PhilHibbs

18 Rune Points is hard for a PC to get, but an NPC can have them. Skills over 200% are hard to get, but an NPC can have them. Spirit Spells over 6 points are hard to get, but NPCs can have them. What's the difference? Why remove one of these advancement options?

I wouldn't restrict it in any hard sense, but I would make it tricky to get anything much higher than 6 points, and 10 points would be really hard to come by. Certainly there are no Rune levels who happen to know it to teach nearby.

There was a programme on the TV the other day where Danny Dyer was looking at the lives of his ancestors, and one was Sir Henry "Hotspur" Percy. This was around 1400, so his armour may be more sophisticated than that available in Glorantha, so that should be taken into account. They talked about him training by running through the woods in full armour, but I don't remember if they mentioned how fast he was supposed to be. Dyer was dead beat in seconds, but the expert was making quite an impressive pace, and once he got moving, he was pretty much unstoppable due to the momentum of the armour. I would not want to have been in his way.

I love the idea of crocodiles as a kind of magisaur.

Is this where Forbidden Planet used to be? I didn't know it had closed! Ah, it's just moved round the corner.

There's a tiny museum in Beijing full of pottery calligraphy.

There's a story here - the old Lhankor Mhy sage who goes crazy and joins the Trickster Firebug cult, and dedicates the rest of his life to burning libraries.

That's not what Thyrwyn said - by "roleplaying restrictions" he meant "restrictions that are not game mechanical, but based on roleplaying". Babeester Gor gets some powerful stuff, but you have to roleplay a restrictive kind of character. Same with Humakt. You get powerful toys, but have to roleplay a Humakti. If a group isn't as much into the roleplaying side, and just takes the toys and plays them in a munchkin manner, then roleplaying restrictions can be ignored. The D&D equivalent is Paladins - if you don't give the player a hard time over the Lawful Good restrictions, a paladin can dominate. At least, in the older editions that I am familiar with.

I think the overarching problem here is that Jeff and Jason intended the rules to be used with a large degree of personal interpretation and flexibility, so a lack of explicit prescriptive mechanics is, in their minds, not a problem. Some gamers and game groups don't want that, they want mechanics that are clear and direct. I can understand both desires, I know what I want out of RQ, and I'm happy to run the game my way and make calls to resolve the problems.

He's making a complete mess of the mechanics over on that thread. He's suggesting that if you have 200% attack against a 55% parry, then because you lost 100% and they only lost 50%, you could apply the other 50% as a penalty to their attack. Presumably you will be doing that separately with your superior parry skill. What if they already attacked before you did? What if they are attacking someone else? If you are parrying with 200% and 180% against two attackers, do you apply the extra antiparry to their attacks as well, not only reducing their attacks from 55% to 5%, but also both their parries as well? It's a nightmare. Playing loose with the rules is one thing, it's ok for a GM to make a decision that doesn't make sense (or is ok in the situation, but not scalable) every now and then, but suggesting it in an official clarification thread should be done with more care. We've seen this before with Detect Enemies and Countermagic, he makes fast decisions and doesn't think through the consequences.

That's fair enough. RQG is a tricksy beast, as have all the previous editions of RuneQuest. If you're after something a bit simpler but with great BRP credentials, Elric! is a good substitute. It's what my brother uses for his "crunchy" Gloranthan games, when he's not using HeroQuest, his own Apocalypse World variant, or his Rune Hack (Black Hack inspired super-minimalist RQ).

Don't forget GORP! Very expensive on ebay, though. https://juegosydados.com/2018/08/08/interview-with-michael-obrien-the-vice-president-of-the-new-chaosium/

Spot on. You can also have MP storage, in crystals or matrixes or allied spirits, but you can't have RP storage (unless they introduce rules for Truestone that do that, but that's a big can of wyrms). Another subtlety is that, if you are a member of more than one cult, you have a separate Rune Point pool for each cult. Your Orlanth magic uses Orlanth Rune Points, and your Argan Argar magic uses Argan Argar Rune Points, and you need to get them back at different worship ceremonies (unless there is a joint one for some reason, such as an Ernaldan service for all the Husband Protector Deities, ask your GM nicely).

Some Rune Magic will also require MPs - Heal Wound, Sword Trance, etc., this will be stated in the spell description.

I heard a rumour (which may have contained a substantially false component) and met some people at Dragonmeet to do with a French translation of RuneQuest - did that not come to pass, or are they still involved under a new umbrella? *Edit* Ah, now I see Deadcrows mentioned, that's who I met. I think "Studio Deadcrows" and "Sans Detour" got crossed over in my brain.

I just didn't know. I hadn't seen anything about Trollpak, so I asked. No panic.

I think it's a shame that they lock the threads while a new edition is being printed, because there are issues that I've found and forgotten about because there was nowhere to post it.

Just thinking a bit more about the anti-parry rule, I asked my brother what he thought and his instinctive reaction was "of course you use the reduced skill to figure the chance of the next parry". Since clearly some people might come to this conclusion, I think it's worth enumerating the reasons why it's a bad rule. Anti-parry is just for resolving a single interaction, and should have no further consequences for subsequent die rolls - trying (possibly successfully) to sneak past a super-observant guard should not turn you into a klutz for further sneak rolls. If you did carry on from the reduced figure, then increasing your skill over 100 would have no improving effect whatsoever on any parry after the first. A 100% ability parrying two opponents of different skill levels would be very different experiences depending on the order of attacks. If the lower skill attacks first, you get to parry both, whereas if the higher skill attacks first then you might have no chance of parrying the low skill (if the high skilled attack, say 180 vs 100, has driven down your parry chance to 20 or less).

So anti parry happens if ability is over 100, Bladesharp affects attack chance, Sword Trance affects skill. Is there a distinction here, or are they alll the same thing? Does the Sword Trance increase affect anti-parry, but Bladesharp not? I don't think there is meant to be a difference, I think anti-parry happens after all modifiers.

Interesting question. The campaign did reach the $205k stretch goal for Trollpak, but the page does not say "Achieved" next to it.

Yes, I see, and I agree. There's little incentive not to declare parries against all attacks, unless you think that some are going to miss and you want to reduce the number of -20 penalties. Against high skill opponents, always parry (or dodge).

Interesting. So the first parry, which is reduced to 100 in order to reduce the attack by the same amount, sets the chance for the second parry to 80. Hmmm. I'll have to think about that.

I don't think that the boosted skill would not count for the anti-parry mechanic.

It makes splitting your attacks a tricky choice. If you split your 180% skill into two 90s, then find your opponent has an unexpectedly high parry of 150%, you find your first attack chance reduced to 40%, and the second to 60%, and both very likely to be parried. I think that's fair enough though. Don't split until you know what you are up against. And yes, this thread has become more of a general discussion on the mechanics of high skills and I think that's ok.

Also, as written, regardless of facing or SR. There are no rules about parrying attacks from behind or above, or parrying two attacks that happen on the same SR, on on the same SR that you attack on. I'm sure that is intended to be left to the GM, and the facing bonus to attack already takes this somewhat into account. I just had a bit of a knockabout on another thread regarding this - SR are not literally mapped 1-to-1 to real world time. If you always attack on the same SR, your swings are not always precisely 12 seconds apart, and therefore two people who "always" attack on SR5 do not always attack simultaneously. If you want to model simultaneous attacks, you need a rule that models two coordinated attackers making a deliberate effort to act in concert. Maybe something like the aimed blow rule - delay your attacks, take a penalty to hit (probably not as much as half chance), but with a bigger penalty to the target's two parries. That way two or more organized people can more effectively gang up on a higher skilled opponent, without relying on the happenstance of attacks coming in at the same abstracted SR. Personally I do not want such a rule, it's an unnecessary complication and I prefer the more heroic style of fight where a skilled warrior can take on large groups à la Crazy 88.