StephenMcG

Stephen's principle: dont rely on players remembering stuff or taking their own notes. I produce a bunch of index cards for games I play. Each index card has information on people, places and things that they have encountered or heard about. Each card is on the table on later occasions, available for players to look through and annotate. This builds up as a resource to the game and helps players engage with the details that have been introduced into the game.

yeah, it depends on the player. If we play it out, it is very possible the dwarf dies anyway. This way the dwarf goes out in a heroic way. If that is cool with the player, then great, if not, we look at other options. Obviously, if the dwarf character dies we think hard about what the player next brings to the table or whether we think about the next adventure be about the party travelling to the Hero Plane to recover the spirit of their friend....whatever happens though should, if possible, be heroic and cool.

Stephen's Principle: do not allow the dice to rob your game of a cool moment. If a moment occurs in your game that would be cool and memorable and one or two tragic rolls mean that RAW the moment cannot happen, then negotiate with the players to allow the cool moment but with consequences. For example, it is the denoument of the scenario and the Flintnail Dwarf calls on his powers of stasis to hold the gate closed against the marauding trolls while the rest of the party secure the escape of the royal family. The dice don't go well and he fails while the trolls critical. What should then happen is that the trolls get in and among the royal family but that feels like too much of a failure for what should have been a heroic moment. You then pull out of play. Chatting with the players I offer them four options. 1 - the Doors blow open and the trolls flood in. The dwarf recognises his failure but remembers the stories of the troll invasion of Pavis and calls on his ancestors to collapse the roof of the buildings around the, sacrificing his life but securing the escape of the rest of the group along with the Royal Family. I will allow this as a fait accompli if the player of the dwarf character is content to sacrifice his character. 2 - the Doors blow open and the trolls flood in (gotta be true to the dice!). The group recognise that their survival is secondary to the Royal Family. They turn and sell themselves dearly to give the Royal Family escape. They are captured and ransomed back to their temple (no need to play that out) with damage both physical and spiritual that we can work out later. 3 - the Doors blow open and the trolls flood in. The party turn to fight and we game it out (this is risky in a game like RQ) 4 - the Doors blow open and the trolls flood in. The players they come up with something else cool.

Until I use the multiple parries in an active game I am going to be skeptical about this. I did not want to pollute the two weapons, multiple parries thread and so thought I would spin off a new one. Does the multiple parries rule not put us in a strange place with regard to combat, there are pretty strict rules about multiple attacks etc but an increasingly relaxed set of rules about parrying. Surely the same justification for multiple parries in a round work equally well, with the same declining chance of success, for multiple attacks?? I anticipate this conversation with my group - I would welcome it being rehearsed here first... 🙂 Stephen

The other issue with a 2H weapon over sword and shield is the damage inflicted on whatever is used to parry. If you have a weapon and shield and your shield is ruined - you can still attack. If your 2H weapon is ruined then you cant parry OR attack. Of course, this is where the bastard sword shines - as you lose your shield, move to use it 2H and retain your combat effectiveness... Stephen

I find that, ultimately, take your lead. If you refer to them in joke-y ways and have funny names for them, then they will have no respect. if you do it seriously and have serious stories with ducks then they will become part of the tapestry. We have a middle path where there are joke-y names but the ducks have different ones for themselves and the players are understanding that there is a steely interior to the feathered jokes that they see wandering round. At some point they will come to the tragedy of the curse and have to think about what happens (they are adventuring round Pavis, are River Voices and the Agimori became a Zola Fel priest due to geas placed on them after a dodgy DI). There is a duck character who is about to become the first Champion of Pavis and I think that ducks are going to be core to the thwarting of the Lunars in the cradle scenario, led by the new Champion of Pavis....which will lead to a Lunar pogrom of ducks and hopefully a redemption when the Priest of Zola Fel and the Champion of Pavis heroquest to save the ducks and their reputation... Might be two years hence when I get there.... 🙂 Stephen

If only that were true, NPCs might point and laugh, their friends will be asking them why they wasted their clacks on the most expensive shield...

Might be a cultural thing but there are very few starting characters that will use three times as much economic resource for the same game effect... 🙂 Players are very goal oriented, especially in the character creation element of the game (including the shopping phase...). As few NPCs will be shopping it seems odd to include the three types unless they think the GM is going to severely restrict the availability of the cheaper types under certain circumstances. Stephen

I am reading the rules now and, from that (admittedly less than careful read) you can shield bash to knock people back, you can do an aimed shot and I think you can disarm (not sure about that). Am I wrong?? Of course, the first rule that I have read that I know I will ignore (being the RQ2 lovie that I am) will be rolling to see if I can cast battle magic. I want my simple spells just to cast. Being a POWx5 roll to cast a spell reinforces the need to have high power right from the start, not only can you not cast many spells in a day - you may not even be able to cast them when you have the power to do so... Stephen

Agreed on the difficulty of switching between editions as compared to switching between systems. 🙂 I dont think that there needs to be a guide/document etc. It would have been nice to have some designer notes talking about some of the decisions made (peeking behind the design curtain!) but I think the series of videos that are being done would be an excellent place to have one focussed on the elements used from across the RQ family of games. I also think that, becuase of the number of (very different) decisions made in previous editions and the diverse experience of those that might buy the game, the writing of the rules would have benefitted (in a few places) by being a bit more explicit in the rules utilised in RQG. I am old enough and ugly enough to rip out the things I want and add them to the polyglot of rules that I use in my Glorantha game and that is much easier when I am running the game for the friends I have gamed with for over 20 years. A less experienced/confident GM and/or a new group or a convention game and things get harder. Stephen

This has not been addressed I think. In RQ2 you had to buy BladeSharp 1 before you could buy BladeSharp 2 etc, and the costs racked up. the mechanical differences I have noted so far with battle magic are: the lower costs of spells; the lack of caps on variable spells; the need to roll POWx5 to cast a spell; points of magic remembered capped by CHA rather than INT; those not in memory have to be re-learned rather than having to meditate to bring them “back into memory”; and, they only last 10 rounds rather than 25. I was going to ask about the accumulation cost as well, nothing explicit to say how variable spells work. stephen

Steve Long did it for the switch between 5th edition and 6th edition Hero System. It was not every detail but a broad sweep of the design decisions and changes made. I think that there is a decent need for a designers overview and the guys are doing a lot of work in introducing the new system, this would fit right in. I think that not limiting variable spells is a broad change worth noting (along the lines of : we decided to remove the caps on variable spells - it was trialled extensively in RQ3 and seemed to work). There are so many versions and things going round, something rounding up the design decisions on where to break away from RQ2 as was would be an interesting read - there must have been a lot of hard decisions on how far to make it recognisable as RQ2 but enough to make it a modern take on the classic.

I am just about to read the magic section of RQG. I am expecting most interesting change to be round that. I am a character sheet fan. I see character sheets as the players GUI to the game. I am not sure game designers give them enough love.

the group is long standing but they have not played much Runequest and almost no Glorantha.

I wrote this piece, which my friend published on his blog. It details how I have come to run RuneQuest, with other things ported in. I am sure RQG will change this even more but I am more likely to adapt this to new information received than move to a pure RQG game. In the event you are interested, you can click here to read it. Stephen

You know, as a GM I love having the heft of material behind me that I can pick up and use as I want to. I make it clear to the players that, if we are in Glorantha, it is my Glorantha and I will not entertain arguments about points of detail (unless, as is eminently possible) I have contradicted myself. Just because something is printed in one of the myriad of books, magazines and online sites about Glorantha does not make it true for my game. My preference, in that kind of situation, is to take it in game. "Who told Robart that the Governor of Pavis in 1621 was Duke Raus?" That way the misinformation is part of the game rather than an out of game distraction. I can lead the party through a very small bit of exposition that lets them know who is really in charge. As long as you have established this simple thing, there is nothing for the 'expert' to fall back on, you have invalidated all of his authoritative sources, though he can rely on broad knowledge of the setting, he cannot rely on specific items of information. Make the history and detail a positive rather than a scary edifice of things to learn... Stephen

It does (there is more in the P&BR compendiums by Ian Thompson??) but I was looking for more (what can I say, I am greedy!) Again, I am simply trawling for homebrew spells that people have used, especially if they have been popular with players or provided them with difficult choices. RQ is, IMO, one of the key resource management games for magic - you have so many magic points and so much INT. What spells do you have ready and when do you use them. it is one of the things that keeps the game's feet firmly on the ground. Stephen

As you say - coherent worked out stuff comes from developers. I was simply wondering if anyone has added to the published material in their own campaign that I might steal. I have most of the material published since 1978, that I periodically flick through and a reasonable number of the TotRM and Tradetalks to peruse as well. I think I am fine with eyeballing things like a 2D6 disruption. What I have never come across is, for example, a spell that reduces the strike rank of a combatant, or one that hinders the effectiveness of incoming missile fire. I have an idea for a spell for sages that makes opponents target more dangerous people first. That might be like a reduced invisibility or more like a befuddle. This would allow sages to be on the battlefield but with less danger as long as their colleagues remain up and fighting, it would also be negated the first time the did damage. To be honest, I think I can work things out - I am just lazy enough to ask folk for things they have used before sitting down to do all this for myself. It is also useful to have folk that might have worked a set out for particular cults, my lot are not your usual RQ cults but more Pavis based - so Zola Fel, Pavis, Flintnail, Lankhor Mhy and a modded Lanbril cult that appeared in Hearts in Glorantha. They really are not heavy on the usual sources of combat magic. Stephen

wasn't that what we did with HeroQuest?? :-)

I am bought into the whole thing, specialist magic from cults, expanding (even extensively) from the base rulebook (a masterpiece of brevity and setting integration). What I am lacking is anyone giving me examples of what has been done. I think the easy bit is coming up with spells that can do things, the difficult thing is assigning such spells to appropriate cults. It would be too easy for most of the really useful combat stuff to be assigned to Orlanth, Humakt and Yelmalio when actually it is the other cults that need something to keep them alive in dangerous situations while the combatants get on with killing broo... :-) Any takers? Is there no experience of this out there for me to steal wholesale and pretend it is mine??!!? Stephen

yeah, worried about both such things. I hated RQIII sorcery.... 🙂 I am thinking of adding in additional spells that are only available from particular cults.I need to think of which ones would be most likely to have priests heroquest to "find" the right kinds of magic.

I have been running a modded RQII game for my group which has been going great. One of the queries was why battle magic was so limited. An example they gave was BladeSharp - add chance to hit and damage by expending magical power. Why was there no battle magic reducing SR and adding damage, or reducing chance to hit but upping damage delivered. Any number of things. Anyone experimented with new battle magic spells like this. I could come up with stuff but is nice to know if things have been tried and evaluated... Stephen