frogspawner

Though I can't wait to see a copy in my friendly local game shop...

Which reminds me - that single copy of BRP looked awfully lonely on my FLGS's shelf, on it's own amongst the many dark-spined sets of books from other publishers.

Can anyone tell me again why Chaosium don't just send out a handful of related monographs with each one, to keep it company...?

Except when you find that bow as treasure. It cant be "the right pull" for the halfling and the barbarian.

Hmm, oh yeah.

It's like the bow is rated for a certain damage bonus only and can do anything up to that but not exceed it.

Does that make sense?

Perfect sense. So, bows should be for a certain STR just like armour is for a certain SIZ. Right?

[Actually, I think the bows should be usable only by those of that STR or greater (but not do any greater damage). Like Odysseus' bow, which only he could draw (unless Heracles had happened to find it, I guess!)]

Sorry to have to tell you though, Rod - quoting yourself is not 'cool'...

... BUT being able to claim the tall guy at the top of every forum-page is yourself - now, that is cool!

If you use different skills, representing different techniques, the boxer will be superior, as he only needs 2 skills: "bob and weave" and "hit really hard". The samurai needs to master 6 different weapons, and then pick up the specific martial arts skills for each. Hardly seems fair.

Ummm - but if the boxer came up against the samurai, who would your money be on?

...things become more difficult to represent with a single generic skill.

For successful Martial Arts with whatever weapon, rather than extra (double) damage, I give an extra attack. How's that?

If you steal [a Rune-object] from an enemy then you have stolen some of that enemy's magic and it may sit around in a chest until such time as the enemy dies at which point it becomes unattuned again.

Sorry, but this is the same as the "kill them and take their stuff" scenario which should be avoided.

In narrative terms I envision the old thane dying and passing on his torque of leadership to his eldest son. The torque contains a motion rune but when the son tries to attune it he fails, leading to whispers from other clan members that maybe the son is not up to the job.

Fine narrative, but there's nothing to stop some brigand killing the old thane and taking the Rune - if it's an object - and then having just the same chance as the rightful heir to attune it. Doesn't seem right.

Now if, as I'd say, the Rune/crystal had been absorbed into the thane's own bloodstream, then maybe someone of his own bloodline might get a chance to inherit it, if voluntarily given...?

Finally I don't recall exactly but didn't Powered Crystals in RQ2 have to be attuned to a user and then couldn't be transferred short of death?

But if you don't want that feel, the runes could continue to manifest. As long as the Ur-Runes exist, they will continue to manifest materially on this plane. So there is an unending supply of the more prosaic physical runes.

Personally, I'd prefer only truly rare/exceptional circumstances to allow physical Runes to manifest.

This was my idea on the subject, too, but it looks like the next iteration of HQ could introduce physical runes (or at least something similar) in the third age.

Dreadful news. They seem intent on introducing differences for the sake of it (or, rather, for the sake of making a deliberate break from older material. To improve sales of their new products, a cynical person might think... )

I hope they will not screw everything up.

"A triumph of hope over experience" is the phrase, I'm afraid, Rosie.

I suggest we wait until we have more information about runes in HeroQuest before proposing other approaches to Rune Magic.

I suggest we do what we can to fix the mess Mongoose/GS have already made (and I think we're close, if not there already!) and worry about fixing whatever further Glorantha-breaking nonsense they come out with if/when it happens.

... there's a significant difference in the punch of, say, a 30 pound pull bow and a 90 pound pull bow, ...

I had a system for bow damages by draw weight awhile back.

Isn't it enough to assume that your particular bow has a poundage that's sufficient to give you your damage bonus? I know you don't just pick up any old bow and shoot, but have to find one that's got the right "pull" for you...

That's the approach I prefer (and it helps with this situation since you can kick up the difficulty of the more sophisticated "martial" skills) but its not a tool people using vanilla BRP have.

And I rate MA as "very hard", naturally! BTW - does anyone use vanilla BRP?

1. Vanilla BRP doesn't deal with differences in difficulty of learning skills...

My houserule is, in addition to skills of normal difficulty to learn (+3/+d6 per increase), some are easy to learn (+4/+d6+1), some hard (+2/+d6-1) and some very hard (+1/+d6-2).

But then you must have a way to physically create a Rune from scratch, or else the overall quantity of runecasters would decrease with time, as runes left over from Godtime are used up by casters.

Aha! But that's part of the beauty of it! This explains why physical runes are prevalent in 2nd Age Glorantha, but (virtually) unheard-of in the 3rd Age...

As time goes by, the only way to get/integrate/attune a Rune is by proxy - through initiation into Rune cults (to the gods of which we can assume the Rune-integrated souls would pass, after death).

There's a thought - Runes as the oil that greased the wheels of an ancient fantasy world. Sounds like fun to me!

Indeed. I'd take the view that physical Runes are the equivalent of RQ2 crystals - the crystallized blood of the gods. The parallel with oil (being organically-derived) gets even closer!

OK, for the first time in ages, I've been back to the MRQ Forum, to mine it for useful stuff.

The major problem, as I see it, with Physical Runes was the "kill someone and take their stuff" effect it produced - Gloranthan-style ransoming was out the window, since you had to kill a Rune-integrated person to get their Rune, making it all too d&d-ish. The conclusion of a debate on Runes was this...

All good & positive ideas, recommended to anyone wanting physical Runes common in their Glorantha.

I think the "a Rune becomes part of the Integrator, and dies with them" approach solves this problem neatly (for scenarios that aren't written on a premise fundamentally contravening this principle).

I'm not running Glorantha, but a land inspired by White Bear & Red Moon, RQ, and therefore by reflection Glorantha.

Your Glorantha reflection sounds more recognizable as the Glorantha we knew of old than current products under that trademark.

It rather surprisingly fits with the attempts to make Gloranthan magic at least partially community-based in HQ.

Mmm, spooky. Must be Fate at work...

I prefer a light touch but for those who like the equivalent of Personality traits in their games, having runic personality traits is a distinct option.

I'm just saying a 'Carrot' mechanism is preferable to a 'Stick'. (I've previously stated my personality traits mechanic, which I like to think is quite 'light touch', in another thread).

... in-game benefits (e.g. more Improvement rolls, more Hero Points)...

I'm reminded the potential to reward role-playing was one of the (very few) advantages I noticed the MRQ SRD had over RQ/BRP. (Again, though, it's a good idea implemented clumsily. Subjective handouts by the GM are too D&D-like, too easy to degrade into "you killed X kobolds, so you get Y experience pioints... I mean Improvement Rolls"). Another subject for this thread!

Only difference is that a priest has easier access to a "recharge" for his spells (the discount you mentioned).

Could you please explain to me the difference between 'easy-access recharge' and plain old re-usable Rune/Divine magic?

Glorantha was never meant to be as rich in magic as RQ2/RQ3 made it out to be. When you look at RQ2/3 stats with barmaids having 10 points of battle/spirit magic it's clear that this simply doesn't reflect any kind of 'canon.'

How magic-rich you play it is a campaign decision, not necessarily dependent on the rules. True, published adventures/etc did seem to give too many spells - for my taste, anyway (but it's easier to cross stuff out than add it in...).

Moreover, each rune relationship is a two-way effect. If you have an integrated air rune then it tends to push you towards being blustery, rash, brave, reckless etc. If a player wants their character to act in significantly non-runic ways then you must make a Persistence test opposed by the appropriate Runecasting skill in order to act against your runic nature.

I don't think the rules should prevent players doing things, even uncharacteristic things. Rather, I'd say there should be a mechaism to reward actions that are in-keeping with their religion (i.e 'runic' in this case).

One great advantage to having a rune priest in your clan is that, basically, god gives him a discount thus when you support a priest you as a clan get a discount on magic as it were.

Interesting. What discount, exactly?

... seeing HeroQuest and RuneQuest converge more would not displease me.

And seeing BRP & MRQ converge would not displease me - so long as MRQ moved most!

Frogspawner, Loz is not advertising anything.

Hmmm...

But a guy's gotta eat. Let's just do what we can to get it right.

Fluff is all. I'd probably just change the 'crunch' anyway - but a good story fragment transcends systems and inspires better mechanisms.

Frogspawner, Loz is not advertising anything. There are such things as Non-Disclosure Agreements in the gaming industry, and he should not discuss the work he is doing for Mongoose (or Issaries) in a public forum.

Well, he said won't say anything, rather than can't. But my previous post crossed with his, and since he now has shared some thoughts after all, I was obviously being overly harsh. <insert excuse about being so wound up by physical runes here>

Sorry Mr Whitaker. Thanks for your efforts on behalf of all Glorantha fans.

I think Matthew Sprange would be first to admit that he's no Glorantha buff. But to suggest that Greg Stafford is out of touch with a world that he's spent more than 30 years developing (and still is) is ... quite incredible. Still, Your Glorantha Will Vary. Might be worth remembering that.

Mr Sprange is too late - we've already 'admitted' that for him. He's a D&D man - and, as has been said by others, it shows.

Mr Stafford may not be 'out of touch' with the Glorantha he invented all those years ago - and then gave to us, as he said - but what I suggested was that he appears to have lost the 'feeling' for it. (The bolt-on cults he invented for HeroWars were just daft, IMO). It's more a case of 'His Glorantha Will Vary'. Clearly he wants to make money from it.

(BTW, if you really find it incredible anyone could hold such opinions, then your imagination may be wearing out...)

It wasn't. The aim was to make runes more of a physical focus for the game, thus reflecting its name. I do agree that chasing physical manifestations of runes isn't the way they should work in Glorantha; but it wasn't a deliberate act of sabotage (which is what you're suggesting, Frogspawner). For what its worth, I'm looking very closely at how runes need to work in preparation for something I'm working on Glorantha-wise.

Yet I did get that feeling. Just paranoia - probably! Yes, I'm sure an aim was to make Runes into mere 'treasure' - something D&D-ers can understand.

And no. I won't share my ideas here; they're not finished yet. But just so you know that the subject and mechanics are being looked at.

Pity. This forum is for sharing ideas. Not just advertising your product.

I think Matthew Sprange would be first to admit that he's no Glorantha buff.

New thread for this debate: How to fix Mongoose RuneQuest/Glorantha

<Summarized/Continued from the "Chaosium Supporting BRP" thread...>

I bought "I am Mongoose" by Mathew Sprange last night from DriveThruRPG. I read a bit before becoming overwhelmed by...the lack of humility...

One thing that struck me (again, from a short read) is how much Mongoose's strategy is driven by volume: Keep costs down, know that you will sell a certain number of each kind of book, increase sales by increasing the number of issuances you do each month.

CLearly quality is in there, and they have generated some nice stuff, but there's a strong bias toward volume. In retrospect, this is probably why the RQ playtest was botched -- it was just taking too long to surface and discuss the options and was messing up the production plans.

Chaosium has the cost down part nailed, but I think they need to start moving the dial more toward speed of publishing. Encouraging fans should be a great way to do it.

Steve

One thing I have noticed with the new Gloranthan works, is that Mongoose has failed to capture the subtle depth and essence of the Glorantha I originally saw defined in early works such as Cults of Prax. The new Mongoose works now feel like general contemporary fantasy.

The "soul" of Glorantha has been lost through making it a commodity.

The quality is there, but something special and unique was lost along the way.

...

True to a limited extent. The first books were a bit generic-flavoured although full of nice game ideas, but when Jeff K, Loz and Shannon Appel dropped in the Old Way was restored.

Absolutely true. The problem stems from the bad rules, which new authors cannot fix, no matter how 'soulful' their contributions.

I'm only judging by the SRD, because that was plenty to put me off. Every rules-design decision Mongoose made went the wrong way, for me. Particularly trying to simplify HPs and Init - worthy aims - but they replaced 'em with something even more bizarrely inexplicable - doh! And the infamous 'what actually happens in combat?' opposed roll confusion. But worst of all, the dire, insensitive and video-gamey 'physical Runes' abomination. Bleurch. :eek:

I must admit that I think the Glorantha Second Age book is a contender for one of the best Gloranthan supplements period. Dara Happa stirs is simply superb and the Alkoth chapter is genuinely creepy. The Dragonewt book and the Aldryami book are as good as anything that's been published in Glorantha for RuneQuest and Blood of Orlanth is a wonderfully ambitious campaign.

From my point of view, the breakages due to Mongoose's chaotic publishing system actually inspired me to come up with my own fixes and I tend to find, over time and with actual play that I tend to move back to Mongoose's version from mine. Can't say I'm a Mongoose fanboy as they are overly fixated on the bottom line in my opinion but I can't argue that they have managed to survive problems that would have sunk most other games companies and continue to produce erratically brilliant products.

I think their rune system went horribly wrong initially - especially for Glorantha. Ironically, the latest work on runes in HQ2.0 shows how easy it is to tweak the Mongoose system into something that is genuinely interesting; something that Loz started in the GM's Handbook. Personally I think this is a boom time for Glorantha that equals anything that came before it.

Must say I'm pretty happy with the recent Glorantha stuff too. I do hope that MRQ2 will be a better system though.

SGL.

That'd be easy. But would Chaosium let them have the license...?

You're not far off. The official book was if anything, worse than the SRD. The fact that the rules were changed as the book was released and that none of the examples were correct didn't help the game much. I have heard from some Mongoose employees that the early drafts of MRQ were much closer to RQ, until one of Mongoose's bigwigs took over the project. That said individual had written a lot of D20 stuff in the past showed. Many of the problems that MRQ had/has were pointed out by the fans/playtesters but they were ingored.

I generally agree with the views on MRQ rules. Although in this case I was mainly referring to gaming world content, specifically the Gloranthan content (and I would not even consider myself a Gloranthophile). The depth of The Travels of Biturian Varosh is one of the main factors for me that first separated RuneQuest (2nd Edition) from D&D (and other 'conventional' RPG worlds).

I think that the ideas for the physical rune magic rules are good, however for me, they break the feel of Glorantha and are not an improvement on spirit/battle magic for a Gloranthan setting. They also undermine the original rune connection of divine magic.

Even so, in general, I do like the concepts behind them.

When I next run a generic fantasy game, I am planning to use a variation of the "physical rune" rules. However it will be a version of the rules which is closer to the rules of their original author.

Yes, I got that.

You do yourself a disservice. Seems like you've more feeling for Glorantha than Sprange (and perhaps Stafford, these days...)

Absolutely!

Yes. So much so, I couldn't help the nagging feeling that was the deliberate aim.

They're not unsalvageable. Back when I visited the MRQ Forum, I spent lots of time suggesting tweaks/interpretations for the 'physical runes' rules that could have made them Glorantha-compatible. What are yours? (Perhaps we should have a new thread for that...).

In fact, physical runes can be a good idea in some settings. Next episode of Stupor Mundi will contain a Futhark rune adaptation of Mongoose Rune Magic.

Nevertheless, the new HeroQuest rules will have a rune-based approach. I hope they really fixed what is wrong in the original approach.

I use a version that is fairly close to the original version and to tell the truth it doesn't work that well. What you tend to get is PCs concentrating on certain runes, building up a large number of a single rune and being able to cast high-pointage spells based on that rune.

If I GMed a RQ campaign again then I would go back to RQ3-style Spirit Magic and use Runes as an extra layer of magical power that would assist spellcasting, not be as common but not be overpowering.

I think Matthew Sprange would be first to admit that he's no Glorantha buff. But to suggest that Greg Stafford is out of touch with a world that he's spent more than 30 years developing (and still is) is ... quite incredible. Still, Your Glorantha Will Vary. Might be worth remembering that.

It wasn't. The aim was to make runes more of a physical focus for the game, thus reflecting its name. I do agree that chasing physical manifestations of runes isn't the way they should work in Glorantha; but it wasn't a deliberate act of sabotage (which is what you're suggesting, Frogspawner). For what its worth, I'm looking very closely at how runes need to work in preparation for something I'm working on Glorantha-wise.

And no. I won't share my ideas here; they're not finished yet. But just so you know that the subject and mechanics are being looked at.

...I was mainly referring to gaming world content, specifically the Gloranthan content...

...(and I would not even consider myself a Gloranthophile).

The depth of The Travels of Biturian Varosh is one of the main factors for me that first separated RuneQuest (2nd Edition) from D&D (and other 'conventional' RPG worlds).

I think that the ideas for the physical rune magic rules ... break the feel of Glorantha ...

Yes. So much so, I couldn't help the nagging feeling that was the deliberate aim.

When I next run a generic fantasy game, I am planning to use a variation of the "physical rune" rules. However it will be a version of the rules which is closer to the rules of their original author.

They're not unsalvageable. Back when I visited the MRQ Forum, I spent lots of time suggesting tweaks/interpretations for the 'physical runes' rules that could have made them Glorantha-compatible. What are yours? (Perhaps we should have a new thread for that...).

There is nothing that scares players more than picking up D6s from all around the game table while saying "It is for the damage modifier."

That is true. :ohwell:

Maybe I got the "handfuls of d6's"-kick out of my system back in the days spent playing Tunnels & Trolls.

PS: Or maybe not - Fireball-type spells still give a buzz...

What table or calculation do you use?

I was thinking of:

- if STR 1-10; damage modifier = 0.

- if STR 11+; damage modifier = +(STR-10)/2

Sounds good. I use the straight D&D3.x bonuses, i.e. the same as your 11+ formula (if rounded down) - but continued down below 10. That may be a bit harsh (especially on any STR 9-ers!) considering there are also minimum STRs for weapons (is that why you'd cut it off at 10?). But I say - what the heck.

Number based (+1, +2, +3, etc.). For historical reasons, having evolved my game from D&D (I'd love to say it was RQ4 influence, but...)

My players might have balked at dice-for-bonuses, but I can't just blame them - I actually prefer the plain plusses myself. The weapon dice give enough randomness, and having to roll more dice just slows it down - finding the darn things to roll (which takes some players a horribly long time!) and adding them all up is harder. And the finer-grained flat bonuses are clearly better for the low-powered gaming that I aim for.

PS: Also, when the weapon dice are the only dice being rolled, there's no room for 'confusion' (let's call it) over which are to be doubled for various types of special hits.

Yeah, it depends. If the campaign is all about mountaineering, then separate skills for this sort of thing are fine. Personally, I'm not into that sort of thing so, to me, it's just a part of the Climb skill.

It depends how significant the action being performed is. If it's the climactic event of an adventure (e.g. defuse the Bomb) then a single roll might feel like being short-changed. If it's something unimportant (or I'm not that interested in), then one roll is fine. Any blow in combat could be significant though, so that's why it involves plenty of rolls...

I do hope that MRQ2 will be a better system though.

That'd be easy. But would Chaosium let them have the license...?