boradicus

17 hours ago, styopa said:

(shrug) I'm not sure of your point?  I mean, it's clear you DON'T think RQ is more complicated and are arguing against the 'common perception' that it is.  OK.  In fact there are two levels to this discussion and you're switching between them willy-nilly.  The two points you're arguing against are:

1) RQ is generally perceived to be more complicated than D&D (which is your purported point) - well this isn't based on facts, is it?  This is just perception.  The vast, vast bulk of people learned RPGs as D&D so anything not D&D/d20 is "more complicated".  FATE seems "more complicated" when it mechanically absolutely isn't.  Not to mention each game has a lengthy history, so are we comparing AD&D to RQG?  Or 5e to RQ3?  Much of that isn't even necessarily a mechanics discussion; in my experience D&D games tend to be often in fairly simplistic worlds full of archetypes and tropes* (cf the whole idea of alignment and absolute morality making everything simple - "oh, you're verifiably evil? then I can kill you without remorse") while Glorantha has always reveled in it's relativism, complexity, rather ...er...'dynamic'... fluctuating canon.  Add that to what I've already explained is an inherently more complex combat system, and the perception is easily explained.  (While I agree with your caveats about digging out modifiers etc PERCEPTION isn't based on deep understanding.  Ask someone the elevator-pitch version of D&D combat and it's 'roll to hit, if you hit, you do damage.'.  Ask any RQ devotee to explain melee combat and I guarantee you it's going to take more than 9 words.)

*this is a broad brush, of course.  Nothing inherently in D&D requires simplistic settings (again, setting aside the rationalized ideas of 'classes' and 'alignments' which are much more flexible concepts in 5e now anyway) and there have been some fabulously interesting and creative ones.

2) RQ is more complicated than D&D: (this is where you're actually arguing) in this point, I'm probably 80% in agreement with you, and not further only because I don't care enough to get down into the weeds of details, I mean, what value is there in that?  Are we counting the number of times people have to look shit up in the books?  Are we counting the number of dice rolls each combat takes?  Why bother?

I totally agree about the D&D alignment thing.  I mean, that is probably why there is not only a Monster Manual, but additional monster supplements as well.  Players need fodder to plow through in order to level.  On the other hand, Chaosium games are a bit more spare with the hit points, and characters tend to be a little more careful about engaging in combat; hence, relationships to other beings become more substantial than just objects to be destroyed in order to level up.  So, consequently, "investigation," and other roleplaying options tend to be used more. 

17 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I totally get what you're saying, Not sure about the "multiple copies of rulebooks" though... they ain't cheap! And having everyone bring their own (if they did) would be (en)cumbersome 😛

Character generation should only be 1 session in RQ. In D&D, it's basically every level up... (yes, I'm exaggerating... but the idea of needing the tables, feats, class abilities, AND multi-classing, and you should get what I mean).

Well, I think that is part of the charm of D&D.  Everyone is eager to get to that next level so that they can go through that whole "shopping experience" of leveling up.

17 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I disagree. Firstly, one simple GM screen takes all of that and puts in in one place if needed.

However, the "ability results" is simple maths (and a quick look up if that math is too bothersome or not written down). The A&P and A&D are pretty simple formulae, and there's not really a need to look it up every time.

Hit location table - is the same for all humanoids. Other non-humanoid creatures, sure...

Resistance table is simple maths, so you only use the table when you CBF.

Strike ranks... annoying, but not exactly hard. Not incredibly different to Initiative (depending on how you play it). Granted, the realism of the combat does mean keeping a closer eye on SRs than on Initiative.

Now, as I said above, compare all of that with a spell book, or class abilities... you've just mentioned 7 mechanics (not including Specials). These are always the same tables (except HL). How many tables, pages, abilities, spell descriptions, etc do you need handy for D&D?

 

 

Yeah, we did that too. I agree that's a bit annoying, but it is simulationist... ever looked at Harnmaster??? 😛

Oooo... I had friends who had a campaign in the world of Harn.... is Harnmaster related to that???

17 hours ago, styopa said:

...and this is perfectly fine if it works for your group.  This is, in essence, the D&D method as IIRC there's functionally no difference between an arrow, an axe, or a mace in what it does to the target, they all do 1d8 hp.

I know IRL if someone said 'grab a melee weapon from the rack you need to get out there and fight' I'd certainly think pretty hard about which one I picked.  Personally, I *want* a character's choice of weapon to be a similarly meaningful, informed tactical choice. 

Thus that's the direction my houserules have gone (and in fact, simulationist that I am, ideally I'd LIKE to have a system that recognizes more detail in that direction - ie chainmail is nearly worthless against a mace, and almost worthless against arrows - but I've come to recognize that it's RQ-the-adventure-game not RQ-the-combat-simulation and that pragmatically that's just not possible outside of a computer game and still be PLAYABLE).

That is a great argument for developing TTRPGs software/app playing aids to support combat, and other complex forms of bookkeeping!!!

19 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

 

Yep, I know all that.

However, how many tables, references, screens etc does one need to look up in order to figure out the full effects of said combat?

While D&D has 1 THACO roll basically, the sheer number of adjustments (add a few here, remove a few there) and the reasons for them can be staggering (conditional effect to add + to hit 😛).  In RQ, sure you have more base  rolls, but very rarely will you need to do much adjusting. What there is is pretty simple - -40% to hit because X, type thing.

Wizard and cleric - which spells have you prepared today, and have you cast them yet? Vs - well, I sacrificed 2 RP last holy day, and the local priest taught me Bladesharp 4. I have 15 MPs.

Also, while I get that character creation in RQ has a few more steps, after that, everything is extremely straightforward. I don't need to consult any books (and do you have the right one for your specialist class on hand?) Obviously for D&D, there's table after table after table.

 

So, for my money, I think D&D is a lot more complicated. As evidenced by the number of books that should be purchased (calling them "supplements", but are needed to get away from base classes). Sure, RQ has a few books out there as well, but those tend to be modules. Once you've got the first couple (and, with RQG, you really only want the main book, bestiary, and soon to be GoG

It's probably time for you to try Rolemaster!  Rolemaster has a very exciting combat system - but there are a few extra charts and tables to contend with.  The combat system also uses d100s, but the dice explode.  The critical hits are also quite realistic, with a variety of different damage types based on the weapon used.  Hits are also vs. a particular body part, making the combat more realistic and challenging.  Wounds can bleed, and can affect your character's ability to function and fight properly (but, of course, opponents are vulnerable to the same).  You might really like it!

Thanks!  I am more interested as a GM.  Does it have in depth information on the Rune system?  Can spells be constructed from Runes, or do they function more in the capacity of being generators of "effects?"

10 hours ago, g33k said:

Which RQ do you mean?  The new/current "RQG" edition?  Or the KS'ed "Classic" edition?

RQG has "Passions" baked in.  Stuff like "Hate Lunars" and "Fear Harrek the Berserk" and "Loyalty to Shaker Temple" and "Love Family" for example.

You can use them to Augment certain other rolls:  "Fear Harrek" might help your various stealth rolls when Harrek is around, "Hate Lunars" might help your combat skills vs. Lunar troops, etc etc.

It has been part of the rules since the Quickstart was released.

Then you ask about an "update," & a "starter set," so I'm confused...

There is the "Quickstart" with the Broken Tower scenario.  That has been out the longest, before even the core RQG rulebook.  Passions included.

There is the core book itself, about a year old.  LOTS about Passions!

There is the new "slipcase set" which adds the Bestiary and "GM Screen Pack" (which is over a HUNDRED more pages than just a "GM screen"), and of course the slipcase, to the Core book.  Some new Passions for the new races.

There is a project Chaosium announced for a "Starter Set" for RQG, but that's a ways out yet, I think.

 

Yes, I was referring to the announced starter set that was mentioned above.  As for the other books, I was asking because I am not at all familiar with them.  I have had some of Chaosium's other rule books, but none of those.  They sounded interesting, and that is why I was asking about them!  I am still not clear on what a Passion is, but it does sound like it has a more directly causal and logical relationship to what it affects in the game than the inspiration system from D&D 5e, which awards inspiration for any sort of use for playing up to flaws, bonds, etc.  Thanks for getting me interested!  Of course, I would like to know more, in case I might want to invest in an edition of RQ.  I am especially interested in the "recently added" runes.  I sort of figured that runes were the point of RQ because they were a part of the name - but I suppose I really don't know that much about the game itself.  Thanks!

On 4/19/2019 at 8:00 AM, Sumath said:

That's a fair criticism, RQG is not especially innovative. But then for the most part it doesn't need to be. There are a few areas (e.g. strike ranks) that haven't aged well, but the chassis of the game is sound. It's mostly tweaking that's required. The introduction of Runes and Passions is the greatest improvement IMHO.

D&D 5E is also a missed opportunity - full of things that should no longer be there (e.g. prime stats, which aren't even used - modifiers are, so why not generate them directly?). WoTC also passed up the opportunity to solve many of D&D's shortcomings, particularly how lightweight combat is when that's supposed to be one of the three pillars of gameplay.

There are similarities between 5E scenarios and Chaosium's old campaigns, but even for some of WoTC products they seem to be similarities in style rather than substance. We're currently playing through Tomb of Annihilation and it has plot holes that you could ride a T Rex through! Looking back at Borderlands or Griffin Mountain, they were rooted in a consistent and well thought-out fantasy world, and that depth and consistency mean that you can still pick those products up now and run them pretty much as they are. ToA is a couple of years old and already looks hackneyed.

I've heard some awful things about the new 5e modules.  Most of the 5e games that I have either played in or observed seemed to me to also lean too heavily toward combat rules bog-down, or fast and loose rules that start to lack consistency and cohesion.  I think that my least favorite thing about D&D is the level-progression dependency of hit points.  It isn't only death by a thousand cuts, but also how under-powered, by comparison, the innate ability to physically survive is to that of higher levels.  The first time I played Gamma World, I suddenly realized that it is pretty ridiculous to give monsters and animals hit dice based on their size and robustness and not have hit dice for humanoids base on a similar metric. 

On 4/19/2019 at 7:50 AM, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Personally I’m not so sure. I think RQG mechanics being based off of RQ2 still works really well. They were so well designed in the first place that there isn’t a lot that would improve them IMO. 

Edit: though I think in some places the rules could be explained a little better, as evidenced by the long post on damage “Death by a Thousand Cuts”

2nd Edit: OK RQ3 First Aid skill feels a bit ill matched to RQG.

I like the introduction of passions and Runes as it slides into the rule set nicely and really helps with the immersion in the game.

Combat in RuneQuest still feels as visceral as it did back in the day. 5e still plays off of a simpler more abstract  approach with AC. Though I find in play RuneQuest is fast and furious in all the right ways, despite perceived crunch. 5e ( which I play a lot of, and like) is much pulpier In approach, and despite having a more abstract approach to combat, can still fall into the trap of protracted fights, particularly at higher levels. 

I don’t see D&D 5e as particular vanilla. It’s setting and classes are quite specific DnDisms. Though I guess the background for characters tends to be much less then the rich tapestry of Glornatha. Which in one helps with accessibility - without lots of background new gamers can easily pick it up and run with it.

Looking forward to see what Chaosium does with the new RuneQuest Starter Set on this point.  We’ve got this great rich game, we now need different entry points for newcomers. 

What are Passions in RQ?  Is a RQ update coming in addition to the starter set?  It sounds interesting!

4 hours ago, Oracle said:

Nope. Breakouts are generally based on and relative to the base skill. Let's say you have a skill Warrior at 18, and you add a breakout Shortsword, then this Breakout skill starts with +1, e.g. Shortsword +1 (i.e. Shortsword 19). If you raise your base skill, then this raise includes the Breakout skill, e.g. Warrior becomes Warrior 19, and Shortsword +1 then means Shortsword 20. But you can also train your Breakout skill independently from the base skill, e.g. you still have Warrior 18, but you raise Shortsword to Shortsword +2 (i.e. Shortsword 20).

As you may guess raising a Breakout skill is cheaper then raising a base skill.

Can you have a string of breakout skills?  For example:  Melee is the skill, and under that would be the breakout for swordsmanship, and under that would be the breakout for rapier.

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

When I GM, I allow any applicable Trait to be used, but I think the Revolution rules say one, or maybe two. Each Trait adds +30 to the skill, but I play +10 because of the multiple Traits.

So, in my Revolution games, you could have Science as a skill with Astrophysics, Quantum Gravity, Mathematics and Black Holes as Traits and you could also have Quantum Maths as a Stunt under Mathematics and Rotating Bodies as a Stunt under Black Holes.

Revolution has Stunts, which are particular specialisations of Traits, so someone could have Parachuting as a Trait for Agility but have High Altitude Low Opening (HALO), Sub Orbital Low Opening (SOLO) and Wing Suit as Stunts, which I play give a +30/+10 Bonus to the skill when performing those actions.

Really, the idea of Traits and Stunts is far more important than slavishly following how they work in the rules. Personally, I have a more narrative interpretation than Paolo and treat them almost like Breakouts in HeroQuest.

Thanks!  I was thinking of another approach the other day - that perhaps after a skill reaches say... 50%, that you *must* take a specialization, and then after that specialization reaches say... 50%, that you *must* take a sub-specialization.  But that did not sufficiently answer for me how much a specialization would contribute to the general skill.  Technically, I suppose that raw intelligence is a factor when determining how much can be abstracted from a specialization to type of general knowledge... but that might be going a bit far for game mechanics.

What are breakouts in HeroQuest, and how do they work?  Are general skill levels (the ability to abstract from specialized skills) increased when breakouts are added?

15 hours ago, soltakss said:

Revolution D100 does this kind of thing well, in my opinion.

You have a few very general skills and then Traits that give your specialisations.

So, for example, Agility is a skill and you can have Traits of Jumping, Climbing, Dodge or Parachuting. Craft is a skill and you can have Traits of Blacksmith, Farming, Fishing and so on.

In a SciFi setting, I'd have Science as a skill and that would have Traits such as Physics, Chemistry and Biology.

For extra Specialisations, you just add Traits. So someone with Science could have Quantum Physics, Astrophysics and Mathematics, allowing them to apply all the Traits when looking at a problem involving Quantum Gravity around a Black Hole.

For me, it works really well.

So, how do these traits work?  Also, it sounds like the trait system is only comprised of one extra tier - in other words, each skill could only have one tier of traits because traits could not have sub-traits... or am I wrong in inferring this?

On 8/19/2018 at 12:52 PM, Joerg said:

One thing I would handle different from when I chose RQ3 over any other game system available at the time (1988 or so) is to have a lot less but broader skills, going in the direction OpenQuest has gone from the MRQs. I get it that the way RQG is presented as almost fully backward compatible with RQ2 does carry over that multitude of skills. However, I recently revisited the game system which I played before switching to RQ, which probably noone outside of Germany has ever heard about, and I found that what originally attracted me to the system - the detailed skill system - has become a bit of a burden now that I have collected experience with much leaner sets of abilities in other systems.

Approaching RQ the same way, leaving nostalgia aside, a RQG lite based on basically skill categories, possibly slightly subdivided, with the option to take specialisations that either opportunity or personal preference create as break-out skills (much like HQ handles it) might have been a better way to attract players new to RQ.

A leaner set of skills to track with slightly higher abstraction would still create enough gritty stuff to hang on to as you take weak (or buffered) hit after hit.

I am quite pleased with the magic systems, even with sorcery for specialists, as far as Dragon Pass and Prax are concerned. I have come to doubt whether RQ magic works as well to reflect the cult practices of the Lodrili (who don't usually initiate to a single deity the way the Orlanthi do) or the Westerners. It should work well enough for henotheist Malkioni, though (and given that that's one of my main points of wrestling RQ3 rules and the setting together, this is saying something).

 

The only D&D that I have played in earnest was AD&D 1st edition and a little bit of 2nd edition. The system sucked for me for a number of reasons. No unified skill system (only the Thief class had any in 1st ed), classes, XP for gold, XP at all, levels granting endless supplies of HP, and near limitless world-shattering magic overshadowing the non-magicians after a certain level, before which the MU was nearly useless unless he directed henchmen/followers (which few DMs allowed in the environment I played D&D in). And many of these points are what people who love the game consider its strengths.

Although I have only played CoC thus far, I love Chaosium's game system.  As for the skills, what immediately occurred to me as an enhancement, would be a skill "tree" by era.  In other words, some skills are related to each other in such a way that there might be enough in common between them that they could provide some cross-over capabilities.  But in order to model this accurately and neatly, a tree would be needed, wherein more general skills serve as umbrella categories for more specialized skills.  Of course, both technology, and culture progress (or, sometimes regress) from era to era, and this would provide an opportunity to create specialized skill trees based on eras - and this could be done in the form of monographs or supplements for the particular era/world/culture in question.  

In terms of game mechanics, each monograph/supplement could detail both the chance for a more general skill to succeed at a more specialized skill, as well as how much a specialized skill might cross-contribute to a more general skill further up the trunk.  One way to model this - that would make sense - would be for each monograph/supplement to first map out a skill tree.  Then, the specialized branches of the skill tree could be categorized into tiers [e.g. Tier 1: 1920s firearms; Tier 2 1920s Handguns; Tier 2 1920s Guns w/Gunstocks, Tier 3: 1920s (Gunstocks) automatic weapons; Tier 3 1920s (Gunstocks) sharp-shooting weapons (rifles, etc); Tier 3 1920s; Tier 3 : 1920s (Gunstocks) scatter weapons (shotguns)].  Once the number of tiers for each root skill has been determined, we could then take the total number of skills from the highest tier (the most specialized tier) and this would determine how many points would be allocated to the tier below for each specialized skill learned; these points divided by the total number of points possible from the tier above (the more specialized tier) would provide the percentage for success for the tier below.  

So, what about branches that don't have as many tiers as others?  How should they be weighted?  Well, progressing from tier to tier, for each branch that is missing a tier, a general weight could be assigned by taking the average number of skills of all of the skills under the same branch at that tier.  This would then be a reasonable weight for the purpose of determining the points to be added to the branch on the tier below it (the more general skill, closer to the root skill).

Now, this could be a bit tricky during design due to the fact that cross-over can exist between skill branches with different skill roots (e.g. veterinary medicine would have some cross-over with human medicine; traditional medicine would have some cross-over with allopathic medicine, etc.).  From the supplement/monograph designer's perspective, this could be addressed through the use of a custom software program that can handle such complex ontologies, and perform all of the same calculations that I mentioned above in a multi-dimensional topology (as opposed to a 2d topology where branches from different roots have no lateral branches between them).  While this all sounds (ab initio) to be rather complex, such a software tool (even one made publicly available online) could be used by monograph/scenario designers to achieve both integration and consistency.  As for changes in the core rules from edition to edition, such a software tool could be updated (if actually need-be) at the time (or shortly after) of the release of said new editions.

Although another challenge, for such an approach, would be deciding how trees would be provide cross-compatibility from era to era (e.g., how would experience with a tommy-gun provide skill with a more modern automatic weapon?), by using such a software management tool, such challenges could also be deftly mitigated.

Any thoughts?  Any takers?  [Electronic & Software gaming tools are increasingly the wave of the future - why not incorporate tools for the designers?]

I have never tried playing Glorantha.  What makes it so engrossing for the people who play in this setting?  

Thank you!