Kloster

I think the key things are that Greg has said that there are some aspect of Glorantha that he doesn't care about, and that the Second Age ends with pretty much everything being destroyed.

So:

1) Greg doesn't care about MRQ

2) Anything Mingoose comes up with will get destroyed anyway.

If Greg was writing MRQ stuff or doing up some 2nd Age HeroQuest stuff I think it would be a different matter. But the impression I got was Greg figured he could make a couple of bucks off of it, and it won't affect his gaming or Glorantha proper.

IIRC, he stated that for him, the Mongoose deal was mainly a financial one, that brought him more cash than the whole HQ line.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

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That said. I don't consider 'zero" to be anything other than a work in progress, and won't hold it's errors against BRP when it comes out.

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I think the angst comes in over the supplments. As some others have pointed out, it is a lot more work to write up SR, hit location, and piecemeal armor data for all the characters in a supplment then it is to ignore the stuff you don't want to use. Enough work to cut down on any appeal that using a predesigned adventure has.

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Idem for 1st part.

For 2nd part, this is exactly what I had in mind. It is easier to ignore what you don't want than to add what you want and is missing. Apart the fact that I would have liked to get something more Runequesty, my main point is that I would have prefered the opposite way, ie the most comprehensive default, with optional simplifications.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I'll fix that when I'm home after work.

SGL.

I'm also interested.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

soltakss has some good points here. I also think that BRP has moved away from RQ. Not really surprise though, since that is what was being advertised. Any confusion over this can probably be the blame of Chaosium because of the BRP Monograph.

As a RQ fan, the more I've found out about BRP the less I think I'm going to like it. I like RQ, with all it's complexity, and never cared for the watered down versions such as CoC and Elric! that seem to be popular with several people here.

I don't consider BRP to be RQ anymore than I consider CoC to be RQ. RQ derived, yeah, but not RQ. MRQ, however, claims to be RQ, instead of a derivative. Claims were made as to the involvement of Greg Stafford and Steve Perrin in the development that were false. BRP makes no such claims.

Jason and Chaosium have been quite upfront about the new BRP not being RQ. Mongoose were not. The basically used the RQ name and word of Stafford's and Perrin's involvement to con a bunch of RQ fans into buying the game. I have little doubt that most of the first printings were preordered by RQ fans. I suspect that there is enough evidence to win a fraud case against Mongoose. Not there is enough money involved to make it practical (a class action suit for a few thousand people at $25 a head isn't worth the trouble).

So neither is RQ, but at least the folks behind BRP are honest about it.

Completely agree here. And I think the work is well done, but it is not what I would like to have.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Congratulations soltakss, you were faster on creating this topic.

On most of the points you cited, I'm in full agreement.

I have other points:

- As hit locations, skill categories modifiers, single skill per weapon (attack/parry), strike ranks are optional, they will probably means they will not be used in the supplements, and if I want to use them, that's more work for me.

- As variable armor is standard, it will probably means it will be used in the supplements, and if I don't want to use it, that's more work for me.

- Why having used the magic from WoW and SB, and discarded the 3 from RQ.

This is why, although I like what Jason did, I think the new BRP is moving further away from RQ than the previous incarnations.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Yes PLEASE not in a thread titled "Glorantha"! Start a new thread and call it "Comparative systemology" or something. Pretty please with a cherry on top?

:focus:

As it seems it will become quite hot, yes, please do!

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

RQM is close enough to the other RQs to count as a valid version.

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I disagree on that, but let's NOT start a new flamewar on this.

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Sure, it's not brilliant and has flaws and I wouldn't use it as my main system, but it has some good ideas and shouldn't be dismissed out of hand.

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On, this, I agree.

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From my point of view, BRP is just another version of RQ. It has a lot of rules I don't like and a lot of things I won't use, just like RQM. Is one better than the other? Maybe, maybe not.

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Agreed, even if I'm sure than one will be better than the other is.

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The playtest was interesting but the game seemed to be moving further away from RQ, a bit too far for my tastes.

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Same for me.

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It certainly seems more coherent than RQM, but even after playtesting and checking it still needs extensive alterations. That's why I won't be buying the Zero Edition, that and I bought 3 Mongoose RQ books that are now combined into one, so I'll be damned if I buy a Zero Edition and then have to buy a full version of BRP.

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Same opinion for me, except that I am not buying edition 0 for economical reasons.

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I'll wait, I'll buy it and I'll use bits of it. It won't be my prime system, any more than RQM will be, but I'll get some of the supplements and I'll use them in my games.

Idem.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Yeah, I think there is some bad blood between Greg and what is left of Chaosium. It was originally Greg's company, and in the mid 90s, Chaosium did split off into three different companies, with Issaries being the Glorantha company.

While Chaosium could probably broker a deal. I don't think they want to. I think if they were interested in publishing more Glorantha they would have produced HeroQuest.

I really doubt you'll see Greg and Chaosium working together on something again. Otherwise I doubt there evern would have been an MRQ.

According to GS, Chaosium split in 4 (Chaosium itself with CoC, Mythos and SB, Issaries with Glorantha, another company I don't remember the name with Pendragon and Wizard's Attic to handle distribution).

And also according to GS, he MAY have an interest in working with Chaosium: when asked who owns Chaosium, the answer was 33% himself, 33% Lynn Willis, 33% Charlie Krank and 1% Sandy Petersen. But, considering GS view on RQ (already cited by Nick) and the existence of the Mongoose license (that most probably includes an exclusivity clause), I really doubt it could occur.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

So do you think Greg Stafford will license out First Age Glorantha to Chaosium to use with BRP? Or better still use first age for Heroquest and licence out 3rd age to be used with BRP. That really would be back to the good old days!

Think there is any likelihood?

I would like, but I doubt. I think I will have to build my RQ IV, starting with BRP.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Players in my long running RQ game always loved training, but they wouldn't train for years.

Adventures don't happen everyday and you have to do something in between. Generally once combat skills progressed to a certain point it was no longer possible/practical to continue to train them up, so they would focus on other skills that they felt their characters would be interested in.

They would train up First Aid, some Lores, magic skills, Climb, Jump, Hide and Sneak. This is also when they would work on secondary weapon skills or their Dodge skill if they primarily parried. All of this was done to round out the character. If you did nothing but adventure you would find that your primary sword skill was 200%, but your chance to fight with your dagger was 30% and your World Lore was still 8%. Or your "Heroes" would come to a river and drown because no one had a Swim higher than 20%.

Money is also a factor. I required them to spend money on living as well as training and eventually they would run out and need to go get some more. Usually off the bodies of defeated foes like any other upstanding member of society. :thumb:

For 1st part, same for me.

For 2nd part, I agree.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

If your character gets more powerful he can take on tougher opponents. That is a benefit by itself. So instead of fighting goblins or feral broos, you are fighting dragons and chaos terrors. Instead of seeing these things and thinking, "Oh crap! Run away!" you are thinking, "I think I can take him!"

Of course it is different in other games. I played Champions for a long time and the characters grew very little in power. Add some skill levels, maybe a minor power and that was it. There were also a couple "Radiation Accidents" when someone really wanted to remake their character, but even then the "new" character was only moderately more powerful than a starting character. Really we played that game for different reasons than we played RQ.

On this, I tend to disagree. The most powerful Champion character I've played had about 100 XP, and he was way more powerful than when created. It took about 18 month to reach that point, so I would not qualify this as a slow rise.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I won't speak of Bond specifically because I don't know about its advancement, but that's not true in most of the spy and modern adventure games I know of; in most of those, you start as anything but a beginner, and the slope of advancement is slow (the exception being D20 based ones which are stuck in a "start at the bottom" paradigm, but they're stuck in that on everything).

With Bond, the advancement curve is quite steep, even more than with BRP. A starting rookie can reach agent level in a few scenarios. 00 level is slower to reach, but not because the curve slows (it is even steeper), but becausethe requirements are difficult to reach. And when you reach 00, the curve is furter steeped.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Currently on sickness (more properly wound) leave because of left arm unusable.

I'm computer room manager, and when too tired installing servers (physically in addition to os) or removing them, laying power cables, connecting fibers an lan cables, tuning the UPS and cooling system, I connect to the web to see if I find way to ease my job. I use part of this small time to post.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I attached a file on Mecha Rules (in French, unfortunately) in downloads under rules. If someone can translate it, it might be interesting.

I will give a try, but I have only 1 hand available, so it will be hard.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Well, we know you can't win at a RPG, so it would have to be something else for a win, right? :confused:

I still got the WWII edtion they did of AofA.

Yes, the Me262 rocks (and fly like a rock, either).

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

As I expected I am a relative newb here. I started gaming in 1980 with the D&D Red Box. Moved to RQ 2nd Edition shortly after that.

I have played Car Wars as well. Plus Autoduel Champions!

For Car Wars, or for Champions?

Runequestement votre,

Kloster (VMG fondler)

Also, remember that RQ3 professions were "parent occupation". In other words, that's the profession your were born into. There was no requirement to keep it, and in fact there were rules for changing profession if you wanted to. We typically allowed a new character to pick any of the more "standard" professions that might be available in the area if he wanted without penalty (obviously, you couldn't just choose to be a noble if you weren't born to it).

IMO, they added flavor to the game. It wasn't just "I'm carbon copy warrior number 19...". You were something else when you grew up, and then you (presumably) decided to go off in search of adventure, ran into a group of troublemakers (the rest of the player characters) and things just snowballed from there.

There were a couple very useful aspects to the profession lists as well. Firstly, it just gave you a general sense of what a given type of person might be able to do. If your characters for some reason need to organize a group of farmers to help defend their village from raiding barbarians, how skilled are they going to be? What skills might they have that could be useful? What magic? Can they sew? What about the local thieves guild? What kind of skills are they likely to have? How about a group of longshoremen? The professions gave the game environment a bit of consistency and foundation that many other games lack.

Additionally, it was a nice resource for player characters during offtime. If I don't play a character for a few years, what skills does he gain? Maybe I want to pay for training or something and roll a gazillion dice, but boy is it simpler to just find a profession that fits what he's doing when he's not adventuring and use that as a guideline (we allow some substitution of skills when doing this of course). Maybe my Earth cultist *is* a farmer when he's not adventuring?

The rules specifically states that you can change occupation during preliminary experience, if you fulfill the conditions. You have to stay at least 1 year and can't change your culture, but otherwise, you can switch to whatever you want, although you are of course right by saying GM discretion has to be applied for 'occupations' that can only be reached by heritage or by roleplay (like noble).

Same thing for the downtime.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I have to point out that if you chose age in addition to profession, the argument about replacement characters starts to become progressively moot; even a 27 year old RQ3 character (assuming you're still forcing them into the range that is potentially rollable) in one of the more adventuring professions is a relatively advanced character. With a decent attack modifier, for example, and using one's cultural weapons, the military professions could quite easily start at age 27 with their main weapons skills at 80% or higher; short of Gloranthan style runelords, that was already approaching as good as most RQ3 combatants were going to get barring a very long period of play.

So at some point if you are allowing too much manipulation here, the concept of "starting character" becomes essentially meaningless.

We kept age in the 'rollable' range. I should have said 'Choose one possible roll'

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I long ago gave up the random background tables. The novelty of playing farmers did indeed wear off in short order. Also, it seems based heavily on real world demographics, but certainly certain backgrounds are more prone to adventuring than others - and farmer just sin't one that comes to mind (unless of course someone wanted to play a farmer). I've typically allowed either choosing background or more often used the assign a certain number of skill points yourself approach. In RQ3 if I recall right your age roll has a major effect on starting skills in the default method, which again I have not used in a while.

I like the MRQ chargen approach a lot. Choose a background, choose a profession, assign your free points.

Don't forget that in RQ III, all chargen rolls and tables are described with 'Choose or Roll', including the age!!

If you don't want to play a farmer, don't roll, and choose something else.

The way we play it is Choose.

If the GM don't validate your choice, you have the possibility to either make another choice or force a roll, and everybody (player and GM) has to accept the result of the dices. In almost 20 years, I've never seen a dice for this, as everybody prefers choosing something that fits his style and expectations (and we've seen farmers).

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Thieves Guild was a D&D-like game where every player was a thief. The list of possible PC races included Orcs, Goblins, Kobolds and Pixies along with the usual suspects. While the game rules themselves were uninspired, they released lots of adventures that were very different from the usual stuff coming out at the time. For example, one of the adventures took place during the Duke's fancy dress ball. You had to infiltrate and steal this necklace from the duchess.

You beat me.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Certainly, and I even tossed in an example of an opposing priest using shield 4 and protection 8 to defend against the guy with the bladesharp and the truesword.

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True

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I think that my original point has kinda been lost in all of this. Assuming you use a "dodge subtracts success off attack" system (which most people do use, and I believe is the default "standard" in the BRP rules), then all of those things actually increase the utility of dodge, rather then the other way around.

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True also.

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IIRC, runemetal by default is 150% ap and 50% weight, right? This means that it's less restrictive on dodging then normal armor (assuming I'm remembering the weight thing correctly. I know we've always played it that way). So a successful dodge skill will always ensure that you get that armor on every single attack, no matter what. You can't be criticalled unless you fail your dodge skill. As the worn armor value increases, this makes dodge more valuable.

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No, this is RQ 2. For RQ III, you only have 150% AP.

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Add in armor enchanting of locations and/or armor and this gets even bigger. A shield is nice, but if we're assuming someone with lots of time/power on his hands, he's going to have significant worn armor points even before casting spells (which add even more). His parry becomes pretty small in comparison. When we add in runemetal armor into the equation, my point becomes stronger.

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No, the iron only add 3 points on the 43. Let's say he has no iron and count 40 points. In that case, the shield, and thus the parry, counts for almost half of the points, which furthers my point.

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So, Joe the orlanthi runepriest can walk around in his rune iron platemail, giving him 12ap on every location. Add to that his shield 4 and his protection 8, and he's sitting at 28ap everywhere. Note, that this is before armor enchantment is even considered. In our campaign, we restrict this to double the normal AP of an item, or the HPs of a location (for armoring skin for example). Some campaigns don't place such restrictions, so it's hard to say what's "typical". If he's facing the guy with a truesword and a bladesharp 8, he could parry and probably do just fine. Average damage with say a broadsword would be sitting at 11+7+8=26. Easily stopped. Even before the parry. Max damage is 36+12+8=56. Not so easy. Even with a parry (but hopefully, not that common either).

Note, however, that if Joe makes his dodge (assuming the "level subtracts" system), he can reduce an impale to a normal hit, putting the damage level back into the "I can take this with my worn armor" range. An average impale would do 22+7+8=37 damage. Parried, that'll be stopped. Dodged, that will be stopped. An average critical will do the same damage, but the armor will be avoided (so you just get the parry). Even with a hoplite, he's still taking 19 points of damage to a location (which will probably sever it). Same critical if dodged will result in only 9 points of damage being taken. That will likely put a location under, but not sever it.

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IIRC, on a critical, you don't substract the protection afforded by spells 5they don't have weak spots). We ruled that enchantments don't have neither, but without that, he still has 34 AP with parry, which is enough.

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The point I'm trying to get here is that if you play where dodges subtract the level of success, the whole "critial kills a dodge" concept falls apart. What we find is that as worn armor increases in proportion to parry, dodge actually gets *better* against criticals.

On this, we agree, Dodge gets better against critical, but this becomes significant at higher levels than the 'easy ones' you've cited.

The real gain of dodge is that once you've started to dodge, you can continue to dodge all attacks from the same attacker.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I've sorta played it. The rumor has always been that the city of Refuge in Glorantha is really Sanctuary and I have used the map and some basics there before, but of course much of the fleshing out was tradtional Glorantha.

No, this is Thieve's world (I also have it, with the companion) you're speaking about, not Thieve's guild.

This one, I have used and enjoyed.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

As I stated earlier, it depends on where your game is in terms of armoring and whatnot. I play in a game that's more or less RQ3 in a modified Glorantha-like setting (actually based on the old QuestWorld stuff. kinda...). In our game, runemetal is *rare*. Let's face it, given the starting skill levels in RQ3, it's just not that hard, nor does it take that long, for people to qualify for runepriest. You just need some skills at 50% or higher (some 90%s depending on cult), and 10 points of runemagic.

So it's quite common for a relatively beginning level priest in our game to have the exact spells and gear combination I mentioned earlier. My point was that without *any* extra gear, or power spent on enchantment, or heroic level augmentation of your character's stats and bodies, they can achieve the sorts of damage levels I was talking about. If you need to add in runemetal armor with perhaps some armoring enchantment to counter it, that's great! But it does not change the fact that those sorts of damage levels really are "normal" for any RQ3 game that uses standard RQ cults and spells.

You don't need anything but standard RQ3 rules and spells to obtain them. And it's not even difficult to do!

I agree with you it is easy. My point was that, even for warrior cults, offensive spells are not the only way to spend POW, money and time. Characters with such level at least should have also spells and equipment to defend and protect them. I have thus used standard equipment and spells, with a like amount of expenditure.

My opinion is that they should also have at least an equal amount in OTHER expenditures (utility spell, like worship deity, healing magic, non combat equipment, perception spells, etc) just to be viable (and accepted).

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

Yeah. It really does depend on the "flavor" of your game. How much armoring enchantment do you allow? Do you have stacking limits on spells? How strictly do you follow the encumberance rules?

30-40 points isn't really that high, even using "standard" spell rules. Let's assume you're playing in a game (like mine) where spells are capped at 4 points for rune and 8 points for spirit (ok. we use a scaling cap, but whatever). So a priest of humakt is facing you with a broadsword with truesword and bladesharp 8 going. That's hardly even out of the range that a random beginning level priest might have. Let's also say he's got sufficient points of the strength spell to get a 2d6 strength bonus (typically about a strength 4). Again. Nothing is out of the ordinary, nor even requires any houserules (aside from those limiting the possibilities).

Average damage on a regular hit becomes (5.5*2=11)+7+8=26. Against someone with say a 12 point shield (pretty typical) and 6 points of armor (ring+leather, arguably the best ap for the enc in RQ3), he's going to take 8 points of damage to a location every single swing (which will likely take that location down barring significant strengthening enchantment). A special gets "ugly" in this situation, since it bumps the damage up an additional 11 points (now an average of 37) if he chooses to impale, or 5 points if he chooses to just take max damage.

Max damage in that situation is 18+12+8=38 damage on a regular hit, and 36+12+8=56 on an impale. That's pretty brutal.

Ok. But let's pretend that you're also a priest, and you've got 4 points of shield and 8 points of protection. That's an additional 16 points of armor. Note, that this armor "works" whether you parry or not. So your worn armor has jumped to 22. Suddenly, the 12 points of parry from the shield isn't as significant as the worn armor you get. Avoiding a critical matters *more* (since it's worth 22 points) then the parry. Of course, you could pretty safely parry as well, since in this case, your parry gives you 34 points of protection and the other guy has to get a lucky hit (an impale or better) to have much chance of doing any damage to you.

That's an edge case honestly. The two skills are almost a wash. But if we transform that opponent into a Zorak Zoran priest using crush4, wielding a troll maul, and capable of getting a 3d6 damage bonus, suddenly are numbers might not look so great. Dodging starts to look pretty good when the opponents average damage hits 18+10+13.5+8=41.5 damage (yes, that's average for a 3d6 bonus, with a troll maul with truemace, crush4, and bludgeon8).

I'll also point out that the above mentioned troll would only need some spirit spells (which he can pick automatically once he's a priest and spends one power for spellteaching), and 5 points of rune magic (and since he needs 10 to qualify for priest, that shouldn't be a problem, right?). So basically, any random zorak zoran priest can do this without any special items or abilities.

IMO, it's quite common to face foes that can do that kind of damage. And of course, one of the disadvantages that PCs have is that while they're expected to fight and defeat many foes over the course of an adventure, each foe they fight is *only* fighting the PCs. Thus, he's likely to run out of shield before the foes he fights over the course of an adventure run out of stuff like truesword, crush, or slash.

Having a dodge is pretty darn nice in those situations. Yes. It's harder to get the skill up. It starts at a lower base and suffers penalties based on enc. But more experienced characters in my campaign almost always take some time to learn some dodge just so that they have the chance to use it if/when they need it.

With that level of offensive spells, characters should have an equivalent of defensive spells, and their armor will be well over 6 points (plus 12 for shield).

You're speaking of rune level, which probably means (with the warrior cult you've cited as exemple) iron chainmail (10 AP) plus hoplite shield (18 AP) plus some protection spells (for exemple, protection 4 is not unrealistic) plus shield 2 (not unrealistic considering the level of offensive spells). If you add a couple of POW for armoring enchantments, that would give you the staggering amount of 43 AP, well in line with the damage you've calculated.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

What, no Car Wars?

You can't claim to be experienced in Roleplaying if you haven't played Car Wars.

None of this rubbish about playing a Magic User, a Troll or a Lord of Chaos, in Car Wars you could play tanks or 18 wheelers with bulldozer attachments.

Now, that's roleplaying.

And Goblins, and having a voodoo power plant that ran on human blood!!!

Runequestement votre,

Kloster (who lost his world record for acceleration).