PhilHibbs

Someone who has studied and mastered the power of Truth would be better at casting Logical Clarity than someone who has studied the power of Illusion.

To be fair, up until last Friday, RuneQuest 2 was the only currently in-print version of RuneQuest, and technically RQ2 and RQ:G are now both in print simultaneously! 😜 A comprehensive list of differences would be nice, probably as a fan project, but I would not like to see any more space in the RQ:G rule book taken up with it. I don't know of any new role playing game edition that has gone to the lengths of comprehensively listing all the changes, to the level of detail of "this mechanic is no longer limited to X points". Often previous editions are never even mentioned.

Sure, other games have copied these features of RuneQuest - they are RuneQuest in every sense other than the trademark (caveat, I don't really know RevD100). But RuneQuest did them first, and IMO RQ:G does them more than any other game, and he does say "that help make RuneQuest distinct", he does not say "each of which is unique to RuneQuest".

Well my archive of Sandy's documents is here: http://hibbs.me.uk/snarks/docs/ I will check in any of the other sets posted here are more up to date. Seems identical to Mugen's (www.chez.com) so far.

I can even do a custom version of the spreadsheet with the old formulae in if anyone wants, I had it all working before, so it's almost a simple cut and paste.

Ah, yes, that rings a bell. I came across a variant where where you rolled 3d6 for all stats, and when you assigned a roll to INT or SIZ you swap one of the dice for a 6, so you are getting rid of 2 crappy dice rolls out of 7 stats. You could easily extend this to "roll 4 dice, discard the lowest, and replace one with a 6 if assigning to INT or SIZ". We also allowed discarding of higher dice if someone wanted a low SIZ. A variant that I used at one time was when you rolled a stat, you had to pick which one to assign it to right away before rolling the next one, so it became a bit of a gamble whether you should wait for a better roll.

I think variable spell limits were only in RQ2, RQ3 got rid of them.

Rolling Ann allocating - with or without extra dice - is ok for D&D or RQ2 which had all stats being 3D6 but when you have two stats rolled differently, you have very limited flexibility on INT and SIZ. What I used to do was roll 21 to 25 dice all at once and pick out dice in groups of 2 and 3 and allocate them to stats.

The best stat rolling system I ever came across was a friend who programmed his Amstrad computer to run overnight printing out sets of random stats on a dot matrix printer, and pored over the list the next morning to find the best ones. He turned up to a new game with a character that had 16+ in every stat, and said it was randomly generated legitimately. We got the story out of him eventually.

I think GURPS 3rd Edition in 1988 was the first time I came across the idea of designing a character without any dice rolls. If I had heard the suggestion for RQ, I would probably not have been interested. Later, though, we used a ponts-based RQ3 character creation system almost exclusively for several years. I have it mirrored on my web space but I can't remember who created it! Does it look familiar to anyone? http://www.hibbs.me.uk/snarks/chargen.htm *Edit* it is Nick Effingham's system.

Absoutely, MRQ2 is a rock solid, high quality, great fun game system. Although RQG is great, I would have had no issues whatsoever with Chaosium just adding character backgrounds and runes and calling it RQ7. I'm not sure which I would prefer... probably RQG, but its a close call and also I haven't actually used RQG yet.

I agree, for the basic reason that probability and statistics are hard to get right. Crunching a million sets of numbers is easier, at least for my particular skill set.

Yes, the HP per location charts in RQ3 were approximations of the multiples presented in the rules (0.33, 0.25, 0.4 if i recall correctly), or vice versa. Despite my mathematical brain, I always just used the charts on the basis that that's what all the published stats would probably use.

That's why the GM Pack will come with a rolled up newspaper.

There's always been a difference between a skill that has a zero base (like read/write) and a skill that has a base that is wiped out by a category modifier. The latter is just like any other skill number, you always still a 01-05 chance of success.

Thanks a lot, fixed: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/179pEllnjDoBjLC0e42e_C9ZtGsK31nWrzg6ddqn2HAc/edit?usp=sharing I added an extra skill column "Extra" on the first sheet. Add in anything here, including experience, training, HeroQuest bonuses, etc. You can, of course, use any of the columns AO-AS for whatever you want once character creation is completed and you no longer need to keep track of where the chunks of skill came from, you can consolidate the original numbers into a single column and use the rest if you want, for example, to keep experience and training separate. I may, for example, want to do my experience rolls by adding the new gains into a blank column, and then summing them up into another column when I'm done. Hmm, I think Google Docs does macros, so I might make that a feature...

RQ made it non-compulsory, but you absolutely can do it, and I have done so. In fact that was the primary answer to the problem of crap stats - if you can assign them, assign them to STR, CON, SIZ, CHA and play a sorcerer or shaman (although low CHA is no longer a shaman option). And as a general principle of game design, it's better for the GM to give than to take away, so the rules should not give too much by default, and the GM should be encouraged to supply the generosity. This would tend to start the GM-player relationship off on the right footing.

Bully for you! But it isn't consistent with the rules as written, so I think raising an alternative suggestion is an entirely legitimate thing to do at this stage.

80 is 1.5 points above average for a full set of straight dice rolls, so not really ridiculously low.

The thread is for posting errata. Please bounce it elsewhere.

You only reduce skills over 100 if both characters have over 100. So if Mr 150% is facing 90%, he has a 30% special chance. I'm not a fan of the rule about reducing skills, as most people will have several different skills and you will end up doing loads of subtraction all the time. "No, I'm dodging, I have 142 in that, I parried last round and I have 135 in shield".

A tie should be broken by the highest die roll winning,. This gives the edge in both cases to the higher skill.

Typos in the left column.

Good spot - just need to move the "SIZ" in AC2 to AD2. Also I noticed that the secondary bonus calculation has "+5" instead of "+4" so secondary category mods for stats higher than 21 were kicking in at 22, 27, etc. Oh, and low stats had the wrong sign on their modifier, so they behave just like high stats! Ooops! Fixed: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UNfkIklJrrFH8WiS2efka0wu_2V3tcMSnNWRwbBHz4Y/edit?usp=sharing If you've started using a sheet and want to fix it, just copy in the contents of the Lookups sheet from the new version, or fix the formula yourself in cells U6:U12.

I've gone through the whole of Vasana's character creation story and filled in my sheet as closely as I can: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IhvH1OLspcSurqd-c3YTmfbEZpwYz_5njTTOR0viBXY/edit?usp=sharing What I have learned: Needs another Loyalty passion Needs a third spoken language slot Needs a fifth weapon line Needs lines for shield skills and shield stats There's some stuff in the weapon stats section that I can't remember what it is so that needs simplifying So now there's a new version with those changes: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zUJmo8XdAN6CLHudH4KH_qb4o9WImQLCxaGyvbu1Boo/edit?usp=sharing