Mankcam

The BGB allowed for extra defensive actions at a culminative -30% modifier. I think I prefer RQG's culminative -20% penalty, I think it may work slightly better.

Reminding us that bronze remains the default metal works well with these parry rules. Historically alot of time was spent bashing bronze weapons, armour, and shields back into place after a battle, so armaments regularly losing HP emulates this well. The advent of iron (and later steel) was a big step forward in real world history. Likewise in Glorantha this will be similar, with the durability factor making arms and armour crafted from ur-metal (equiv to iron) much more valuable than such forged with hu-metal (equiv to bronze), with better AP etc

Cool, yes thanks Jason for explaining, that all seems pretty clear to me

Yeah this always felt counter-intuitive to me, so I'm not going to use that, it certainly feels illogical for my troupe. So I'm quite unhappy that RQ is doing this, but yeah, no big deal. We'll likely use the CoC 7E approach where you have an extra success level (1/2 skill), then the notion of having 'the best success level wins' is a much more viable way to go

RD100 Companion sounds good, and this Secret SciFi Project sounds intriguing. I also hope to see a RD100 Core Rules in hardcover one day perhaps?

In the 80s/90s we mainly played using RQ3 strike ranks, so we only had 10 strike ranks per melee round, not 12 like RQ2. Most times I have played Glorantha in the last decade I have used the BGB for my core mechanic rules (just added RQ magic, etc), and we used the BGB's default DEX rounds initiative system. So I'm a bit hazy on the Strike Rank system now, however I don't mind the concept. Returning to it certainly feels very 'RuneQuesty'. In RQ I always thought you could make any number of actions (or attacks) per melee round, just as long as as you acted on your SR. So the quicker and more unencumbered characters tended to get two to three actions by the end of the melee round, whereas the more heavily armoured combatants only tended to get one to two actions within that round. Seemed to work well. Then if you had an attack skill over 100% then you could split your attack action into several separate attacks. I didn't think it made any difference whether it was a melee or a missile weapon. We may have been playing it incorrectly. This sounds a bit clunky if you have to split up attacks over 100% into 50% chunks ...

lol pure gold evil roddy

Well always nice to come across a local on these forums I actually came across the RQ Quickstarts at the Goodgames shop on Logan Rd ( Upper Mt Gravatt - south side), they had plenty of FreeRPG Day giveaways. I picked one of each free RPG products I could find, and two of the RQ QuickStarts (one for a mate). They were very lax on the FreeRPG stuff, as they primarily deal with Board Games and Trading Card Games. To put some money back into the shop I bought two packs of Pokemon Cards for my kids, and Munchkin Cthulhu for myself. Had my eye on Cthulhu Pandemic, but out of my price range at present... You could easily find that they may have RQ QuickStarts left over

I'm hearing 'Bennie and The Jets': "He's got Lamellar Boots, and a Chainmail Suit, He's as bad as you've ever seen - D-D-D-Derek and The Pol-Joni! Derek! Derek! Derek! Derek, and The Pol-Joni!" (keep repeating and fade out) Now you hear it, it can't be unheard

I think keeping the setting weird, mysterious, and forboding is the way to go. Anything that assists this vision is the trick, so yeah I would portray the demi-humans as bizarre and keep them mainly as NPCs in order to maintain this presence. I do this with the Aldryami and Mostali in Glorantha, and I find it works so much better, otherwise players will tend to portray the Elder Races as too human. Likewise in Ravenloft the Demi-humans need to be otherworldly in order to keep that gothic flavour, so keeping things human-centric probably will work best as a rule of thumb.

I'm amazed I actually came across the RuneQuest Quickstart here in Brisbane; wonders will never cease...! People should be aware that it really doesn't contain any char gen process, it only discusses the role of abilities, hit points, magic points, etc. However its not designed to make characters, as it is essentially a scenario with some pre-gen characters ready to go. It's a great introduction to the setting, the characters are very Gloranthan, and the setting is perfect for beginning characters. The Quickstart does provide a brief overview of the combat rules, and has a page or so of spot rules, and it's perfectly serviceable to run the scenario. It also covers a few very important new rules such a Passions and Runes, and how to use them to augment abilities and such. On the topic of such, Passions work like they do in Pendragon and Mythras. It is a good idea to bring Passions into the classic RQ line, as these have really helped flesh out character motivations in my other games, and not having them would fall short for me now.. But the work of sheer brilliance in these rules is the notion of porting Pendragon's Personality Traits into Runes, it's both old and new at the same time. I'm surprised how much these rules feel like an organic extension of the classic line of RQ. I remember back in the 1990s I was always hoping Greg Stafford would somehow port some of his Pendragon concepts over to RuneQuest. So in a sense it looks like this is happening now. Instead of waiting until RQG, anyone with the RQ Classic book (RQ2) could easily just update by adding this RQ Quickstart to those rules. You could probably do likewise with RQ3, although the stat values appear more in synch with RQ2's calculations, which only means sometimes opponents may have one or two extra Hit Points over their RQ3 counterparts. But RQ Classic+RQG Quickstart should work really well; at least for the next six months until RQG hits the shelves. Anyway I thought I would only ever see this product in pdf form, so I'm so happy I managed to grab a copy. So good to see the cover artwork in the flesh. Really starting to feel that RQG is on its way now

Totally agree that Ravenloft is such a cool setting, but the gothic fantasy genre was always mismatched to D&D's high fantasy flavour (D&D should of just kept with Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms IMO). Portraying Ravenloft with a BRP system like BGB or MW just makes so much more sense. Really looking forward to the finished product!

Wow, nice editing and layout. Great to see this ported over to BRP Great work mate

I like the idea that its a gamble, and if you fail your Rune/Passion roll you receive a penalty. Nice bit of balance there. The flat bonus of +20% is also a much easier calculation than the BGB version ( and a bit more significant as well). I can see this mechanic being a good addition to the classic RQ rules

So it's basically a new version of the BGB Complimentary Skill rules? Although it seems a bit clunkier now - instead of adding a bonus equal to Special Success %, now it requires a separate Rune or Passiion roll first. Although the +20% to the augmented ability is a nice reward Given that Runes can also portray personality aspects, I expect that this may add an organic element to the game, and I can see people using narratives to stretch things to justify the augmention. That may be a good thing.

What an excellent way to get immersed in the contemporary (and definitive) version of Glorantha!

Finally seeing the finished MoN Companion also took my breath away, it sits nicely next to my hardcover edition of MoN, and if easily 4-5 times the size of the original campaign book. I have been running a rollickling and rather sprawling Pulp Adventure/Investigation campaign (BGB+CoC+converted White Wolf Adventure! rules) intermittently over the past few years, using MoN as the foundation plotline for the campaign. We have recently resumed this (now using CoC 7E + Pulp Cthulhu), and I can see I'll be getting so much use from the MoN Companion. It is truly an amazing resource to add to an already great campaign.

I think in terms of viability, the add-on game stat books would need to have a purchase price. Obviously RQ may be a bit more in cost than HQ if there are more stats etc. I think that would be fair and the only way to have a business model out of it

If there's stats for all the Troll breeds in the RQG Creatures book, then I don't mind whether I have a RQ Troll Book or a HQ Troll Book., as HQ stats are not usually a prominent feature. Personally I prefer RQ for Glorantha, but conversion from HQ to RQ is pretty easy in my opinion. The content for this upcoming HQ Troll book sounds excellent if it has all the previous Trollpak content plus more. I remember I was very impressed by the HQ Pavis book which followed a similar approach. To digress slightly, it makes me wonder if the printed books for Glorantha should even come out with game stats; perhaps just print pure narrative content. That way collectors who just want the lore will be happy, and rpgers can always interpret the content into whichever game system they prefer. I know of people who would love to play Glorantha with HARP Fantasy, and there will be those who prefer FATE Core. No reason for them not to come to the party. The formal game stats material could also be released as separate booklets or pdfs, a version for each of the official Gloranthan rpgs (RQG, HQG, 13G). I don't mind having pdf game stats, that way I just print what I want. Makes more sense to me

Yeah, I would recommend this: http://www.chaosium.com/call-of-cthulhu-keeper-screen-pack-7th-ed/

Well if you're going for a cinematic game, then you should just rule that you could do these cool effects with a normal skill if you roll a Special % or Critical %. This makes higher success levels with non-combat skills quite balanced with the combat special effects. Then you could always additionally say that spending a Fate/Hero Point increases success levels for particular skills, so if you have the Deductive stunt you would be able to increase a standard success in Perception to a Special or Critical Success, thus gaining the cool effects as if it has been randomly rolled. I have always agreed that in BRP you don't need Feats; you just pull off that 'stunty' stuff with naturally rolled higher success levels. Yet having a Stunt would allow the PC to exercise some control regarding this, so it all flows organically within the current mechanics. That's how I approach it.

I am quite odd in the fact that I really don't like HQ doing Glorantha, as I think RQ is already a perfect for it. However the more I read HQ the more I can see it would be great for Pulp Action or Adventure games, and it may also be able to do stuff like Supernatural Noir, so I will hunt this down and take a good look. I really want to see HQ come out with a setting that's some kind of mix between Procedural Crime Investigation and Hollywood Action Flick, I think that would be a sweet spot for it! (BTW Dresden Files looks good, although I think I might prefer the FATE Accelerated edition rather than the FATE Core edition)

I quite like that approach as well, possibly more so

Yes I did a bit more research and it was for HQ2. I should have done that before I posted... One of those releases that I wasnt into at the time, but kicking myself now