reckon these chat menus could quite easily provide a character sheet on the screen for play purposes, especially if the macros were built to call out elements of the character sheet which would be used to maintain all of the detail and when you want to go look at the character as a whole instead of playing it at the table... Of course, my menus are horrid to look at but I think a bit of CSS magic for those with that knowledge would make a huge difference....

Been working on my idea of banks of macros. I can now create sets of buttons in the chat menu. So a macro that pushes buttons for all the characteristics into the chat bar which can be clicked to make a roll. Only made it happen for INT and POW, but the principle is there. You can make two characteristics appear per row.

I loved the idea of this rule but it failed hard in my group due to the admin burden of tracking it round by round...I still pander to the idea that I will try it with them again.